Thank you.

We have two items on our agenda today.

We've got the Family Justice Center here to talk with us about their strategic planning.

And then we do have an item from Councilman Elliott revisiting the potential of a council policy position.

So I'd like to welcome up the Family Justice Center and y'all take it away.

All right.

Where do you want us to be?

Do you have a presentation you want to show on the computer or what are we doing?

Just to talk.

Come sit at the table with us.

Or you can stand at the front, whatever makes you most comfortable.

Okay.

Well, um, I just wanted to um say thank you guys for allowing us to come.

Some of you were at our breakfast this morning and got a chance to hear at Casey.

We are very honored to have a national, international leader in the family justice movement.

In fact, the founder, he doesn't like to be called the founder, but the founder of the Family Justice Center movement and the first family justice center in San Diego.

And we we are very honored to have him here this week to help us with strategic planning and to talk through some areas that we really need to take it up to the next level.

And so there's a lot of opportunity in our community.

We had about probably 75 to 80 people at our breakfast this morning lab, somewhere around that tomorrow in our strategic planning.

And you know, what Family Justice Center is doing is is connecting the dots for victims and pulling law enforcement district attorneys victim services together, and we we've had a day full of meetings.

We were at the district attorney's office and met with Mayor Wamp and uh General Wamp and the Sheriff's Office, and then uh of course we're gonna have an opportunity to meet with some city leadership as well and you guys, and so it's just an honor.

I wanted you to hear from Casey because Casey can explain the Family Justice Center and what that looks like in a way that um you know better than me.

So um I wanted him to kind of share a little bit about the movement and what he sees and what he's doing, and so with that, I'm just gonna turn it over to Casey.

Well, Casey, why don't you join us at the table or come to the head of the table and talk?

If you want to stand up there, it's fine.

Send and join us.

There we go.

Great.

Well, thank you all.

Uh it's an honor to be with you all.

Uh I'm a municipal government guy, uh born and raised.

So I was the elected city attorney of San Diego for eight years.

In California, we have 11 elected city attorneys who do criminal prosecution and civil legal work.

So uh I grew up in municipal government, ran on the same cycle as the mayor, and uh built really close relationships with our city council, and the family justice center movement came out of city government in the city of San Diego.

And so for me, uh it's an honor to be here because the leadership of the city of Chattanooga is the reason that this family justice center exists right now here.

And if it wasn't for you all and the leadership of the city, I don't think this center would be here.

Um I was in Hamilton County more than more than uh 20 years ago uh in this journey uh when we were first trying to develop a collaborative model here.

Hamilton County was running about 15 domestic violence homicides a year at that time, and Hamilton County had gotten an office on violence against women grant, and it put together a collaborative, so everybody's trying to work together to intervene in families before people died.

And uh once that collaborative got going in the early 2000s, domestic violence homicides in Hamilton County went like this.

In fact, they went from 15 to zero in four years.

Um and then there were a series of issues related to egos and politics in Hamilton County, and that grant was not renewed, and domestic violence homicides went from zero right back up to 15 within three years.

Um you're running uh uh eight to ten homicides or so a year right now in Hamilton County, so you're not at that zero number.

Uh but I really believe that uh you all in Chattanooga have an ability uh to really set a state standard for Tennessee.

I said this this morning at the breakfast.

Uh we worked in Memphis, the model did not survive in Memphis.

Uh the director in Knoxville just resigned, and the Knoxville Center is not healthy.

Collaboratives are really complicated.

Uh when you get government agencies and non-government agencies having to come together and figure out how to share information, what information can be shared, what can't, the culture of law enforcement, the culture of prosecution, the culture of social services, mental health services.

It's all complicated.

And if it doesn't work well, it falls apart.

And you are in a good place right now, I feel like here.

You have the right director, you have a healthy set of partnerships, you have a lot of good things going on.

Um we've been involved here for when did you get the you got the polyvictimization grant?

2019.

So Chattanooga was chosen as one of our six national demonstration sites in a national initiative called the National Polyvictimization Initiative in 2019.

And that was federal money from the Office for Victims of Crime in the U.S.

Department of Justice.

The focus of that initiative was really trying to address trauma and trauma symptomology in people that have experienced violence and abuse.

So some of you may have heard of what's called the adverse childhood experiences study, which has to do with those that grow up in a home with violence and abuse, drugs and alcohol, and what happens if those issues don't get addressed in their life.

I've written two books on the adverse childhood experiences study.

And the ACE study is really complicated because there are force multipliers to childhood trauma.

So if you grow up as a person of color in America impacted by racism or poverty or historic oppression, it's like a force multiplier in the trauma you have experience.

I grew up in an abusive home, but I also grew up white and male in America.

So I didn't experience some of the same kind of force multipliers of growing up in an abusive home that people of color do.

So the ACE study is a really important piece because the majority of all people who go to prison in the state of Tennessee grew up in homes with violence and abuse.

Bar none.

And then you look at the overrepresentation of communities of color, and that connects to the racism and poverty and historic oppression piece.

So for us, in the polyvitization initiative, we were looking at besides childhood trauma, what else impacts people that causes serious mental health issues, increases homelessness in America.

And the answer is other kinds of victimization.

And it's not all as children.

Sometimes it's as adults.

Right now we're dealing with refugees coming in from other countries in the United States.

And those refugees are coming in with trauma histories that include their families being murdered, or you know, we've got Ukrainian.

I was in a in a focus group with some Ukrainian refugees.

This young woman in her 20s watched her whole family be murdered and watched her mother be raped by a Russian soldier.

That's a ton of trauma that she's coming to the United States with as an immigrant.

And they don't see her as that person experiencing trauma.

They just see her as a person that now needs a place to live and needs a job and needs to get kind of integrated into American society.

But her issues are really complicated and her trauma issues are really complicated.

So that was the polyvictimization initiative.

And we produced a national assessment tool out of it that Chattanooga was a part of.

We've been using that all over America now.

Chattanooga was one of the creators of that.

It's been validated, and then the goal of the tool is to help people then address their trauma through mental health services, um, through behavioral health, uh, through interventions with kids, including uh our camping and mentoring program.

You have a program here called Camp Hope America that we run nationally uh that is a collaboration between the Family Justice Center and the Partnership for Families here.

And uh we brag about Camp Hope America and Chattanooga all over America.

It's if you if none of have any of you ever been to Camp Hope here?

Oh gosh.

So at some point, even if you could spend a day with kids from Chattanooga and see what happens when kids who have been impacted by violence and abuse go to camp for a week outside of Chattanooga, not far, uh, it's life-changing.

And our goal is that our kids grow up to go to college and vocational school, not to go to jail or prison.

And the majority of those kids are children of color uh who go to Camp Hope America here.

And our outcomes here are stunning.

They're just stunning.

We just don't have enough capacity to send tens of thousands of kids to camp all over Tennessee, which is what we'd really like.

Uh but anyway, that's kind of the background of my connection uh to Chattanooga.

So I just want to say thank you for your leadership and support for the Family Justice Center.

Um, because if if you weren't supporting it, I don't think it would happen.

Uh, collaborations like this don't happen naturally.

Uh you have a child advocacy center here that's also well known that is housed in the family justice center.

The child advocacy centers started getting federal funding more than 30 years ago.

That's what sustained the child advocacy center movement.

We have very little federal funding uh yet for family justice centers.

We have some.

They're now in federal law.

Um, and thankfully the current administration just decided to keep supporting family justice centers, which I was pleasantly surprised about, um, even though they've cut a lot of other grants that we're connected to.

Um so we are here because it's it's time for the center to keep imagining.

Collaborations, like I said, if you don't keep them healthy, they fall apart.

Happen in Knoxville, um, happen in Memphis.

Uh I don't want it to happen here.

Um, and I'd like to see those homicides go down again.

Um, there's a lot of people that think that you can't stop the murders of women in a community or the murders of children.

Um I believe you can.

In San Diego, when we started this journey, and for those of you who don't know, I I grew up in a home with violence and abuse.

I went to college, I went to law school.

My wife and I got married uh 43 years ago, moved to San Diego, and I became a prosecutor in San Diego.

I knew nothing about anything.

I was totally incompetent.

Uh and I was not there the day they picked that people picked their area of interest.

When I came back, the only area that had not been picked was child abuse and domestic violence.

That's how I became a child abuse and violence process.

Talk about divine appointments.

And within a month, I lost a high profile case against a judge on television in San Diego.

Thought I was going to be fired as a brand new prosecutor.

And it was a leader in the black community in San Diego named Ashley Walker, who was a survivor.

And she was the founder of Battered Women's Services at the YWCA, who came to me and she called me an idiot the first time she met me, which was totally fair.

And then she said, if for those of you that were here this morning, she said, you need me in your life.

And I wasn't so sure about that since she called me an idiot.

And then she said, and I need you in my life.

And I, and she's still one of my best friends, by the way, to this very day, you know, in the late stages of dementia, you know, tough journey, a tough goodbye in her life.

But we practiced that principle, you need me in your life, and I need you in my life.

And that became the Family Justice Center in San Diego.

A few years later, we moved our staff from the Y and the city attorney's office into an office together and co-located 1990.

And then we just started building that partnership, and that's what became the first Family Justice Center.

We we opened officially in 2002 with 240 people under one roof in the fourth largest county in America.

Didn't have the support of the county at the time, and that's why I say the city mattered because I needed the mayor and council.

At the time, our DA was not supportive, our county wasn't supportive, and the city made it happen.

And uh at that time we were running uh we were running about 20 domestic violence homicides a year.

Uh now we've reduced that to almost zero.

We have the lowest per capita murder rate of women in America in San Diego.

Lower than Hamilton County, Tennessee.

Because if you work together and you collaborate and you intervene early in families, and you go after the most dangerous offenders, you don't need to criminalize everything, but the most dangerous people, which are usually men who strangle women and have access to firearms, those are the most dangerous men on the planet.

And we focused on them, and lo and behold, our homicides have been going like this.

Well, nationally, by the way, for the last decade, they've been going murders of women have been going like this for a decade in America, since 2014.

So for us, this journey is now about how do we build more successful centers.

We the the movement only uh expanded from San Diego, in my opinion, because I spent two days on Oprah in January of 2003.

Oprah Winfrey endorsed the Family Justice Center framework.

Carol, a big Oprah fan.

Oh, she's a big Casey fan, I don't know.

Yeah.

It was a funny journey.

Two days in Chicago.

Oprah came into the green room after our second broadcast, and she said, I just changed the rest of your life.

And I kind of laughed.

I mean, it was an she's an amazing woman.

It was an honor to meet her.

But I'm in Chicago in January, it's freezing cold.

I'm from San Diego.

Um I was married and had three little kids, and I thought she didn't really change my life.

But what I didn't realize is her reach.

And within two years, we had site visitors from 77 countries come to the San Diego Family Justice Center.

And uh, and once that happened, then it went everywhere.

And not long after that, President George W.

Bush created a federal initiative.

And when I left office as the elected city attorney, he asked me to run a national initiative, uh, which which we started here in Knoxville was one of our first 15 sites.

So Knoxville failing is a really painful one for me.

We're trying to figure out how to find a pathway forward right now in Knoxville.

You we we swim in this water now.

We've had a family justice center quite a long time.

Can you help us understand what is different about this model than other places?

So you're in your typical community-based agency, you're gonna have one agency with staff, they might do three, four or five services, that's about it.

Um if you're in a police department, and maybe they have victim services advocates, but other than that, they're doing investigation.

And if you start thinking about the system, you've got cops over here, prosecutors over here, police officers over here, medical people over here, mental health services over here, and then if you put an overlay, if you've got child abuse, you've got child abuse victims having to go here and here and here.

And then if you had sexual assault, you've got that, and then if you had human trafficking, you've got that.

The family justice center says we're gonna try to put it all in one place.

So survivors only have to go one place.

And your framework is not as big as it could be.

You've got about 10, 10 or 12, 13, 14 core partners.

In our newest center in San Diego, we have 114 agencies on site.

I mean, it's a it's a village.

Everything from job training programs to educational stuff, you name it, it's all there.

And survivors literally can go one place.

But the more places that victims of violence and abuse have to go, the less likely they are to never navigate the system.

It's easier to go back to their abuser than it is to navigate the system.

So it seems like a common sense simple idea that you would go one place.

I think we were in uh uh Chicago, and we were at a Weston Hotel, and I was orienting the whole Weston leadership team about our conference that was coming there, and the general manager of the Weston Hotel said that's such a simple commonsensical idea, uh, that whole family just center thing.

And I said, No, you don't understand.

I said, Imagine if there was a hotel where the Weston had 10 rooms and the Double Tree had 10 rooms and embassy suites, they served breakfast, they had 10 rooms, and Motel 6 had 10.

He said that would be chaos.

I said, that's what we're trying to do because all these people have a different mission, and they all have a different set of issues that they're focused on.

And this becomes a competitive model at times where people are threatened by it, or law enforcement is threatened by that, or the prosecutors are don't want the social workers telling them what to do.

And the goal is mutual accountability in a family justice center.

Like we want people to be accountable to each other and ultimately accountable to survivors on how they're providing the services that they need.

So it seems really simple, but it's not.

And in most communities, everybody tends to silo.

In Knoxville, they siloed in the building with poor leadership.

They just started separating.

They were still in a building together, but they literally weren't working together anymore day to day on cases.

And that can happen really easily in centers.

And then we have some places where uh, you know, there are just a lot of agencies that don't want to move in.

They don't want to give up their clients, so to speak.

They they think they're gonna damage their funding.

If they're part of this, then people won't give them money to their organization.

So the notion that you need to bring everybody together is a fundamental principle that Chattanooga has embraced in the family justice center.

And now the challenge becomes making sure that everybody really stays engaged in that.

And it's not their challenge is here.

I mean, we're gonna do some strategic planning tomorrow, and I have no doubt we're gonna we're gonna find gaps here.

We still have gaps in San Diego, and we've got three centers open, we're about to plan our fourth that will cover all of San Diego County.

We're way bigger, obviously, than Hamilton County.

So we and we have four courthouses, so we need multiple family justice centers in San Diego.

Uh but the uniqueness of the model uh is doesn't make it easy, it makes it really challenging.

And sustaining it makes it challenging.

And what's the city gonna do?

What's the county gonna do?

What's the private sector gonna do?

What's the business community gonna do?

And the the business community tends to think, well, that's the government's job, and the government kind of says, Well, we can't support one nonprofit over other nonprofits.

Well, the difference here is that the family justice center is what we call a public safety public health collaborative.

It should be the framework by which everything else revolves around.

The child advocacy center now, thankfully, is connected to it.

The partnership's moving the rape crisis center in next year, uh, thanks to your support.

That'll be huge because then we'll be able to do medical exams for rape victims and domestic violence victims under the same roof, which will be great.

Victims don't want to go to an ER for their medical care when they've been assaulted.

They'd love to go to the Family Justice Center.

And thankfully, we'll have sexual assault nurse examiners that'll be a part of that because of what Regina's uh been advocating for.

So the goal now, from my perspective, is you've just got to keep reinventing yourself and growing.

I mean, anybody will tell you in private business, if you don't evolve, you die.

Uh, we used to have something called Kmart in America, and Kmart did not evolve.

Um Walmart evolved, uh, Kmart never evolved, and the we're we're no different.

You've got to keep reinventing yourself.

And in this world, we say you've got to reinvent yourself about every three years because technology's changing, uh, needs are changing, communities are changing.

Um, and you're trying to remember to work with adults and kids both.

Uh I always say real criminal justice reform is not getting people out of jail or prison.

Real criminal justice reform is not criminalizing children to begin with.

And when you intervene in the lives of young people impacted by trauma before they get involved in the system, that's where you save their lives.

That's where you change their destinies.

They don't grow up to repeat the generational cycle.

They don't end up in that disparate impact on communities of color in the criminal justice system.

We have a longitudinal study about to be published in San Diego.

We had a hundred kids in a cohort for nine years in Camp Hope as part of the Family Just Center.

We have not a single child that's gone into the juvenile justice system.

Not one.

Nobody's gone to jail, nobody's gone to prison.

Our kids are going to college and vocational school.

And they're all they all were impacted by violence and abuse in their home.

And a lot of them were impacted by racism, poverty, other impacts.

But they're not going to jail or prisons.

So for us, you know, our goal is to break that generational cycle.

Uh so that's the that's the background of it.

I just wanted to be here today to let you know that tomorrow uh is a really important day because we're gonna take the five year vision from five years ago.

We're gonna start looking at what happens between now and 2031.

And I I think there needs to be some change made here.

I think you need to, I think there needs to be more engagement for more community partner agencies.

I still think law enforcement can be more engaged.

We had a good meeting with the District Attorney General today.

Uh Cody's very she's never been in the family justice center world, but she was very interested in it, and uh we have some DA-led centers around the country.

We have some mayor-led centers.

We have we don't have any centers like Chattanooga.

You're the leadership of your center is pretty low in your city structure from from an outsider's perspective.

I mean, in in New York City, when we worked with Mayor Bloomberg, Mayor Bloomberg said, I want the director of the center to report directly to me.

Uh, and and she does to this very day.

The office on violent on gender-based violence in the mayor's office is a direct report to the mayor, and we now have family justice centers in all five boroughs of New York City.

In San Diego, we made it a separate city department that reported directly to the mayor and council.

It wasn't down low in other community-based organizations.

Um, from my perspective, it's the structure isn't, I wish it was elevated more.

But I think in general, um, you've got a good opportunity now to really create a more dynamic uh operation here.

Um, and it it connects to a variety of things.

I think we we need to make sure that the staff uh and I think you need to build a bigger volunteer program too, not just with staff.

We built a volunteer program with 80 volunteers, um, mostly built by churches, by the way, in San Diego.

We reached out to the faith community and we had 80 lay chaplains working out of the family justice center in any given week.

They did everything from court support, court accompaniment uh to uh follow-up phone calls with victims.

Um not everybody requested spiritual care services, but when they did request spiritual care services, we had 80 chaplains uh trained in the American Red Cross, non-denominational chaplains model, so that we could meet their needs.

It's not a sectarian thing, it's really trauma is a very spiritual wound.

We learned this from 9-11.

There were so many people with severe trauma at 9-11, and the National Transportation Disaster Relief Team brought in 170 chaplains from police departments, fire departments, hospitals, the military.

And um one of my dear friends who ran that team said I was praying with people who were swearing at a god they did not believe in, but they wanted to swear at them because of what they just experienced, watching their friends die in those towers.

So spiritual care, I think is a and you've got a good coalition here.

I think how it integrates into the center is something that we'll talk about tomorrow.

Um I also uh feel like there's a pretty high dismissal rate of domestic violence cases here in court.

Uh the system kind of punishes victims if they're not willing to quote testify, unquote.

Um and so I I'd like to see systems in which victims get to make all the choices about their lives, but we really focus on the more aggressive offenders.

There's a there's a bias out there that somehow the criminal justice system is gonna solve this.

It's not.

You can't arrest or prosecute your way out of this.

You deal with the most dangerous offenders.

But I'd love to see more early intervention stuff here.

Um a lot of people get pled out to lower charges, but there's no real meaning to it.

That nothing happens to them.

They're not in any wraparound program.

Um I think the day should come when there's family justice centers for those who have harmed others, uh, where they get wraparound services and accountability rather than just saying, oh, if we lock them up, that will solve the problem because most of you know that's not gonna solve the problem.

It doesn't solve problems, it creates more problems over time.

Um so I just wanted to have the opportunity to come and answer questions about what we're doing here.

Um but most of all just to say thank you, because I feel like you have laid a foundation here in the last couple of years, and you have good leadership, and you're you're poised to be a real example for the state.

I have some, we've done some work in Nashville.

We're definitely connected to the Nashville Family Safety Center.

We didn't plan the Nashville Family Safety Center.

So I would have done some different things there as well.

But I will say that I still think Chattanooga has a chance to be a model.

And I said this morning, Tennessee, the governor, both the last two governors have been very supportive of the Family Justice Center framework, which I'm very encouraged by.

But I also feel like it's time for the whole state to have higher standards now for these centers.

Because if you're gonna put money into these, you gotta make sure they're working, and you gotta make sure they actually matter in the families that you're trying to help.

And so we'll talk more about outcomes tomorrow and measuring outcomes in this as well.

But thank you for your leadership and your support for the Chattanooga Family Justice Center.

We we brag about you all over the country.

Um and even though I think there's progress to be made here, I still think that uh what you're doing makes a huge difference.

So I don't know, Jenny, if you have anything else you want to comment on or um well, I thought it was really powerful when you talked this morning about um creating you know, victims find themselves in this community, and the role that family justice centers should play is is helping them transition into another community, and as long as they are stuck in this one community and not offered another option, and you said it much more eloquently than I did.

But if you could talk a little more about that, I think that would be great.

Well, what I what I said this morning is victims that find themselves in an abusive situation, men or women in an abusive home situation, they're in a they're in a community.

They're in an unhealthy community, they're in a violent abusive community, but they're in a community, and the bias of the culture is well, you should just leave.

Well, to what?

What do you leave to?

Uh the majority of all women murdered in the state of Tennessee every year in domestic violence are killed at the time of separation or after separation.

They don't die when they stay, they die when they leave, when they try to get away.

That's when they die.

And so if you're gonna say you should leave this and bring your kids with you, where are you going?

And what are you being welcomed into?

And if you're being welcomed into just services and programs, that's not what changes people's lives.

Relationships change people's lives, communities change people's lives.

You need to welcome them into a community of safety and support and healing.

That's not for a week or 10 days.

That's a long-term relationship.

I mean, I'm I'm working, I'm working with families now that were part of the San Diego Family Justice Center 15 years ago.

We're friends.

Uh, I just went to the graduation uh of a young man from Grand Canyon University in Arizona.

Um his mom was a client of the San Diego Family Justice Center in 2010.

Uh and Elijah just uh he's going to the Air Force Academy.

Um I've known him since he was a little kid, and he grew up in our Camp Hope America program.

We welcomed them into a long-term community of support and healing.

And they got involved in a church in San Diego and they got connected to a support group at that church for domestic violence victims and survivors, both adults and kids.

And all of that was not a one-month journey or a six-week journey, or get them a restraining order and then say good luck.

It's a long-term relationship.

And I feel like there's more to be done for the Family Justice Center to become a long-term community where there's enough services and reasons for people to come back over and over again.

We all say we don't want to see them again.

Like we just want to see them once, and then we never I we want to see them again because trauma takes time to heal, and you want people to be in community when they're healing from trauma, and to find other supportive people that have been through what they've been through, both adults and kids.

So for me, the family justice center's ultimate goal is to become that community, long-term community of support.

Yeah, thank you.

I think that that's one of the things we talked about, some of us talked about after the fact is, and I think everybody at some point's been to the family justice center.

But when you walk in, it you are you are walking into a space that's more than just a family justice center.

How many people have been there for an event that had nothing to do with the city?

You know, it's it's being used by other community organizations, or they're walking in to shop in the boutique.

And all of that has been done intentionally for the several years that went into planning the family justice center.

It wasn't just, oh, I think this would be a good idea.

There was a lot of thought that went into planning and being very intentional about artists having their art on the wall, or um various organizations being able to have special events there, the boutique.

I mean, there's lots of other things, so you're not walking into this uh justice model, you're walking into an event space or a community space that also can help serve a need.

Uh Regina and I ran into a woman the other day um at a meeting, and Regina was speaking, and and the woman came up to her afterwards and said that we checked all those boxes, and it was good to hear that all of that intention that was planned back in 2000 beyond before 2012 when Regina and Carol and Charlotte, yeah, Dr.

Boat Wright were you know sitting around a table figuring out what do we want it to look like that to know that it it's accomplishing that and she's middle class, seemed to be middle class, and I don't know if she's you know works in I think a in the real estate industry and she went there hesitantly because she was embarrassed, she was you know, she would wasn't sure what she was gonna find when she walked in, and you just saw Regina's face just go, you know, she was like they welcomed me, they made me feel um you know warm.

They, you know, I didn't feel like I was forced into anything, I got the services that I needed, I feel whole.

I mean, it was just like boom boom boom, and that's not the first time we've heard that story, or I've heard that story, but it it just shows that if you create this environment uh that's much more than the services that it offers, it's a good model for other things that we could possibly do.

You know, our community centers or our whatever.

So uh I was inspired this morning um just by hearing that we're doing we're on the right track and we need to do more.

I think you are.

I don't think the Family Justice Center is yet the hub for collaboration for all of Hamilton County, which it should be.

I don't think it is yet.

I was talking to some law enforcement folks this morning.

We talked to the sheriff this morning.

They don't, that's not their first referral.

In fact, they may not even mention it at all.

It's like when San Diego, man, every victim got that form, the number one thing, go to the family justice center.

I don't care if it's child abuse sexual assault domestic, go to the family justice center.

And that everybody would say that's the hub, that's where we all go.

And then if they want to eat work with an individual agency, that's fine.

They don't have to get help at the family justice center.

But I don't think right now, even on your law enforcement agencies, that's their primary referral, even the Chattanooga Police Department.

So for me, that's a that's an important question to be asking is are we really driving everybody to this hub?

And is this the place that everything revolves around around public health and public safety in gender-based violence in Chattanooga?

I don't think it is quite yet.

I think it's kind of considered yet another place that you could go.

You could go there or you could go to all these other places.

And until everybody feels like that's the hub, um, I don't think you're gonna be at the goal that we have.

I loved your story about New York and saying, you know, when anybody walks up and says, where do you go for it's a given in New York City?

Everybody says Family Justice Center.

I'd love for us to get to that point.

And whatever you think about Michael Bloomberg from the beginning, Bloomberg said if we're gonna do this, this will be the hub that we coordinate everybody in everywhere.

And long after Bloomberg has left, and multiple mayors have come and gone, it has survived as that hub.

Yeah.

Councilman Cross.

I was gonna say, uh, Casey, thank you for coming to Chattanooga.

We've been San Diego's doing something right.

We were on the phone yesterday with urban street angels.

Oh, yeah.

Eric Lovett mayors uh who does somewhat similar but with uh you've transitioned.

Yeah.

But something key that you said about how the centers of Noxulamph is are surviving, it is their leadership, but I cannot state enough how we know Regina is a glue.

So what happens there even when we walk into the center, she makes us feel warmer.

We're not there for services, right?

And so I I hear you with your charts to this municipal body and asking us as a call to action to continue to support leadership and to continue to evolve to where we don't you know deteriorate like other uh so what do we do?

What will be your charge to this council?

Of course, I won't say more funding.

Uh but what aside from that, like what would be your specific charge to this council in order to continue to support Regina and her work.

I think there's a lot you can do.

I mean, uh in San Diego, uh this this is a conversation I had early on with the mayor and council.

They said, Well, how can we promote and and magnify the messaging that this is the place for collaborative work?

And I said, Well, you could put something in every uh water bill, every sewer bill.

Uh you could you could send something out to everybody and we did.

It didn't cost us virtually anything.

Uh we did it for five years, in fact, while Dick Murphy was in office and I was in office.

And it it became funny after a while because I I was telling uh Regina the first time we did it, uh, the the head of the water department called me and he said, I'm getting checks made out to the family justice center.

They're mailing in their water bill payment and then they're sending a check.

It's like I didn't ask for checks, but they were people that found out that the city was running something that was trying to help families, and they were obviously touched by it.

Uh and then, you know, I had uh I had a an eight-member council.

I had seven of those eight members who just started promoting publicly very publicly, and everything they put out.

They did a district newsletter, family justice center update was in every newsletter.

Every every elected official did.

Um there are lots of ways the city messages.

I don't know, you have a city channel or you broadcast public public television.

Uh oh, you know, public.

The EPB channel, it's like a public broadcasting.

Yeah.

We partnered with a public public, we're on WTCI.

There's uh Comcast and EPV both have a public interest.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, so we partnered, our the city of San Diego partnered with our public interest channel.

Uh, and we ran regular um shows on uh domestic and sexual violence and the importance of working with kids impacted by violence, and our our doors flooded.

I mean, that the and I thought nobody watched it.

They're they're they're on it like midnight.

It's like who watches public television a minute?

The answer is a ton of people watch, including people who can't sleep in their homes because things are not good.

Um so there were lots of things that you can do as a public body.

Um I go into some cities and they say, well, we're not gonna elevate one entity over other entities.

You're not doing that.

This is a public safety public health collaborative.

This is a collaborative that connects to all agencies, and this is your initiative around public health and public safety.

So we're gonna broadcast it to everybody.

It changed the dynamics.

So you're saying more messaging.

We messaging more messaging.

Okay.

In San Diego, we open we were open for less than three months when the mayor said, Does every new city employee uh in the city of San Diego tour the family justice center?

And our city manager at the time, now our chief operating officer said no.

And the mayor said, Why not?

And he said, Nobody's ever told me I'm supposed to do that.

Well, they did it.

We we started it.

Every new police cadet, every new park and rec employee, every new library employee, they all toured the family justice center as part of their new employee orientation.

Because one, their families, a third of your families are impacted by violence and abuse, including the people that work for you.

Um they're working in neighborhoods that are impacted by violence and abuse and community violence, and they need to know that this resource exists, and they needed to know that the city of San Diego ran it.

And by the way, the city of San Diego still runs the original family justice center.

The county now has opened two more centers that they run, um, and they're all kind of connected in an MOU.

But the main center is still run by the city of San Diego to this very day.

Um, and uh in the last 10 years is domestic violence homicides have gone like this in America.

In San Diego, they've gone like this.

We're at a 35 year low right now, we're almost a zero.

Um so I believe the engagement that you the ability the that you have to engage the public is significant.

And you don't need to necessarily have to ask them for anything for it.

Some of them will just want to help.

Uh but you can raise awareness about it on the priority it is for all of you.

Thank you for that.

All right, Mandy and Darren.

So the employees on boarding FJC.

Uh yeah, I do have a question.

Okay.

What what efforts, if any, well, let me ask this.

What is the hesitation that you're hearing from from law enforcement, if again, if any, um, that they're not promoting the family justice center.

Um, I can't speak to any situation here in particular, but I will tell you that nationally, when law enforcement has their own victim services operation, that is often the break off, unless the police chief says my victim services people are going to be engaged in the family justice center.

They view their job as interacting with crime victims over here, and there's a silo.

And as soon as I see a silo or hear about a site, and I see them all over the country.

I mean, in San Diego, we had this issue originally with the DA's office.

They didn't want their victim witness people in the family justice center.

Like, how the world can we have prosecutors at the family justice center from the DAS office if we don't have victim witness people?

And now we do, uh, but we didn't at the beginning.

And so it tends to be that if a police department has some other volunteer force that they use for certain things or advocates that they use for certain things, that if they're not engaged from the original, and I wasn't, we didn't plan this center when it opened in what year did it open?

2015.

We didn't do the original plan here.

So I don't know if they were in the plan back then or not.

Maybe they were, and maybe it's if it's changed, I don't know.

But I will tell you that one of the reasons we're redoing tomorrow is so who's missing?

So who's not there?

Um, and part of my challenge, my recommendations will come out of tomorrow, are it's time to start doing focus groups again with survivors regularly, whether they come in through a protection order process in the courts or they're reaching out to some social service agency.

What are you experiencing in Hamilton County?

What happens in Chattanooga, what happens outside of Chattanooga, what's your experience when you come forward for it?

We gotta just keep asking.

Because even good people doing good things can still have processes in place that alienate people or cause things to not work well.

You never know until you ask survivors what their lived experience is.

And law enforcement is not always the best people for for victims to reach out to.

So you gotta know that.

Who's intimidated by law enforcement, who's scared of law enforcement?

I mean, right now we're dealing with this on a national level.

Uh we've had some partnerships with uh homeland security and some family justice centers that have gotten very dicey right now uh in other parts of America where vic if victims are scared to come forward for help at all, completely terrified to come forward.

We got a problem because those victims stay in the violence and abuse, and if it escalates, they end up dying.

And like I said, we're at the highest murder rate of women in America since 1996, right now.

Uh it's not good.

It's a complicated set of issues, I think.

Uh it has to do with politics, it has to do with the bail reform movement is complicated.

There's good things about the bail reform movement, and there's we've let some really dangerous people get out of jail who do bad things.

Uh you shouldn't be locking everybody up, but there are certain people that are really scary dangerous, and uh that has played itself out.

We have a we have a Google track alert nationally called um while out on bail.

That's our Google phrase.

Uh and we track homicides, and they're running about two a day in America right now with the phrase while out on bail.

Um so we let a killer out.

And of course, the judge doesn't know they're gonna kill, it's hard to predict it, but there are predictors for who's been using firearms, who's been threatening to kill, who's been using near lethal violence in intimate relationships, those are the potential killers.

So anyway, that's a different topic.

But uh yeah.

Are there efforts to uh integrate Family Justice Center program into the prison system?

You know, it's interesting you say that.

We so we measure hope in all of our family justice centers.

Um hope is uh is a predictor of well-being after trauma, and hope is not unicorns and rainbows.

Hope is the ability to set goals in your life and then find the pathways to those goals.

So you can measure hope in a person's life.

Higher hope people do better in life than lower hope people.

When you've been when you've lost hope, the ability to set goals, the ability to find pathways in your life, you're in a low hope place.

And we just started a hope-centered program.

I work with the Compassion Prison Project in California, and we just started a hope-centered, we got rid of the Scared Straight program, which is just plain stupid.

Uh, and we put in this hope-centered course in with this with lifers in the Kern Valley State Prison.

And uh, it's been transformational.

I just testified at a hearing in Sacramento about this program.

Um I do believe that we can actually create hope uh inside prison systems uh with people that need to leave prison more equipped to make better goal setting choices in their lives and and have real pathways to those goals.

So, yes, I I'm I'm actually I I started out many years ago.

I was on uh an advisory board for what's called prison fellowship, which was a prison ministry that Chuck Colson started uh many many years ago, and now I'm part of the Compassion Prison Project in California.

So I'm a big fan of it.

There are some people that need to go to prison, but man, I want to make sure that they have are getting some tools uh to be able to find their way forward when they get out of prison because recidivism rates for us in California have been pretty high, and they're starting to go down as we're doing more kind of redemption work in prison.

Good.

Thank you.

Okay, it looks like looks like all of our questions are answered.

Thank you so much for being here.

Well, thank you all.

Thanks for your support for the Family Justice Center.

Thanks for your strategic planning.

Thank you.

Ask the hard questions.

Thank you very much.

Appreciate it.

Hey, Councilman Elliott, we've turned the floor over to you, sir.

Yeah, thank you.

Oh, that's more exciting than that.

Come on.

Is your bill that board?

A little bit.

Uh things are colleagues.

Thank you all so much.

Uh, really appreciative, Madam Chair.

I appreciate you for putting this back on the agenda.

Um in your packet, you have a uh memo outlining this um position we discussed before.

Um before I dive into some of it, you'll notice there's some changes.

We've kind of tweaked some of the scope of it, uh, responding to some of the questions and concerns we have from last time.

You'll see the title is director of legislative affairs, and some of the things that you know we've focused more on is the emphasis around policy and legislative preparedness.

Uh, some other pieces that we I've heard throughout those conversations around pay.

Quick reminder, this is this position was sent to HR almost a year ago where they did a competitive pace study to uh like other roles throughout the country and like cities, and they gave us a uh set of pay scales ranging from GS 14 to GS25.

And originally last time this was at a GS proposed to be at a GS21, and now we I've kind of rolled it back to hear some of the concerns of GS 17, which is still in the range that they have suggested.

But some things I want to highlight uh about this, you know, this proposal is really about being able to strengthen our legislative capacity as a council, uh, not expanding bureaucracy, but making sure that we're putting our best foot forward to save serve the city and our communities.

Um as our city continues to grow, and hopefully we grow um robustly, um, our issues become more complex, and it puts our council in a position to have dedicated legislative support to really operate at that higher level.

It makes sure that we're being proactive instead of reactive with the things that are coming down.

Currently, we don't have anybody that can help us on the council end with just legislative staff.

Right now, we are very we lean heavily on administration for a lot of policy generation, and which is great, but you know, we as council members also have our own policy priorities.

I've heard many of us around this table looking to push various different projects and uh ordinance changes or policy initiatives that you know the administration is nice enough and kind enough to lean in to help us, but it's not necessarily always in their purview.

So it allows us to kind of have that own leg to stand on in our own shop.

Um what this will actually do, it creates a position that provides us in-depth legislative research, draft ordinances, resolutions, help us monitor many of the state and federal actions that impact Chattanooga.

That is something that we don't talk about enough.

I'm gonna stay on this one for a second.

There are plenty of laws that are rolling down from the state and federal levels that oftentimes we may only come across by happenstance and really don't understand the impact it can have on us as a council.

We have nobody really monitoring that and really guiding our hands.

Something that somebody told me just the other day, um, they followed up on conversation we had around some of the ICE conversations a few weeks ago.

And I know I had made point then that you know the state has kind of tied our hands to what we can do as far as immigration pieces.

Apparently, that got shot down in some court since that statement was made.

Had no idea that happened.

I'm not saying I'm proposing any legislation towards that, but that's the example.

Things change.

Things change, right?

And how do we keep abreast as to things that are happening as a legislative body?

Uh, this all gives us the opportunity to preside provide policy briefings and strategic analysis before votes.

I think this is something that stood out to me, especially going into the budget conversation last year.

How can we create additional capacity to be well informed and effective legislators?

This is designed, our body is designed to be part-time.

I think we all know there are a lot of full-time expectations that come with this job.

Many of us all have families, other businesses we run, or other responsibilities outside of this.

How can we make sure we're showing a best for our community?

Now, what this role is not, it is not a duplication of our council clerk in their office, right?

Many of their work is administrative in nature and completely different from the scope that we're describing.

Um, and I know there have been conversations from some council members.

What does this look like to merge this role with existing staff?

And we can talk about that today.

I kind of told Nicole she may need to be leaning on some of that conversation to provide some insight on that.

And this is not replace the mayor's policy team.

I think this is something that uh we've seen before.

Sometimes we have different priorities when it comes to administration and individual council members, right?

And even when we may need help on certain legislative pieces, we may not be completely aligned yet.

And that's okay.

But it gives us that bandwidth to figure that out, to flush it out, to still make sure that we're acting as the legislative body and pushing that forward and letting that process unfold on its own.

And finally, this position is not a decision-making authority, right?

This still works very much with our council, our council and all non council members to make sure that we, as that body, can make those decisions.

Ultimately, this leads to better research, stronger uh and legally sound legislation.

It reduces some of the unintended consequences and inflammation implementation delays that we may experience.

Like I have, I'm just gonna use myself.

I have quite a few priorities I would love to pump out.

I just don't have a priority, I don't have the bandwidth myself to do all the the pre-work it takes to see it get done, right?

Um, and ultimately the proposal, this uh will this position will report to council leadership.

We can talk more about that.

Provides clear performance metrics.

Um we will provide uh clear performance metrics and regular reporting to ensure transparency and measurable impact so we can actually go back and see how is this working along its duration?

So we're just not spending dollars without seeing the impact.

And finally, as I wrap this up to hear from everyone else, this is an investment in our body, and making sure that we're putting our best foot forward.

Um size have dedicated legislative staff to help them do their jobs.

This is us catching up and being able to match that so we can deliver for our community, and if we're expecting high level uh policy outcomes, we we're gonna have to equip ourselves with the tools to achieve it, and this is what this looks to do.

Thank you very much.

Do you have any questions?

And reminder, we will be looking at this again at our next, I believe at our next strategic planning, so you'll have more time to study um and get feedback because I believe we've got it in.

I'm looking at you to remember.

I don't remember the date, but I think it's a good one.

Okay, let me pull it up real quick.

Um but we will uh we will be talking about this again, not too terribly long from now.

Um but do we have any questions while I'm pulling that date?

Council members.

I'm sorry for me.

Yes, done on the summer.

No, it's okay.

I want to make sure you were pointing at somebody behind me.

Does the county commission have something like this?

I have not seen they have actually very little staff, they don't have offices.

Perks being the city council.

But also keep this in mind too, they don't have home rule, right?

So they also cannot legislate the same way we can.

Yeah, we actually have a charter government, so we can pass a law today with the right things that say all restaurants and businesses have to be closed at 10 o'clock.

They can't do that.

Don't let that don't let the no, I'm I'm not proposing that.

So anybody listening, I'm not proposing so our next strategic planning is on the 17th, and we'll be talking about all council business, so the special exceptions by vote, um, sign in a council with topics, um, and we can also discuss this policy position.

So on March 17th, yes.

Okay, yeah.

So please be studying it.

Yeah, I'd like I'd like to I have some questions that I'd like to just to submit the for response that have come up, but um, not in slavery discussion right now.

Okay, okay.

Councilman Harvey, do where you finished, or do you have anything else?

Couple more things.

Um sorry, no, no, you're fine under item six.

It's funny would could come from uh general funds.

It will have yeah, so is that could come or would come?

It it will have all of our budget comes from general funds, right?

And so this is something that councilman Dotley has said previously that you know we had that hundred thousand dollars that really wasn't utilized.

I know that may look different, but this is why the timing for this is perfect now because as we're going into these budget conversations, as we talk about what do we need for our council budget, and everybody's allocating money.

Okay, do we need to allocate this additional position from the general funds, or is it room to repurpose dollars that we already have existing, or a combination of both, right?

We may be able to use a little bit of both so we're not pulling from somewhere else, or because everybody's pulling from somewhere, right?

So it's gonna come from general funds.

This depends on what it looks like.

And so as long as we approve this, this will allow us through councilman Dolly and the budget process and administration to make sure that that money is allocated from the general funds going into this budget cycle.

So to be clear, we're we're reallocating funds, not increasing the city council's budget.

Not necessarily.

We don't have an answer to that yet.

Yes, yeah, okay.

Okay.

Um I mean, I'm generally I'm for this.

I think it's something that we can benefit from.

Um, but Ron, you knew my hesitations from our last conversation when we talked about this previously.

Still think it pays a little bit high.

Um, that's just me.

Um, I I think uh 70,000 a starting would would be ideal for somebody to do this.

Um I mean, I think it you know I know there's inflation, but 70,000 is a lot of money.

Um but that that's just me.

So that that's my only hesitation.

Other than that, I think this is something that we could benefit from.

If I can speak to that, this is not an arbitrary number that we just pulled out of our hat.

This is a amount that we have compared other pure cities to similar job roles, and what are they paying those individuals?

HR under previous department head and their team was able to do this pay study to really pull that number out, right?

Now we did roll it back some because we did hear the pay was a uh a problem in the range from GS uh 14 to GS25, what they suggested.

The original proposal was a GS21.

We've wrote that back down to GS17.

So I don't want anybody to think, hey, we're just gonna pull an arbitrary number.

No, this is sound and it would make sure that it's following the the proper pay scale for accountability alignment with HR.

But I I also kind of rephrase in my way.

I look at the salary conversation, not a salary, but what type of value and impact are we getting, right?

When you're looking at it.

If you if we want high level uh legislation or work to be produced, we're gonna have to make sure we're paying professionals at those levels to deliver, right?

And I don't want us to cheat ourselves serving our communities, because that's really what is what it would come down to.

If we if we cut ourselves short on the best quality to deliver for all nine folks, now because we're not asking for a single person for each district.

This is one person that's gonna sell or serve nine different offices.

That in itself is a a load.

But we're introducing one person to serve nine folks in nine districts, nine priorities, and I think we have to make sure that we're being mindful of that.

And to keep this in mind as well, many of our pure cities have multiple staff members in this category, and we're just trying to get one.

And it's not like we're raising taxes or anything else.

This is what's already been allocated and what the city is already pulling in as a community, and we're just utilizing the funds that are already existed for the government to do operations.

We're just making sure our operations are in putting our best foot forward, just like the administration ensures that all their departments are having their best foot forward, we're just trying to do the same for us.

Councilman, I just my nose is so stuffing, I apologize to my colleagues.

Uh Councilman Elliott, I I support this, and I think it's a very needed position to help us maximize our work as legislators.

But my question to you is could this be because when we when we're doing budgeting, that is policy and a legislative function of this council.

Could that per could this legislative affairs director act as a conduit between us and the administration?

For instance, if I were having conversations about my budget priorities, I could use this position as a as a part of legislative affairs to be that conduit from my office to their office in my part-time capacity because I'm not here full-time.

Yes.

And so could that is that an example of how this role can be utilized kind of as a conduit between our offices and their offices?

Thank you for that question, Councilman.

That actually is outlined in the job description as well.

Okay.

And that's intentional because some of our priorities and works that we're looking to push out requires uh partnership and collaboration with the administration that let's be honest, we may not always have that capacity.

If I could do this job full time and do nothing but serve the people of Chad Nova and District 9, I absolutely will and would.

But I can't survive on $29,000 a year.

I have to have a job that supports myself and the family I have.

So that is the goal.

When we're not absent, it provide when we are absent, it provides a capacity to make sure the work of all of our nine offices are ongoing, and that doesn't stop.

So we can be efficient with our work, and you don't wake up and some of your projects are taking six months just to get off the ground, because it only moves forward when you have the capacity to lean in and be here.

And last question.

The other piece I've got a question about from the key response.

Oh, I'm sorry, from the position summary.

It talks about community engagement objectives.

And there was one piece where it talks about organizing participating town hall forms, community meetings.

I like the fact that you have added that community engagement component because oftentimes we don't, other than ourselves, we don't have the capacity to do that comms portion as opposed to the administration who has a comms department to help us with coordinating meetings to help us with drafting up notifications, making sure it gets to the clerk.

Can you explain a little bit more about how this position can be used from a comms perspective as a relics of community engagement?

Absolutely.

I think it provides additional capacity once again.

And of course, we'll have to set up guardrails.

Like I'm not expecting this person to have access to everybody's council social media and be their individual comms person.

But they can draft press releases, right?

They can say, hey, I need help scheduling this spot for town hall.

Like I'm gonna be preparing for my district wide town hall in a few weeks.

I may need help with capacity scheduling that.

Last year we were working with redemption to the nations to have that, and that was not gonna lie, it was a lot for me trying to constantly coordinate with them in their working hours while me also having my own working hours outside of council.

So it provides that ability to help push that message out so we can connect with our constituents so we can hear their problems, we can bring those problems back to this dais and this body for us to dialogue and address them and make sure that we're putting our best foot forward for our districts.

Yeah, I'm excited about that component to where we can better, as he talked about messaging through that position, we can get our legislative message out to our constituents better with that community engagement piece.

So anyway, that's it.

That's all I have.

Do you have any other questions?

Okay, I'll just add a couple of things then.

Um I I like the way that we're we're honing this a little bit.

Yep, yep.

Um, I'm gonna make some suggestions for further honing.

I I would disagree about putting um a lot of community engagement work on this person.

I'd like to see this role.

I I think I could get behind this um this role with a tighter job description and a tighter um HR code, yes, pay grade.

Um I do think that it could be interesting to look at some of our existing staff.

We have some remarkable folks that work for us that we might be able to expand their capacity and um offer a raise to do some of the community engagement, some of the exactly security and things like that.

Um, I will say as it relates to like K my daughter would absolutely meet all of the qualifications for this job.

She is currently interviewing for a full-time job in Washington DC that pays 40 or 54,000 a year.

Yeah, that is the going rate.

So even if other places are paying people, depending on what the work is, and I saw I do think that if we um, and I'm not necessarily advocating for 54,000, but I am not advocating for a hundred thousand.

Right.

Um and I think it's a combination of tightening up that job description along the expectations for that job, and also looking at it within the structure of our office and how for our first for our first hire as this council for this position to set ourselves up for the most success with this because past councils have tried something, the person had more responsibility than the council was able to really um hold them accountable for, and it was a lot of waste to taxpayer dollars.

So we don't I don't want to see us make that uh that decision.

I want us to put some guardrails on it.

So thank you very much.

Um, council, we are at 304, so um I'll go ahead and um uh re call this meeting.

That's one question.

Yeah, absolutely.

Um, the only piece, and this is gonna be a follow-up afterward.

Can you and I talk or mind sending over some of the areas on the job description?

Yeah, I think absolutely I'll redline it for you for sure.

That would be perfect.

Yep.

Um where I'll be headed is just tightening on the idea of a legislative or a policy support specialist, like kind of using that same level of like people that would be doing research for everybody, be writing those research papers about policy.

Um that's what I would personally be looking for for somebody to ask.

And the last piece I'll say this.

I think as we break from here and look to convene, we all should consider to what level of skills we're hoping for this position to bring.

With the lower pay, you're gonna get lower skills.

That's very true.

And when I think of some of the work I'm looking to do, I don't have a lot of time to handhold anybody in their role.

I'm really gonna expect somebody to come in and be able to do a job at a high level without me having to constantly look over their shoulder or teach them how to navigate very high-level complex conversations if I'm not there, right?

That's just my perspective, but I would like to hear everybody else's thoughts as to what level of experience or professionalism are we expecting this person to walk in with.

Right, what work product we want to see come out of it?

I want to just say one other thing, because you touched on our current council staff.

I think there's opportunity to bring pay within that's competitive, um, where it's more, but maybe by adding a component of community engagement to like say Melissa or what have you.

Um because I know the clerk's duties are very specific.

Very specific.

Um, and we cannot add to that, but I I will say I do believe that our pay structure for some of our staff is very low.

Um I think there's an opportunity for us to look into that and maybe add some responsibilities out of this so where we can increase the pay for that.

So I'm I'm with you 100% on that.

Okay, but now we've got so councilman, and then we've got counsel Harvey.

Nicole, I know that when we had the uh citizens review committee, we added we added to the pay for uh our administrative assistant, right?

Yes, I'm a I don't want to assume anything, that additional pay is still in that position, even though that responsibility has been removed, correct?

Yes, okay.

So there's a little bit of bandwidth there, right?

Uh since we're not, I guess we could replace that responsibility for the citizens review committee with a different responsibility.

Potentially that's I would for this for the sake of uh I mean I'm just right and I and I hear that if I could.

I would love to hear at this may not be today's meeting, right?

But talk about what is what does Nicole feel like her staff can actually handle because I would hate to be throwing something on them because we don't really know y'all do great work and y'all constantly deliver for us, but even with Melissa, every time I'm in there, her head is buried in between two moments.

Um I always want to make sure that we're just being responsible before we just throw additional workloads.

Yeah, well, like I say, I know we removed that responsibility, but I think that increase in pay was money set up.

Still there, so yeah.

I'm just you know, I'm trying to figure out how do we how do we capture that?

Councilman Harvey, can I get vice chairwoman?

I just want to say, you know, I think we're going down a road that we don't uh in a different direction.

What their responsibilities are is totally different from what is being presented here.

So to take from here and add there is um doesn't make any sense to me.

Um they do their job well, Nicole, Melissa and Crystal, and to add on to them doesn't make any sense if you can take it from here, whether the money is put here for this individual or that money is given to someone else.

It's no need of adding on because they have a lot to deal with when they're dealing with all nine of us right now.

So I'm not um in support of adding anything extra to Nicole, Crystal, or Melissa because it's uh it's a lot that they deal with now, even if it was a promotion, yeah.

Even even that I don't I mean if you want to mean I mean if you want to promote, I mean, if you want to do anything, you can give them a rate as far as I'm concerned, but no, not to add on any responsibility, it's just totally different because this has gone in a different direction altogether when I brought it what a a year and a half or maybe a couple years ago, I had two different positions.

If I remember correctly, the council family was not in tune with the legislative part because they said it had been done that right, Councilman Henderson, and you were saying that it did not um have enough work for them, it didn't work out, but you all were willing to consider the constituent part of it, which was what I was advocating for to start with.

So this has gone totally in a totally different direction, but the three of them we just we don't we don't need to mess with anything that's not broken, and that is not broken.

Councilman Harvey.

This is a different subject.

Um, but the animal control board is four, five, and seven.

I know I asked this at every strategic planning meeting.

We have an individual assessment.

We all need to all three of us.

Okay, all right, very good.

Indeed.

Okay, do we have anything else?

All right, we are adjourned, and we'll see you guys in 20 minutes in the chambers.

Thank you.