I'm calling to order the meeting of the housing, health, and education committee.

If we could all rise to say the Pledge of Allegiance.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands.

Indivisible with liberty and justice for all.

Thank you, everyone.

This is the first meeting of this particular committee.

Um the members of this committee are um councilmember Shackelford, Councilmember McShane, who is here with us.

Committees serve uh two primary purposes.

One, they are the main venue for discussing workshopping policies, proposed uh, and general ideas for legislation and other items requiring council member input and feedback and development.

And two, they review and provide initial feedback and recommendations regarding drafted legislative items, for example, ordinances that have been formally submitted to the city council and are undergoing the legislative process.

Committees, except for the com city council work session consist of three council members appointed by the council president.

Other council members not appointed to the committee may attend committee meetings and participate in discussions, but are not permitted to vote or contribute to the committee's quorum.

There are four standing committees, however, the city council president may call for the formation of temporary special committees to address emergent policy public issues and policy topics as needed.

This particular committee, the Housing Health and Education Committee, um meets the first and third Thursdays of each month at ten from ten AM to twelve PM.

Members, as previously stated, include Councilmember Donald Kazemchuk, who is the chair of this committee, Council Vice President Derek Shackelford, and Councilmember Ben McShane.

The scope of this committee uh includes policies, departments, and commissions in the city related to community wellness, housing, community care, natural resources, and sustainability in public health.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Um, so to today, our discussion is going to uh uh be centered around the council housing policy work plan.

We are hoping to move forward with some um ideas that will make a difference in how we help those in our city who are in need of housing and um policies that may have um hopefully some low time and cost and high impact.

Um thank you to everyone who is here just to set us up for for what's going to happen.

Um council president Katie Nash is actually going to be doing the presentation today.

After the presentation, um we may have some questions during the presentation.

Certainly um committee members are welcome to ask questions at any point in time.

I'd ask those of you who plan on speaking to um maybe take some notes and we'll give you a minimum of three minutes at the end of the discussion to you know give us your thoughts on anything that has been discussed, depending on the amount of time that we have.

Um we may extend that time frame to five, but again, it's gonna depend on how much time we have within the um meeting parameters, if that's okay with everybody.

So um President Nash, thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

A special note of thanks to our staff that made it in today.

The city is on liberal leave, but when we as a council compressed to our Thursdays, that made Thursdays pretty darn important for us to be here.

So I very much appreciate the staff, especially that that did make it in.

Just a little bit about a history of how we got to this point.

Uh we had previously discussed um the context of price appropriate housing, affordable housing, known by many different names.

Uh we had a work group meeting or work uh session meeting, excuse me, uh in September.

We then had another meeting in October.

And so I want to just make sure that if you're just joining us and you're excited about this conversation, you can go back to uh on our website.

We have City Council, or excuse me, yeah, city council work sessions, and if you go to 2024, if you go to September and October, you can see those presentations as well as the conversations that we had.

Where we are, as the chair mentioned now, is we are in this space where we have identified possible policy solutions using a variety of resources previously discussed.

By no means are the items that are going to be listed today uh exhaustive.

There are so many good ideas, so many things that communities are doing.

Uh, certainly, you know, there were this is the opportunity to bring all ideas forward, but we need to start somewhere.

Also worth mentioning uh that in this fiscal year, the city and the county made the commitment to do a housing study, and so that is in process right now.

The county is taking the lead on that, and so we're certainly following that work, and we want to be mindful that that's going on uh while we're having these conversations.

But as we set the stage in October, we said that we wanted to move forward and say, okay, how can we get ourselves ready for when that housing study becomes available?

So just a couple of parameters in our conversation, things that I think that we all agree on.

We know that our residents are concerned about growth, yet we also know that we have a housing shortage.

We know that the county has limited housing uh development.

They have put a pressure on the city.

We can talk about the goods and the bads, but that's just the way that it is.

Um, but we also know that constraining supply does hurt affordability.

So I think that's something that we as a council have done a really good job of having that conversation.

But just as a fundamental principle, we also know that the market will never create anything below the market rate, right?

So the market threats sets a threshold, but without government intervention, we will never see the market just spontaneously create housing uh below the market rate.

So we know that's I think we agree that's something that we need to do, and that's something that our job is to incentivize and create policies that consider these uh these issues.

Did want to acknowledge we have advocates in the room who have been at this work a very long time.

I want to acknowledge that Vice President Shacklford is our liaison to the Affordable Housing Council.

Um so you know, this we're not starting from scratch, but in some ways, I think we're setting um some realistic goals and priorities for the remainder of this term and hoping to set up our next term of city council members uh so that when they get here, they have tons of work to do, and nobody's looking for the bathrooms for a year, right?

So we're gonna we're gonna hit the ground running.

Um I think also, and I'm gonna be very limited in how I talk about this, but I think also there is a pressing need to move these items forward because we know that we're facing imminent economic crisis in our region for a variety of reasons, but um I know that I can't do that.

I can't, or I can't change that, I can't uh affect what's going on in DC.