This special meeting of the Metropolitan Council was called to order on Monday, August 31, 2026, to consider a single agenda item: authorizing Mayor Pro Tem Brandon Nota to sign Appendix B of the Model Cities Initiative Grant application, which designates official partners for the grant. The Council heard public comment and testimony from the Executive Director of the Criminal Justice Coordinating Council (CJCC), discussed the grant's scope and partner list, and voted unanimously to approve the item.
Welcome everybody to the special meeting. Metropolitan Council is Monday, August 31st, 2026. Call a meeting order. Ashley, do we have a quorum? I have a quorum. All right, reminder, everybody, please sign the proof of notice going around. Item one authorizing Mayor Pro Tem Brandon Nota appendix B designated partners of the Model Cities Initiative Grant on behalf of the Metropolitan Council by the Mayor's Office. Anyone here wishing to speak on this item? Are you all trying to go out quickly? A while back. Lane. Oops. Do I need to do that again? A while back, Jen Rocke had made a comment when when we were all up here talking about funding, um, and asked, you know, well, tell us what the CJCC does. And I just want to point out this is what the CJCC does. It is the entity that brings all of our um uh criminal justice agencies together, and it's important. Uh and that's what I wanted to say. Thank you. Thank you. Anyone else wishing to speak on this item? See no one go to council? JCC. Tell them what you do, maybe almost. Almost good afternoon. I'm Chris Sonka. I'm the executive director of the criminal justice coordinating council. We are the public safety council for the parish of East Baton Rouge. Our council consists of all the justice leaders, community partners. Uh we we have a spot for Metro Council on the council, and we really work to make East Baton Rouge Parish safer as a whole, whether it's through policing or community derived initiatives. Uh we work with community grassroots community programs, we work with law enforcement, we work with prosecutors. We bring in ideas from the outside and say, hey, maybe we can try this and it'll make our system better. We want to make the street safer. We want to make the court process more efficient and fair, and we make we want to make it more suitable for people returning from prison so that they have a chance of succeeding and not returning. So we work through all parts of the criminal justice system. This grant opportunity is really unprecedented in my history of being in criminal justice. This allows us to bring it's not just about policing, it's about community services, it's about focusing on re-entry, it's about focusing on juveniles and giving them proper education pathways, crime diversion pathways. Um it's also about re-entry and behavioral health and substance abuse. It incorporates all of those things into this, which is why it's such a large grant. We've been working for the last two months with over 15 different community agencies or justice agencies trying to put this grant together. So are there certain sorry? Are there certain agencies it's gonna go to? Do you know those agencies? And just question how much is the grant? So we right now our draft budget, uh, which is about finalized, is at about 125 million dollars for a three-year period. Um that is a very large number. The total pool of available grant funds is 300 million. They're awarding that to two to four cities throughout the United States. So as you can guess, there's probably going to be some steep competition for this. Uh I think we are well poised given the given our history of violent crime. Um, and how we've always ranked higher than the national average ever since they've been reporting violent crime.