Good morning.

Commissioners at this bright and happy hour.

Thank you for being here.

This is the mayor's advisory commission on food access.

We are meeting on July 16th at 7 30 a.m.

in the morning.

So thank you for everyone being here.

We do have a quorum.

We have a full agenda this morning, so I'm going to get right to it by calling the meeting to order and asking.

Now we you'll notice that we have an agenda.

Thank you to Sheila from the mayor's office who is getting us all formalized.

And we will have a resolution that we will have to vote on this afternoon, or excuse me, at the end of the meeting.

And hopefully everybody's had a chance to uh read it.

If we have questions, we can have debate, but we are trying to follow open door laws and uh regarding how we use or how we allow our members to be on line, which is uh the same for all commissions, all committees, city council, everything.

So we we just have to fall in line with that.

So um we are uh going to have three presentations today, but I want to start out and ask Amanda if she could just give a quick update.

The the probably most pressing business in front of us right now is applying for the grant with the U.S.

Conference of Mayors.

And Amanda had a great conference call with um with that group, and I'll let her give you an update.

Thank you.

So you might recall that at our June meeting, Andrew Bradford attended.

Um, and at the end when we were discussing the grant, Andrew offered assistance from his consulting group.

Um I did connect with Emily and Danielle from Bradford Consulting Group, and they have been assisting us with the grant.

Uh Cindy J and I met with Emily, one of the grant writers, and had a great conversation about the overall grant and our angle.

I submitted the grant inquiry on July 7th with direct guidance from Emily and Danielle.

So the grant is centering on childhood hunger and how federal programs might assist with this, addressing this.

Uh we decided that our approach to the grant is a hybrid model that would allow for placing a benefits navigator across Carmel's food pantries and launching a public awareness campaign, doing so in coordinated effort with Merciful Help, Carmel UMC, Grace Care Center, um, to connect eligible families with SNAP in the school breakfast program.

Uh following that grant inquiry submission this week, Chairman Warrell, Sheila Much, and I met with Erin Goldstein, uh senior manager at Share Our Strength.

Share Our Strength is partnering with the Mayor's Action Fund on this grant.

Uh we just wanted to discuss our approach to the grant.

And we learned that 2026 is the second year for this particular grant, and our approach of a hybrid model is unique from the previous year, so that any specifics we can apply um provide on the grant moving forward would be helpful for our position.

We'll find out early next week if we are moving forward, and then the application opens July 22nd and closes August 21st.

Very good, thank you.

And can you just um who is serving what commissioners are serving on this task force for the grant can um from this group?

Well, so far I've got a lot of support.

Um Cindy and Jay definitely met, and I'm happy for anyone else to jump aboard.

So Cindy and Jay, big thanks for for assisting and helping.

Big job.

Um Amanda during this conference call was absolutely over the top, prepared, professional, represented the citizens of Carmel.

Great.

I mean, it was so impressive.

Thank you, Cindy.

And I think the um, you know, this group that is in charge of the grant was impressed as well.

So they they did uh speak very highly of this tack that you're taking for a hybrid model, hasn't been done before, and you know, Carmel likes to be different and unique.

So it was all good, all good.

So thank you very much for your work on that.

Fingers crossed, uh, whatever you do, do it uh if it can be in support of us getting this $25,000 grant.

Uh the other thing that I might mention is that we are looking for uh one of the the things that we're talking about in this grant is the opportunity to raise matching funds, which would make the grant go further.

So if without you know spilling our candy in the lobby, so to speak, and giving away too much, we are looking for organizations that should we get this grant and have an opportunity or have an interest, would be willing to partner with us.

And certainly we would consider in-kind, but also looking for cash is how could we make our grant more powerful by being a $50,000 spend instead of a $25,000 spend.

So I'm putting that out to the commissioners.

I know you're all highly uh connected, and we are also pulling some levers behind the scenes as well.

And so uh just if we can work together, anyone has any ideas, thoughts on how we might make that go further.

Let Amanda know.

Well, Amanda, you'll be the uh front point.

All right, now um not too much talking from me, but also Cindy.

We in the future are going to to follow protocol.

We're gonna have to uh kind of just give a quick uh send out some minutes and um get those approved at every meeting.

So Cindy has uh been gracious enough to agree to be our I don't know, I call scribe, but the person who is going to help us put this uh report together at the end, so she's keeping great notes and and hopefully we can now convert those into minutes.

So if the next meeting, if you would be prepared to do that.