Good afternoon, everyone.

Welcome to the community culture committee meeting for Thursday, August the 15th.

Let's stand for the Pledge of Allegiance.

Let me offer a quick correction.

Today is Thursday, April 16th.

We have two presentations in front of our committee today.

The first presentation is from Director of the United Away, Ken Odom.

Welcome, Ken.

That's working.

Good afternoon, Council members.

I really appreciate the opportunity to sit down with you today and talk about something that is close to all of our hearts, which is supporting the working families in our family who are unable to afford a basic cost of living.

We're all pretty familiar with the term Alice asset limited income constrained but employed, but I appreciate the invitation from Councilmember Shackelford to come back and refresh.

The great news is you're seeing the data that was most recently released.

The really wonderful news is that we're updating this data on an annual basis now.

We will be releasing the new set of data here in the next couple of months.

So bear in mind that the data you're seeing today will likely change as we as we roll out the the next uh the next report.

Um all of the data you're seeing today is based on 2023 data from the federal government for the most part.

So you're looking at data sources like the American Community Survey, the Census, uh Bureau of Labor and Statistics, uh really important information.

Clarifying item before I get started.

How much time do I have?

As much as you need, Will.

Don't say that, Councilmember.

You have you have a simple time.

If we get to a place I will get you there.

I'll start moving forward, yes.

Out of respect for my colleagues who also want to present.

So thank you.

I'll I'll do a I'll do a relatively short version of this, and then I'm always available for additional questions.

You could member thank you.

So a little bit of background, the Alice Report is a product of uh of United Way Network.

So United Way of Frederick County is a local United Way that is uh we're independent, a 501 CO3 organization, but we're a part of an international network of United Ways.

The real value of that is that we're learning from each other's experiences and in our communities and sharing information and projects uh across the network.

One example of that is United Way of Frederick County's Ride United Network, which actually started through United Way Worldwide in Alexandria, Virginia, and rolled out to local United Ways.

And today, as we sit here today, uh United Way of Frederick County um and its many partners and two one one from Mental Health Association are providing up between 600 and 1,000 rides a month for free to our Alice families in our community.

Another project uh that that is created out actually out of the United Ways of New Jersey and shared throughout the co through throughout the the network is the ALIS report.

It's a great example of um interunited way sharing and communication.

So the Alice Report is a report of working families who are unable to afford a basic cost of living.

Among the things we have learned through this report is that our Alice families are in every community.

They're in every city, they're in every demographic, they're in every age group.

It's all a matter of what the concentration may be in those individual groups and communities.

The nice thing about the ALS report is it's broken down to the individual community.

So uh in in down to the county level, so really local level, and that's fairly unique among these these analyses.

We also have data that's down to the city in many regards.

And we're able to supplement that data.

We'll get into this in a little bit with our own research and findings at United Way of Frederick County through our pro programmatic uh outputs like Ride United Network or a pathway to home ownership or Vita.

We're able to demonstrate that in our case, what I'll show a bit later is the distribution of Chromebooks that we did two years ago to 5,500 households, many of whom were in the City of Frederick.

So Alice households struggle to afford a basic cost of living, they live paycheck to paycheck, and then often even then are unable to really make the ends meet.

We're going to talk a little bit about Alice.

We're going to talk about the Alice uh household survival budget, and I'll go into a little more detail.

We're going to talk about uh what it is to mean financial survival, and we're going to talk a little bit about the Alice Essentials Index.

We'll get to that towards towards the end.

The buy-in, if you will, the the organization of the Alice report is actually by state.

So the uh the United Ways of Maryland band together and um help produce the Alice Report.

Uh and then we're able to roll that out into our individual communities as we see fit.

I'm delighted to report that Frederick County and certainly the City of Frederick within Frederick County has been among the most assertive and most widely adopted Alice reports in the country, especially among smaller communities.

When the Alice report is introduced as a key performance index by the county executive, that raises attention in the Alice network.

So we're able to look at the uh at the state of Maryland, of which there is about 29 percent of family or 39 percent of families are unable to afford a basic cost of living.

You're gonna see similar colors throughout the presentation.

Uh throughout the presentation, the color red will represent poverty.

Though that is the federally defined poverty level or below.