The Duluth City Council met on Monday, July 21, 2025, at 6:00 PM in the Council Chamber. The meeting included reports from the administration, a presentation from the Human Rights Commission, public testimony on multiple issues, approval of a consent agenda, and deliberation on a proposed Transportation Commission. The meeting adjourned after a vote to table the Transportation Commission ordinance.
Could you introduce yourselves and then start your presentation, please? Be happy to. Hello, my name is Nomi Ostrander. My pronouns are she they. I am the chair for the Human Rights Commission and with me. Hi, everybody. Luis Angel Islas Navarro. Oh. Pronouns are he and I have been with the Human Rights Commission for about three months now. Bring your mic closer, please. Thank you. Thanks. Alright, so off we go. Maybe. Maybe off we go, maybe not. No. Oh, there we go. Awesome. So this slide is just the photos of the commissioners that we have, and I want to thank you all for processing through applications for three of our new commissioners, including Luis. You'll note, I should note that in the top right is blank for a second, is Jen Harris, who is our vice chair. And bottom left is Amanda She, who is our secretary. This is largely just a description of what the Human Rights Commission is. This is the charge that came from the ordinance, and that we promote cultural diversity in Duluth and promote the elimination of hate, prejudice, discrimination against persons or groups based on race, color, creed, religion, national origin, sex, and so forth. You all can read forward on that. And that is also available on our website. So largely what we do is that we review human rights complaints. We have a finance committee. We have a mandate to do that from the from the ordinance. And so if somebody in Duluth has a complaint based on human rights, they will initially go to our human rights and equity officer. And those get presented to the finance committee, and based on that conversation with our human rights and equity officer and three other human rights commissioners. And then our human rights inequity officer will follow up on that. And some things don't raise to that level. And we partner with other city commissions for social media posts. And then we collaborate with community organizations, and we're also very active members in the community, again, as you'll see shortly. And also the complaint form can be downloaded from here if there are folks who have human rights violations that they'd like to talk about. This has been such an interesting year, I think, for the commission for a number of reasons. As you all know, our previous human rights officer has left and gone over to St. Louis County. Great job with that hire, I have to say, uh, for the city. Um and so we had a period where we didn't have a human rights officer. Um we did have tremendous amount of support from Laura Leckinson Lexinen during that time, and that was invaluable. Uh and then for a while, uh at the start of this calendar year, we went three months when we couldn't meet because we didn't have quorum. Um, and that was largely because uh no applications had been uh processed, and so again, thank you so much for turning your attention to that. Uh and still we're under we're under staffed. We should be at nine, and I think currently we are at six. Um, so we got room if there's any floating around. Um, and of course, we're pitching the commission for other folks as well. Um I think that's all of the slide. Uh this is just looking at complaints um that we have fielded um both last year and this year, just so you can get sort of comparison. Um last year, and we presented this when we when um Dr.