Twenty-sixth.

Uh, if you'll rise, we'll have a moment of silence followed by the Pledge of Allegiance.

Thank you.

Now join us in the Pledge of Allegiance.

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

One nation invisible with liberty and justice wrong.

In accordance with section 841412 of the Nebraska revised statutes, a current copy of the open meetings act is available for view.

It's supposed on all the council chambers.

Uh pay would take roll, please.

Mayor Claus.

Here.

Bush Cutter.

Yeah.

President.

Nicola.

Here.

More here.

Hey, oral communication.

So at this time we'll have uh uh Isaac or Ike Smith and Katie Gerardo.

Um if you recall here what a couple months ago we had an uh email from them, and I uh met with them a couple times, and uh they are going to do a presentation.

Uh there won't be any action taken tonight, but they'll do a presentation um on the family career community leaders of America, and uh just uh they've got some great things that we sit and visit and said, Yeah, come to the council meeting, show us what you what you got.

And uh glad to have you here.

They're really good to be called pictures, that's all we're good with.

And the mic doesn't adjust, it'll pick you up.

All right, okay.

So we're here to talk to you guys a little bit about vaping in our community, and so like we said before, we are from the family career and community leaders of America at Carney High, and we are specifically kind of focused on community and career-wise and leadership and how we can take leadership within like our community and our schools, and within FCCLA, we can do something called a star project, which is students taking action with recognition.

There are multiple projects you can do.

The past few years I've done interpersonal communications, but this year I decided to step outside of that box and tackle something that's more of an issue within my community.

And we figured out that something big in our community is vaping, especially within the teens and probably the parents that are being role models to those teens.

And we saw that the usage of e-cigarettes was increasing and the marketing was targeted probably to teens because it was very colorful, and saying that nothing was bad with them and that they should do it, and the accessibility part was even beyond because if you guys see you guys' handouts, like most of them we're getting from friends and family, which is a bigger issue for us because it's like if you ask your friend, hey, can I get something?

And if they're like, Yeah, we'll get it for you, it's kind of an issue there, and many risky behaviors were being taken because of them being so addicted to it.

Uh so a problem that we have identified, or one way that we can try and target this situation is through parks.

Uh we went and did a park cleanup with our committee that is the youth health equity committee.

Uh and through this park cleanup, we found lots of cigarette butts and lots of um like vape materials and trash left behind from that.

Um and so we identified we looked around for signage around the parks to address these problems with um alcohol and tobacco, and one of them was uh a sign we saw that addressed it said refrain from tobacco and alcohol is prohibited, um, which works.

Um, but a way that we wanted to try and solve it, or at least more address the um tobacco and e-cigarette side of it was um through making a new sign.

So we mocked up a new sign that could be used, it could be adjusted.

Um so with our thought process here was if we have a QR code, it has information, so it links to a source that we used, which was through the buff Buffalo County Community Partners.

Um, and it's a source there that has all the data which is on the that's where we got the handouts, the information there.

Um and so for a for a solution like this, a sign would cost around 25 dollars to have like a metal like road sign type sign, and so we would want to start testing it in singular parks first before you put them everywhere to see if it changes anything or if people visit um the site more because of it, and so that would be our pitched solution.

So any questions.

Questions from council.

No.

Well, I do have a comment.

So on the first sign that you showed there, it said that um refrain from tobacco but alcohol is prohibited.

So your other sign then just is focusing on refraining, it's it's not asking them or it's not telling them that it's forbidden.

You did a good job of transitioning to that because you don't have the power to forbid it, even though I'd probably be behind you there.

Yeah.

Like we also kind of were seeing kind of if there were any signs or any like place to dispose of things.

And we went to Centennial Park and there was nothing there really that you could throw away something in, or even just like any other sign other than this one by the ball field, and we kind of saw that as a bigger issue because we were like, not many people are looking at the ball field if they're going to play frisbee golf or even at the swimming pool, they're more focused on other things.

So discourage is stronger than refrain, so I like your switch there, but you'd have to put a D on the end of it.

I remember when we did that.

I feel like we did restrict smoking from gathering areas like bleachers.

I don't know, Scott, can Scott chime in on that?

Like what is the policy exactly with the brown bleachers?

We had this discussion once about parks, and um so explain kind of where we stand now with it.

Is it a discouragement or yeah, go ahead?

Yeah, yeah, it's it's a courtesy rule courtesy recording.

So it's a discouragement, and most of the signage is more around the areas of congregation.

And so does it work?