Great.

All right, welcome to the work session.

We are looking the whole council, as far as I could tell, is looking forward to the briefing tonight.

And we appreciate you all being here from both the city and the county.

I'll let I'll let you all know that Councilor All Care is online.

So the whole council is here present listening.

And I'll also ask council to hold questions until Simone hits a break.

And then so I'll ask you to write the questions down when we hit a break.

Simone will say, All right, now's the time to ask questions, and then we'll go from there.

Any other things you want to add, Robbie?

Awesome.

Mayor.

Council's not on yet, but I'm sure she will read.

Okay, thanks for the heads up.

Appreciate it.

All right.

Simon, take it away.

Thank you.

Good evening, Mayor, City Council.

Good to see you all this evening.

For the record, my name is Simone Brooks, and I'm the assistant city manager.

Tonight, I, along with several staff, both from the county and from the city, will be presenting.

And we're going to share information about the city and county roles in addressing homelessness and deflection.

So to try to keep things moving, because we have a lot to try to cover this evening.

So I have to my right, Kiomi Arbuckle, Community Services Program Coordinator for the City.

Nicole Sting, Strategic Initiatives and Relations Manager from Washington County.

Danielle Farr, Deflection Coordinator, also from Washington County, and Sergeant Aaron McCarver from our Hillsborough Police Department.

He is the community outreach sergeant and public information officer.

So thank you, County staff, for being here today.

This will be a well-rounded presentation, so we certainly hope by time we're done.

Oh, you already went to agenda.

Thank you.

So before we move into the presentations, I just want to touch on the city's current role in addressing the issues of homelessness and behavioral health because I know for community members and sometimes for city council that can be confusing.

So through grants funded out of our general fund, community partnerships and some other limited resources, the city supports, connects, and coordinates with service providers, local, regional, and state agencies, as well as through our government relations advocates for federal funding for projects such as the year-round shelter.

The city receives approximately $675,000 in federal community development block grant funding, which can be used to provide social services to address housing and homelessness issues such as eviction prevention and emergency assistance.

However, City Council most recently and in previous councils has directed this funding to affordable home ownership and critical home repair.

And you heard about this program during one of the previous Hillsborough 101, so that's probably familiar to you, but I just wanted to kind of orient you to some of the different funding.

Housing affordability, which can be a contributing factor to homelessness, is not part of tonight's presentation, although housing affordability was also discussed during a previous Hillsborough 101 and is uh typically addressed through our housing production strategy, which is led by our economic and community development department, as well as efforts by other departments to address affordability issues.

Law enforcement is a role of the cities.

Um that is a key responsibility for us, as particularly in application of the time place manner rules for camping.

Um that was following the June 2024 Supreme Court ruling that gets cites the authority of local government to regulate public camping even when shelter is limited.

So just some there'll be more context coming on this when we get down to Sergeant McCarver.

So there's more to come details.

Um regarding behavioral health issues, such as treatment for substance abuse or mental health.

It's important to note that the city does not receive any source of funding to address those issues.

So no local, regional, state, or federal agency funds us to activate in those areas.

So unlike the city, Washington County, like Multnomah and Clackness Counties, receives Metro supportive housing services funding and state and federal funding related to its housing, health, and human services functions.

However, tonight's county presentations is not, they're not going to cover all the things that the county does related to housing, health and human services.

Um, but we will get some really important and helpful information this evening from their presentations.

So for tonight's agenda, we'll provide you with data to provide some context as it relates to homelessness and behavioral health.

And Washington County staff will provide updates regarding the homeless services system of care and the deflection program.

Next you'll hear here from Sergeant McCarver regarding our police department's role and relevant data.

Kiomi here will share current and upcoming news as well as information about the city's investments.

So some more details about what I just briefly gave you an overview.

And so those investments can include support to the local social service agencies.

So Komi will go into that.

And we've already identified this is a pre-and post-council work session, but we're going to do our best to get through Washington County's presentations.

So we're gonna, if you can hold your questions, write those down and hold until after the county completes its presentations.

I think we'll be in a pretty good spot when we come back after the council meeting.

So with that, I'll hand it over to Fiomi.