Michelle Pan Hear us, it doesn't work.

Michelle, you can hear us.

Yeah, we're 40.

All right.

Good evening.

Welcome to the August 27th, 2025, Social Service Human Relations Board Meeting.

This meeting is being recorded.

The chat function has been turned off.

If members of the public would like to comment on an item, please digitally raise your hand or email Gracia Manayan, G-M-A-N-N-A-H-A-Y-O-N at Alameda C A dot gov.

Comments submitted during the meeting before the conclusion of public comment section will be read into the record.

Free mail address is also on the meeting's agenda.

If you're calling in by phone, please email Ms.

Manayan.

You can also dial star nine to raise your hand, and we will call on you.

Public comments will be limited to three minutes.

The public has two opportunities for public comments.

First, under agenda item two, public comments.

Comments from the audience may concern matters either on or not on the agenda, but must deal with matters subject to the jurisdiction of the Social Service Human Relations Board.

Second, under each item, there will be an opportunity for public comment on a specific item.

Each item follows a format similar to City Council meetings.

First, a presentation.

Then we will ask if there are any public comments on this agenda item, and finally, after public comment, we will open the item up to board discussion and a vote if recommended.

Diana Michelle Omi.

Here Gerald Bryant.

Michelle Buckholz.

Samantha Green.

Scott Means here.

And uh board member Ruckholtz is joining virtually, so uh all those today will be done by roll call.

Um also joining us from Housing and Human Services.

We have Assistant City Manager and Wildridge and Gresham Mana Program Manager.

So we'll go right to non-agenda public comments.

The city welcomes speakers providing public comment, but please be advised.

This is a limited public forum.

Comments from the audience may concern matters either on or not on the agenda, but must deal with matters subject to the jurisdiction of the social service and human relations board.

Comments will be limited to three minutes.

Comments concerning matters on this evening's agenda will be heard when that item is called.

If speakers fail to follow these rules, they will be warned.

And if they continue to disregard the rules, their opportunity to speak will end.

So do we have any speakers?

We do not have any public comments.

We will review an approved minutes for July 24th, 2025.

Can I have a good question?

Interruption.

Oh, when that when the meeting was disrupted, I yeah, because there was a yelling and we had to stop the meeting, so I would answer a lot of interruption.

Okay.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Do we have a second?

We have a second.

Okay, we will do a vocal vote.

Bernie Wolf?

Yes.

Diane Michelle Ome.

Yes.

Joel O'Brien?

Yes.

Michelle Buckles.

Yes.

Samantha Green.

Yes.

And Scott Means.

Yes.

It's unanimous.

Sorry.

All right.

We're going to move on to item number four.

But before we get into uh item four, um, I must all look ahead here.

We have three presentations tonight with our comments and public comment times.

So we need to be mindful.

Uh each presentation is going to be 10 minutes.

Um we will time keep five minutes after that presentation for for questions, so please be as concise as possible.

Then we'll go to public comment after that five minutes, and then we'll just you know have a couple more minutes to tie things up, but we'll have to be a little more laser tonight because sometimes you know we have gone on for a while, and I don't know what subject.

Um this is the interest of public and need to see everything and all the presenters that have come here tonight.

Um so getting right to it.

Um, we're gonna go to item 4A, the presentation on Rise of Alameda, the guaranteed income pilot program.

Um this uh presentation on Rise Up Alameda uh is with the 12-month inter report by Eric Vonstein, development manager from the base reuse and economic development department.

So I said yes.

Okay.

Okay, excellent.

So um I'm very happy to be here, like I was telling some people it's uh almost like coming home, so really appreciate it.

Um, and I feel um very fortunate to be able to present to Shrub tonight on this topic.

Shrub has been involved with uh Rise Up Alameda and guaranteed income from the start.

Um been involved with it to help shaped it.

Um Gerald's been uh uh critical part of our advisory board, and we'll continue to be uh as I will show it in the presentation.

Moving forward, we plan to uh reconvene the advisory board a couple more times, but we've also present presented the guaranteed income uh twice to Shrub uh right before we launched, and your comments were really helpful in shaping our outreach.

So just wanted to say thank you.

Um so where we are, um the reason why I'm here tonight is we're here to present our one-year survey for the city's anti-poverty guaranteed income pilot program, which is a two-year uh program that started in December of 2023.

Our research partner, Apt Global, recently conducted a survey of all of the participants and compared these results to a control group of non-program participants.

The purpose was to see or to measure the statistical significance of the program's effectiveness.

APT will conduct a similar two-year survey at the end of the program.

And what we're so what we're presenting is just the first year uh mid-program findings.

So um first, just to quickly review what is guaranteed income.

Um guaranteed income programs provide a flat monthly cash payment to a defined population for residents.

These programs are distinct from other financial assistance programs in that they are first unconditional.

For example, they don't have work requirements, second, they're unrestricted, allowing the individual to determine what they need and how best to spend their money, and third, uh they involve regular payments over a period of time instead of a one-time uh grant, and these payments used in the pilot programs are not enough uh to live on but are intended to help support and supplement uh participants' needs.

There are now nearly 200 city um and local jurisdictions conducting or have it conducted uh guaranteed income pilot programs.

That's about double from when we first started our program.

So this um President Means mentioned uh Almeida's program is called Rise Up Alameda, and it provides 1,000 per month to 150 low-income households over a two-year period.

Our first payment was dispersed in December of 2023, and the final payment, two years, will be this November.

And there were um three basic eligibility requirements.

First, applicant must be an al meter resident at the start of the program, must be 18 years or older, and third, have an annual income of 50% or lower of the area median income, which in 2000 or 2023 was about $51,000 for a family of one.

Just briefly go over the program goals.

We had three goals.

The first goal was to reduce the economic volatility of the program's participants.

Second was to help change the narrative and perceptions surrounding poverty and a sense of community belonging.

Like, for example, who is an Alameda and who belongs in our community.

And the third goal was to collect data and contribute to larger policy discussions regarding anti poverty measures.

There's a couple points that I think are worth noting.

One is that rise up almeta participant population is slightly older than other pilot programs.

The average age is 49 years old.

And about a quarter of our participants, about 26% are 62 years or older.

The other I think salient point is the average, on average the participants reported a household income of slightly less than $32,000 a year, which is significantly lower than the program's threshold of eligibility requirement of $51,000.

And then finally, a majority of the participants, about 64%, reported to be using some form of public benefits, such as food stamps.

So APT measure, our research partner, APT measured 40 different outcomes and found improvements in 17 of them.

And this is better than a majority of other pilot programs across the country.

And so I'll briefly go over some of these outcomes.

First, financial well-being.

Rise up recipients showed greater financial stability and resilience than the control group.

They were more likely than the control group to be able to handle $400 emergency, which is the definition of living paycheck to paycheck.

They also reported less chaotic home environments than the control group.

And then in terms of medical health, APT found that increased medical care, particularly for older participants, with more doctor visits than compared to the control group.

In terms of social engagement, recipients were more likely to be involved in community activities such as PTAs and parent groups, religious or social clubs.

Overall recipients demonstrated greater emotional connection, group membership, and felt more connected to their community.

In some areas, APS findings were inconclusive.

For example, there was no statistical impact on employment, and there was not an increase in unemployment.

However, rise-up recipients who were unemployed at the start of the program report feeling more hopeful about goal setting and goal setting in reaching them.

Participants were less likely to be employed full-time than the control group, but it is important to note that there are some instances in which reduced employment may be considered a good outcome.

For example, reducing work hours to sign up for job training or educational programs, hoping to get a better job in the future, would generally be considered a good positive outcome.

In such cases, their income and employment rates may temporarily decline as they spend more time learning.

Such as picking them up from school or having family dinners.

Similarly, there were inconclusive findings for housing and food security.

For example, due to the small number of program participants who recently experienced or are experiencing homelessness, APT was unable to determine if there was any real change in homelessness due to the pilot program.

In addition, it may take longer for changes in housing to be reflected in the survey data.

For example, there is usually a long lead time making plans and actually moving into a better housing situation.

Also, the temporary nature of the program, it's a two year program.

Why it influence whether a person actually makes a move, changes their housing situation or not?

We might see more housing and data in the two-year study, some more significant results.

So next steps.

So starting this last month in August, Operation Dignity, our administrative partner has been regularly notifying the participants in multiple languages that their last payment will be in November.

Operation Dignity will also be offering free benefit counseling to the recipients.

As I might have mentioned in previous meetings, the narrative storytelling component will be separate from the app's research studies.

However, it will complement the research findings by providing additional context with actual lived experiences of the participants.

The telling of these experiences may be through a combination of workshops, panel discussions, videos, andor printed text.

Apt will launch its 24-month survey in December 2025, and we anticipate the final report sometime next summer.

That report, APT will be able to provide more detailed analysis of our results, be able to compare our results with those of other pilot programs.

So that ends the presentation answering any questions, hopefully.

Great.

Thank you, Eric.

So do you have any clarifying questions about our reference from the board?

How can we say that long or having a program?

I think that's a really good question.

I think we will be looking for the advisory board as we meet with our consultant, which is may have been collaborative on that storytelling component to really kind of develop themes and messages to the community where the best messages of convention and how to tell the stories of who's actually our residents and part of our community.

But I think in terms of sustaining, that's really important.

It's just not uh you know one workshop or something, but how to actually uh continue will be really important, and we look to the advisory board for that.

We plan on a series of meetings with Maven to help shape that.

And I think there was one uh initial meeting with Naven, which was very good.

Uh so and I think at those workshops, um I think we would also be inviting the whole shrub to those workshops for you to be involved in.

I think that'll be really good.

How often do I do that?

So the last question about operation should they move will be needed to help with supplementation with service after the finally getting after the given last year and the searches that they want to be able to continue to get functional.

Yeah, um we've uh operation dignity has uh distributed uh a survey to actually all the participants uh well it along with notification that the payments will be handy.

The um the survey is very brief and it's been translated in multiple languages.

This asking what type of uh benefits are you receiving?

Would you like benefits counseling and uh third uh or additional questions?

What type of services would you like assistance with?

And operation dignity will be able to follow up with referral services, but at that it's actually a part of our um survey that has gone out and we'll include that repetitive um multiple times uh until November.

Thank you.

Um Michelle is there a funding source that you're thinking about for another round, would it be uh grant tax dollar?

Another another funding source for another round.

Um I think that would be open to uh the city council and uh the budget.

This was mainly through uh the COVID uh federal uh ARCA funding.

Uh so it was like a one-time uh funding source to develop a pilot program.

I think the also though um the next step, and what's really nice about our study is that the um it's part of a um uh common used uh survey uh instrument that we could compare it to other programs, and actually that day data is uh pulled in a larger data bank.

So it would help to shape the policy discussion.

I think there's a lot of pilot programs here in California that might be able to change or help influence at these state policy about uh child income tax credits or similar type of program.

What was the cost of it for two years?

Uh total cost was 4.6 million dollars, and 3.6 was for uh the direct cash payments.

Okay, great, thank you.

And when this is all concluded, is there going to be a more formal report on all everything that happened with all the fighting?

Yeah, for example.

Uh the final report will be similar, or the survey of the report will be similar to this.

Okay.

Oh similar to uh the what the exhibit that was in the staff report.

Yeah, some of those numbers that were up there was really interesting, all the gets certain other things too.

So yeah, so that's good.

Before I forget, because I just was uh but anyway.

Uh I was just wondering, um, you know, is the city kind of how the city functions in relation to this program?

Is that also part of the evaluation?

Oh is it just focused on the uh clients?

I think it's just focused on the clients, but I think operationally is there anything that you've learned or that you would recommend to do differently if the program would continue.

Is there a place for you to get that feedback?

Um I think that will be after me, but I think the um what I view personally is a lot of the value will be actually in the storytelling um to make those numbers real and that that data real.

Um I think that is also you know may identify uh I don't know, housing in human services or roles and certain opportunities for our uh to be involved in uh sense of belonging uh discussion.

I'm just curious like what the overall city sentiment is about the program.

Like does it like is there staff or constituency?

I mean staff, like as far as like city staff goes, like is there a sense of or like how do folks feel about the program and its implementation and are we not there yet because someone's not done?

I can speak on my own again.

Sure.

Okay.

I think for me that this is a very exciting program.

Um and it's uh I think it's very needed, and uh I think the timing of just the guaranteed income, the whole concept is uh very important um as our economy is changing uh the concept of uh support and uh changing employment standards.

Um so I think it's exciting, and I think um when talking among the uh other people in the city, people are very excited that this is um well as far as I know this is one of the biggest or the biggest anti-cooperative programs.

Oh, yeah, so I would see the city just like a pioneer program here, a bunch of cities fall after all meeting.

And I think Alameda was very significant.

Uh a lot of the pilot programs was um uh $500 for one year.

Right, and $500 uh figure is uh because of to help people over that unexpected expense looking paycheck to paycheck at that when we proposed and with the city council delivery this it was decided to go with $1,000 over two years more um robust program, but also the cost of living in the Bay Area is so much more than in other areas.

So yes, we were um we were really uh uh unique in other programs.

Yeah, thank you.

Let's check in and see if anyone um in public would like to ask any type of uh question as there is no public thought.

Okay, um we can still take a couple more minutes on you know any final questions or comments.

I was just curious about um the other pilots would be because I know Stockton started many years ago, just wondering if it's still going, like, or did it end?

Was it time limited?

Are all these time limited?

All of them are you know pilot programs.

I think Los Angeles, some of them, some of the larger cities have found additional local resources to uh continue them.

Um Stockton, what happened with Stockton is uh Mayor Tubbs here or the former mayor, um, and the staff that worked on that program, uh that really groundbreaking programed an organization called Mayors for Guaranteed Income.

And Mayors for Guaranteed Income has provided advice and guidance to all these startups.

There's now over 200 star uh are not startups but pilot programs.

They are like the go-to of like if you need help with the request for proposal or shaping the benefits programs, but they're also the ones that not only a clear in-house of information but are leading the discussion of um moving from pilot to policy.

Um so and um Mayor Tubbs is also um a real has really carried this forward.

He's developed uh I think um last year we uh had uh screening of a documentary um to really kind of promote this idea or as an anti-poverty auction that uh documentary was really incredible.

So it's continuing.

Uh yeah, I believe um nears for guaranteed income, yes.

Okay, one last question.

Okay, we have we got final question here.

Okay, final question.

Um that it was a bit device of proposed it.

There were a lot of people who called it during the period where we were actually influenced to council.

They were so what do you think?

Staff or should it look where you think how you really felt in general as a general case?

I truthfully don't know.

Um I think uh really like I uh it's coming back to the storytelling.

I think that when you have a human face and human circumstances, I think that and that's why it really helps dispel myths and such an important part of it.

And I think that's where you um you change opinions and you change perception perceptives is you can have statistics and you can interpret the statistics as any way you want, really, but it's I think it's the storytelling that really kind of gives the meaning.

But it's I think it's the storytelling that really kind of gives it meaning.

Right.

All about the procession.

It's been quiet here as we've been implementing the program.

We haven't really thank you for the presentation, Eric.

And you know, I just want to say, you know, Eric was at one point, you know, staff is board, and I think all of us here either work with him in that capacity or some other capacity with the city.

And I just want to take a moment to congratulate Eric because he's actually retiring.

When is your actual last day?

Uh we wrote tomorrow.

What?

September 4th.

September 4th, okay.

Well, it's earned you with the city for a long time.

We've all enjoyed working with you.

Just want to thank you on behalf of the board myself for all the work you've done for the city of Alameda.

Thank you very much, Scott.

You all of you know I think that uh Shrubb is very unique, and I've really enjoyed my time.

It's been an incredible part of my time here at the city.

Um, just working with all of you individually and as a board and some of the projects that we've worked on together.

Um, I think uh it's one of the um I guess more meaningful parts of my time.

So thank you.

Oh, you're welcome to do great work.

If you need the assistance of another you know recent retiree, I do the funny activities.

I've got a volunteer list for you.

Yeah, yeah.

And thank you for making time for us.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Scratch.

Um, this brings us to uh item 4B, a presentation of domestic violence prevention programs by Alveda Resident Jennifer Rukowski.

Um Jeff Ragrowski is a community member in Alameda.

Professionally, she has a master's of public administration.

While her current work focuses on housing, she has 20 years' experience addressing domestic violence and hate violence on at the local, state, and national level.

This includes being on the board of the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs, the California Domestic Violence Healthcare Leadership Board, and a co-founding co-director of Sorna Innes Services for Abused Women.

Welcome.

Thank you so much.

Um it is um a real gift you're giving me to have this time with you and to allow this conversation to go forward.

I hope these next few minutes we can spend imagining together what a domestic violence, community empowerment campaign could look like for the city of Alameda.

Um to center us, I'd like to start with a quote from Rashid McNenicum from my grandmother's hand.

Resilience is built into the very cells of our body, like trauma, resilience can ripple outward, changing the lives of people, families, neighborhoods, and communities in a positive way.

And if we do our job right as a community and as a city, we can be those ripples outward to make that positive impact on those around us.

Um that is my hope.

Everyone knows someone.

It seems like a simple slogan, but to really bring it into your body, who is that person you know?

Who are those people you know?

Are they co-workers, family members, neighbors?

Is it something that happened in your childhood?

Is it something going on right now?

Is it memories being triggered of past events?

It's a simple slogan, but it also points the way forward.

We often, and we heard it in this very room, say domestic violence is a critical issue, but I don't know how to start.

I don't know where to start.

It is behind closed doors, it's hidden.

And this points the way forward.

The core elements I want to propose to you tonight for a community-based campaign is in the idea that everyone knows someone impacted by family violence, including city employees, residents, and visitors.

We are already touching the lives of those we hope to touch with this issue.

That we need to take a strength-based approach that looks at the city's existing capacities, resources, skills, and unique assets.

And from strength, we can create that change.

That we need to view the whole cycle of abuse, not just moments of crisis or the physical violence that may be what first comes to mind.

And then in targeting a campaign, we need to broaden our audience.

We need to skill up the entire community to see what steps they can take to move from bystanders to resources.

So I said employees, neighbors, residents, visitors.

I'm recommending that we start with employees.

If we think about it, most of us spend a large portion of our day in our place of work.

And so what better place for the city to start than with its own employee base?

And there are a couple of recent pieces of legislation that give us an amazing in to do that.

In July of 2024, California mandated employers to maintain an active workplace violence prevention plan and to do training, dissemination, reports about that plan, and that plan is explicitly inclusive of domestic violence.

Second, in January of this year, California became one of the few states in the entire country to not only grant time off work and to understand domestic violence is something that may need reasonable accommodations in the workplace, but to expand that right to employees who are family members who have someone close to them who's experiencing domestic violence.

So someone doesn't have to prove that they are the primary target of the abuse in order to get that relief, and those closest, those whose ties have been broken because of an abusive relationship, can repair it by helping someone move or get a restraining order or any of the go to a medical appointment, any of those necessary things to help someone maintain their employment and to begin to build healing.

And these laws are new enough that a lot of employees, whether they are city employees here in Alameda or in other businesses, also impacted by this law, do not know these rights.

When we say this is an issue that the city takes seriously and we want to take care of our own city family, we're conveying a shift in culture that then our city employees convey to those they're interacting with.

And so we can by caring for city employees, we can actually change how they interact when they're experiencing community members who are facing violence.

When we think of all the youths that we come in contact with as a city, and the education that can be done around relationship violence early as a preventative measure, it is a real opportunity to make a cultural shift in our city.

So these are opportunities that broadly exist across city departments.

And you might, I'm not going to go through all of them because I only have 10 minutes.

Would you have connected seniors and how grandparents can be impacted by domestic violence and intergenerational trauma and the role that the mastic senior center could play?

Are you thinking about what books are in our library, what programs, what resources already exist there that could be mobilized towards this campaign.

We're not dealing at the individual level.

And so it allows us at the community level, all stages in the cycle exist simultaneously.

So we can have a positive impact in preventing harm from occurring, intervening early, responding to the crisis, supporting recovery, and healing intergenerational trauma.

And this is so important.

It is often we have in our heads that TV show episode with a scary instance, and we're like, I can't be Superman flying in to save someone.

When we're asking the communities to step up, we're asking them at any of these stages in the cycle, not just in the heightened moment of crisis.

So someone can use their technology skills, use their community-building skills to help respond.

A campaign and what it would look like.

Choosing messages that allow for personalization.

Some of the ones that are out there are right to be, one thing, one more, no more.

This is a sign to step up, now is the time.

This is what some of them look like.

And it allows someone to place themselves and understand how they could potentially take action in the situation.

And right to be, we've already used to be hollow back.

And so some of these are organizations we already have relationships with, and some of it we can take the concept and personalize it to ourselves.

This is the why for me, this is why I'm here, is when we remember those that we have lost recently to domestic violence.

And they remind us that each of us is connected to each other, and that is where we go strength from.

Thank you very much for the presentation.

That concludes the presentation.

Do we have any questions or comments from the board?

I loved it.

I mean, I never really thought of it in terms of the campaign, city, the city campaign.

So I think it's certainly something for us to consider.

I don't know if there are others that you reach out to with a concept.

So this initially started with a Bernie's reaching out to the community and what was thought, and then sort of it's involved from there.

So I had intentionally kept things scalable and flexible so that those who are more involved in the day-to-day running of the city could decide what the scale.

The scale could be as simple as the library is going to highlight its resources, and this year, this October, we're gonna highlight the library in the ways that it's stepping up.

Or it could be a much larger role.

And so the concepts, the four concepts are scalable based on other factors that the city has to consider.

So Jennifer.

So we vision the city developing a program.

Where would it start?

And who would be in charge of it?

And who would shepherd it through?

Well, I think the initial direction probably would come from City Council and the City Manager's office to say that this is something that we support and that we want to get behind, and then I again leaning on the strengths based discussing what makes sense, what make um whether starting with a small kernel, I would encourage looking at a city employee discussion and education campaign as maybe a starting point, and then from that the expertise of city employees about what they would like to see in a campaign could emerge, and then the campaign could grow from there.

But it uh yeah, the idea is to really um think in terms of people not being heroes, but using their current skills, talents, and resources to take one step further to support a community that is deeply affected by domestic violence at an endemic level in the city.

Yeah, I know that we've done similar campaigns previously, like we have the law members are in different public areas in public restaurants.

I think something like that is very useful.

Um I would say like a formal program always comes back to budget, staff capacity, and that's a large task.

There isn't currently department that holds that work.

We mostly hold it in housing and human services through sure.

But in terms of that campaign, I mean similar to what we've done previously in furniture with our social service providers, I think it's a great idea.

You know, it really strikes me, and this is an outgrowth of your contributions when we spoke is that when we meet now quarterly with the task force.

We had a meeting just recently, and then your suggestion we have a fire department representative.

We tried to get somebody from the schools, and we're gonna have next time somebody from the district attorney's office.

And when you hear, you know, as well as building futures and family violence law center and Elme Family Services, and they all actually are doing good things.

And they have a lot of resources, particularly the police department, they have things I didn't even know about, but it's what concerns me is when Bon's a quarter.

People go their separate ways.

There's no really no integration of it.

That's what I asked you because it seems like there should be somewhere starting at the top where all these resources are collated and used together.

Because the resources are there, there are a lot of them.

Um I don't know what you think.

Michelle.

Yes, I have a question.

How are we going to measure fit back on?

Can you hear me?

Yeah.

How do you measure success?

Is it our is our goal kind of just awareness of the issue?

Will we see outcome of less violent issues, you know, less incidents?

Is it more connected to services?

Is there a kind of measurable sense of how we say this campaign had impact?

Not to say that it we should do, you know, it's very important, but it's also kind of like are we just art and minds or what's your overall goal?

I think a plan would need to be fleshed out further to make SMART goals.

So whether it is more of what was shown as a later part of the presentation where it's a public awareness campaign where you could have data about how many people participated and how many people felt like they could articulate one step that they could take to support someone, or some of what we discussed earlier in the presentation about what was staff's awareness of the issues, or what resources were available in the city as a campaign, then obviously um having clear outcomes that you would want from the campaign would be an important part of it.

And what I'm hearing also, Jonathan Harris, correct me if I'm wrong, is that you're here to propose this first to the city to take action.

You're like you're a resident advocate or right, so you're so uh yes, it started as a conversation, and so I coming from my background in public administration, I'm looking at what can the city do as opposed to the great work that Building Futures or other nonprofits are doing on this, the city is in a unique place to make an impact on this issue.

Um and so uh having it take a fresh look at um what it could do to positively impact the community and level up our response to the best results.

Just to be clear, you're gonna start with the city city staff.

So that's the campaign that you're recommending, and then you're hoping for like a ripple effect from engaging staff.

So um my piece if we don't know if we can pull the slide again, is really those four points that to not just try to target those we are directly having services to at the moment, but to realize that we can have a domestic violence response that supports our employees, our residents, and our visitors, that we can have that response in a way that we're trying to level up everyone's ability to support those who've experienced my to hold accountable those who have our done harm, and to do it in a way that we look at where our strengths are, where is our moments of opportunity right now to do it?

Well, the students maybe I thought was really important to how we resources work, it's first question.

Yeah.

Um, so um, for instance, if we if the city chose to do one of those participatory-based campaigns, um we could invite different residents, um, and uh from uh uh woman who survived domestic violence, who has succeeded in starting her own business, talking about what that journey has been and how the city has helped her to find financial security.

It could be someone a coach talking about not just learning about fair play on the field, but fair play and safety and anti-bullying all or in all aspects of the youth life that the coach is involved in.

It could be um the idea is for not to script how people get involved, but show them examples that they can reflect on.

Oh, I'm good at tech and this AI and uh is creating new opportunities but also new risks for domestic violence survivors, and I actually know something about AI.

I can then be a resource there, or whatever it is that is your strength that you can bring to the table.

Last question is the show board in your first offward.

What can we as a board do to get this information to people that should be?

Um well I would love for the shrub board as sort of a place that has been tasked to pursue domestic violence response to see how this may fit into your existing mission and tasks.

Um I love hearing when Bernie says hearing about these concepts already has changed who we invite to the table to our quarterly meetings.

That is the starting point.

Um if there are recommendations to pass on to City Council of, we would like to have some sort of campaign that involves X, Y, and Z or any other ways that are the levers that this board has access to encourage or support extending our resources in this area.

Do we have any questions or comments from communities?

No, um I just this is not really a question, it's more of a comment.

Um you brought up this up um too is that the whole thing about bystanders' resources, I think is really great.

Just you know, one of the just recognizing a problem we have with social media and popular media, you know, people see domestic violence on TV on the internet as always you know, someone hitting someone or the black eye, right?

That kind of thing.

It's like obvious, but many people who've never experienced it directly don't really know what to look for to understand you know what the underlying conditions are, what the precursor is or aftermath is of domestic violence that someone that exhibit in public, not behind closed doors.

And I think that part of community education is so important to recognize that because you can't help but somewhat if you don't see it or don't understand why someone's behaving a certain way.

Yeah, creating that space, opening it up so that those convocations can happen is really important.

You have any other comments there?

Thank you so much for your presentation.

That brings us to item for C.

We are going to review and write feedback.

I mean, City of Alameda, LGBTQ action plan uh presentation of the City Alameda, LGBTQ action plan by assistant city manager Amy Woolworth.

Welcome, Amy.

Yes, please.

Um thank you for having me.

Really appreciate being here and seeing you all again.

Always love coming to see you and chat with you.

Um in May 2020 May 6, 2025, council member Daysog brought a city council referral to council proposing LGBTQ sanctuary city policy or resolution.

Sorry, um, through discussion, the city council decided they'd uh wanted to focus on local action, and they directed staff to create an LGBTQ action plan focused on what are we really doing here on the ground in the city of Alameda to support the LGBTQ community.

Um so I was tasked with that, and uh we met with the our executive team, which is the all of our department heads of all those great departments that you saw Jennifer put up, and um uh developed this initial draft that we have before you that is um that we'll go through in a minute that was just our brainstorm of what are we already doing?

What are the existing partnerships, services, programs that we're already offering?

Um, and then we had a few ideas of opportunities, um, and then what I'm doing is coming to you for um your feedback on what you think either is currently happening or what we could be doing.

Um then uh I'm also taking this to the Recreation Parks Commission as well as the library board, and then I'll be bringing it back to City Council in October.

Um so that's where we're at.

Um, it's not.

Oh, there was our technical um there we go.

So this is what is our brainstorm of existing.

I'll go briefly through them and then would love any of your feedback.

Please jump in.

I would love for it to be more kind of interactive than the formal just presentation questions.

So feel free to jump in at any time.

So the Recreation Parks Department closely partners with Alameda Pride, which is a new foundation here in Alameda that was established in 2024 and created Pride in the Park, which happens every October.

It's happening this year on October 11th on National Coming Out Day.

And they also supported the creation of QTAC, the Queer Teen Alameda Center, that was both ACCYF, the Alameda Collaborative for Children, Youth and Families, helped come up with the idea and then worked with Jeremy Andahusen and QTAC was born and Alameda Pride now is ushering it forward, and Recreation Parks Department provides the space at no cost for that program and then supports in other ways with staffing.

The mayor lifted this up and appointed Jeremy Endahus and founder of Alameda Pride as the this year's parade grand marshal, and she let us have the Alameda Pride contingent right behind him, which has actually never happened before to have a contingent in front of all of the VIPs, right?

So that was pretty cool.

We do acknowledge the LGBTQ community in our existing city of Alameda Sanctuary Ordinance.

We also have already updated our city charter as well as the what city staff MOUs means, those are a memorandums of understanding with all of our bargaining units for the union unions.

We've completed five of those.

We increased the inclusivity of bereavement leave.

And so that was made more broad, specifically to include non-traditional family familial relationships.

People get sometimes super dressed up, and it's just fabulous.

Alameda Free Library holds Pride Month programming at all three of its locations every year in June.

But year-round carries a wide variety of non-traditional family and LGBTQ themed books.

Each year in June, the mayor reads an Pride Month proclamation at City Council.

Public restrooms are converted to all inclusive as they're renovated.

You can imagine that's fairly expensive, so it's not like we can do it as one project across the city, but as they're renovated or when they're created new, like for example, at Alameda Point Gym.

There was a project to install I don't know, six to eight new restrooms there, and they were all gender inclusive, which is great.

So City Council every year, every two years adopts a legislative agenda, and we use that as our guiding policy on advocacy either for or against various uh various bills and so and legislation.

So that legislation agenda under the guiding principles at the top includes and is a and is a very specific legislative focus area later on and includes this language, support human rights services, access to health care, protection from discrimination for people who identify as LGBTQ.

Each year we fly the um well, we hang the pride flag, the inclusive pride flag at City Hall West at City Hall AirPD.

In June, um this past year we started an I am Alameda economic development campaign citywide, and in June they focused on LGBTQ owned businesses.

We plan to keep doing that.

Um we certainly do communication on all of our city social media and other platforms when there's LGBTQ events and activities.

We fund Alameda through HHS, we fund Alameda Family Services Youth Mental Health Services and AUSD schools.

They serve everyone, and they they absolutely serve LGBTQ plus youth.

I mentioned the ACCYF youth advocacy committee.

They held these listening sessions at every single middle in high school, and that's what helped lead to the development of QTAC.

Last year we did uh DEAB employee training for everyone, and and this was a component of that.

Um APD tracks all hate crimes and incidences and and does specifically track LGBTQ plus.

Um and they have ongoing, I spoke at length with the police chief about this, and and they have ongoing procedural justice and implicit explicit bias training and awareness, um, which among many things includes the LGBTQ community.

Um this is also APD, this next one, APD specifically has numerous policies regarding discrimination for all protected classes, including LGBTQ, both on how they police and how they hire and promote.

Any questions before I go to opportunities of existing?

So are they going to continue with the DEIV training here coming up?

Um we are looking at that.

We have trained all staff and um we're looking at kind of what is our organizational culture and um how do we really focusing on our organizational culture and ensuring that it feels safe and inclusive for everyone?

So yes.

Any um demographic data?

I don't I don't know if the census collects any of that data about uh our population of households that have um uh same sex head of households.

Do we have any data?

Does that uh I build it feels I mean I love Pride that that the October Pride is so family friendly and our kids love it every year.

Um but do we have any kind of just basic demographic data?

Um we should.

That's a great question.

I have not looked into it, but um it was included in the um people could self-identify in the 2024 census um as LGBTQ, or I think it was LGBT.

Um so if they self-identified, we would have that census information.

So I could certainly look that up.

It's probably an undercount though, I would think.

Likely, yeah.

Starting.

And you also forgot about the prom they did at the team center.

That was a cool event.

You're right.

We did the queer prom that actually had um uh 80 over 80 kids youth attend.

Um, and Alameda Pride's planning on doing uh every quarter event like that, so they're gonna do a Halloween party coming up as well.

Um and anyone is welcome, uh we screen, but anyone is welcome to volunteer, they're always looking for volunteers as well.

Um so this is where I also especially want to open up any opportunities you see where the city um can support and lift up the LGBTQ community.

Um these were opportunities that that the executive team um mentioned.

Uh so one is add a domestic partner registry.

Um, this wouldn't be just for LGBTQ community.

Um, there's also I know actually for seniors, I know you've talked about age-friendly, there's sometimes seniors that prefer do domestic partnership because there's different um because of tax implement implications essentially versus marriage.

Um we could certainly prioritize funding.

This would be a bigger lift in these economic times, but we could prioritize funding for gender neutral restrooms, especially at the library.

That's the key place where we see it as a need.

Um we I mentioned we celebrate uh Alameda Pride, but we don't yet um out you know have a particular celebration around International Transgender Day of Visibility in March, so that's a possibility and other specific targeted economic development support for LGBTQ owned businesses, and then just resources, um, especially um right now for the transgender community.

You know, we're we're already looking at what we building out more of a resource page.

Uh we already have a pretty significant page for um for immigrants, uh, and I think that we certainly can can build that up for other communities as well.

Um for a suggestion for how programs actually services for how the action plans working.

Actually, I have a question I get it to work.

Are there gender neutral restrooms at uh veterans hall?

At where?

There are not our QTAC is actually happy.

Yes, yep.

Um it's a historical building, so that one's even bigger list.

Yeah, but um, but that's a good point.

Um yeah, it'd be interesting to see what happens when uh new buildings are built around every gender neutral bathrooms.

There was this actually it's quite a nice hotel it went to, and there was just one bathroom you walked into, and there was a hand washing station in the middle, and then a series of doors that just had a toilet behind it, and it was just men and women are all using the same one, and people still have their privacy, you know.

So interesting to see like your new design comes through, what we can do with that.

Maybe we could actually save space too in bathrooms.

Yeah, there's some great designs, and in fact, just having come from recreational parks myself, gender uh inclusive restrooms actually are um more efficient for the whole public.

It's great, like what you're saying, Scott, and or like at the gym, for example, when you have six, you know, individual stall restrooms, they go much faster when you have several hundred people there than just everybody lining up for one.

Right.

And it also fixes another gender issue around line equity.

Yes.

Line equity.

Especially in the conservatives.

Yeah, sorry.

Yeah, yeah.

Michelle, so yeah, I wanted to know how we're working with the school and some of the more national the school district and the national policies of informing parents of uh if students want to use different pronouns or different uh uh names.

How there I I know we're not different, so they're different jurisdictions, but how are we partnering with school, especially for our transgender?

Um I would I wish I could speak to that specifically, but I don't want to um say something that's not accurate since I don't have specific knowledge of the policies um uh of the Alameda Unified School District.

But I think what we can is important to add on here that you're lifting up too is that we need to make sure we have coordination with uh uh the school district uh in regards to our you know our programming and supporting them where we can with uh their LGBTQ students Joe and yeah, sorry.

My last thing is do we do also um I think this is more on the county level, but like how do people get to uh gender affirming care or you know could be we don't have much how we support people getting those resources within the health system?

And obviously that's my yeah, that could be included on the um resource page we were talking about, but also within kind of um housing, you know how to how to make it more inclusive and sensitive to yeah, um yeah, I I want to go back to the veterans board up for a minute, just this is just a thought here because this is or those crossover things, right?

Where you get into the whole seniors, people with disabilities and the gender neutral bathroom uh issue all intersects because that building is not in violation of ADA, but it just barely meets the standards.

There are reps for those of you don't know, there's like one bathroom that's in the middle of a stairwell, basically.

You can't get to it unless you go downstairs.

So doing some kind of you know ADA money could help pay for gender neutral work, is what I'm saying.

Like there could be very various ways of attack of attacking a problem where we actually make things more accessible for everyone at the same time of making a gender neutral.

To me, it's an exciting opportunity.

That was exciting as bathrooms, yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

You know, there's a there's a parallel um facility in Oakland to the veterans building here, but it's the same issues with both of them because the era they were built between the two wars.

Yes, right.

Um did you all want to know to Pelantana before?

Oh, yeah, we should, yes.

Is there is there public comment?

We have two.

Okay, let's that we'll come back.

Well, yeah, we'll definitely come back.

That's right.

Okay.

So we have two public comments on this item.

The first one is Lily's Will.

We have the we've left.

Uh okay, so I'm the, so uh actually, oh I'm sorry, Lily, and it's um three minutes of public comments.

Okay, yeah, so I would be um student co-chair for the USG round table for LGBTQ plus people.

Um so I think I have a decent amount of understanding of like the policies in place through AUSD in order to protect trans people myself.

I am a trans non-binary person.

Um I definitely think I really back up everything you said, um, especially the bathrooms, the gender neutral bathrooms.

My school has no gender neutral bathrooms on campus.

I go to school in Alameda.

I have nowhere to go to the bathroom on my campus, and anywhere on my campus.

I go to Alameda Science and Technology Institute.

I have to get a key from one of my teachers who's a very kind woman and lets me go into the teacher's bathroom.

That's the only bathroom that I have to use at all on the school's campus.

So I really back up, it is so incredibly incredibly important for people like me and for just anybody.

Again, it aids accessibility, it aids, you know, um, pregnant women, women with small children, um, men with small children, um, breastfeeding, nursing, all of that sort of thing can all be directly um addressed through having gender neutral bathrooms and through creating an environment where there's no reason for a bathroom to be gendered in the first place.

That's not necessary in the first place.

Um, so there's been a lot of talk of like different um like uh setups for bathrooms like that.

I've seen a lot of like, oh, we'll have this thing here and then we'll have a bunch of bathrooms like was previously brought up.

I think that's a great way to address that.

Um, because again, it addresses all of these different issues for all of these different groups of people, it's like it's a no-brainer in my opinion.

Um, if you could go back to the thing just so I can see the oh sure.

Yeah, the job memory.

Sorry, thank you so much.

Um yeah, so coordination with AUSD just in general, the teachers do get um like as the student co-chair of the AUSD LGBTQ plus round table.

Um, I mostly work with students or Try I forgot the word what's called parents of transgender children in elementary school, and what we've overwhelmingly see from these parents is that their children are there's certain like particular problem teachers that are being you know either usually transphobic to the students, so that is an issue, though I do know I believe that all um schools in AUSD can opt out of their own um like training towards the LGBTQ plus community for their teachers to get training that believe the schools can opt out and the teachers individually can opt out of that training, um, which is just one hour of training per semester.

That's the current regulation.

Um, I believe I could be wrong about that.

I don't think I am though.

Um but it's one hour per semester, and both teachers and schools as a whole can opt out.

Currently, all of the schools on the have opted in except for Love Elementary.

So that is an interesting, I just want to share that with everyone because I don't know.

I think it's kind of strange that they can opt out of that, but that's more ASD than we guys imagine.

Um but yeah, just in general, just the amount of resources, especially towards like trans businesses, LGBTQ owned businesses, especially like having I really like the idea of having um uh like a day in March, the celebration of the transgender day of visibility.

I myself am a transgender person, I myself experience microaggressions, I experience misgendering on the daily.

I think a lot of people don't understand that these impact so closely people in our community, me, my friends, my you know, my teachers who are trans, you know, like it's it's so close to home, and it's any way that like there can possibly be support for the community and for um like just making sure that these people are visible that these people are knowing that the history in this area is known by all of the people who inhabit the space is important because queer people helps to make this city just as much as anybody else did.

Thank you very much for your comment.

Do we have another public comment?

We do.

Our second public comment is Jennifer Kowski.

You've heard from me tonight, so I will be brief.

But you will see some common fees.

So when you check out that Kentucky data, one of the family council in Alameda that's LGBT will be mine.

So my face will be part of that data.

Um, and I just I want to appreciate it used to be um I didn't move here initially because the first time I came when I was working for eight buyers response agency when the Molotov cocktail was thrown at a gay man's house, and it took me a long time to be established trust with the city after that incident from the 90s.

I moved here, and the week that I moved in, I saw anti-queer graffiti in the apartment complex where I was taking my children at the time from those instances to the Fourth of July parade and the highlighting businesses and where we've come, we have made tremendous strides.

There are still great steps to take, especially around the transgender community, the transgender community under attack.

We help with basic passports, but trans people are having their identity stripped from the passports right now, and that is real and causing real hardship for members of our community right now.

Um I'm so aware right now that we have a generation of lavender seniors who survive the age epidemic, never expecting to survive, who are still dealing with that trauma, and then the challenges of being LGBT, and the massive study would be a wonderful place to provide additional triple room resources for that community.

Um, so I really want to appreciate um the work that is being done and to encourage it to continue.

Thank you.

Yeah, I was gonna say that um one thing to consider adding to opportunities is when we look at the diversity within the city, um, to um figure out you know, kind of there's cultural nuances that come with uh a youth coming out to let's say an immigrant family that may not necessarily be mainstream, so I don't know how to put that in words, but um providing some resources or some services that is culturally sensitive and support for yeah, is there sorry comments or yeah, oh I know one more thing.

Um I think our speaker talked about the history, and I think that that's really important.

Um I don't know, maybe that's a library function, or you know, but there should be I think the city needs to know what its history has been.

Um yeah, that's interesting, and um so you're saying the history of the LGBT community, and that could be more broadly and locally, right?

Right.

Um I think that's a great opportunity to um to educate the public.

And the the uh library oversees the Alameda Museum contract uh agreement, and the city provides funding, so um that's certainly an opportunity okay to as a personal color who has lived here for 40 years, it's not a place for me.

Yeah, so we're working on that as well.

Yeah, okay.

Yep, agree.

But that would be a great site.

Great.

Michelle like a gets its data.

Oh yeah, I was just trying to pull it.

Sorry.

Great.

Well, thank you.

This was really uh informative and helpful.

I appreciate it.

Thank you.

Great work.

Thank you.

We can move to item uh 4D, which is work group reports or 825.

Um discussion only.

There's no staff presentation, so go directly to public comments.

Is there anything ahead of our group reports?

Uh there is no public on.

Okay.

Um there's an order since we have uh a domestic violence preventers still at the regiment here.

Why don't we go with you first, Bernie?

Okay.

Um we had the task force meeting that I told you about last time, and at this meeting there were 10 participants.

So thank you, Brescia, for doing that.

They came from a broad variety of uh public and private places, included the representative from the Alameda Police Department from the Alameda Fire Department, several people from the city staff, Alameda Family Services, Building Futures, and domestic violence.

And I have four pages of notes.

It was that you know that was that thorough, and I won't I will just kind of give you the highlights.

There's been a transition in the Alameda Police Department to a new liaison for domestic violence.

His name is Robbie Stoffel, he's an investigator.

Very good and very committed, very interested.

Presented statistics about the incidences of uh domestic violence arrests, and uh they were particularly high in June and July, which he said is somewhat typical, but uh but he was aware that there's a large amount of domestic violence that's either you know it's not reported, and particularly it's particularly difficult for the police when there are no physical signs that somebody's been abused, and the police are well aware of strangulations that he had completed a three-day course on strangulations because it's a major issue.

So it doesn't always look mark, which you have the Alameda Fire Department that uh we included it thanks to Jennifer's suggestion, make clear that they have a paramedic on every rig, and that they that they particularly look out for medical requests that you know that are in fact domestic violence, and there's good coordination between the police department, the fire department, and family violence law center.

The only limit, only difficulty is the family violence law center, it is has is housed in the Oakland public schools, but they're not in Alameda because I guess for lack of funding, and it probably would be a good place if somebody could find the funds or the capacity for them to be in our public schools as well as in Oakland.

You know, the next time we're gonna have a district attorney from the domestic violence prosecutorial unit's gonna talk to us.

The uh Officer Stopel and actually several others were very interested in outreach and public education, and the police particularly would would like to put on programs in the schools, but they've never really been asked.

And it would seem like a good place where um Shamal Edwards said that she was interested in working with us on domestic violence issues.

Perhaps there could be some liaison with her.

So there were a lot of a lot of other things that came out.

Um I don't know if there's anything you wanted to add, Gretchen of it.

Yeah, I think so it was a great meeting.

It's great that the DA will be joining us at the next one in three months.

Um she's actually an Alameda president, so I think she has an investment interest, which is pretty cool.

Um we increased these used to be twice a year, and we increased the frequency to orderly based on the interest of the participants.

And what was great was you know, I was trying to kind of like leak kind of assign work to our social service providers, but they were pretty insistent of like what's our project gonna be as a screw, what are what campaign are we working on?

So that was something I was starting, we're starting to look together in terms of the task force could be in place for a campaign and potentially focused on schools.

I like the approach of thinking about prevention and not just crisis response.

There's several groups working with youth on healthy relationships, but to some extent they're not really working together, and that's kind of why I asked Jennifer what can we do with all these resources to coordinate them and make them make them more available and more coordinated.

So it's something I want to think about.

Maybe you can think about come up with some ideas.

So that's that's really what I have to say about it.

Thank you.

Thank you for part.

Um meetings together, I guess, Kate.

Um so we had an opportunity to speak with the mayor and the vice mayor about our resolution.

Um did not seem to have any problems with the resolution as it stood.

Mayor had several reservations, uh, asked us several times to change it into an action plan.

I gave some examples of my lived experience and why I'll take an action plan, it would be quite the right way to go.

Um I have likewise made clear that there's certain things that we aren't really trying to do.

We've already got an action plan built into resolution, question with more of uh optics, um trying to push forth such a resolution in the eye from other places that might want to be a problem for such resolution find it using, but I'll leave it at that.

So yeah, also I also had a conversation at one point about some of my living experience here, and how we had there was a question about uh working with the police force and conversations with chief of police.

I was told that I was asked if I had uh if I'd be willing to have conversation, I should I'd be happy to do so.

I was told that at some point there would be someone reaching out to me.

Um as far as the idea of the resolution, we're gonna continue moving forward, reaching out other council members to have conversations with them.

We're also preparing for the United States Hate Week.

National is going to be coming up in October.

Poetry Slam that we've done for several years has not really successful.

Wanted to I made a general recommendation that we look at the answers that we got from the group last year, which is that we need more social media engagement we should be out more.

And so that's what we're working on.

Yeah, I think so.

So I mean, the bottom line, I think for us is the timeline that we initially proposed to bring the resolution to city council in October, it's probably not gonna help.

So I think um we need to kind of have conversations with other city council members, see where they stand um on a resolution, and that it doesn't seem like we can gather you know support them.

You know, we'll have to think about trend, but and in the meantime we are gonna continue with the activities.

We still have uh activities that are on our work group's agenda that we'll be working through, and that'll probably take up the better part of the rest of the year.

There's still an open slot for one of the position uh one of the things that we've been trying to work with about the community engagement, and we'll have to figure out how to happens here.

Um I spoken with a couple of people about getting uh access to the actual unions and various groups at the high school.

I was told that it may be a problem having to do being on campus non-teacher or non-parent.

So we're gonna have to look into how we'll get that done.

I will know that there's a way around it, and I'm not trying to make a way around it.

I think we should try and engage with the students at that level to be able to hear their voices and get their responses back, not just have a lot of people.

I'm really familiar with NCNAL and their leadership group, and Goram is the person who runs that, and I can definitely get you in and then small if if you want to keep them.

I do if you know anybody in that way.

And leadership isn't just a council, it's actually a class of leadership because I presented the volunteer list there, and there was 30 kids in the room.

And they're all represent leadership of the school.

No, no, so it's okay.

I just because you you know, I'm trying to I'm trying to build a coalition behind you too and get other stakeholders to bring them in.

So I just want to support this, okay?

I appreciate it.

Thank you.

So I did just want to add that Shamar's suggestion was just to start with parents, so not necessarily not to discourage us from meeting with the students, but to start with their parents, which I agree with.

Again, how you get to the parents.

Well, that's the leader that's speaking with.

They would back what we already said.

So you see why I say it's very difficult to really get what we're kind of crossing.

But it seems like it should be obvious.

You should not require that much in stage.

I was just gonna add, are you guys uh is there a collection of notes on the listed sessions?

Yeah, is there an opportunity for us to like just the I was just wondering about like the listening session and why does my collective and is there an opportunity for us as a board to maybe collect that information and make that more public so that at least folks could see what we as a board are hearing from folks and make it into just if it's there, we could pretty it up and make it a brief or something.

We can talk about it.

I don't know that the parts we have notes for all of our meetings.

Um probably have to ask permission.

Right.

We didn't probably advertise it as like something that would be out publicly.

It was more of like information gathering as a different resolution.

Um but yeah, I guess there's a thought as to what to do now having audience information.

And again, I I truly believe that one of the key purposes was the listening sessions and the ideas that come from that that are the basis for a reason for a resolution.

That's that's just the basics.

Don't have it out there, how will people know they won't?

Yeah, and just to clarify, the mayor, you know, it's not against that she understands that there is an issue in the city, but it's just the timing of it, and she's just very concerned about um you know with Trump in office and kind of uh what the repercussions would be if the city you know had on record, which you know am I wrong, or not anything else.

No, you have not said anything about you can't cower in fear of the next three and a half years said it.

But the city has a different thing.

Well, she's taking she's taking a very cautious position, which is understandable as mayor.

I respect it.

Yeah, I have no problem with it.

The key thing that I got from our meeting was that we are going to keep having this conversation as opposed to I don't recommend it.

Right.

There's a difference.

Yeah, there's a difference.

So only we can continue to have a conversation, we'll continue to meet with the council people who consider it.

But just to be clear, she it wasn't that she was not supportive, she was supportive, but it's just a time issue.

The way I look at it is she said the same things that most people that I've talked to who looked at the resolution.

There's nothing in here that I don't agree with.

Everything here makes sense.

It's not like you're asking for something out of the ordinary, it's just the object of it.

And so, yeah, I can't.

We're we're fighting the long game, but it's been you know almost three years now.

When the climate was supposed to be better, we still couldn't get it up.

So to think that somehow in four more years or three and a half more years is gonna be any different.

There's a little dubious on that point on my part.

I just need that.

I'm with you.

We need to find a way to make it happen, yeah, not find a reason why it cannot happen.

I agree.

Yes, but that's key for being your persistence.

Your persistence is inspiring.

We're here for search.

Um the road home.

Um we really have any there's not a huge amount of updates, so uh we had our first you want to talk about.

Oh, right.

I can talk yeah, we had we had our first listening session.

Um it wasn't a really very big, I counted the total number of people in the room, uh including myself as 11 people.

So it wasn't huge, but it was interesting, it was fairly diverse representation.

We had someone come from Digby Village, um, and we had some providers in the room, which was good, and you asked me it had to put some important context to some questions people had, so it was good to have the city employees to you know answer questions when things come up.

Um really interesting, and I I think it's it'll be important to talk to some other groups like the veterans because of this, is there was a definitely a split in the room.

Um some people thought you had to go through Mastic for anything related to seniors in Alveda, like there's nothing wrong with everything funneling through the senior center, and there's some people who just said, well, I don't really use the senior center very much.

So that's why I think it's important to actually get more people who don't primarily go there for the primary entertainment, you know, to have the voices heard about this sort of stuff.

Um did come up, um just if you could think of anything too, uh, was just transportation came up a lot.

Um the shuttle did come up and just needing other transportation options, especially if you go across the island.

A lot of older adults don't bicycle.

So all the bicycle links don't really help in terms of that, so there's other things.

So we're of course gonna be looking for stuff ongoing.

You know, these plans take like five years, and I know I've already looked into uh in fact because of some of the US.

I looked into that grant.

I know it's coming up in September.

I talked to Amy about this, and it's something we could definitely look at for like you know, next year or you know, future years we have more time, but actually like going for a um you know grants in terms of enhancing transportation across the island would be a really great thing.

But we're gonna find out other stuff too, I'm sure.

I don't know if there's any other big moments for you.

I mean I think one of the things that came up for them has been coming up for us as a work continuously, which is just communication and identifying ways of connecting with people who aren't in the normal like a sphere of city resources, right?

And so how do we connect with folks that aren't already connected?

Um I think that was definitely one of the things that kind of came up, right?

It's like it's it's much easier to get resources to people that are already connected to a resource.

Um it's really hard to get resources to folks that are not connected.

Um I think you know, we've also talked about some of the other issues around just social isolation, and we talked about that in terms of a lot of different groups.

Um I think that that also came up in this group.

Yeah, I think those are kind of some of the main things.

And I think one of the other things that we talked about is how hard it is to balance the different needs of different communities, right?

So there's some things that are a benefit to multiple communities, right?

So we're just talking about the bathrooms, but there are things like the bike lanes, which some folks weren't talking about as a hindrance for older adults, right?

Having to park outside of a bike lane and then get across those lanes, right?

Or have a bus stop where you still have to walk to get to the sidewalk.

Those are challenges for older adults or people with limited mobility.

Um so I think those were uh you know just interesting um perspectives and important to have them on route for the city in this context.

Um, because it's interesting, like 75-year-old might be able to throw a bike but then drive a car.

Right, or even bus, right?

If you're relying on public transportation, and then the bus stop is out in trouble, that's electric scooters, you know.

I can just say somebody who rides bus every day.

Most of the people who see it now when we arrive in the bus are working.

So school time, most of older adults, and yeah, very limited search.

There was a realignment of the easy transit uh schedules, which basically less availability for certain lines and changes for others.

So I'm thinking transportation is spot on right there because that's really a key key aspect around if you're if you're old and you don't have a car.

You have very few choices to get around the side.

And um Italy, if you're a veteran or over 70, you get free public transportation.

Uh what a god.

Sometimes there's like simple answers.

And then other things for us for the road home.

We're trying to get in front of the A USD still, so that's still on our list to talk about resources that are available.

And then we were just talking about how point and tech count is around the corner.

Well, and making sure that we just as four numbers if we're thinking about volunteering to put it on our calendars and get prepared for a new round of data collection.

Michelle, did you have anything that we missed?

No, but I can make up.

I I do want to regularly muted.

I appreciate how fast going with how we muted and we don't usually talk about just the close out the RAV, the resident advisory board at Diggy Village.

It's actually going really well.

Um they they there's a sense of trust that they have for us in terms of communication.

Um I I think I've really developed a relationship with their their uh board chair.

They feel like they can you know communicate with me outside the meetings and stuff, and I think they're it's good to be able to voice their needs, and this is a really important aspect.

And a a lot of these type of transitional housing situations don't have something like a wrap.

It's not it's not like a normal, yeah, it is a new normal.

I think we should recognize when those things are happening.

It's really good that Alameda had the foresight to set something like this up.

You know, yeah.

Um so that in mind, and the hour getting late, we're going to item five staff communications on housing and human services.

Staff report.

Alrighty, thank you.

Um guessing now I'm gonna do the staff report.

I think it's a little shorter because I will do the long six-month report presentation for you all at the next meeting.

Technically, it was gonna be this meeting, but I don't want to make you sit through four presentations.

Um, so we have hired a Metric specialist uh who will be assisting Shrub and ACCYF.

She starts on Tuesday.

Um September meeting.

I did have a big update right here this month.

Our agent staff received communications from the county.

That time will be someone to the first meeting for the point count designated point of contact, but that's still not been confirmed.

Um so we are getting that's all the communication we've got so far from the county.

Uh we will keep you updated as we learn more.

Um, and uh Sarah mentioned we anticipate the need to recruit volunteers for the day of one another update I wanted to share was my colleague Neil, who manages our house programs for the division, shared at our staff meeting that operation daily who uh operates the many village, uh, has housed more folks in the last few months during their tenure um than the last two providers combined.

So they even made a joke that RAP is gonna have to do elections again because there's only like one board member left or like one and a half, so it's great news.

Um I was gonna congratulate everybody on his retirement, so good.

Uh and that's all I have for you all today.

Thank you.

It's just amazing to see how quickly to get village went from shoveling the ground, fully running and now having the longest group of transitional health and going on.

Yeah, definitely something we should be trying to do if you came across county.

Yeah, sure.

Um so this brings us to item six, um, board communications, non-agenda, and I something I'm just gonna get right into here.

Um Alameda County Health Care for Homeless has an annual summer solstice event um that celebration celebrates people who have lived experiences um through their struggles, and and part of that is 12 individuals receive a a RAD award, which is a real resiliency and determination award.

They they've already done everything for this year, but they they reached out and said, would we be interested in trying to nominate someone for 26 or 27?

And they have it in different places in Alameda County.

So I told them that we would definitely be interested, you know.

This would be like someone you know from the RAB or something, you know, something like that.

And so um, anyway, this is just an initial communication, and we have a year to go, and we'll bring something more to the board once we get closer to it, and we can decide who if we want to put some people's names up, you know, for this award.

So just want to come up about that.

Anything else?

I have tickets to the museum Friday.

Are you welcome to come with me on Friday?

Can't do it on Friday.

Sorry.

All right, well, I'll go twice if you will go another day.

Um yeah, cool.

Another day would be great.

You let me know what day send me 10 minutes, send me an email, tell me what day one, because I'll definitely go.

Okay, no, I'd love to go with it.

It's free on Fridays.

What then?

It's free on Fridays.

I got 25 bucks.

Oh, you guys still pay.

Yes.

They have a bunch of uh Friday activities going on outside around the area.

They're very cool.

It's a great exhibit.

Yeah, we went to see it.

I know I want to see maybe a week Thursday.

Are you okay?

Thursday worked for me.

Yeah, I'll check.

That's okay.

Yeah, well, thank you.

Oh, yeah, I want to get that on the record.

Absolutely.

I didn't hear it.

You were muted.

Yeah.

Um are there any other communications?

Hearing none, we will adjourn this meeting at 8 51 p.m.

Oh.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Hi Michelle, we're waiting for 10.

I've been to Rush and