Oh, but we do.

It's a jump.

There we go.

My name's Ben Weber.

I'm the District six city Councilor and the chair of the committee on Ways and Means.

Today is May twelfth, two thousand twenty six, and the exact time is ten oh nine AM.

Uh I have a few preliminaries to get through here.

Uh so this hearing is being recorded.

It's also being live streamed at Boston.gov/slash city-council-tv and broadcast on Xfinity Channel 8, RCN Channel 82, and FIOS Channel 964.

The Council's budget review review process will encompass a series of public hearings beginning in April and running through June.

We strongly encourage residents to take a moment to engage in this process by giving testimony on the record.

You can do so in several ways.

One, you can attend one of our hearings and give public testimony.

You can do so by speaking, coming to the hearing in person or by testifying virtually online.

A full hearing schedules on our website at Boston.gov/slash council-budget.

We also, in addition, you can come to the fourth of four public listening sessions we're having.

The last one will be on Thursday, May 26th at 6 p.m.

right here in the city council chamber.

You can give testimony in person again here in the chamber by Zoom.

For in-person testimony, please come to the chamber and sign up on the sheet near the entrance.

For virtual testimony, you can sign up using our online form on our council budget review website, or by emailing the committee at ccc.wm at Boston.gov, or by emailing Karishma Choan at K A R ISHMA.CHO UHAN at Boston.gov.

When you're called to testify, please state your name and where you live and your affiliation with any organizations.

And please limit your comments to two minutes.

In lieu of attending one of our hearings and giving public testimony, again, if you're here to give public testimony, there's a sign-in sheet near the entrance.

You can also testify virtually.gov.

Lastly, you can submit a two-minute video of your testimony through the form on our website.

For more information on the city council budget process and how to testify, please visit the city council's budget website at Boston.gov slash city-council-budget.

In-person public testimony will be taken following the first round of counselor questions.

Individuals will be called on in the order in which they've signed up, and we'll have two minutes to testify.

If you wish to sign up for public testimony, haven't done so.

And you uh, you know, again, the sign-in sheet is by the entrance, or you can email our director of legislative budget analysis, Karishma at K-A-R-I-S-H-M-A.CHOUHAN at Boston.gov for the zoom link and your name will be added to the list.

This morning's hearing is on docket numbers 0733 to 0740, an overview of the fiscal year 2027 operating budgets for the Office of Equity, Office of Blackmail Advancement, Fair Housing and Equity, and Office of Women's Advancement.

This is one in a series of hearings to review the fiscal year 2027 budget.

These matters were sponsored by Mayor Michelle Wu when we referred to the committee on April 8th, 2026.

Today or this morning, I'm joined by my colleagues in order of arrival.

We have Councilor Flynn and Councillor Santana.

We're waiving opening statements at our budget hearings.

So the counselors will have ample chance to speak after we hear from the panel.

So this morning we're joined by uh the chief of equity and inclusion, Mary Angelie Solis Cervera.

Uh we're joined by the Director of the Office of Black Mail Advancement, Frank Farrow.

We're joined by the Mayor's Office of Women's Advancement's Deputy Director Hallie Smith and the Deputy Director of Operations for the Equity and Inclusion Cabinet, Maya Getter.

So with that said, uh I'm going to hand things over to the panel.

If you have a presentation, it looks like you do.

Uh, the floor is uh yours.

Good morning, counselor, and thank you for your patience.

I needed to make sure that we had some warm water and snacks, as we are here all day and in the hearings.

Um, for those of you who may not know me, my name is Maria Angelis Solis Cervera, and I'm the chief of equity and inclusion, and I have the pleasure of leading a cabinet of eight different departments with several uh priorities that I'll go into in just a second.

Uh but before I start, and I'm gonna say this again at a 2 p.m., because it's important for me to sort of just like name the moment and articulate what what some of us um may be feeling is that for the last four years.

I've had the opportunity to lead a cabinet that when I first joined in FY22 during the FY22 budget, um, had less than 30 staff members.

And today I get to share that we are 80 plus strong as a cabinet, and I know I have colleagues across the country who do not have that resource.

Um, and so I just want to sort of set a little bit of the facts at the table.

That while we are experiencing cuts in the form of the grant making that we do uh that is very impactful, and you will hear testimony about this directly from our staff and also from the residents.

Um we are not cutting personnel or programming that work will continue in the FY27.

So I with that I'd like to begin.

If I can get the next slide, please or is it a clicker for us?

Looking for it.

I yeah, I think they can do that.

Just okay.

They can take care of it.

Also, for the panelists, you uh, you don't have to press the buttons on your mics.

Central will take care of turning those off and on.

Um great.

Um so just a little bit of our mission, our focus is improving live outcomes by targeting the different social determinants of health, as in the programs, practices, policies that this larger city of Boston is responsible for.

Um, so we are less focused on um doing direct programming, although there are, and you will hear examples of that, and more focus on changing the systems internally.

And we have three ways in which we do that.

We have direct equity inclusion services in the form of workshops with staff so that they can change behaviors as well in their work and technical assistance.

We also have targeted programming, which is what our departments have done incredible work around, and we've done some work around coalition building.

We've spent the last four years focused on building coalitions within each of our entities.

So you'll hear again from women's advancement specific groupings of women that they've organized and built our agendas around.

What I'm looking for in the next four years is that we do some cross-part cross-departmental work.

Um, as there are limited resources, we need to be more uh effective and strategic with what we do.

So you'll see you'll see some changes in the next couple of years.

Um next slide, please.

Just a reminder of the departments that are under us.

You'll hear some from us today.

Uh, some right now in 10 a.m.

and then the rest at 2 p.m.

And last but not least, when it comes to the office of equity, which is often gets confused.

There's a cabinet that encompasses eight departments plus multiple priorities, and on top of that, there is a specific office that has some other work such as cultural affairs, um, the work of operationalizing equity and inclusion throughout the city, the work of reparations task force, and something that we do that is often behind the scenes that we don't talk about during hearings is just cabinet-wide operations and supporting the different departments that are that have been resourced in different ways throughout the years.

Um, counselors have given us amendments, etc.

Um, and not but not all departments have had the same amount of resources, and so that's where the equity office steps in and provides those operational needs.

Okay, so just some progress on FY26, um, related to dollars.

Uh cultural affairs is wrapping up their selection of who will be receiving grants for this summer mini grants, and that will be the last time that we do this when it comes to culture affairs.

We have um some work, then we're happy to share some reports that we have available for you on the academy, on technical assistance program, and our Native Governance center, which is preparing to do a training with departments to ensure that we are applying a lens that it's um that has been formalized by Native Nations and we are looking into that as well.

When it comes to the work of reparations, we are the dollars has been spent on finalizing phase one report when it comes to FR26, a seminar that we held at the Roxbury Community College, and some work that we're doing right now with the archaeology department.

And in a second, I'll get into FY27.

And then some of the cabinet-wide operations just for transparency.

We are looking at centralizing admin and finance since some departments have access to this and others do not.

FY27, I'm gonna go briefly on what our spending goals will be for each of the initiatives, and then I'll pass the mic to my colleagues to talk about their specific departments.

We'll continue our direct programming just because grants end, that does not mean that our programming ends.

We continue to do educational workshops in target languages to ensure that residents receive and know how to access services from the city, and we're looking at building cross-cultural policy agendas.

Right now we have our Caribbean liaison thanks to the advocacy of members of this of this panel and city council.

And I don't know if you all know Bianca, but she's already developing a policy agenda with members of the Caribbean community, and we're gonna be doing that with others as well.

When it comes to the work of embedding equity and inclusion, internally, we are looking to double the number of participants.

Um we have already reached over 40 departments just through the work of the um academy.

And as I said earlier, we're gonna re-engage with the work of supporting indigenous communities.

Now for the rest reparations task force, um, which I hope to be getting questions about to make sure that we are uh clarifying some of the confusion at this point.

Uh, we recognize first that there has been a significant delay since the ordinance was signed in FY22.

Um, but our hope for F 27 is that we deliver on the task, which ends after phase three with a set of recommendations informed by research, informed by the public directly from the task force to the city of Boston.

And that is that is something that we will meet by the end of FY27.

And last but not least, some of the cabinet-wide operations that I'm happy to go into if needed, of how we plan to support our departments, especially those that are losing significant dollars in their grant programs.

Um, but again, programming is not sorry, grant grant program, but not the direct programming that our personnel is in charge of.

Okay, and now I'm gonna pass off the mic to I believe a black male advancement, led by our director, Frank Farrow, who um and many others uh here represented today have had very little time to take in all the information about the budget and had to rethink their strategy, whether that's through their commissions or advisory boards, listening sessions that we've hosted, and my hope is that today we remain focused on what is possible and hear direct feedback from the public about how we can make this um work better for everybody.

So, without further ado, am I right?

Yes, BMA.

Thank you, Chief.

Uh good morning, Chair, good morning, counselors.

Um, this FY27 budget proposal uh for the Office of Black and Male Advancement outlines our impact, priorities, and the vision for deepening our investment in the lives of black men and boys across the city.

BMA continues to build on our progress, expanding opportunity, fatherhood engagement, youth pathways, workforce empowerment, affordable homeownership, men's health, and more.

This year we will continue our efforts to increase access and opportunity through policy, programs, partnerships, and continue to build out our ecosystem, and ultimately a city, a city where every black man and boy can thrive.

The mission of the office is to improve outcomes, reduce systemic barriers to investment for black men and boys, and ensure they have the opportunity, access of resources and support across the city.

Our core priorities are equity and racial justice, economic opportunity and workers' empowerment, affordable housing, pathways to home ownership, education and youth advancement, public health and wellness and fatherhood and families, community safety, and returning citizens.

Some of our core programs include My Brothers Keeper Boston, My Brothers Keeper Boston, is in partnership with the Obama Foundation.

We are the Boston chapter connected to the national network, and we work to break down societal, economic, and educational barriers for black boys and young men through targeted efforts in education, career pathways, mentorship, out of school time support, and our community partnership network.

In FY26, MBK has served over 2,000 young black males through our initiatives, like the MBK Fellows, MBK ambassadors, Opportunity Lab, Reach 1000, College Tours, and the Summit.

Project Opportunity focused on the older population, 25 and above, and that works to establish successful pathways to prosperity for Boston residents through concentration of offering access to employment, career training, health and housing resources, free legal support for record sailing and expungement, and community partnerships.

In FY26 so far, Project Opportunity has provided resources and supports to over four 400 individuals through career fairs, resource fairs, and community partnerships.

We passed three budget cycles, operated a community empowerment grant where we fund community-based organizations to scale up their work, deepen their impact, and strengthen community outcomes.

In FY26, we supported 40-based community organizations to support and advance the work, targeted focus on mentoring, out of school time, youth and young adult pathways, housing mobility, economic inclusion and wealth building, workforce training and development, fatherhood engagement and mental health.

Since the start of the office, through these grants, we have provided over 2 million dollars to community-based organizations and supported over 240 community organizations in the city of Boston.

As a result of our grant process in working with community-based organizations, we identified some areas of in need of additional assistance.

Uh to nonprofit organizations.

Through the Corey Sealin Project, we provide free legal support to help residents sell their criminal records, remove barriers to employment, housing and opportunity.

We do that in partnership with legal advisors, community partners, and that's something in FY26.

We provided support to over 81 individuals.

We are in the process of launching our data dashboard, which will be a centralized real-time platform featuring rolling data from city departments, organizations, and agencies, looking at outcomes, progress to better inform policy and drive impact.

This data dashboard will be publicized in the coming weeks, and it will have data sets from over seven uh city departments.

Whoever has the clicker or uh Ethan back there, I think we're a couple slides behind.

Yeah.

Great.

And the next is the equity study that was made possible through support of the council.

We recently announced the brief for phase one of the equity study, which is a comprehensive assessment of data related to black men and boys and how they are served by the city of Boston through policies, programs and services, and FY26.

We engage with over 2,000 black men in the city of Boston through equity surveys, focus groups, one-on-one interviews, community outreach.

We are currently the RFP for phase two is currently live and closing in a few weeks, and that focus will be on a comprehensive assessment to identify and evaluate existing programs, the determined black men and boys are benefiting from programs in the city, identify gaps of service, and ultimately provide recommendations to remedy any disparities if found.

We have both local and national partnerships centering around the work of black men and boys, and annually we provide uh annual report uh through the clerk through the city council and to our community to outline the work that we were doing, and we make sure that uh through the advisory of our black men and boys commission made up of 21 uh community leaders that we're moving the work forward, that we're tracking progress.

Um, and so looking ahead, Office of Black Male Advancement will focus on expanding MBK Boston Project Opportunity, advancing phase two of the equity study, and monitoring progress through our data dashboard.

Our office will also prioritize continuing capacity building institute, supporting black men and boys uh commission budget and policy recommendation process, convening regular commission meetings, publicizing information concerning black men and boys, and maintaining our BMA partnership network to strict the collaboration and impact across the city and continue to build out the ecosystem to ultimately ensure that all black men and boys in the city have pathways and opportunities to advance, thrive, and build wealth.

Thank you.

Thank you.

All right, good morning, everyone.

My name is Maya Getter.

I serve as the Deputy Chief of Operations for the Equity Inclusion Cabinet, and I use she her pronouns.

Um I'm here on behalf of the Fair Housing team today to walk you through our FY27 budget.

Oh, I've done something.

Sorry.

Looks like we're doing that.

Could you bring me back to my slide?

Thank you.

Um, so I wanted to get started today with um our office's definition of fair housing.

Um our team works really hard to make sure that these this definition is upheld every single day.

Um, and when it comes to your constituents or to other folks uh across the city that would like to use our services, we want to make sure that they are coming to us and asking questions about if something like this applies to them.

So there's a long list of protected classes that I'm not going to read out loud for you.

You can read them yourselves.

But we want to make sure that anyone that is in one of these protected classes, we often have cases where people sit across multiple of those classes, is not experiencing housing discrimination in their search for housing.

That can look like a leasing agent, a broker, a landlord, a lender.

And the tricky thing about our office is we are limited by the federal government and the jurisdiction we are allowed to instances within six months of occurrence.

We often ask folks when they come in for their intakes to make sure that they are letting us know about the most recent instance of discrimination they're alleging.

But we also are able to use state resources at our disposal if the timelines are a little bit longer than that.

So, like I've mentioned, these are the priorities across our team.

We really spend most of our time focusing on that casework in the middle.

But additionally, Mayor Wu's first executive order in her first term was the affirmatively furthering a fair housing executive order, and we continue to lead a cross-departmental group that is working towards ticking off the boxes of all of those goals we hope to accomplish, and I'll get to that a little bit later and where we are.

And then excitingly, we've been working for a couple of fiscal years now, and with the support of the council last year to develop a fair housing testing program.

There are not that many in Suffolk County right now, which does mean that the only people who are really coming up with fair housing cases are folks that are being personally discriminated against, and testing programs allow us to sort of do mystery shopping, for lack of a better word, with those lenders, brokers, and different folks that are could be sometimes accidentally, sometimes not as accidentally, engaging in discrimination.

So, like I said, our team has seen some great success for our affirmatively furthering fair housing work.

The work is across several departments, but this is not an exhaustive list, but BHA and MOH and planning and ISD and the public health department, as well as BPS all work towards affirmatively furthering fair housing for our constituents.

And so we were able to directly address that goal right in the anti-displacement work that planning has been working on and continue to sort of advise on Article 80 modernization to make sure that the fair housing pieces are not left out.

As I said, our you know, the core part of our work is our constituent casework, and we continue to make sure that we are meeting those needs of our constituents.

We have not changed anything we do in this current federal administration, and so our team continues to work really hard to make sure that we are assessing the needs, keeping track of trends and things like that, and making sure that we are closing our cases as quickly as possible.

And lastly, we are excited to be continuing to do more work around education outreach around fair housing.

The team hosts a weekly Zoom that is open to the public.

So sometimes we have members of the public join who are renters themselves or homeowners themselves.

What more frequently we have brokers and lenders and folks that are sort of on the giving end of housing who join to make sure that they are following fair housing law and can ask us a lot of questions as well if they would like to learn more.

In FY27, we are really hoping to grow that casework.

I think a lot of the work around education and outreach is towards the goal of making sure that we actually have more cases coming in so we can truly assess those trends and figure out where discrimination is happening in the city if it is.

And then we are really excited to draft an assessment report on the progress we've made with affirmatively furthering fair housing.

Guys, try saying that one seven times fast.

Um it's a really really exciting time.

Um we are, I think, five years past the initial drafting of the executive order, and so getting to go through a very, very long list and figure out where we are and what we what we still want to work on is something we're really excited about.

And then, of course, lastly, um, our testing program we are hoping to launch in FY27.

We're really looking forward to finding a strong vendor who is able to support us through that process and to help us, you know, continue to dig in on issues of fair housing across the city.

And that is my last slide.

Passing it on to the wonderful Haley Smith of Women's Advancement.

Good morning, everyone.

Good morning.

Good morning, everyone.

Good morning.

Good morning.

Great.

So I'm Haley E.

Smith.

I serve as the deputy Director for the Mayor's Office of Women's Advancement.

Ethan, do you mind doing my slides?

Pretty please.

Thank you.

So we know next, not next slide.

I'm gonna say next slide.

I'm gonna follow your instructions that you printed so nicely.

So we are the mayor's office of women's advancement.

We um serve women and girls in the city of Boston through the initiatives of equity, economic equity, safety representation, and health.

I am leading this office with my amazing executive director, Dana Alice, our policy director, Emily Nassiv.

We have two fellows that also support our work, Grace Sullivan and Taylon Clark.

Next slide.

So you have the FY26 budget available to you, and now we're gonna bring those numbers to life based on what we did and the looks that we served.

So we have signature events in March around all of our initiatives, but what we've really focused on this fiscal year is proving that we can do programming outside of Women's History Month, the month of March, and doing a lot of initiatives and program partnerships by um exceeding that efficiency that we know that we have with the fiscal budget that we're facing.

We're building relationships in community both on a national and local scale, including offices within City Hall and Quise offices.

Next slide.

That we have been able to move forward from 2023 when it was a pilot, and we've moved into phase one.

And essentially, we created a educational animation series that's available in 12 different languages, and through this program, we've been able to train all BCYF staff with plans to train BPS and BP of BPL staff as well.

Next slide.

We are also following the I am bill with the help of our policy director, supporting the bill in its progress and making sure that menstrual products are not only available and accessible to people, but that the product the ingredients within those products are also revealed to consumers.

Um we've partnered with an HKS student who did a feasible study on the cost of providing products to BPS, which is phase two of three of our menstrual equity program.

We um, oh, next slide.

So essentially, WeBoss is another one of our programs that sit within our economic equity initiative.

Um it stands for Women's Entrepreneurs Boston.

It lived under a previous administration, and we were able to revitalize it as it died throughout the pandemic.

Um, and we transformed the program from a week of events in October to four annual events, having a summit in March, hosting a workshop in Q2, and hosting some sort of like outdoors clinic in Q3, and then hosting a mixer in Q4 for Women's Small Business Month.

Some examples of our workshops have been a golf clinic.

This year we're planning to do a tennis clinic, we've host a tariff workshop, and this year we're planning to do a workshop on corporate sponsorships.

Um we want to be the front door to entrepreneurs and really serve as that first stop when they're saying like I'm a woman and an entrepreneur, to then feed them into the other offices within the city that support entrepreneurs, especially minority entrepreneurs.

Um, the summit this year was a rounding success.

We were able to gain a new partnership with Roxbury Community College and serve close to 500 women on summit day.

Next slide, please.

Some of our impact is on the slides, and this is our some of the testimonials from some of the attendees at this year's summit.

Next slide, please.

One of our other programs is Extraordinary Women, which has been around since about 2019 as a formal program of the office.

Um, we put it under our representation initiative where we honor 40 women and girls in the city of Boston for their astounding work and commitment to service.

Um, this is our second year honoring girls, and this year's reception was able to be held at the ICA in partnership with Endless Flair.

It was a beautiful evening and a packed house.

It was indeed packed.

Next slide, please.

This is our second year of our mental many health grants after much considered community feedback.

We noticed there was also an area of opportunity per our partners, and so we launched the domestic sexual and gender-based violent prevention grants.

These two programs welcomed over a hundred applicants.

Next slide, please.

Something that we want to focus on in FY27 is actually releasing and creating a girls summit similar to some of the other offices that do a black boys summit, a black boy joy summit, or a mayor's youth summit.

We want to focus on it specifically for girls in the city of Boston.

This came as a direct request in 2024 from a BPS senior who is now a sophomore at Clark Elena University, and she requests she basically acts like why isn't there one for girls?

And I thought that was a great question.

And so we want to collect as many resources, support, and engagement around creating a summit for girls in the city of Boston on International Day of the Girl, which is Sunday, October 11th, 2026.

Next slide, please.

So that is it for me.

Like I said, I'm Haley E.

Smith.

I serve as the Deputy Director.

My executive director is Dana Alice and our policy director, Emily Nassau.

Thank you so much.

Okay, thank you.

That's that's it from the panelists.

Um we've been joined by Councillor Orrell, Counselor Louie Jen, Counselor Fitzgerald.

Uh, just you know, for for my colleagues, uh, we do have uh two hearings uh uh focusing on equity today.

So uh I I have in the the morning we've got the Office of Equity, the Office of Black Male Advancement, Fair Housing and Equity, and the Office of Women's Advancement.

In the afternoon, we're focusing on Office of Language Access, uh Moya, the Office of Immigrant Advancement, MOLA, the Office of LGBTQ, IA2S Plus Advancement and the Disabilities Commission.

So if if you're if some of your questions are for those uh those entities, might be more appropriate for the afternoon.

Um, okay.

So we're gonna go to the uh my colleagues uh seven minutes.

Counselor Flynn, uh lead us off.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair, and thank you to the administration team that is here.

Want to acknowledge the professional work of um of black male advancement.

Frank, you have done a uh I believe a very good job in that office and have had the opportunity to attend many of your meetings and just want to acknowledge um the importance of this department and what you do.

I also want to highlight City Councillor Mejia, City.

Councilor Worrell for really leading us to develop that black male advancement.

Um Frank, can you just go over a little bit about your mission and during challenging times when we see a lot of cuts or we do see a lot of racism?

What is the how is the mission of your department kind of redefined itself during these challenging times?

I'll say during the challenging times, we continue to move the work forward, and we are an intentional um around the work that we're doing, and we work closely with our commission on black men and boys to kind of focus on what our priorities are and the foundation that's kind of laid out in the ordinance.

Um, and so we move all work through kind of through the ordinance um that gives a specific task and focus on on the office.

Thank you, Frank, and attending these meetings.

I kind of like to listen and watch and I see the members providing recommendations about how you can improve uh the lives of young black boys or how you can support black men as well.

What do you what do you do with those types of recommendations, and how do you try to use those recommendations into some type of policy?

So I think the first thing we do, we we submit an annual report um that lays out the recommendations from engagement with community.

We work uh with other city departments for kind of the issue areas that are identified specific to their departments, um, you know, the workshop identify gaps, um, then identify solutions to those gaps.

Um, so we have ongoing meetings with city departments.

Uh we collaborate um and find ways to strengthen the areas that are named in the inequities.

Um we're doing doing a lot of work through the equity study right now in partnership with those targeted departments.

Uh we're launching a data dashboard uh where we'll have updates, but we're working with those departments in tracking progress and monitoring um what outcomes um in identifying solutions uh to some of the issues that that are needed.

Thank you, and I frank, I always supported the um the black men advancement because I've seen the, especially during the amendment process, but I've seen the work up close and I've seen the interaction and outreach that your team has done.

That's why I've been a strong supporter because I know what the results are and um just want to acknowledge your professionalism.

Um maybe to the fair housing commission.

I know I know um you spoke about the fair housing commission, um what is the status, and we obviously we had an exceptional fair fair housing professional director with Bob Terrell.

What is the status of that job um being vacant, but getting someone into that?

I I'm a strong supporter of the Fair Housing Commission.

I want to see a strong leader in there, but what's the what's the latest on getting a permanent person?

Sure, I can answer that question, Counselor.

Excellent.

Um we are planning to hire, hopefully, this spring, um, and to post the role publicly and do a search.

Um I think as you mentioned, um Bob Trail's passing was really hard for the department, um, and it really took us some time to think about what next step should look like.

Um we are really excited to bring somebody in, especially sort of in these federal times where things are up in the air.

Um, we're excited that our partners are ahead are still working with us and look forward to filling the role, hopefully by the fall.

Excellent, thank you.

I also support the other uh departments that are mentioned here women's advancement, language and communication access, immigrant advancement, LGBT, fear housing, certainly the disability commission, one that hasn't been discussed that I've long supported, and the chief knows I'm going to ask about this issue, and I've met with the chief many times.

Um human rights commission.

I've always been a strong supporter of the human rights commission.

I know it's had better days, it's been a challenging time, but I believe in the mission.

I believe in the mission because I've I've seen it work when it when it is supported.

City Councilor and Mayor Flynn relied heavily on the Human Rights Commission, and I don't want to see this commission disappear.

I used it a lot when there were hate crimes, and I would formally send a letter to the Human Rights Commission asking for an investigation relating to a hate crime, including hate crimes against people in the LGBT community or any type of hate crime against a person of color or someone based on their religion or sex nationality.

Again, I'm a strong supporter in the Human Rights Commission as as you probably know, Chief.

What are your thoughts?

Thank you, Counselor.

I'm I'm trying to remember.

I think you were the first counselor I sat with when I when I first got appointed.

So I think so.

Um and I am I've always been really grateful for your advocacy in in this work.

Um I think one thing that I I'm I want to address is is as I shared, a lot has has changed in the last four years.

We have departments now that we didn't have before, and we have learned through the mechanism that still exists of people submitting concerns through uh emails that a lot of that work can be addressed by the current departments um and I think it's a it's an excellent evolution that couldn't have happened without the work of Mayor Flynn.

And so I'm just I'm looking forward to further comment for is that a so sorry further conversations just so that we can um see how we can continue the work but right now it is a gap that is being addressed by the staff that exists.

Okay I I don't want okay and again I'm re have respect for you chief I I don't want us to see the commission um fold the the other aspect of this mr chip can I just continue if you have a comment okay yeah I'll just have a comment the Boston police department had a um community civil rights um civil rights outreach that investigated hate crimes um that was very effective the human rights commission um also is very effective the they're only effective when the staff is in there and and they have the leadership from the top if they don't have the leadership from the top that's going to prioritize a particular department but I I do believe that there is a role in the city for the human rights commission um and I know we're not going to solve it now but Chief maybe um sometime um over the next couple weeks we can talk about it uh further okay um mr chair thank you for giving me an extra minute okay thank you counselor Santana good morning thank you all for being here um I want to also start I think just by thanking um Frank and your amazing team uh I think just from the top down um you and your team um uh just do incredible work I've seen you all in community um and uh just doing amazing work on behalf of of uh black men here in the city of Boston but I think I do have um some concern I think you mentioned right some of the grants um that will be uh uh we'll be losing um and the organizations that are impacted there um just would like to know more about what's being communicated to those organizations and despite maybe not having those grants I mean what what does support look like for them you know I think my concern is that I understand that's the chief mentioned right that is the moment we're in right now um and I think throughout this throughout many departments we're seeing grant funding um decrease right or eliminated um and in some cases I I think there's other avenues for some of these organizations to apply for maybe other grants are uh across um I am concerned about that maybe some of the organizations you are working with um this is the only form of funding that they have right that there are there aren't any other um you know national or or statewide grants so you know I'm very concerned about the uh these organizations um and you know just want to know what's what what support we're providing them thank you thank you for that question um so I think our communication with our grant partners concerning FY27 is that we're gonna continue offering our technical assistance technical assistance program and that provides organization capacity uh nonprofit coaching caption outcomes storytelling peer to peer learning and advancing equity efforts as part of a community um we are also uh ultimately looking to share other grant opportunities that we're able to compile um through our uh city partners um connecting them directly with city departments that work in the spaces um of the focus areas um and then we've had initial conversations uh with our chief um in the mayor's partnership team of kind of identifying other opportunities for public and private partnerships to help fill some of the gaps that are gonna be identified as we know kind of through our department we have a number of grantees that through our grant, it was their first time ever receiving funding through the city, and some of them the only place that they receive funding from um so we want to continue to make sure that you know through our through our office that we're exhausting kind of any effort to make sure that we connect to them with kind of the resources and support that they need to continue to work.

I appreciate that.

I think just following up on that, Chief, you know, I think in other situations, you know, I'm uh the mayor's come out with even like year-round jobs, right?

And that's being cut and maybe having some like fundraising, outside fundraising happening.

Uh, there, like, are there any discussions um of that happening even within this department?

Again, I'm just very concerned about like, and I know you are too, right?

I mean, um, think about it.

Um, these organizations, and uh you know, I visit some of these organizations um that have received funding from me when um they're doing very good work with very limited resources, and when that limited resource is taken away, um the the sustainability of that organization is not questioned, right?

So um is are there any discussions about maybe outside fundraising um that could potentially happen um for for some of these grants that we're losing?

Thank you, Councillor.

I I cannot speak for fundraising.

I feel like the law department could better answer that question for me, but I I you know you all have done your own advocacy, Counselor Luigi and you were so successful in getting us that partnership um with TBF and and um and others.

Um so this is a moment for us to get creative.

Um I am talking with other chiefs and seeing how we can internally put out an agenda that is comprehensive of all the different needs that are out in the community and and then workshop that with other leaders, but this is gonna take uh an effort from everybody.

So I appreciate that question.

Absolutely.

I think please let us know and my colleagues know of how we can support um those efforts.

I think it's uh extremely important.

Um I think I do want to echo um Councillor Flynn and um uh the fair housing, um, I think, right?

Yeah, uh, you know, I think having a strong leader at the top, as we did in the past, I think is very important, and I think um right now, because of the federal administration that we have, um, because of the housing cost of grant here in the city of Boston, um, you know, we need to make sure that uh uh that our titans are being protected.

Um, looked out for so I'm appreciate that timeline.

Um I think just with uh final minutes that I have here, Chief.

You mentioned um just rep reparations, and I think you gave an important update that I haven't um had I can you just actually repeat that update and that timeline um so that folks know just like what you know the timeline that you mentioned.

Yep.

Um, and I want to acknowledge the delayed timeline, um, and something that I believe Antonia Edwards is still here and is consistently asking us to be more public about this.

So is any of thank you for your work in the task force and there you are.

Um I we will be putting out a roadmap that clearly indicates when all phases of the task force will be finalized.

Uh the roadmap is not finished, it needs to be in consultation with the task force and with the research groups also.

Uh, um, as we are looking to put out the report.

But by FY27, phase three, which is the completion of the task, will be finalized, and that is it's research informed, public informed, and city task, um, sorry, task force informed recommendations to the city of Boston to engage in a uh repetitive program, reparative program.

Um, that's that's the update.

Awesome.

Thank you very much.

Um, I think the this cabinet as a whole, I mean, does so much.

I think as you pointed out, Chief, I think just going back from to 2022 to where we are now, um, I have seen that growth.

Um, uh, and you just really appreciate the work that you all do, um, and especially your teams.

I mean, your teams are just uh amazing, um, people who are from here, people who know the city and know our neighborhoods and are on the streets, uh, really providing that outreach.

So, um, and uh also shout out I think uh to just uh black ground commissioners.

Um I actually had the honor of meeting one of your youth commissioners, um, and just doing amazing work and um our community educate educating other youth.

Um, and you know, really love to see that.

So um shout out to them.

Um that's all the questions I have, uh, Mr.

Chair.

Um, thank you.

Okay, thank you very much.

Councillor Warrell, uh, seven minutes.

Uh thank you, Chair, and thank you to the panel for the work that you do.

Um, just want to jump right into it.

How many?

This question for this chief?

Uh, how many uh positions did the equity cabinet have?

And then how many vacancies?

Oh gosh.

May I get back to you?

I wanna give you an accurate number, but I know we're upwards of, well, a cabinet wide, we're upwards of 70.

You know, you're just the office.

Yeah, just the office.

Um, I'll give you the accurate number.

Okay.

Do you know how many vacancies you have?

I'll give you that number immediately.

Okay.

All right.

So did you have the answer?

Just want vacancy.

Or if it worth the final number of decisions.

So on vacancy is just one, but we'll get you the official.

I mean, I think in page 75 of the budget book, it says 33 positions.

Thank you.

Office of equity operating budget.

Okay.

So 33 positions, and then just one vacu.

So the org chart is is that up to date?

No, not yet.

Should be.

Okay.

Because I was just trying to just confirm that.

When you talk about centralizing uh uh responsibilities, how how do you go about to explain the process?

Yep.

So we have been in FY26.

We took we made some changes to uh the org chart to ensure that uh all the departments that have.

When I say departments, I'm not talking about the equity office.

I'm talking about the eight departments of Maras, have access to the admin and finance and finances that need to happen in the city of Boston because some departments, such as women's advancement, only have three staff members, and we do not feel like it's uh a good use of time to hire another person to sit in that small department.

Instead, we have now a team of I believe four people, and Maya can correct me here, that do admin and finance for the rest of the cabinet.

Other current departments still have that those A and F functions, and we are looking to centralize as our many other chiefs to ensure that we are being the most effective with our our resources.

Got it.

I guess my concern is uh when we're pulling from these already small departments, and then they're getting another haircut uh from the administration where you know we're decreasing um a lot of the the budgets in the equity cabinet, right?

We're not taking, we're not taking personnel from departments.

I'm not sure where you're getting this information from.

Oh, you just said that you took one from um mayor's office.

Women's advancement does not have the ANF position.

We've had we've taken that from we've we've had that in our.

So, what I mean by this is we are taking the responsibilities from the department, because if they're a small department, we they don't need a whole body for that.

So instead, they can refocus their work on that.

So instead of Haley having to do ANF, we're just taking that responsibility so she can focus on the programming.

Alright, that's good to hear.

So no FTEs are moving from departments into.

We can speak a little bit on what we're doing with the Human Rights Commission, but that's not the other departments.

Okay, so so it is happening in human rights.

Uh so last fiscal year, counselor, the we took two positions out of the human rights commission to expand our technical assistance work, which gets to some of the work that human rights commission does as is.

Right.

Um, and then what chief is talking about, I would reiterate is like imagine somebody has a couple of items in their job description, we are removing some of those bullets, the position stays, and the department gets to reimagine exactly what that person focuses on on the day-to-day.

Alright, because I do remember, and I think it's also reflected in the RFIs that mayor's office of women advancement went from three to two last fiscal year, then it got bumped up, I believe again.

I think it might have been four to three.

Yeah, 43.

It did go down, right?

Yes.

Okay.

Um we went from five to two, and then we went to three.

Okay, so yeah, so that shift was what was that shift?

That five to two shift.

Five to shift was to make up for some of the concerns that we had around pay.

Explain.

Yeah.

Sorry, can I understand where you're trying to go with this line of questioning?

No, I'm just trying to understand how the staffing was moved from here.

I think it's important to acknowledge that not that long ago there were not that many personnel in the equity cabinet, and now we have more.

In the specific example of MOA, which I gave you, you were not asking about MOA.

It was five about three years ago.

When Dana comes in, we make a decision to move the ANF position.

And this is now FY20.

We'd have to look at a couple budget books back.

We went to four, and then we went from four to three to make up for a pay equity issue that we had in the cabinet.

Okay.

All right.

Um to the overall budget.

When we're talking um in previous years, you talked about how you worked with OBM and the CFO on, you know, creating the budget to make sure that it was equitable.

Um a lot of the work that you know, the departments within your cabinet, um, they issue a lot of grants, right?

Um, a lot of those grants could be direct services.

Um, also it's a good chunk of the grants.

I mean, a good chunk of their department of their budget.

Was there any other, I guess, recommendations uh you as the equity chief gave to the administration on other places to look to cut outside of the grants within your cabinet?

Yes, I was a part of multiple conversations, and that is why grants are not the only things that are being cut in the entire administration.

Okay, but for your for your departments, were there like any other recommendations, like, you to give me like some recommendations you provided the in December?

Right.

I don't know when you're yeah, when we did when we were requested for the two percent reduction, I'm I'm happy to go back to those documents and share how we expressed the two percent when we came back when we were requesting when new information came to us, the grants were one of the things that were part of the discussion.

Okay, all right.

I guess my concern is I'm seeing like a lot of big cuts in some departments.

Um, you know, some departments get cut uh within your cabinet, like 25%, which is a lot more than the 2%.

Um a lot get cut, you know, even a little bit higher than that.

And for me, that's a you know a major concern just based off of the work that some of these departments do.

I see.

That's a really important um thing that I'd like to clarify.

The the decision was personnel or grants, because our our budget is personnel or grants mostly.

And for me, it's more important to keep the incredible work that's happening internally with the policy changes, the practices changes, and the programming that our staff directly offered to our residents, and I recognize the impact that that is going to have in FY27.

Right, and I'll just end on this is that um I I haven't totaled up uh the cuts from your cabinets that you know resulted in grants, but like could we have found, right, that dollar amount somewhere else in the budget opposed from taken from Mayor's Office of Women Advancement, Immigrant Advancement, Black Male Advancement, that are doing, you know, a lot of work that other departments are not doing.

Um, so I'll leave it there.

Thank you.

Okay, yeah, just a clarifying question.

So when we're looking at the cuts of the grants, did we look in the contractual services line item?

Is that all the grants or were there a cuts to grants else?

So all of the grants fall under contracted services, but there are still dollars in contracting services that are not grants, right?

Could just be a contract, things like that.

So you'll see that number decrease, but some in some cases the line stays quite large.

Okay.

Um okay, sorry, uh Councillor Louie Jen, you got seven minutes.

Thank you.

Um, thank you, Mr.

Chair.

I have a lot of questions.

I want to thank my colleagues for all the questions that they've asked, address some of the the um issues that I have.

Um, I want to thank all of you for the work that you do.

Um, I think the work of the equity cabinet in a city where we have a lot of equity work to do, um, is important.

I think it is also important to remember the recency of this cabinet.

Um the first chief equity officer, my first boss, uh Carolyn Crockett, um, really started this labor of love, and I think it's important, it's just an important like benchmark for us to remember.

Um, and we're trying to, we want to move so fast because the urgency is completely there.

Um, all right, I'm just gonna start with my questions.

I guess, with black mail advancement, a lot of praise was given, as is was due to you, Frank, for your leadership and to the leadership of uh your department.

Want to also give a big shout out to Tito Jackson who planted the seed way back when for blackmail advancement um have several questions.

It looks like the personnel budget for BMA increases slightly from about 1.167 million in fiscal year 26 to 1.175 million in this fiscal year, well, the upcoming fiscal year, while non-personnel drops from 952,000 to 443,000, assuming that's mostly all grants, unfortunately.

Have you as your cabinet in sort of this structure?

Have you thought about what programs that you used to maybe rely more on external sources to do?

What are you bringing in-house?

Like is that a active conversation that you're trying to have?

Yeah, we are having conversations, kind of identifying the gaps through the grants and what we can continue kind of through the funding we have in contractor services, and then what we have with internal staffing that can kind of help fill some of those voids, but also working with other city departments that are kind of tasked with those direct services to make sure that uh constituents that reach out to us are getting the support they need.

Thank you.

I do think the grant programs are incredibly important.

Um, if for no other reason, like are they necessarily some of the grants amounts, especially for some of the mini grants, are they changing the nature of organizations?

Is that what the grants are supposed to do?

No.

But they are sort of good affirmations from the city of support and alignment, and I think that is really important, and I think that is really important for this cabinet, given sort of when we talk about the recency of the cabinet, when you also combine it with sort of like the urgency of the issues for groups that have been traditionally marginalized, excluded intentionally to have that affirmation from the city and that support, saying, like, hey, we got your back, we're here to support.

Um, when you talked about Chief Sully Severa, the work that my office did with getting the Boston Foundation to partner and the United Way to partner and do this public-private partnership.

That was before I even knew that these cuts were even coming down the line.

But I do think that it is important for us always in moments of difficulty, but also in all moments, to be thinking about private-public partnerships because the city can't solve these problems alone.

Number one, because the city participated in a lot of these, but when we talk about redlining, we talk about block busting that happened in Matapan, Roxbury, Dorchester, those were created by private banks.

And so there is a role for our private companies in helping us solve complex problems, and there's a role for philanthropy.

I'd like to see us do a lot more of that, identify which of the foundations are could be good partners with different um entities to to bring up how much we're able to support grant funding.

But I also, as someone, you know, I started here in 2022.

The Office of Returning Citizens did not have a grant program.

We started that via the obviously of my office, and we are going to make sure that they're able to continue that work because again, we're talking about populations who often don't have any other place to go to get that assistance.

And so I know that there's difficulties financially, and we have to be fiscally responsible, and we have to make sure that your cabinet continues the important work even in its recency of affirming the work that vulnerable communities are doing.

Another question for you, Frank, is um the black men and boys commission made more than 25 policy and budget recommendations in fiscal year 26.

How many were accepted, rejected, funded, incorporated into department work plans or carried forward for future review?

I also see the work of your office as incredibly important, like how do you embed it into the work that the mayor's office of housing is doing?

How do you embed it into the work that the Mayor Office of Workforce Development is doing?

So if you could talk about how those policy recommendations are embedded into larger city work.

Yeah, I can I can look into the exact details, but um our name through the health commission, kind of it led to what was recently announced, the one million dollars that's focusing on improving life expectancy for black men in the city of Boston.

Um, it also led to a funding um opportunity for black men's health, and so we identified uh community partners that can be an extension of the work the health commission is doing to provide uh support for black men's black men's health, um, as well as uh fatherhood and mental health for black men through the health commission and through kind of the advocacy of the black men and boys commission.

It also led to kind of the centralization of the Office of Violence Prevention under the Health Commission.

Um, that was through kind of the advocacy of the commission as well.

Um, increase in funding for emerging developers in the Office of Housing, increase of funding for down payment assistance in the Office of Housing in FY26, increase of funding in MBK work and BPS and FY26.

And then those are the you know the primary ones that I have kind of in front of me.

I could follow up with a full list of the recommendations that led to results.

Thank you.

I have more questions for you, but um I'm gonna move on to a different department, and just I do appreciate the work that you all have been doing at Boston Public Schools.

I think that that partnership could deepen, strengthen, and really take root.

Um I have some questions for Fair Housing.

Maya, thanks for being with us.

So this was an is also a big advocacy point for my office.

Um we had uh maybe rest in peace.

Um, Robert Terrell here several times, and you talked about the gold standard uh for fair housing testing, which is peer testing.

You have a white applicant and a black applicant or a pregnant woman and a non to go out and to to do that.

Are we seeking vendors that are doing sort of that are able to do that?

That that uh peer testing.

So we the tricky thing about testing here in Boston is there just aren't that many folks doing that work.

Um, the university has a program, and I know that a lot of it has been discontinued because of federal funding, which is why it's even more important that we are doing for housing testing because no one is doing it.

Precise federal government has relegated their responsibility to do it, like we need to be the ones doing it, and it's frustrating to not see it happen year after year.

Yeah.

So it says here that the this the office of fair housing equity budget will decrease by 24.8%.

This decrease is driven by completed research initiatives, understood, and the removal of the city council amendment for fair housing testers, which I find an unacceptable.

Yeah, so we are using the funds from that you guys did gift us already to begin some of that work, but do have external resources that we have access to that we can also tap into.

We spent some time um after the amendment from the council last year digging into what a program really should look like and doing some of this research.

Um, and the fair housing team just thought we needed more money.

Um, and so we have found some of those external resources and are putting, I think the contract is for two 50 out in the in the end, so a little bit more than more than double what the council offered, but um I think we do have some concerns about you know the lack of diversity of vendors, right?

We are hoping that Suffolk will apply and be a great partner to work with, but we also would love to see more testing happening across the city as well as the county in general.

So the RFP does allow for um folks that are not currently offering that work to propose a system, and yes, peer testing is is certainly what we are hoping to look at as a as a gold standard.

Um the program also is gonna run for more than one year, um, which is part of why we needed more of that funding.

I think we think that we'll be able to see some of those trends better over about a three-year period.

Okay, I have more questions, but I'll save my time.

Thank you.

Okay, thank you.

Uh so we've got Councillor Fitzgerald and I have a few questions, and then we'll go to public testimony for anybody who's who's here.

Um, so council Fitzcherald, it looks like we've also been joined by Counselor Murphy.

Okay.

Thank you, Chair.

Uh, thank you everybody for all the important work you do here for equity and inclusion for the city of Boston.

Um to be consistent, I've asked this to every every department that we've had during this budget season.

And just that we know that everyone's taking a haircut.

Uh, where are you guys feeling it the most?

And what is your confidence level in terms of backfilling, stretching, being able to cover up for what we have lost, um, and sort of just uh any specific pain points that you guys are truly feeling.

I know from what I've heard from my other colleagues' questions, it's really the grants that's the issue, but um still want to ask the question anyway.

Thank you.

That's right.

I can start.

Um it's a pretty simple answer for the fair housing team.

Uh we do not issue grants um out of the department.

I think our biggest concern is always working um with the federal government, and if that partnership were ever to to falter, um, but right now the the cuts seem pretty manageable.

Great, and how so where are the cuts specifically happening in fair housing?

Um like counselor just mentioned some of those that work around research that we again as I mentioned have have made some real progress on.

Um, and then the cut to contracted services around that testing program that we can cover with some of our external funding.

Awesome.

Thank you.

My focus is making sure that as much as possible we bring services in-house and also use our incredibly culturally um competent and and humble team into the other departments so that they are changing practices and programs as well.

So we grants it's it's the only thing that we're concerned about.

Great, and good, sorry.

Yes, advancement grants has always been also been our biggest cut.

Yep.

Subgrants are out grants as well for office of black and so in terms of backfilling grants uh and the other any other philanthropic outreach that we're doing or any other ways to fill these up or do you feel like those grants that are gone will be lost this year or is there uh outreach being done to say look at we can maybe claw back a little bit through um alternative methods, I guess you could call it.

I'll I'll take that and I'll um I think in Council Jen was alluding to this, we a lot of our grants went to were small dollars to a lot of this community-based organizations that were not already being considered within our current ecosystem of philanthropy.

And so I think a question that we all need to ask ourselves as people with the capital that we have as elected officials as appointed members of the public, is how are we going to encourage the ecosystem to to better fund and support the work that's happening in the ground that we served as a bridge for, even though that was not necessarily happening before our time, yeah.

Similarly, um women's advancement are exploring meetings with funders to talk to them about finding organizations like the Boston Fund that show women receive only one percent of philanthropy dollars, and black and brown women being even a lesser percentage.

Um we're hoping to by educating funders of what that is of what that reality is that they'll reevaluate and distribute their equity more equ they're giving more equitably.

Thank you.

Um, to those mini grants, I don't know that this was originally for um for you, Haley, around women's advancement, but I guess it could be asked of of all the departments here.

Is in those mini grants what what was the average amount to each party or each group that you were giving to, and and what type of things did those fund?

Like where those mini grants that are getting cut because I saw one of the the reasons I asked that question.

I saw one of the slides that said, you know, 25,000 went to six different parties or you know, whatever.

So you know, those are you know three thousand dollars.

I'm assuming that's why I was asking.

What is the average amount to each and what did that money grant?

I mean, three thousand dollars can be a lot, but also when you're trying to make an impact, sometimes it's like what what what are we accomplishing with just giving three thousand, right?

Because I'm sure so uh just a little bit more detail on those.

Yes.

Um, so our max was about ten thousand dollars per grantees, and we gave about three grants um based off the applicants that we received.

Okay, so the uh of that when so when you say the the max was ten.

Yes, but the the average would be around.

A little less than three, a little a little less than three to each to each party.

And what type of things are that fund in women's advancement?

And I might ask some of the other uh folks that lost grants as well, just as a heads up.

But like, so what would that three grand who who would it go to and what would they do?

Um so we have a list of our grantees and the programs that they um all executed, and we can absolutely get those back to you.

Yeah, that would be that would that would be awesome.

Please and thank you.

Just want to know what like who's missing out, right?

Like what services are we losing, what are the things that that that's supported, even if it is small dollars, like what what is it that that's that no longer there?

Because those folks are reaching out to us, as you guys know, and they're saying, well, look, council, you can put it back in.

And so all of a sudden, my fear is we're gonna be the bad guys if we don't put everything back in, right?

And I'm trying to say, like, hey, whoa, whoa, whoa, this this we didn't make this budget, right?

Um, because everybody is every everyone's um looking to us to do that, but where where are we pulling from, right?

Um any of the other departments uh around those mini grants about an average of grant uh the average mini grant that went out and any specific of what it helped.

Yeah, so for the Office of Blackmail Advancement, uh our grants total up to 20,000 per organization with an average organization probably get around $10,000 to support the work.

Um, and it focused on seven key areas mentoring, mentoring and out of school time, youth and young adult pathways, housing mobility, economic inclusion and wealth building, workforce training and development, fatherhood engagement, and mental health and wellness.

Awesome.

Thank you.

I think uh counselor, just because you may get called on some of these, we just want to make sure you also know the cultural of the cultural affairs programs also has a mini grants.

This summer.

We are okay.

We will be uh drafting that, giving those dollars out for F or for the rest of F our 26, but FR27, we will not have access to that, and that's for like cultural programming, festivities, some workshops that the community is doing.

That sucks.

Um, because that was actually I have cultural affairs written down here, and I was going to ask you about it because I always have this, especially in Dorchester, where there's you know, we have the Polish triangle, we have Little Saigon, we have trying to uh create the the Irishest um the Irish heart down Adams Village, and it's like you can go around the world just in district three, right?

But I also want these places to um uh the aesthetics of of these locations to also look the same.

So I was looking to cultural affairs to help sort of create that.

Like when you're down when you walk down Hanover Street, you know it's Italy, right?

When you're in Chinatown, you know it's Chinatown.

But why isn't it when you're in Fields Corner?

Do you not know it's Little Saigon?

Right, and and so I want that to be expressed um throughout all the different areas and really throughout the city.

Um last couple questions, they're really just rapid fire answers.

Um, fair housing.

How many intake specialists do we currently have for fair housing?

There's one intake specialist, but for investigators.

So one person you talk to when you walk in the door, and four folks that would that could be assigned your case.

Great, and then uh final question is uh are there any specific effects on uh the women's safety initiative with any of these cuts?

Beworth the question.

Uh any specific effects to the to the women's safety initiative.

I know there's like violence prevention um in the in the in the women's safety initiative as I was on the website, um, and just an area that um you know, having a young daughter, I'm just saying, well, it's I want to make sure that that is um there's no effect taken to that.

I don't know if there is uh we want to talk about the gender violence prevention work that you all work with.

Yeah, we do so I think our policy director can speak more about the grant specifically, but I don't think at this time we can really like predict what is going to happen as we're still in like the planning phases of like being creative and how to make sure that that doesn't happen.

So we're trying not to think of the worst though, so but I'll yield to Emily.

Excuse me.

Yeah, hi Emily, thank you.

You either make a phone's fine over here, yep.

Yeah, so we did do a grant this um year on uh violence prevention focused on young men and boys, um, and so we won't be doing that, but we also work really closely with BPHC has an initi uh domestic and sexual and gender-based violence um prevention initiative, and we work very closely with them.

Um, we're working with them on actually like a bunch of stuff for the response to FIFA coming in and everything coming in for the summer.

Um, and that's like a big campaign.

Um, but I think we're gonna rely on kind of policy advocacy and bringing together different groups of women to kind of talk about the issues and highlight things, since we won't have any dollars to put out.

But I think that work is really growing um in the past year, so I only foresee it um kind of gaining a lot of speed at in this next year.

Great.

Thank you for all you do, and panel, thank you for everything that you guys do to help out.

Thank you, Chair.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you.

Councillor Murphy, seven seven minutes.

Thank you.

Um, thank you for being here.

Um, and for all you do, just a few questions.

One of the first things I realized when I got here into the city hall, like five years ago, is you know, this city doesn't run if we don't have outside partners and we don't have grants and you know other funding and nonprofits that you know step up in some of our departments, like when we met last year with the like the Office of Emergency Management, like 90% of their budget is funded through grants, right?

So we um are always vulnerable that if those grants don't stay in, you know, we lose those grants that we may not just lose programming or funding, but we could even lose staffing, right?

That people could lose their jobs.

So it seems that a lot of the cuts that departments took when asked, and it's a tough year, and you never want to make cuts, especially an office like yours, Frank, where you're growing, and this this body, like I was proud to be here on this body when we passed it, and then continue to help it grow and the good work it does.

But that the cuts were like grant funding or others, but now we're seeing that you know that's really taking away either from city employees or you know, residents across the city.

So how do you see the need in each of your departments to not rely so heavily on outside granting?

And if there's a need to shift a lot of that funding right into the operational budget for next year?

Like if it's vulnerable that you know you feel like you can't deliver on the mission, you know, that you were tasked to do if there's things you would wish could shift over to the operating budget.

Anyone can start?

Yeah, I can start.

Um good morning, I'm Haley E.

Smith.

I serve as the deputy director of the mayor's office of women's advancement.

Um we are focusing our efforts efforts on policy advocacy and partnership, um, and using like we talked about a little bit earlier, some of the organizations um who have the same mission and goals of this to support women and girls and making sure it's a safe and equitable city for them, um, and using that to push policy and legislation that supports them.

I'll say for the Office of Black Bill Advancement, a lot of our grant funding goes to kind of identify gaps that exist, um, and so the work that we're doing now, um we continue to do is through um working with the differ the various departments um to ensure that they are strengthened uh to help kind of shore up some of those gaps, and so like we're gonna continue that work, continue to identify external partners uh to make sure that our community partners are receiving additional support.

Um we also have a technical assistance program that each grantee and in grant applicants that are not funded are able to get kind of those one-on-one supports um to help them.

Are do you have enough staff to help kind of shift that work now to reaching out to more external partners to do that work?

Yeah, I think like we are at a place where we finally have reached kind of the capacity that um we were working to achieve, um, but we're also working with our city departments um that are in housing to help us identify um and support um and collaborate around kind of those gaps BPS, workers' empowerment, economic opportunity, health commission.

Um, so it's not isolated you know for the work uh black male advancement alone because the ultimate goal is to make sure that this work is embedded across all city departments, so we're working towards that.

Counselor, can I just add to this piece?

Um I think this is what I was alluding to earlier.

You have BMA, you have LCA, you have Moya that have 10-ish staff members, and then you have MOA, three staff members, Mola, I believe five only, and so this is a little bit of why the centralizing is happening to ensure that everybody has access to this different work, and with the partnerships team led by Stephen Chan in the mayor's office, we are also planning to look at some of these uh focusing on the needs and strategizing better so that the the work is happening.

Thank you.

Just thank you for all you do, and as we go through this budget, like you mentioned, your a lot of your work is connected to all of the other city departments, so we're just making sure that if cuts are being made that it's not directly affecting the populations that you're servicing.

So, thank you for all you do.

Thank you, Chair.

Okay, thank you very much.

Um just a couple questions from the chair, then we'll go to public testimony.

Um, in terms of the grants again, we're um, you know, for for blackmail advancement.

I think it's uh your your budget for like contractual services going from about 950,000 to 400,000.

So 500,000 dollar cut.

I mean, what is that due to your ability to give grants?

What grants are you no longer gonna be giving if you haven't said so already?

But I guess um the community empowerment grants, like, you know, uh, are you gonna you know is it how much of that is being cut because of the loss of that those funds?

100% okay.

Okay, so there's no community empowerment grants for in the next year.

No, okay.

And is that that like is that with the $500,000 cut is gonna impact the most, or are there other things?

Yes, okay.

Uh okay, so that'll be that when we're talking about what we're losing with that cut, we're talking about the community empowerment grants.

I mean, I trust me.

I mean, we've we're more than halfway through this process.

I've seen these faces, many departments.

They're you know, obviously, you don't want to lose this ability to make a difference through the grant process.

Um, but uh, and then just you know, I I guess uh uh chief.

So if you look at the overall cabinet, you know, fiscal year 24, it's 11 million dollar budget for the cabinet, then it goes to 14 million and 25, 15 million and 26, and then basically back down to the 24 level.

Uh you know, I mean, uh like so.

Are we um is this is this like what we can expect?

Uh like as a cycle, or um, are we gonna be able to provide the same level of uh and that that's for all of the the entire cabinet, not just the panelists here, but um, you know, can we uh can we at least provide the same level of services provided in 2024?

How do we look at that sort of thank you counselor?

Um yes, it it is important to just acknowledge that there is cabinet-wide a three million and change difference, um, between FR26 and 7.

I and just want to reiterate that personnel stays the same.

So any programming, any work that is happening done by the staff is not going to stop.

Grants is the only thing at this point that is significantly decreasing and and in some cases stopping for FR27.

And I cannot speak for FY28.

Okay.

So for women's advancement, I uh you know, I see the the so the contractual services goes from a 216,000 this year to it's a down a hundred to 103.

Um, do you you know what specifically you know your you're not gonna be able to offer uh or you know, are you gonna be able to offer any grants next year?

No, we would not be able to offer grants next year.

Okay, and is that the same for black male advancement?

Just no correct, no grants, okay.

Uh I mean, not okay, but um at least that's clear.

Uh we have a superstar team, we're gonna figure we're gonna figure things out, uh yeah.

No, we I mean, uh so we all have a lot of tough choices uh and to make in this budget.

Um, so just you know, if any further money is coming out of your departments, that would affect your staffing.

Is that at this point I am very confident that is what would have to happen, but I I can guarantee you that we're gonna be we're gonna have more accomplishments than FY24.

Um then I'm sorry, for for fair housing testers, uh, like so what is that going to look like next year?

Yep, so we have put out or we're about to put out an RFP for a service, right?

So Suffolk obviously is more than welcome to apply.

I hope they are hearing this.

Uh we will reach out to them directly.

Um, but we are looking to do um a program that is co-developed with that vendor.

Um, but essentially for for folks that are less familiar with testing programs, the vendor will go out and send people to apply to an apartment or seek a loan from a bank, um, and we are going to be tracking what happens if someone is denied a loan or somebody is denied that apartment, especially after they reveal a characteristic about themselves that is within the uh protected classes.

Um so this is really common.

We women often do this where they show up first time of sign up for the apartment, and then when they return, they return with a child.

Um, and we are testing to see that marital um rather uh family status is not um something that they are being discriminated against with.

So we look forward to developing that program really strategically with the um with the vendor.

Um and it is a three-year program, so we also are building in a ton of metrics that are gonna help us to track sort of where we're seeing protected classes across the city um see that discrimination.

Okay.

Have we seen a rise in in like voucher discrimination and other kinds of housing discrimination in the last few years?

Yeah, so the the specific rise we actually are seeing at the moment is to um the disability protected class.

Um and that is sort of wide ranging, obviously, because there are lots of different um kinds of disabilities that are protected, but that seems to be, I think, in part because people are aging in place and you're seeing mobility challenges there.

Um that is sort of seems to be the uptick that we are dealing with, and the Fair Housing team has partnered with the Disability Commission to sort of do some extra training and to make sure they are understanding sort of where those things could arise.

Okay, and then just uh so we still have contractual services line items for for women's advancement and blackmailing.

So what are those uh funds going to be used for in fiscal year 27?

If not, so there's no grants uh is uh part of our funds are gonna continue to be used to for our technical assistance program um that we offer um as well as our legal um support program for those that have quarry um to seal their quarry uh does be talking about.

Um and then portion of the funds is gonna be used um for the final kind of payments to complete our equity study as well.

Okay, and yeah.

For women's advancement, we're gonna continue our regular programming, so like women's entrepreneurs Boston, which has four annual events, extraordinary women, which is an annual um ceremony in March, and um Ministral Equity and other programs to support women and girls.

Okay, and then just uh we'll go to public testimony one second, just in terms of staff, I had for group for grants.

Do you have staff who work like I don't know you're not writing grants, but the sort of reverse uh accepting grant applications and things like that.

Are you retaining those staff?

I guess what happens if we're not doing grants.

What and how do how does that work in the cabinet?

Does each does black male advancement have their own grant person and women's advancement?

I don't know, Chief, if you want to.

We don't have this is part of the larger strategy that I've been referring to, but we don't have any staff whose single purpose in the administration is to just manage grants.

Um in fact, staff will tell you that they have too many things on their play, but that is not something that and we are going to be rethinking um the strategies moving forward, but I'd want to just hone in on the fact that as you're hearing, programming is not stopping, is just the grant program, which obviously is one of the ones that get most of the marketing because that's what's exciting, etc.

But none of the programming is ending.

Okay.

Um oh, I wanted to uh councillor women's advancement, our policy director runs um our grants and manages them, so she'll be leaning her work on policy advocacy, and we love the support.

Okay, uh, and then I guess are we doing any advanced investments in grant writing uh in terms of getting grants for departments?

I know uh my wife works at a refugee resettlement organization, and and investing in those people pays off uh because there are grants, and so what are we doing to that would love to learn more about what that could look like?

Um, but that is not something that from an equity lens we are considering at this moment.

Okay, well, I mean I do think just a good grant writer is worth their weight in gold, probably.

Uh and I think counselor, in the afternoon you'll hear a little bit more from departments for whom that is the case, um but just not from this panel.

Okay, thank you.

Uh so uh Councilor Brain, we're about to go to uh public testimony, but you're you you're here if you had a first round of questions, seven minutes.

Come on, um, and then for for folks who are here for public testimony, you will go after Council Brain.

So we talk quickly, seven minutes.

Um I just want earlier with there was uh a question about the um the director, the executive director position of the Office of Fair Housing and Equity.

Um the outreach and education director position is also on filled.

Is there a plan to fill fill that position?

Yeah, my hope is that that is one of the first uh positions that the executive director will be able to fill.

I think there's a lot of work um to be done around standards for education and outreach and tracking sort of metrics of what that that outreach brings into the office traditionally with HUD funded um for housing offices.

So it's something we really want to see strategically put in place by the executive director.

So in terms of and then the executive you're hiring a new executive director.

Yes, yes, sorry, you mentioned this earlier.

I missed that, so no worries.

Yes, by the fall, counselor.

By the fall.

So any hope and then that the outreach and education director would follow shortly after.

Shortly after.

So by the end of the year, you're thinking.

Absolutely, hopefully.

Okay.

Um, given the uh widespread housing discrimination in Boston, how many investigators is the Office of Fair Housing currently able to conduct uh investigations able to conduct a year?

Sorry, are you asking the number of in investigations?

Investigations, yeah.

So it really ranges year to year.

Um I would have to pull up the previous five years for you, but we can send that over if helpful.

Um, right now we are a little bit over two dozen is my recollection.

Two dozen, about 24 of them, 24 plus.

Yeah.

And those do those do range.

I think there have been years um that we've archived already that are in the hundreds.

I think sometimes that indicates that housing discrimination has improved, and sometimes it it means that it's just a bit more hidden.

Okay.

Um, and then um the uh the Office of Fair Housing and Equity is responsible for overseeing the uh affordably cities affordably furthering fair housing implement implementation uh and zoning review and compliance reporting.

Are we how is the city meeting its obligations to um uh with key leadership and investigative positions vacant?

Are we able to are we able to do that work?

Yes.

So the affirmatively furthering fair housing also tricky for me to say, sits um with our policy manager, um, who is still with us, um, and she has been doing fantastic work across several departments, um, and you can take a look at some of our slides where I went into this a bit, but um we are really really proud of the work we've done, especially last year on the anti-displacement plan, which actually ticks off several boxes um of goals we were trying to accomplish.

So that work is being done across planning, MOH, BHA, ISD, BPHC, and BPS, and I'm sure I'm forgetting somebody, but it's really the partnership is working really well, and the monitoring committee is pleased to see the progress that's being made.

And um HUD is currently increasing oversight over Boston's fair housing uh, not because they agree with it necessarily, fair housing compliance, but how is the city preparing to respond to HUD inquiries or enforcement actions given the staff that you have?

Are you are you up to fully staffed to the adequate level to meet those inquiries from HUD?

Yep, so in terms of the investigators, absolutely.

We have four investigators and then one intake coordinator.

That's who you've talked to when you come into the office with your first allegations.

Um, and then we are hiring actively for a director of investigations.

The previous um person left at the end of October.

Okay.

Um the previous person left in October.

Yeah.

So who's doing it now?

But sorry, so that person just oversees the department.

There are still four investigators hard at work.

Okay, um, and then Alston Brighton is a large immigrant and limited English proficiency communities.

Um we're just wondering in terms of having the outreach and education director position as vacant.

Um, what targeted outreach is happening in Alston Brighton to ensure that residents understand their rights and are able to know how to report discrimination?

I'd have to get back to you on any sort of in Alston Brighton events that we've done, but we do have our weekly call, which is citywide for residents to show up and ask questions about their own discrimination, potentially, but mostly it's used by lenders and brokers and landlords um to ask questions around making sure that they are engaging in proper practice.

Um, but we are happy to sort of reach back out and make sure that Alston Brighton is being touched individually.

And in terms of um materials, um, are we uh do we have materials that we can share?

Absolutely, we'd be happy to drop some off for your office.

We have them in all of the cities, um, most spoken languages.

They're sort of pamphlets that are quite quite helpful, and um, they take you to the website also to file a claim.

Okay, um, keep going.

Time on the clock here.

Um, just also wondering that um with all the development, we're still building things in Alton Brighton, which is good.

Um, how is the Office of Fair Housing and Equity participating in the zoning review for projects in the district in Alton Brighton?

Yep, so a lot of our work is actually on the Article 80 modernization um process uh and making sure that as we are sort of working through and cleaning up the process, speeding it up, that the fair housing pieces are not lost.

Um there is a board that sort of looks does some oversight for fair housing.

Um, and we not only the fair housing team but also folks like the disability commission um give pretty regular uh review and feedback on sort of new questions we're asking of developers, for example, around disability displacement.

Um, so a lot of the work that is done in the displacement plan that planning has put out, um, was strongly encouraged by the fair housing team, and those things are being implemented slowly but surely.

Um the human rights commission was as effectively been defunded in the financial year 27 uh budget book, as I understand, um many of these functions will be absorbed by the rest of the equity cabinets departments as well.

I'm quoting as a heavier reliance on existing state resources.

Um, what sort of details can you provide about which which department will be absorbing the work?

Um that was guaranteed onto the ordinance for um the human rights commission.

And obviously, there's no perfect science here, but I I think we've we have obviously our partners in the state, which we understand that there's a backlog in there, but we continue to work with them.

Um obviously OPAD has received some of these um responsibilities.

Our team works really well with the civil rights unit also in the police department, and so while it is not a perfect science, we have learned that this continues to and the disabilities, sorry, disabilities commission as well.

We've learned that this meets the need at the moment, um, so that we can refocus our our resources and in the different work that we do.

Okay, my time's up.

So, thank you very much.

Uh that wraps up our first round of questions.

We're gonna hear uh from public testimony.

Um I have on the sign-up sheet, I've got uh Maddie Good, Aisha Gaskins, Clifton Braithwaite, John Smith, St.

Cyr, Robert Lewis and Kathy Brown.

Uh I we have um a few, I think we might go out of order.

Uh, yeah.

Thank you, panel.

Um, my name's Clifton Braithwaite, decades of serving our community, and this will be the second time that I asked for help.

A lot of these programs um I've been in support of um even promoting it on my own time to make sure that we get the information.

What I'm about to say is not against anybody, but I feel like I'm being dropped in between um the draft where people don't recognize that sometimes even leaders in the community need help.

Um I've gotten a lot of advice which way to go.

But fighting through probate when it comes to home ownership.

A lot of these programs are here about housing and things like that, but they never talk about men or women such as myself that come from a family that has property, and as we all know, things can happen if you're not properly trained or have the money to fight the resources.

I did most of the legwork with the layman way that I know how to do stuff as a just as an activist, but I need help, and I want to know how can we help people such as myself to keep the legacy of what their parents bought for them without losing it.

Um I've been an advocate for a very long time.

I'm not complaining, I'm not saying no one's helping me, but I don't know how to help myself without the help of the body and programs like this.

The most I need is a lawyer to help me navigate through the probate.

I think a lot of what I'm dealing with personally might be the trauma of what I dealt with, losing my mom's and family being my family's just going through a lot, and I pray for them.

I'd like to thank the council president um for helping me on the quiet.

You know, people don't know a lot of y'all in the council.

Y'all give me a lot of advice past um council president.

I need y'all help somehow some way to help me navigate so I can save my family and have the legacy what my father left for me.

And I'm not the only one out here like that.

I hear these complaints all the time.

I really need your help, your services, because I'm gonna continue what I do for the community, but I gotta learn to also work for myself and do what I need to do.

So I'm just applying, asking out to the community and the leadership that's in the community that knows the work that I've been doing.

I really need your help to navigate through this probate and to make sure what my mother left that I can continue to give it back to my family no matter what we're going through.

I am the patriot of this family, and I'm not gonna let anything drop under my watch, like I won't let it drop in our community.

Thank you everyone for letting me go first.

Um I really need your help.

I don't know how to ask anymore.

I really need y'all help to save my family's legacy.

Thank you, Boston.

And thank you, everybody here in this body.

I know y'all are gonna help.

It's whenever we can sit down and get this done.

Thank you.

Okay.

Um, yeah, I I'm sorry.

It can we just uh do you need to go now or you have to leave?

Okay, so please step up and introduce yourself and then we'll go in order after.

Good morning.

My name is Antonia Edwards.

I came here to learn today.

I wasn't gonna testify, but my name was mentioned by Chief Marianjali.

I want to say that I've learned so much today, things I hadn't even even known, and I am highly impressed with the inclusion cabinet and the different entities that go out of their way to provide services and programs for our community.

I just want the mayor and the city council to please consider expanding the funding for these grants that need to be um put together so that they can have this powerful impact in our community.

And without them, it seems like I just have a highly negative effect and getting stuff done.

So I just want to commend you guys, and I just want to say thank you and also recommend that we reconsider the budget for the equity inclusion cabinet to expense, extend those fundings so that they can get the work done.

And I just want to say thank you.

Thank you.

Okay, so uh so Matt Maddie Good is up next.

Sorry.

Uh well.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Um I'm sorry, am I missing this?

Yeah, okay, just go ahead.

No worries, council.

Um, I want to first acknowledge uh the work of the Office of Black Male Advancement has been talked about today, but just want to add a highlight to that.

Want to also acknowledge um Richard Clater, who's one of our commissioners um in the audience today, focused on public health.

Um good morning, Chair Weber and City Councilors.

My name is Marjorie Good.

I serve as the chair of the black men and boys commission, and I am testifying on behalf of our commission.

The commission on black men and boys was established through a 2021 ordinance and is made up of 21 black males with experience, knowledge, and expertise on issues pertaining to black men and boys in the city of Boston.

The commission in partnership with the office, the commission in partnership with the Office of Black Male Investment remains committed to advancing the guiding responsibilities laid out in our ordinance.

I'd like to go through those with you.

Advising the mayor on issues pertaining to black men and boys, assisting the office of the mayor in determining budget and policy priorities, monitoring and advising city agencies and departments on issues pertaining to black men and boys.

Excuse me, designing projects and programs that promote equity for black men and boys, which are not currently being implemented by existing city agencies, performing outreach, communication, and liaison on the black men and boys related to community groups and organizations, host public commission meetings, produce a yearly report pertaining to the work of the commission and the progress of the city to advance the status of black men and boys.

Each year, the Black Men and Boys Commission releases policy and budget recommendations for the upcoming fiscal year.

The Black Men and Boys Commission FY27 budget recommendations seeks to address systematic barriers and improve outcomes for black men and boys in Boston.

We remain in full support of the Office of Black Male Advancement's efforts and outstanding progress, persistent challenges, and the actions needed to ensure black men and boys can thrive in every neighborhood of our city.

Over the past several years, in partnership with the mayor with Mayor Michelle Wu, the City Council, community partners, and residents, the commission has made meaningful progress through the commission's advocacy and leadership.

The mayor's office of black male advancement has been codified into law, launched a citywide equity study that continues to make progress so far engaging more than 2,000 residents.

And in FY26, a 2.1 million annual budget was secured to support the work of the Office of Black Male Advancement.

Through the Commissioner's annual budget and policy recommendations, additional investments have advanced opportunities across education, housing, public health, workforce development, economic opportunity, and community safety.

At the same time, persistent challenges remain.

Black men and boys in the Boston continue to face entrenched disparities across these priority areas of focus.

As the city prepares for this for hard decisions in the FY27 budget, given the current economic challenges, the commission requests level funding for FY27 budget priorities, goals and success indicators for each priority and for city departments to work with black male advancement to gain assistance and outreach.

The commission continues to advocate for the following budget priorities.

The Office of Black Male Advancement to have level funding, remain fully staffed, continue the equity study phase two, continue community empowerment grants, particularly, continue the data dashboard efforts, continue the work of My Brothers Keeper and Project Opportunity, continue providing technical assistance to community-based organizations, and continue to support the Black Men and Boys Commission, and most importantly, to compute to continue support black men and boys throughout the city of Boston.

We are also requesting grants administered by workers' empowerment, human services, economic opportunity, housing, and blackmail advancement to be level funding.

In closing, through the equity study and data dashboard, we will not, we will not only continue to build on the foundation laid these past four years under the leadership of executive director Frank Farrell, the BMA staff, Chair Tito Jackson, and the inaugural commissioners, but we have guidance and tools for the office and new commissioners to continue to build on that foundation brick by brick, department by department, neighborhood by neighborhood, through an equity framework, evidence-based research and recommendations, tracking data and community voice so that we are able to monitor impact and progress across the cities.

These investments and outcomes of black men and boys are a measure of the city's morale and economic health.

Black men and boys commission stands ready to continue this work collaboratively, candidly, and with the urgency our communities deserve.

Respectfully, Marjorie Good, Chair of the Black Men and Boys Commission.

Thank you for your time today.

Okay, thank you.

Uhisha Gaskins.

And then uh John Smith St.

Cyr, Robert Lewis, Kathy Brown.

Thank you for having me.

Um, just to tell you about the safety on our streets, we have glass on every few couple of steps, and we're constantly having these big places of glass all over the place, which I report to 311, the city of Boston.

Um, this is to City Council Mignon Culpepa from Young Youth and Women's Development, Asia Gascans.

I have a small business.

Um, the quality of being fair and just, especially in the way that takes account of and seeks to address existing inequalities issues.

Black Americans and Latin Americans are not treated equal.

Latin Americans is doing far more business with American than the average black American issue.

Black American males and females are being targeted for exclusive rights issue.

Fair housing is going towards the elite race, which is Latin Americans' issue, women's advancement is not including or rapidly advancing black American females as they should.

Final issue, there is segregation from the light skin race and the dark skin race, as well as from the Latin Americans and the Black Americans.

I have concluded my issues for today's meeting with City Council and Annella Chamber.

Thank you for hearing my concerns today.

May 12, 2026 at 10 a.m.

Have a wonderful day.

Sincerely, Asia LaDon Gaskins.

You can reach me at God's Night 2020 at gmail.com.

My phone number is 413-210-4356.

I also have a copy of this form if you would like it.

Yes, uh, we can we'll take that for the record.

Thank you very much.

Uh yeah.

Take a copy of that.

Um, John uh Smith Saint here, then Robert Lewis, then Kathy Brown.

All right, how's everybody doing?

Uh my name is John Smith St.

Cyr and I'm the founder of the J.L.

Smith Suicide Prevention Center for Young Black Boys.

Um, I want to start by saying I'm genuinely confused.

Um I do not know if cabinet leaders work for the mayor or do they serve the people?

Like, is there any balance there?

I understand the formal structure, cabinet leaders are appointed within the mayor's administration, they report through the administration, and they are expected to carry out the mayor's agenda.

But this is a public budget, these are public departments, these are public dollars, and the purpose of these offices is supposed to be public service.

So when departments responsible for equity are facing cuts, I do not expect their leaders to simply defend the budget they were handed.

I expect them to speak clearly about the impact those cuts will have on the people they are supposed to serve.

Because if cabinet leaders can only defend the mayor's budget, even when the budget reduces their own ability to serve vulnerable communities, then we need to be honest about what that means.

That is not independent equity leadership.

That is political management, and equity cannot be managed into existence.

It has to be fought for.

Inside City Hall, these cuts may look like numbers on a spreadsheet, but in the communities, these dollars determine whether programs happen or disappear.

For some residents, that is not symbolic.

It is life or death.

Would there be the same level of silence if these cuts were coming out of salaries?

With it, would there be this little urgency if the reductions affected the people at the top instead of the grassroots organizations and residents at the bottom?

The reality is that grassroots organizations are the ones doing the actual work.

What impact would the office of black male advancement have without the nonprofit and grassroots organizations if funds?

Many residents do not know these offices through City Hall.

They know them through us.

They know them through the organizations that bring the resources into the community, organize the programs, hold the events, support the families, and make the work visible.

Without grassroots organizations, these offices become names on the city website.

They become policy language without community reach.

They become equity infrastructure with no ground level delivery.

That is why cutting grant and partnership funding is so harmful.

It weakens the very organizations that make these offices relevant, visible, and effective.

So I came here to ask that all funding be restored for fiscal year 27.

But now I'm also asking for new department leadership because we need leaders that represent the people and not just the mayor.

Thank you.

Okay, thank you.

Robert Lewis and then Kathy Brown.

Good morning.

Good morning.

Good morning.

I tell you this ain't this is not easy.

I got a call a couple of days ago from my friend.

That I respect, I care about.

He told me about this meeting.

And um, you know, he mentioned Frank, he mentioned the black advancement, equity and um inclusion.

And um, if it was up to me, I probably wouldn't be standing here.

Um, but like I said, I respect them.

Um, you know, I'm a private person, I'm a proud uh proud person.

He said, Rob, man, you need to tell what's going on with you, man.

You tell you, tell your story what's going on because probably a lot of people don't know.

And if they know, they need to hear your side of it.

Um I respect everybody on this panel.

I'll probably work with you.

I've been, this is probably my third time working with City Hall way back from this man's father, um, back in the 80s.

Um, this last time I came in at 213 with Marty Walsh.

Um I was terminated November 17th of last year.

Um, but I but I gotta back up a little bit.

Um about six years ago, very painful time.

My sister got killed.

Um, this was after she, and I'm not gonna keep you guys long, I'm not.

Uh she went to go take care of my father.

My mother died.

My sister went to go take care of my father.

She gets killed.

And um, it was a rough time.

Um right around that time, I was put on a one-year, it turned out to be a five-year last chance agreement.

And the reason people say, Well, what happened?

I guess I was out for a whole year.

When I came back, Marty said, Hey, listen, man, um, you know, they wanted to fire you.

The reason why they fired, it was one of these long days.

I had a work car and I let it run in for 22 hours.

I'll find them.

I live in the North End.

And um, they said, Rob, what happened?

I said, I really don't know.

I was tired and um got up the next day, the car was still running.

I brought the car back.

So anyway, they like I said, they had even a year investigation uh for that.

And I came back.

Um, so this past May.

So anyway, I've been on it five years since that time.

Um this past May, I got a letter saying, Well, you're in investigation again.

Wow, what happened?

Um and this has been the first incident in five years since I've been on this thing.

Um, and um story short, they said, Well, there was it was a coffee hour.

As you want many of you guys that go to Mayor's Coffee Hall.

Um, what in my positions is it was principal administrator censored.

Work with all the city council in the areas around issues of um streets.

I was working with public works was um, excuse me, man, my my heart is racing, man.

Um work with all the city council on issues they might have around streets and transportation.

So I go to all the coffee hours.

Just one happened to be in the north end this time.

Um, usually what happens for the last since 2013.

If it's a coffee hour on a Thursday, I'll sign in on Wednesday at 8 o'clock.

I'm gonna be at the coffee hour.

Um, and by the way, everything that I'm saying, you guys are city councils, all you have to do is look it up.

Everything is transcripts.

So I'm not even making this up.

I thought about writing it up, but you guys can look it up, it's on there.

Um the number, like why I was on this five years for the car running for for 22 hours.

Car wasn't stolen, but anyway.

Um, so this past May, so this particular coffee hour was um in the North End.

Uh, starts at 10 o'clock.

Um, it was raining.

And usually what happens, and if it rains, they cancel it, or they move it inside.

This happened to be the only one that they cancel completely.

So I'm walking around trying to find it, get wet.

I go home, change my clothes, and I come to work.

I come to work uh probably about 12 31 o'clock.

I use my five to get in, and um, let me push the story forward.

They're investigating the fact that one that I was a cu I was accused of um violating my last chance agreement by stealing because they they asked me, well, what did you do from 10 to a one?

Because you didn't sign in.

And normally, and this was on record also.

I asked this person.

I'm not gonna, I don't want to accuse anybody right now.

That's all in documents, but this was a targeting situation.

I have a cohort that everybody knows who it is, our every apprentice.

We started in 2013.

And on record, we usually don't sign in.

We usually don't sign in.

He doesn't sign in at all.

Sometimes I do.

Um so they they charge me with violating my last chance agreement because I stole three hours from 10 to 1.

And what my my piece was was this.

If I was trying to hide something, one, I wouldn't use my fob to get in because they can track it.

Two, I said to them, you normally, and say, well, you sign in at 8 o'clock the night before.

I said, I've been doing this too since 2013.

I came into work that day.

Um, so anyway, so we had three different appeals.

Um I'm on my last appeal coming in June.

Um, and like I said, you know, and you know, I share with this person, man.

What is coming here telling my story about, you know what I mean?

But um, I'm glad I did.

Uh uh, sitting over there, I wanted to go out the door a couple of times.

Um, you know, let me just say this.

Um I'll be 68 in four months.

Never thought in my life that my whole life would be turned upside down like this.

I was eight months away from my pension that I don't have.

Uh never thought I'd be struggling like this at this age.

You know, I worked for this city for the last 30 years.

I had a youth, I had a reentry program, the first one ever ran by a black man in the city of Boston.

Had that for 15 years.

I had a youth program for another 18 years.

So I did a lot for this city, and to be treated like this, um, I just thought that um it's a painful thing.

And I and the last thing, and I just found out last month, like I said, I haven't um applied for unemployment November, so that's seven months, haven't received one paycheck.

I found out last month that public works is challenging my unemployment.

Why in the world?

Why would they challenge my unemployment?

I can't understand it.

Thank God, two months ago I just started collecting my social security, and that's the only income I had.

Um but anyway, you know, on top of, you know, sorry.

I'm sorry, I I apologize.

I thank you for coming and giving public testimony.

It's it sounds like I what where do you you where do you live in the city?

In terms of you have a district counselor who can advocate for you on this.

I would reach out.

Uh you can reach out to me.

Yeah, we can definitely take this.

We're we're here for a budget hearing.

I know, I know.

Equity cabinet.

I I I'm very sorry to hear about these circumstances.

I apologize if it's off time.

You're Frank all the money leaves.

That's all I know.

He does a great job.

Equity inclusion, um, same thing.

So thank you.

Okay, thank thank you very much.

Um, we'll figure out who to uh coordinate with you to get uh the right district counselor um on this.

Kathy Brown, and then uh get back to the second round of questions.

Uh just a reminder, public testimony.

Two minutes a person, try not to cut people off.

But uh, okay, if you hear the buzzer, try to wrap up.

Okay, that sounds good.

Um hi, my name is Kathy Brown.

I work for the Boston Tenant Coalition, and we um anchor the affirmatively furthering fair housing AFH community advisory committee, and we're also um as part of that involved in the monitoring of the city's um um AFH, um and um just you know the work of your cabinet is unbelievably important and all the different programs and really support it and really concerned about the cuts because of our work on fair housing.

I'm gonna zoom in on that.

Um, we are the the Office of Fair Housing and Equity is so critical at this time while HUD is attacking Boston, singling out Boston, and we appreciate the city councils fighting back, you know, and the city um doing their best to fight back, but this office is more important than ever.

Also, the rampant housing discrimination going on across the city, and so we're really concerned that there is a 25% cut against the Office of Fair Housing and Equity, and we're also, as other counselors have raised, really concerned about the staffing, you know.

Um, amazing Bob Terrell who passed, you know, over a year ago, and by the time it sounds like someone will be hired, it'll be a year and a half, and then there's been there hasn't been an education outreach person, which is also critical in terms of training the departments, you know, in terms of the affirmatively furthering fair housing, the BPDA, AFH zoning, you know, all of this work is so critical in terms of Boston's equity.

So um it we just really we really appreciate the amazing work that Dwayne and Joyce and folks are doing there, especially with this um, uh, you know, shrunken, um, shrunken uh department, and so we just really hope there can be more resources because the work is so critical at this time, and again, we appreciate the office and we appreciate the the city council's support of the AFH and the AFH zoning and and all the other work.

So, okay, thank you very much.

Uh um again, we got we uh yeah, anyway, so uh second round of questions again.

We're so we're gonna try to we have uh another hearing with some of the same panelists uh on the equity cabinet for two o'clock.

Um, and uh so we want to finish this round by one and give central staff an hour to recover uh for the two o'clock hearing.

Um so counselor Flynn, we're gonna do uh five minutes.

Uh thank you, Mr.

Chair.

The questions I asked um earlier focused on black male advancement and in other departments.

I I chief and some of my colleagues asked about human rights after I spoke about it.

So I want to follow up on that.

How do we how do we defund an ordinance?

What is the process like?

Are we legally allowed to do that?

Um that is not a question for me as a chief of equity to answer.

That is a question that I would I would direct to the law department, but what we are doing is ensuring that the resources that would have come out of the commission are being addressed by the different departments, and I think uh I want to just repeat what I said earlier of there's been an an incredible change in the way that we do business and our departments are managing a lot, case managing a lot of the issues that were coming our way.

So you recommend that I talk to Michael Thierstone.

I think that when we when it comes to what is legal versus not, that is a conversation for somebody else.

Okay, whose whose decision was it to defund the human rights commission?

Um we have not had any staff in that team for about two fiscal years, and maybe Maya can correct me if it's more than that.

Um so in this moment of looking at other things, it was more important that we did not cut staff or other programming.

Was there any issue as it related to the executive director of the human rights commission and or the commissioners?

What do you mean by issues?

Personnel issues.

There were just no staff in that team for about eight years.

They weren't hired.

No.

Okay, whose decision was it to not hire them?

I was more focused with the departments that were receiving ongoing requests for support and resources as well as our strategic work with the other departments.

So you was the mayor, did the mayor know that we weren't funding hiring at the Human Rights Commission?

Um, can I speak to like the details of that?

But I'm that is not something, again, it's not been a um something that we deal with on a day-to-day basis.

We do not receive concerns on the human rights commission on day-to-day basis, but we do receive lots of work.

But you would you would engage the mayor in what's happening with them with the major department under your jurisdiction, is that accurate?

Yes.

Did you speak to the mayor about human rights commission?

I spoke to her about all the departments and the difficult decisions that we've had to make for FY27.

So you did speak to her about the Human Rights Commission?

The mayor has proposed a budget.

No, I'm I'm talking about over the last couple of years when there was no executive director.

Did you ask her or say, Mayor, you know, we don't have a human rights commission uh executive director here?

It might be helpful to have one.

I see.

Well, we did work with um an a consulting group called agency that came back to us with some recommendations, something that we brought to the council um a couple of years ago, and one of the recommendations was to just acknowledge the fact that a lot of the work is being done with by other departments.

Yeah, I'm not in support of um defunding this program, defunding this.

So the mayor is okay with defunding the Human Rights Commission?

There has not been any programming or staff there in the last two years.

I understand that.

And nobody in the council has changed that either in the last two years.

But is the mayor okay with defunding the human rights commission?

Councilor Ivas to your question.

No, Chief, I'm being respectful to you.

I'm asking, did the mayor support defunding the human rights commission?

The mayor has submitted the budget that she feels will meet the needs of the FY27 needs.

To defund the human rights commission.

That is language that you are using.

Well, tell me the language you you would use as it relates to the executive direct direct position at the human rights and having no staff there.

Yep, this is an ordinance that we did not create.

This is not part of our current strategic plan.

So we have I have not prioritized it in the equity cabinet because a lot of the work that that commission would have done decades ago is already happening in this very different and up to date department.

Was there any challenges at all with the human rights commissioners?

Do they ever express to you about any challenges at the department?

Um when I was first appointed, there were some issues that what were the issues?

It's four years, four and a half years ago, I cannot remember.

What were the issues?

You and I can talk offline once I remember, but I do not remember it was four and a half years ago.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Hello?

Yeah, right.

Um sorry, I'm gonna just consult my notes for the right order.

Uh Council Rurrell, you're up.

I think it's Councillor Louie Jan.

Is me?

Okay, I have a just for everyone.

If Councilor, Counselor Louie Jen, Councilor Fitzgerald, uh I believe it's Councillor Murphy, then Braden, then Culpepper.

We've been joined by Councillor Colbert.

Thank you.

All right.

Thank you.

Um investigations.

Um how old are open cases?

Like, do we have a range of how long open cases stay open for?

Um, yes, we do track that over time.

I think a lot of our open cases are open because we have chosen to really wait on um our complaints and our defendant.

That's not the right term.

Sorry, the person who is acute uh alleging discrimination and the person who is being accused of discrimination.

Um I think the team is working on reassessing how long we need to wait to hear back from people.

Um, but that tends to be where we see cases um sort of lingering.

Uh the HUD recommended the HUD requirement for case closure is 100 days, um, which is certainly lengthy, and I think to the constituent can feel very long, but that is sort of HUD's baseline requirement.

Awesome.

And how many do you know how many are over a hundred days?

I don't off the top of my head, counselor.

I have to get back to you.

Yeah, through the chair, can we find out how many over 100 days?

Do you know how many civil suits related to housing discrimination have been filed by Boston residents in the past year?

And then civil suits and investigations, civil suits and investigations are not the same thing.

So if we know that there are high rates of civil suits going on but low rates of investigation, that might indicate that the rates of service being provided does not match the need, and so we need to adjust.

So I guess the question is one, do we know how many civil suits related to housing discrimination?

And then based on that data, is there a need to adjust?

Yep, so the civil suits are something that the Office of Housing Stability would be tracking rather than us, because civil suits can include things that are outside of the protected classes that I mentioned earlier, and also outside of that time range of six months that I mentioned earlier.

So while sometimes um, you know, a higher rate of civil suits can be an indicator that things are not going wrong, I'm not sure that's something we've had flagged for us by the Office of Housing Stability quite yet.

Awesome.

Um I guess it'll be a question of housing stability.

My last question around, I know you mentioned AFFH.

Um, I asked this question to the planning department.

When does um the BIF DIC provide their recommendation to a project?

As an in the process of the process of Article 80.

They're right in the middle, I believe.

I believe it is after the accessibility assessment from the disability commission.

Um, but I bet your counselor to your left might might know a better answer than I would.

All right.

I I guess my I would I don't know when the middle is, but I think it will be important for our community in the IAG to be able to review um those recommendations.

I know in past processes that I have reviewed or been a part of, sometimes it comes at the end, you know, once those IAGs or community conversations have been disbanded.

Uh so I just want to.

Oh, I see what you're saying.

So the IAG is meeting without the the recommendation.

Right without the recommendations, and so is the community, right?

So I think it'll be important um to have that to be earlier on the process so we can see the information.

Um, and then I I saw that there was like a 2023 outcomes report.

Um, is there um is there any efforts on you know doing that same outcome report for the last you know three years?

Yeah, I had mentioned in my slides that we're really excited to do a full assessment of um the steps we've taken so far.

All right, and I should clarify for you, counselor, MOH also runs the BIF DIC process, so that might be a question to point in their direction.

Okay, that's good.

Um, executive farrow, um, the men's lead, black men's lead.

I know we talked about it last year.

Um, any interest in bringing it back, any efforts on bringing it back?

Yeah, so when we came um the last kind of fiscal year um before the council, um we had internal conversations around working with the Office of Civic Organizing to bring it back.

Um but in the interim through our community empowerment grants, we funded two organizations that provide um support for civic organizing and leadership as we identify kind of internal opportunities to bring it in-house.

Awesome.

Thank you.

And uh, this is going to the chief, which is kind of going back a few years on the executive order that was signed by then uh Mayor Walsh.

Um, and I know this is some of the work that Dr.

Carolyn Crockett has also introduced.

Um, and a lot of this kind of speaks to, you know, what you know I see as uh a blueprint, um, a blueprint for not only embedded in racial equity, but the training around it.

Um a lot of this stuff is again is a blueprint, and I believe um since 2019, what we have seen is whether it's the real training or the mayor's office of resilience racial equity not being moved forward, but also some of the intention around data tracking uh in this executive order uh not being followed up on.

So I guess my question is how do we take a look at you know the original intention, right, um, from the executive order and all the work that you know everyone during that administration took on and move this work forward and then decide on which things we roll back and which things go forward.

Yeah, um I've I've had the pleasure of uh speaking with Dr.

Crockett and and she was not the first one.

We had Dr.

Tia Martin doing incredible work before that.

Absolutely, and then shout out also to Lori Nelson.

Yep.

So these are all all women that um have advised me, and you know, I'm I look I look up to them.

So I think I think everybody who lifts them because um they are aware of the work that we are doing, and so I wanna I think and this is a question that has come up every year, and and the answer remains the same, which is that was an executive order at a different time by a different mayor, different administration.

We are we have evolved in some of that.

We have started the work of the ENI Academy, and maybe a way to address that is we can write set up some of the workshops with your staff and with you so that you see how that work is incorporated into those workshops and trainings that we do across departments.

Um that was also informed by the feedback that we did receive around the real training.

I the real training happened for a couple of months, and when then the that's when the transition happened, and so we cannot I cannot really speak to what was happening back then, but we did get the reports thanks to the work that Laurie Nelson was doing then.

Um but that is that is that work is still happening and then some in the academy.

Um as for the data tracking, I am looking forward to the um equity study that comes out of BMA and and for us to understand how those dashboards can continue to inform the work, but this is not, and we've had this conversation with counselor of like it is sometimes adding more layers to the work just makes it slow down.

And so I'm looking forward to what comes out of the equity study from BMA to see how those dashboards can continue to inform the work.

But in the meantime, we have technical assistance.

When you and I identify an issue for us, we are able to work with the departments to change it from assistance level, right?

And just a follow-up comment, sure.

Um, the ENI Academy, I think one of the major differences from the real training is the real training that was taking place was mandatory, right?

All city employees had to go through the real training, and then when it goes to embedding, um, this was more of a call for proactive um to identify prior to an individual having to bring it up so that we are then making policy adjustments, you know, ever so ever so often.

And I believe it was, you know, I think it was three to five years, but also that we're catching things prior to it having you know a very harmful effect from generation to generation.

So uh, you know, my push will always continue to be to really embed um equity uh through codification, and I think this was a very great first start um at it, and we're trying to again uh push that forward through codifying the cabinet and the work that we believe, or I believe uh should be done in order to identify it and resolve uh some of these disparities.

That's it.

Thank you.

Okay, thank you.

Counselor Louis Jen.

Thank you.

I wanted to continue on my line of questioning uh regarding fair housing testers, because I wanted to clarify.

So we funded a tester program through an amendment, but it was said that the amount was not enough and that it needed multi-year support.

Is that can you do can you and will there be an RFP that will be released this spring?

Yes, yes.

So the RFP's coming out this spring.

Um, we had our former director of investigations as well as our policy manager dig in to sort of really scope out how we would build our best testing program and did find it.

But it wasn't via the fair housing Testers that the city council will we put forward through an amendment.

Right.

So we wanted to put that money out, and as we were looking through how the best way to do that, we discovered that a multi-year program, which would cost more money.

So nothing has happened to that money.

Nothing has happened to that money.

We plan to use, like, you know, if we were able to, you know, get a vendor before the end of the fiscal year, we would use some of the people.

Which is in June, which is very interesting.

Very soon.

And are you gonna are you gonna be able to accomplish that?

I'm not sure we will, counselor.

I think what will happen to that money.

That is a question for the budget.

I think the again, I want to be clear, we do have the resources to put the full set that we plan to put out.

Um I think just with the fiscal, both the fiscal and the federal situation we find ourselves in, it was really important that we put this RFP out correctly and that it be the strongest uh program we could possibly form, and that did just take a longer time.

Yeah, and I understand I mean this this administration federal administration is coming after us with the work that we're doing on home Boston, including my name in it.

It's yeah, atrocious.

And we start to continue this work, and so I like we be careful, but we also need to put it out there because it seems as though if money that's not spent at the end of the fiscal year just sort of um can you clarify where the funding for the testing program is actually coming from if what we put aside was not enough?

Yep.

So the fair housing team has external dollars.

Some of those do come from HUD, for example.

Okay.

Um so those are the funds we'll be using.

So CDBG, uh, the community development block grants.

I'd have to double check with you, counselor, where exactly those are coming from.

I doubt it is CDBG.

And so, what is the scope of the RFP for what is the scope of the RFP?

Is it rental testing?

Um, I'm sure it's probably not homeownership, uh, appraisal uh discrimination testing, white homeowners versus black homeowners.

That isn't a great space that I'd like to see us be able to enter into because that is a testing that is happening that we see happening that it's it's another form of testing that we want to happen, but we have to be able to have the rental housing testing down before I think we graduate to doing home ownership testing.

Can you tell us what the scope of this RFP would be?

Yep, I would agree, counselor.

I think the the homeownership work is something that the office is aspirationally hoping to look towards, but I do agree that you know your baseline is renters.

Um I do believe I would have to double check the RFP.

It's rather long, and we're happy to send that over to you as well.

Can you?

And when is the date that you're trying to get the RFP out?

It is in its last stages of review, so hopefully in the next couple of weeks.

Okay.

It was okay.

Um, it just odd to me that it's just like you're working under the gun, the fiscal year ends at the end of June, we put money aside for it last year.

Again, I'm in a budget crunch, but yet there is this money, you know what I mean?

So yeah, I think part of it is the police overtime funding also that the counselor has the council has awarded us years ago, and the department hasn't necessarily used, and so we are hoping to tap those funds as well.

Um we we do have some room, so okay.

I have questions for uh Mayor's Office of Women's Advancement.

Thank you for being here.

Um, you list domestic violence and trafficking awareness work with BPHC.

I've been we've been we're doing work on this council holding hearings on domestic violence, we've been working with community partners who are uh doing a lot of work uh when it comes to beauty professionals.

Um I want to sort of understand the MOA BPHC relationship, how you all decide to work our projects together, and how do we bring in community partners, grades organizations that are working like I just spoke last week to a this amazing dynamic duo of a doctor and a community advocate that are working with that want to work do more work with salons to identify signs of domestic violence.

And so I want to understand how Moa works with BPHC to identify who the community partners are.

I'm also gonna be talking to Dr.

Ojuku about this because I think this is incredibly important, especially for black women.

Um, and so I just wanted to get more insight from you.

Absolutely.

So we um I would identify our partner our relationship as more of a partnership.

So that we consider them the industry experts in gender based career.

Okay, and we work closely with Kim and their office around gender-based violence specifically, and they were actually who helped us inform and wrap around our grant.

Um, and so we are also being creative in our programming and piloting different things um to educate different groups of people who aren't normally the target audience, which is why we did the grant for boys, which is why we're working with FIFA on sex trafficking, and why we um also did a similar program for beauty industry professionals.

Thank you.

What it oh, who did you partner with for the beauty professionals' work?

Um, I would have to find the organization's names and give it to and get back.

And I believe that's the organization that I also spoke to two weeks ago, and they're trying to do move beyond the pilot, and I think that is incredible.

So I just want to publicly state my endorsement.

Uh, I think her name is Dr.

Charmaine.

Yes, August.

Yes.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I'm messing up the last name, and it was another person that I just want to publicly endorse that work and the work that they're doing.

Of course.

I'd like to hear a little bit more about the work that y'all are doing with FIFA, and then I had a last question.

I but I did see the buzzer go off.

But I would love to hear a little bit more about the work that Moa is doing on on FIFA around sex trafficking.

So our policy director actually sits on a committee with BPHC, um, FIFA partners, cultural affairs, uh, and a couple other city offices around making sure that there is a sex trafficking campaign, and I'll pass it over to Emily to share a couple more details about the progress of it.

Yes, so we're working with the city of Cambridge as well as obviously the DSG at BPHC, um, and then Jane Doe Inc.

And so they've been collecting funds um from kind of different we didn't have any to contribute, but they're putting out grants to kind of the community partners and base organizations that are like respond to calls around sex trafficking or sexual violence to help them build a capacity, um, you know, uh ahead of the FIFA World Cup and also Tallships and everything else that is coming.

Um so it's really about building capacity for the people that are already here and doing this work, and then um we're also doing a like awareness campaign.

So, like Cambridge is putting up some signs.

We're working with um Corinna Night Life to do some training with our restaurant folks on signs, um, and then hopefully getting some materials into our restaurants and bars around Boston to like inform people.

So it's um, and then we're getting different things kind of up around the city and the different cities.

So, yes, so it's um partially getting money and uh building up capacity as well as a public awareness campaign.

Thank you.

Just like to shout out the work of Shakira Story in addition to I hear you say Jane Doe, we have a lot of really great partners, Asian American Task Force Against Violence, a lot of great organizations women, mine, women of color run, and the domestic violence we said I hope that we continue to partner with.

I have a question somewhere left in me that I may be able to come back and ask.

So okay.

Thank you.

Uh Councillor Braden.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Um I'd I'd like to pick up on the black male advancement, um, black male advancements on your reports requested level funding for financial year 27.

Instead, the budget includes a 500,000 dollar cut, which is 23.7 percent.

Um I'm just curious about what changed between the report's recommendations and the development of the budget, and what programs, grants, or partnerships have been reduced or eliminated due to the cuts, and what will how will this affect their BMA's ability to actually meet their stated goals?

Because you folks have been doing some stellar work, and how will these cuts impact your goals?

Thank you, Councillor Uh President.

Um, yeah, so I stated our kind of request was for level funding for the Office of Blackmail Advancement.

Um I think after we kind of submitted our request, there were additional conversations between the mayor, cabinet uh chiefs, OBM finance leadership, um, and they ultimately kind of made the decision on what the cuts were going to be, where the cuts were coming from.

Um, and so we are like aware of the impact on kind of our communities, we're here in the community, and like we are working diligently to identify kind of other opportunities to plug those gaps.

I think you're not alone in terms of city departments who are using with this one, money would be for outside funding of grants for nonprofits who are working in the space.

I think that's across the board every department.

Um, in terms of I identifying sources for funding to make up the gap.

It's a half a million dollars.

Um, what sort of sources are you and like are you working on that already or or how's that going?

Yeah, we had some initial conversations and outreach kind of through the chief of our cabinet um and then the partnership team in the mayor's office, um uh around identifying public private partnerships um and other uh grant funding opportunities, um, and then through our technical assistance program, um, we are also working to identify kind of separate grant opportunities that may exist from philanthropy, state, federal that we can share um with our community partners.

Um, but I think the conversations around kind of how do we move forward?

Is gonna kind of be led by the partnership team and kind of the mayor's leadership team.

I think somebody mentioned it earlier, but you know, we're switching from being grant makers to to being folks who want to go out and look for grants.

Do we have the infrastructure in place to be really aggressive and successful in identifying external grants uh opportunities and and winning those grants in a competitive market uh field?

Do we have the staff and and the folks with the expertise to keep on top of it and all the reporting requirements of you know it's not just about getting the money, it's actually reporting back and saying yes, we this is we give us 200,000 dollars and this is what we spent it on, that sort of thing.

Do we have that infrastructure?

The equity cabinet does not.

Uh, I know that our part our colleagues at the partnerships teams has different ways that that they've done this already under our administration.

We work really well with our procurement team, so again, this is just a moment for us to think about the resources that we do have and and get creative, but currently, no, to answer the question earlier, we do not have grant writers or people that can do that level of work.

That's not been the priority.

So, in terms of work so are you feeding requests to the partnerships um department?

Like are they more they working on that?

Like I think they're probably gonna be asked by every every department across the city to help with grants.

So I think it seems like being left.

That will be coming.

I think right now I'm I as the chief I'm more focused on the resources that we do have.

So public health commission has some grants that we're already discussing.

I'm already talking to the commissioner about to ensure that we are part of the selection process.

There's more dollars there than there are currently in the equity cabinet, even within FY26.

And so I am keeping my open options open so that the perspective and the lived experience of our staff and the residents that we work with are being represented in those election committees.

Yeah, workforce empowerment also has their own work, so you know there's different ways in which we're tapping into other pools of dollars that are much bigger than the equity and inclusion cabinet current pool.

Outside of city and quasi public organizations, we're not there at the moment.

I am focused on what the resources that do currently exist for FY27 in other agencies.

Yeah, yeah.

I reserve a healthy skepticism.

I wish you well, and I have healthily skeptically skepticism about how effective that's gonna be because I think we are in a bit of a crunch.

Um, let's see.

Um, time's that is your time.

Sit by the bell.

Okay, thank you very much.

Uh, Councilor Culpepper, uh, uh I'm gonna give you seven minutes and then uh we'll if we have a well, yeah.

Okay.

Well, you're gonna go compromise.

I think I'll give you eight minutes and then we'll do have a quick last round if anybody has any other questions.

How many did everyone else get?

Everyone got thirty-five minutes, yeah.

Everyone got seven, five and five.

So why am I getting eight?

Because you were not here for the first round.

Here you go.

Eight minutes.

I got a few more questions for you.

Let me just say this.

Uh thank you, Mr.

Chair for holding this hearing.

Thank you, panelists for coming.

Um, we got the Office of Equity Inclusion confused last week with the Office of Inclusion and Opportunity.

And uh when it says Office of Inclusion, you you would think that the focus would be on expanding and building and got to credit blackmail advancement for all the work they've been doing.

They've probably been asked this question already with regard to grant funding, but how much money was actually taken from the community requirement grant funding?

How much was that?

Five hundred and eighty-seven thousand and two hundred dollars.

Not the five hundred and one thousand.

Five hundred and eighty-seven.

So we normally do kind of one round, which is five hundred thousand, um, and then closer to around the summer, we have a uh an additional smaller grant that's closer to a hundred thousand.

Frank, what what were those grants for?

Can you tell us who who's not gonna get grants this year?

So organizations that um focused on mentoring and out of school time, youth and young adult pathways, housing mobility, economic inclusion and wealth building, workforce training and development, fatherhood engagement, and mental health and wellness.

So none of them are gonna get grants this year from the black.

They they will not get um community empowerment grants.

Will they get anything?

Um we are having conversations, we actually started conversations around kind of grants fundings and in identifying external partners before we were.

But as of now they're they're not gonna get anything.

Correct.

And many of them depend on that grant for their programs.

I think there's uh a number of them that kind of through our grant programs are kind of we're one of the only departments that can you give us the specific names, you don't have to give them all now, but so we'll have them all.

And the other thing is on the equity study, it's not completed, right?

Correct.

And there was cuts to the equity study to the personnel that was doing the equity study.

So there the cuts were like it was originally supposed to be kind of we had funding for two years, um, and as you go through the equity study, um, one of the things we we worked on was ensuring that everybody kind of involved in the equity study, internal departments, uh the commission, um, community partners were informed and aware, counselors were formed or aware kind of what the results were for phase one before we launched phase one, uh phase two.

Have the funds been cut for phase two?

So the the funds for phase two were not included in FY27.

So they were cut, they were cut, correct.

Okay.

Um phase two is starting in uh is is currently underway in FY26, so we'll we'll have to identify kind of funding.

Additional money correct completed to complete it.

Okay, uh and let me ask you something with regard to my brother's keeper programming.

There was money transferred to blackmail advancement?

Correct.

So, how much was that?

Um that was 250,000.

Okay, and who what program was my brother keeper under?

So my brother's keepers under the um Office of Black Male Advancement.

Uh, but when I came into my role, there was funds prior to me coming into my role, there were funds that were moved over to BPS to support the work to the Boston public school in the Boston Public Schools.

Um, and so we are it's been uh like a two-year process.

So is that money coming back?

That the 250,000 is coming back, but um the FTE is remaining with with BPS.

So we'll have funds for programming, which will plug some of the gap um for youth related um MBK-focused work.

And so for the black BMA equity study, once it's completed and it's not completed, what would be used to implement the findings in the study?

Is it nothing for the implementation phase?

Funding?

Yeah.

So you do the study, right?

And you have findings, right?

And you you implement the findings, right?

There's no money in the budget to implement the findings, correct?

No, okay.

And I want to just move over to but what I will name, I think the findings, the implementation process will probably be more, we're looking at FY28.

But you you need money to finish the fiscal year twenty-six, correct, equity study.

And if you don't get the funding, then it just sits in limbo.

Oh no, we'll well we we have uh we're identifying kind of other opportunities to to fund.

But you don't have it yet, correct?

Okay.

I want to just talk a little bit about fair housing equity, uh, Chief Severa, and last we met when I first got here, probably the first month, and you told me that hiring a fair housing director was in the process.

Have we hired one yet?

No, but we are very close to posting the position finally.

What's it gonna take to post a position?

I mean, we met, I've been over here over a hundred years.

And then you and I missed each other last night.

Sorry, we were supposed to talk.

I understand, but I just here's my concern.

My concern is that something as significant at the Fair Housing Commission should have had, there should not have been a gap in terms of the fair housing work going on in this city, and so it's pretty much without any leadership in terms of the fair housing, and so we're looking at that.

We're looking at that because I think it's a shame that we don't have a fair housing director.

How long has it been?

Um Bob passed away uh late January of last year, year and a half ish.

And so when you look at the fair housing commission, that's a substantial equivalency agency, isn't it?

Yes, sir.

Thank you.

And there's reporting to HUD, isn't there?

And the reports of HUD concerning the executive director, is the money in the budget for the executive director?

Yes, counselor.

It's on the operating side.

I know you know a lot about this stuff.

Yes, that that position is funding on our so the money for the human rights commission that Council Flynn was talking about, has been there's no funding for fiscal year 27 in the human rights commission.

Human rights, correct?

So so we won't have a human rights commission the for the last two years that office has not engaged in any work, it has not had any staff as well, but it had funding.

Yes, and so the funding is still there, will not be there for FI27.

That is the proposed budget, but it's still there right now, correct.

And help me understand why we don't have a functioning human rights commission.

Um, I think what I can say at this point is that um as I became the leader of this cabinet, and as I worked with other agencies across the departments, we wanted to better understand where were the gaps and where did we really need to step up and think about programming, which again, programming and staffing is not being touched.

That will continue in FY27.

No, sorry, for the rest of the cabinet.

We were noticing that a lot of the incoming requests were things that our departments could already manage.

So I prefer, and that is where what we're proposing to you that we allocate our resources into the work that is already happening rather than funding something that has not done, um has not been funded, sorry, has not had any staff or has it done any work in the last two years?

So we're gonna defund the human rights commission, we're gonna hopefully hire fair housing direct.

We don't have one, we cut black male advancement, we cut the reper reparations task force, women's advancement is being cut by 157,871, and that's tied to many grants, yes.

Who who were those many grants going to?

Um I can read the program partners.

So in 2025, we had the Vietnamese American Community of Massachusetts in Solidarity, Detrimented Divas for Black Girls Inc., the modern mentor for 2026.

We had SIO, U.S.

Inc.

Can you provide that list to me of the many grant cuts?

And what about the community-based programming?

What about it?

What grants were involved in the community-based programming, or was that the office programming?

Office programming.

And our program it hasn't been effective.

Okay, and I'll wait for affirmatively further than fair housing for my second round.

Yeah, yeah.

Okay.

So we are we're trying to uh finish this at once so we can give people time to prepare for two o'clock.

There's gonna be a culpepper round.

Uh button, are you sure?

Okay.

Well, I guess just and the the other, the other thing is where where to find these grants.

I mean, you know, I don't know if they were provide.

I just I've been referred to the list of contracts.

I don't think anything that I've heard uh is in that list.

I think there's five things or six things for women's advancement, and they most of those the contracts terminated two, three years ago.

Um, so Maya, we can work on that offline.

So yes, we can work on that together.

Okay, um and I guess just it's just one quick question on the equity study, like how much would need to be in the budget for FY27?

Did you cover that?

I can't, I apologize.

I asked my okay.

Yeah, I think we're we're projecting that it's it's probably gonna be somewhere around 50,000 to complete for FY27.

So if you had 50,000 in it in addition to what you have right now, you could come you could do the fate complete phase two.

Okay.

Thank you.

Um so Councillor Culpepper, I'm gonna give you three minutes, you will have more time.

Well, not you less time, but it's not all the time.

No, no, because Councillor Warrell has a question.

So you get you're gonna get three minutes and then we'll gonna go to Councillor Rill.

I wanted to get to the affirmatively further and fair housing, and who's doing that work now?

The fair housing team, so our policy manager, Joyce.

What with regard to the fair housing and the affirmatively further and fair housing information that you submitted to HUD and the goals?

Where are we with regard to the affirmatively fair further and fair housing?

And how has the lack of a director had an impact on actually doing what the city told HUD they would do in the affirmatively further and fair housing?

Yeah, so I'm gonna answer backwards to first if you remind me what your first question was, but um the affirmatively furthering fair housing team really does work in uh Bob Terrell's legacy, right?

It is rooted in that monitoring committee, which has not changed, and um Kathy Brown obviously sits on it as well.

So that group has continued to work with Joyce in our office to work with all of our partners across the city to move that work forward.

You know, I I helped to manage that team.

I really haven't noticed um a substantial change.

I think Joyce and Bob built really, really great working partnerships, and our teams want to make those changes, right?

The anti-displacement plan that came out of planning um was pretty incredible and and had a lot of fingerprints from that team on it.

Didn't sound like Joyce was pretty was happy with what was going on with the affirmatively fair housing, so you may want to sit with her and find out what she thinks needs to happen.

The other thing Joyce or or Kathy, the someone who gave it Joyce is on our team.

Yeah, no, for today, yes, it's Kathy.

Hi, Kathy.

Hi.

I want to talk a little bit about the the decrease, the budget decrease from 450 2000 to 340, quite a decrease.

No director.

What's the impact on the work that the office was doing when Bob Terrell was there and before this decrease?

What's the inquiry?

What's the the services or the outreach effort, enforcement efforts?

What's the difference without the director and with the decrease now?

So I think the the decrease is I have it, it reflects a small amount around 12,000 for that open position for education and outreach.

And then we see a decrease of 100,000 for um the research work that the AFFH has moved forward.

I am not concerned with the amount of contracted services left in the department, especially because of some of the HUD funding we have, as well as other external funding sources, part of which we are using to cover that extension to the uh testing program.

And so the the fair housing, the city council, the the testing program is still fully funded.

Yes, sir.

And that's being managed by who?

The testing program?

Yeah.

Is being managed by the Office of Fair Housing.

Right, by who specifically?

Oh, Duane Watts will be managing.

And how many tests were conducted through that program in fiscal 26?

Apologies, counselor.

The RFP for that program is about to be posted.

So we have not done any testing in FY26.

No testing in FY26.

We drafted the contract or drafted the RFP and are pursuing vendors.

And so with the if you just take a quick break, we're gonna counselor, I'll come back to you.

So I'll try to finish a moment.

Councillor Warrell.

If you if you you can if you take all of Counselor Culpepper's time, you can try to make it quick then.

Um for fair housing.

Are there any certain uh uh you know amount of investigations or things that we need to do to remain eligible for federal funds or CDBG funds?

That is a great question, counselor.

Our partners at HUD have not been the most communicative.

Um the government shutdown deeply impacted their ability to get back to us on things like this.

Um other local fair housing um entities have seen 30 minute progress reports rather than a three day stay of observation in the office.

So there are requirements, you know, in laws and grants, um, and we're not really seeing them applied across the board.

Um our goal as an office is to meet the constituent need, right?

I I would love to see HUD um continue to pursue this work, but I'm not sure I'm able to best answer that question at the moment.

All right, but are we I guess are we staying up with like past uh federal?

I think we are on track, yeah.

I'm not sure we are we're concerned there.

I'm also not concerned that the current federal government is particularly worried about our numbers.

Yep.

Um, and then human rights commission.

I know there was work with a consultant around um conversation around human rights commission.

Can you share um either the report or um briefly right now?

Because I do want to get Council Copeper back on his line of questioning.

Um, what was said to to that cons from that consultant report?

I will do my best to quickly reiterate.

I think there were about four options they offered.

Four options, okay.

Um, and one of those, as chief has mentioned, was to sort of sunset the office and think about how we can better explain to the public what services are offered within the city already, as well as externally at the state level.

Um, and then the the option sort of scaled up from their council.

There was an option to, you know, full like go full throated, right?

But that would require a staff of 30 plus um FTEs for the department, right?

So there was sort of a range, range, got it.

Um, and then lastly, uh this is for maybe I have one more question after this.

This is this question is for the chief.

Um, I guess perception, right?

Um, where um, you know, we just mentioned or kind of hinted on, you know, uh DEI and equity being under attack.

Um, and in this budget, I believe the equity cabinet has one of the largest decreases in the budget.

Um, and then on on top of that, uh, we do see some policies or you know, ordinances being rolled back.

Like, how do we how do we, you know, talk how do you work within or try to make sure that you know Boston, right?

You know, we have a history of you know the BHA housing, busted, bussing, redlining.

Yeah, how do we make sure that we continue to affirm um and push forward the work of equity here?

Yeah, I think I'm gonna answer the question from the perspective um side.

I think I can I can state the facts.

We we continue to be more funded than many other cities as a cabinet.

I can do that, and at the end of the day, the impact is felt.

And so I I want to recognize that, and I'm that is why a lot of our teams have already done listening sessions, have hosted office hours to hear directly from the community-based organizations what the impact will be.

And I think.

I think what I'm taking away from this this hearing is that I need to do a better job of talking about the incredible work that the staff is doing.

But at the end of the day, I think I invite you all as counselors to help us think about other parts of money that we should be looking into rather than the small grant program that we had when we think about changes to the system, small grants are part of the solution, not the solution.

Right.

No, and and I um hear that, and then you know, we'll just kind of push back on like I there were some things that were happening four years ago, that's not happening now, right?

Vice versa, in terms of like equity.

Um so I think, yeah, I do hear you, but this definitely sends like a clear message, right?

When we're the largest um cabinet that's seeing an increase, sends a clear message when it's the equity cabinet.

And I I do believe that you know, with our history and how we've been moving forward as a city.

I think this is the wrong message at this time uh to send to the city of Boston to the rest of the country.

I think we need to be standing firm on equity and letting everyone know um that you know we will continue to fund equity and eat lean in even even more.

Um I know we've had conversations about you know whether evaluating policies and data is the right way to go, but I am a firm believer that you don't identify the issue, you can't solve for it.

So I think that that needs to be a critical role in any equity strategy or plan, and that was laid out in 2019.

Uh so again, um that's all I have.

Oh, my last question to the chair will be, you know, kind of to counsel Flynn's point.

Uh the human rights commission is, you know, as you laid out, is a ordinance, right?

So, can we just dissolve, you know, the the um department um without changing the ordinance?

Okay, yeah.

You're gonna have to give me the answer now.

Okay, okay, thank you very much.

So we're over one uh one o'clock, and I I know we have to take a break uh to get ready for this afternoon's hearing.

Counselor Culpepper, I'm gonna give you three minutes.

You will now soar over everyone else's total time.

I will so allotted that.

But please hold it to three minutes.

I will.

Can you tell me how many cases the Fair Housing Commission process in fiscal year 25?

Oh, in fiscal so two years.

Fiscal year 25.

I'm not sure I have that on me uh at the moment, counselor, but I'm happy to follow up.

Did they process any?

Oh, plenty, yes.

What about fiscal 26?

Fiscal 26, we are above two dozen.

Two just two dozen.

And HUD pays you for the cases that you process, right?

Yep, there's a new system for this.

There's two um two different kinds of payment.

One is 3200, that's for a more typical case.

A case that leads, I believe, to a settlement gets an extra 400 dollars.

And so to come into that details.

Get the information for me about fiscal year 25 when Bob Terrell was there.

Sure.

And you said two dozen cases in so far in fiscal year 26.

Fiscal year 26.

Yep, and we have a couple more hearings scheduled with the commission, and that will help us close out several more cases as well.

And so with regard to what I'd like to find out is fiscal year 24, how many cases you process, how much money you received from HUD, fiscal year 25, how many cases you process, what was the payment from HUD?

I would say you're not finished with 26.

But I did want to say, Chief, you talked about you were talking with community-based organizations and you're listening to them.

What community-based organizations were you talking about?

This is in reference to my comment about the grants.

Yeah.

Yep.

So when we um when we the mayor proposed the budget, we immediately connected with the current grantees.

I know that there's I know it's a long list and it's an overwhelming list, but it lives in the RFI, so those are the grantees that were invited.

Can you get that list to us?

It is currently you already have access to it, but it seems like Maya has an agreement with the counselor to walk you all through it, yes.

And and when you had your conversation with them, you were seeking advice for them about how you could move forward, but did you tell them that the grant money was going to be cut?

Yes.

We told them that the dollars were no longer gonna be available in FX 27.

And so all of those organizations are now without the funding that they had for fiscal year 25 and fiscal year 26.

Yep.

And we have the testing program will be cut, testing program is fully funded, counselor, but it's not operating.

Correct.

The RFP is going out in the next week or so.

And so was there testing last year in fiscal year 20?

No.

What about fiscal year 25?

We did not have a contract in fiscal year 25.

I'm not sure we've had an office-run testing program in quite some time.

Suffolk University has been leading a program, but I don't know.

I know Suffolk and I know Boston Foundation and Suffolk did that study with regard to Section 8 housing discrimination.

Did we receive any complaints as a result of a Section 8 housing discrimination?

I'm sure we have, yes.

Can you tell us what we received?

Oh, the number of cases?

I'd have to get back to you on that, but I'm sure we have.

I know it is a set of cases we get with some frequency.

Okay, the data.

And we'd like to follow up on that.

And Frank, we'd like to know all of the uh organizations that won't receive the grant money, and we'd like to receive all the organizations under the uh women's advancement that won't receive grant money.

The cases for fiscal year 24, 25, and 26, and the amount of money that HUD paid us for those cases, yeah.

So I won't be able to answer the question on FY26 payment because that payments processed in the fall based on by HUD, right?

So that's fair.

But I can give you the numbers of what it should look like.

And you know, it is disturbing that we have not had a testing program, especially since the Boston Foundation did that study with Suffolk University, laid out Section 8 discrimination, and here we are.

We don't have a fair housing director.

We don't have a testing program.

We're cutting black male advancement, we're cutting women's advancement, reparations is cut, fair housing is cut.

What are we doing?

We're cutting DEI.

That's what it looks like to me.

We're cutting DEI.

Counselor, I I really want to invite you to connect with our staff.

I recognize why you're saying that, and it's it is really difficult.

But that's what's happening though.

And I think it's really important because all of the staff in the equity cabinet represent the communities that we are in and bust their butts off to work, and so while I recognize the truth in your statement, and I and I'm with you on that amount of pieces of it.

Please work with our cabinet to ensure that we're doing better work.

Let's do that.

Let's do that.

Let's hire a fair housing director.

Yeah.

Or move it.

Can we do that 90 days?

Less than that.

Yeah.

We're looking forward to it, counselor.

We will be in touch with you.

Okay.

No, thank you.

Thank you.

Okay.

No, thank you for everything.

And I know I was tough on you, but but I don't know.

I don't have a choice.

And then we look at what's happening here, my head is spinning right now.

It really is.

But I I'll work with you.

Let's work on trying to get some things moving, especially with that testing program.

Because that's critical.

Absolutely.

And uh thank you.

Okay.

Thank thank you very much.

Uh thank you to the panel.

Uh, we have a hearing at uh two o'clock uh with Mola and Moya and uh I wrote down the others.

And disability commission language access.

So two o'clock.

Okay.

Well uh thank you.

This morning's hearing.

No, this morning's hearing is now adjourned.