For Alderman Dmitrievish as Vice Chair.

Also joining us is Alderman Robert Ballman.

Alderman Russell Stamper the second, Alder Person Jocasa Samaripa, Alder Woman Malayle Cogs will be joining us shortly virtually.

Alderman Scott Spiker and DeAndre Jackson as committee members.

We are also joined by our older woman Pratt and Alder Woman Taylor.

So welcome.

And uh we have with us Dra Melendez, who's our staff assistant is approximately 136 p.m.

on Monday, April 6th.

And want to jump right into our first file.

Number one, file 240920.

It's a substitute resolution relating to the designation of designation of Milwaukee as a certified sensory city.

Today at the table joining us, we have uh Clifton Crump, Policy and Admission Direct Director for the Office of the President.

We also have uh Molly King and Visit Milwaukee with us.

And uh just to put the file into perspective as the lead sponsor, this file outlines uh prospective partnership between the city of Milwaukee, Visit Milwaukee, many of its partners under that umbrella, culture city, and you'll hear from some of these entities today that are already trained and utilizing the Culture City platform.

Uh Culture City describes its organization as the world's leading nonprofit on sensory accessibility and acceptance.

It further states on its website that one out of every four individuals have sensory need or invisible disability, that these are individuals with PTSD autism, dementia, strokes, just to name a few.

Sensory needs are common medical condition in which the brain has trouble receiving and responding information that comes in through the census.

So in line with existing council council legislation, such as the innovation district, where we seek to be creative in both the built and human environments.

This file seeks to embolden Milwaukee as a visitor destination as well as a place of permanent residents that pushing the envelope for inclusiveness.

With that, I'll turn it over to the team that's in front of us, spear-heading efforts on this project so far.

And I think I'd like to start with you, Mr.

Crump.

Uh thank you, Mr.

President uh Clifton Crump Policy and Administration Director for the Office of President Perez.

Uh committee members, thank you for hearing this item.

Um this uh process or program started off with a simple search for myself.

Uh my son Austin is autistic, he is 20 years old.

And one day I started to think about um where he and I will retire to.

Uh I started doing searches on autism-friendly cities and states uh in this country, and quickly I found out that um certain states have stepped up and offered more in cities, and some don't.

Um so when I'm doing these searches, um, often uh Mesa Arizona would come up during my search.

So I chose to look into it a little bit deeper, and Mesa, Arizona, they tout themselves as being the search the first autism certified city.

So I'm like, well, what is that about?

So I'm looking into it, and essentially they partnered with the credentialing agency and they trained various entities such as hotels, recreation facilities, uh restaurants to be more inclusive.

So if I or my son went into a restaurant and he starts to STEM, they would recognize that he's on the spectrum, that he's not just being uh that it's these aren't uh behaviors that are threatening at all, but that's how he communicates to the world through his through his senses.

So I uh thought about I looked into it further and saw that as one of the partnering organizations uh visit mesa, which be with which would be akin to visit Milwaukee, uh, was a partner in Arizona.

So myself being a visit Milwaukee board member, I began to think about if we could do something similar here.

So I uh brought the concept back to President Perez and he embraced it.

Uh we then went to the mayor's office and talked to him.

Uh he was enthusiastically supportive.

Uh and then we took the concepts uh to DER at the time uh Harper Donahue was here, so that would tell you that we've been working on this for quite some time, uh probably a little over a year now.

Um Molly uh King has been kind of leading the charge as well as Tony Snow Rodriguez, just in terms of doing different modeling and and reaching out to different organizations that offer such certifications.

But again, it was a search to find out how can we make you know Milwaukee better or on the same like a scale or or tier as some of our other cities and Mesa is a good comparable 550,000 people, uh very similar in a lot of ways.

Uh, but again, as people like myself, uh in my mid-50s look to retire.

Um, where am I gonna live?

Where is my autistic son going to live?

Um, why not Milwaukee?

Why not put Milwaukee on the map as best we can?

Um, and I think myself personally, I think there's a moral obligation to make sure that we're doing all we can, and as you'll hear later in the discussion, there's also some economic reasons uh that are tangible for doing this as well in terms of tourism and and things of that nature.

So with that, I will turn it on.

No, uh, I appreciate before we go to the other leaders.

I wanted to point out that uh Alderman Jackson is a co-sponsor, and I wanted to provide an opportunity for Alderman Chambers, who's also another co-sponsor if we wanted to kick off the discussion and then recognize that Alderman, all the Roman Moore's joined us as well.

Thank you, Mr.

President.

Um thank you, Clifton, for um speaking of your testimony, and you know, we all have family family members that are close to us that have been impacted by you know this thing, and I think that should have been done sooner.

A lot sooner, um, because a lot of people, even in the adult lives, are being diagnosed with you know, being on the spectrum.

And um, you know, uh so I think this is a great start.

I think we need to go further, and uh you know, you know, um I think Ms.

King and and uh you know Mr.

Snell is gonna go on to more detail about it.

But uh thank you for bringing it up, Mr.