This combined Committee-of-the-Whole and City Council meeting on September 9, 2024, featured presentations on the ICMA Bob Turner Scholars Internship Program and the retirement of Police K9 Annie, proclamations for Suicide Prevention Month and Ovarian Cancer Awareness Month, and informational items including the 7th Avenue Reconstruction Project. The Council unanimously approved all consent and non-consent agenda items.
Good evening everyone. I'll call this committee of the whole meeting to order at 6 p.m. in council chambers. Roll call, please. Alder Person Murphy. Present. Masias. Present. Rosak. Timmy and Present. Finch. Present. McNeil. Present. Castro. President Schmidt. Present. All right. We start the evening with item 4.1, ICMA Bob Turner Scholars Internship Program. Sir V class. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Council. It gives me great pleasure, actually, to have Saeed present this evening to close out his summer long internship with the city of Moline. Said was one of ten interns nationwide that was selected by ICMA, which is the International City County Management Association, which is an organization of over 10,000 members. So it's huge, it's worldwide. But he was selected along with nine other uh young people across the country, graduated seniors to participate in the Bob Turner program. Bob Turner is a former uh city manager who left an endowment for this purpose. And uh so he was selected and he participated uh did well here in the city first and foremost, and uh really got uh to know the city and and meet the directors and get an understanding of what local government is because when you come to work here, usually the truth the young people don't. So they gained tremendous knowledge while they're here, and he was one of 17 interns this summer. So we had quite a busy summer with a lot of young people running around our our buildings. But uh to Said's credit, he was partnered with uh two two young ladies from Salinas, California, and they participated in a competition with the other interns across the country, and his team was successful in winning the award, uh which I came with a little financial stipend as well, uh, as well as an invitation to attend the uh ICMA annual convention, all expense paid in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, should should he choose to go. So anyhow, kudos to Saeed and and uh his team for the work they did, and uh with that I want to introduce Saeed to come up and uh say a few words and then he has a presentation he's gonna share with you, which is based on the uh based on how they won the uh the award in the first place, but he localized it and made it Moline Zone. Alright, thank you, Mr. Vitas. Um if everyone didn't know, my name's Saeed Sarojev. I was an intern here during my nine weeks here at the city of Moline. I mean, if anything that hasn't been said already. Um one of my main jobs here was to learn, and I think I did pretty a lot of that. Um before coming here, I had no idea like everything existed, you know. I didn't realize the mayor had um the clerk or the coordinators or everyone in the executive department who uh worked together with her. Um I also learned about grant writing. I had experience with that. I had experience um drafting up uh integrated pest management plan, so that was pretty fun. I also sat in on a director meetings, so I saw the many directors around the city, like fire, engineering, and all the other directors. I saw how they like talked together, how they engaged, you know, they talked with the administrator, and then the talked about their projects, so that was good. Um it's good to see that uh the city, you know, is trying to make this city better. Um part of my internship here, um, as Bob already explained, I was part of the ICMA program. Um, you know, uh we had a final project and we were tasked, it was four other teams, me and my two partners. We were tasked with um a social media campaign campaign that's what we came up with um trying to get you get uh get more involved with local government. We had an Instagram page, we pushed out surveys, you know, see if uh people knew about local government, you know, people my age, and people did it, you know.