I'd like to start tonight's planning and development committee meeting for Monday, January twenty third, twenty twenty-six.

Christ United Methodist Church, followed by our Pledge of Allegiance.

And that new life is on its way.

We ask for your blessing on the city council, for our mayor, council members, their families.

Bless the business of this evening, the celebrations, conversations, discussions, and even the debates.

We ask especially for your blessing on the people of Rockford, our friends and neighbors.

May all that we do this day help us to be united in our pursuit of making Rockford a place of hospitality and prosperity and peace for all.

We pray all this in the name and for the sake of love that binds us together.

Amen.

Her name is Trinity Rucker.

She served as our as Rockford's first youth poet laureate.

She's a 15-year-old who attends Auburn High School and also a seventh ward resident.

Okay.

Y'all know me.

Tonight I'd like to invite her up so she can uh bless us with her beautiful voice as she sings Lift Every Voice.

Which Mike, you want to grab Test test.

Thank you.

Let her rejoice sing as the need skies.

Loud as the rolling sea.

That the dark past has brought us.

Thank you.

Thank you and beautiful job as always, Miss Trinity.

Um we will roll right into tonight's agenda.

Um we have two presentations tonight.

Um our first item on the list is a fiscal year twenty-six quarter one quarterly results report for Gold Rockford.

And so we have Mr.

John Grove and Mr.

Gino who will be making tonight's presentation.

Sorry, possible.

So I can see what we're I don't think we all.

No one has them.

The website is not oh.

I'm sorry.

I can go okay.

So we'll go ahead and get the public speakers done while we get that corrected.

Um just as a reminder to our public speakers tonight, you will have three minutes to go up to the microphone and make your comments, um, at which time you will hear an alarm sound, and we just ask that your comments, excuse me, you bring your comments to close at that time.

Um, our first speaker tonight is John Tack Brantley.

I'm gonna do a slight encore.

We got the power, we got the power, we got the power.

This is true.

Ain't nobody gonna tell us what to do.

What it take, we have decided, ain't gonna live with all it too long.

We've been divided too long.

We've been without it.

We got the power, we got the power, we got the power.

This is true.

Back in 1955, the civil rights movement was born, and the kill got killed, and in Mississippi, two below Mississippi.

Um Rosie Parker refused to give up her seat on the bus.

1955 was the year that Brother John was born.

Uh Cardi G.

Wilson was the founder of the Black History, uh Black History Month.

The first two weeks at College Wilson Elementary School in Chicago had the first studio, had the first radio station.

In the third grade, my favorite subject was history, social study.

I've been in love with history ever since ever since then.

I learned about Genghis Khan, uh uh Rapinac, uh Dr.

King.

I can go on and on with the different leaders that I learned to name it.

Back in uh also February the 24th, which is come tomorrow, would be my 71st year young birthday.

I was born for Black History Month.

I was born to do the things that I do.

In 1960s and 70s, they call it a riot.

We had 328 riots uh um when um when uh uh uh oh brain freeze when uh Floyd got killed by the uh by the police.

I can go I'm gonna go on and on but talking about black history.

But what I want to get at is talking about our black history right here in Roxley.

Why is it that a lot of our blacks feel like they can't do anything without the white man's permission?

A lot of that stem from Book of Washington.

Book of Washington should never have been called a center.

Book of Washington was a reservation.

Why is they bragging about how they kept blacks in the in a at a center?

We couldn't go to downtown area.

We couldn't go to the east side of the river.

We was divided the same way as Chicago.

The J and Ryan divided us from the uh from the uh whites and from the blacks.

But whenever the whites came in our neighborhood, they came doing the ice, they did it with the ice is doing now.

That's not nothing new.

The only difference was when they came in our neighborhood, they went out in body bags, or they went out in the in the ambulance.

They called it a riot.

It was never a riot.

It was us always fighting back.

And we still fighting back to this day, because uh Donald Trump has made it perfectly clear if it's his way or the highway.

He even talked about the people he voted for in the Supreme Court, and he called them animals.

He always got something negative to to say.

I'm asking this, uh, brothers and sisters for changes.

We want to run a program at the library and at the school program when our kids get suspended out of school to get kicked out of school.

We have a place for them to go.

Utilizing the library for kids that's been suspended out of school.

I finished that one uh at school.

Thank you.

Our next public speaker is Denzel Winter.

Good evening.

I'm talking to you about the battle of Bromberg Bridge.

This occurred June 24th and 25th, 1943.

In Lan Shire, England.

It involved U white U.S.

soldiers during World War II, military police attacking black U.S.

soldiers during World War II.

The confrontation sparked by attempts to enforce segregation in a local pub, resulted in the death of Private William Cross and significant uh racial tensions between the sold the white soldiers, the white uh military.

The fires, the police fired on the U.S.

soldiers stationed during World War II.

I read that the residents of that town were adamant about not discriminating against the black soldiers.

The point was to avoid what happened after World War I when black soldiers having seen life outside of uh uh the crow back in without the expectation of submission and indifference to the white supremacist hierarchy, i.e., they came back with uh they said they came back uppity, not accepting their assigned place.

We were beaten, maimed, or killed, and had their uniforms stripped off of them.

If they were seen wearing them in public to is uh uh to reestablish preferred orders of things.

The men of the 1511th quartermaster truck regiment stationed at Bama Bridge, complained that they were received poor food, often had to sleep in the trucks when they when they stopped at white bases, according to the evidence presented during the court, the court martial proceedings.

The local people in Bramber Bridge defended the black officers, saying that they were welcome in the pub and did not approve of segregation at the base and the events that escalated into a gun battle in the streets and back at the base.

And and and receive uh and related crime.

The white officers were not charged, and the black officers were not formally exonerated for their actions during the clash with the white U.S.

military police.

I want to tell you guys something.

My family loved this country and fought for it, and we still don't get the respect that we deserve.

It's time that you people start realizing that we're Americans too.

Thank you.

We're not nobody's uh uh we're not we're not nobody's uh people uh we're not we're not subject to be nobody's uh uh under American people just like you are, and y'all need to understand that.

And I'm mad, yeah, I'm mad because it's taken us how long has it taken us for us to get to where we got and we still not respect.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Prophet Yusuf.

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen.

In the book of 1 Timothy, the second chapter, the eighth verse, it says, I want the men, every place to pray.

But I want to speak about tonight, praying men's.

Go outside today and look up and down your street.

If someone threatened to attack the families on your street, do you think the men in those homes will come out into the street to defend that community?

I like to think they would.

Well, our community undertack.

But the invading army is invisible.

We engage in spiritual warfare.

And Paul lays the lion's share of the responsibility for repelling the enemy's attack at the feet of Christian men.

The primary weapon we have to fight with is prayer.

We see the men's response most clearly.

Well, the word men is not the generic word for the human race, but the specified term males.

But before we go any further, we need to back up and see what this prayer should include.

Before I go any further, let me tell you what I'm not saying.

I'm not saying only men are supposed to pray.

The context here is the public worship of the church, and it's clear in this setting, men ought to take the lead in this prayer.

But every Christian is to pray.

I'm also not saying that prayer is the only thing you do.

It's just the first thing you do.

You have to start with the divine frame of reference.

You have to bring God into the equation, or your equation won't add up.

So Paul exalted us to pray for everyone in authority in the public sector so that a community will be at peace and safe.

But this is not just peace and quiet for the sake of peace and quiet.

The object of this tranquility is to free us from distraction so we can focus on living godly lives.

It also promotes the spread of the gospel so people can come to the knowledge of the truth.

Someone may say, wait a minute.

I thought the church grew best under persecution.

That may be true, but we aren't told to pray for persecution.

We are told to pray specially for peace.

Christian man, we have quite a prayer agenda.

Could it be that one reason our communities and our nation are deteriorate is because God's men are not praying.

Think about it.

We undertake.

But the answer is not to take to the street.

The answer is to take to our knees.

Also, they want to tell Miss Paham.

She's not here.

Director of Human Service, my granddaughter, Essie, Brother Allen, who was in the Navy with me this for a long time.

And I'm gonna get it off my chest tonight.

I don't like you, I love you.

And you can't do nothing about it.

And happy birthday, my good friends, and I wish you many more.

And God bless you and your family.

Happy birthday to you.

Happy birthday to you.

Happy birthday to my good friends.

Happy birthday to you.

Thanks for allowing me to speak.

Thank you.

Our next speaker tonight is Stephen McMaster.

Hello.

As everybody in front of me knows, my name is Stephen McMaster.

For those who uh are held captive because we haven't finished the start of our city council meetings.

Um I go to all of these kinds of boards and committees and councils and everything I can get access to that shows up on the date of call for the city of Rockford.

And I've encountered quite a few issues.

Uh there's something called the Open Meetings Act.

That's what lets all of us sit here.

That's what lets uh us give public comment and and express our our desires for change amongst city council members and and any board.

Unfortunately, there have also been a lot of violations that I've found of the Open Meetings Act throughout my various activities.

And that's led me to a weird position.

I don't know if it's uh a problem with individuals or a problem with the city.

So I decided I would I would try to figure it out.

I submitted a Freedom of Information Act request for everybody's open meetings act certifications.

Those in the legal department know exactly what I'm referring to.

There's 94 people that I should have gotten certs back for.

I got 52 of them.

That that's an F.

That's a citywide F.

That's unacceptable.

I get up here and I complain about the fact that City Council starts at 5 30 instead of six every single week, despite the fact that we have a law that says it must start at six.

Code and regulations committee.

Isn't that your job to check up on the codes and regulations that we have and make sure that they're in accordance with what we desire?

I've put in a Freedom of Information Act request to try to figure out what the rules for all the boards and committees and councils are.

The only thing I got back was for city council.

Nothing even for these committees.

So when we say we have three minutes for public comment, is that out of kindness?

Am I just being respectful when I sit back down?

Am I allowed to keep ranting for as long as I want?

According to the rules I've seen, according to what legal has sent me, doesn't seem to be anything stopping me from doing that.

I don't think that's what you guys want.

We should change that.

Fix those rules.

Like a motion.

Help, make a point of information.

Just see if I'm saying the truth.

You have the power.

All of you have the power.

In my closing few seconds, I'll refer to the fact that like even this meeting itself seems to be a pretty clear violation of the Open Meetings Act.

We don't call we don't call it a city council meeting, yet every single member of City Council and City Staff and the mayor are all here.

Seems like a fucking city council meeting to me.

Yeah.

Open Meetings Act might disagree.

It would be really neat if we could have some sort of like actual audit to actually determine who's following the rules, who's following the law, and who's not.

If it's not a system, if it's not a systemic citywide issue, please prove me wrong.

Thank you.

Our next public speaker tonight is Stuart Johnson.

Hello, everybody.

I don't have that kind of complaint.

Um, good evening.

My name is Stuart No Lips Johnson, and I'm the founder and chief operator of the Rock and Roll Institute, a local nonprofit dedicated to the education of music for children ages 12 through 20.

Three minutes is not enough time to explain what the Rockford Area Arts Council does for this community.

The Rockford Area Arts Council is not a luxury, it's not an accessory, it's not it is the cultural backbone of the city.

Rockford does not have a municipal arts department.

There's no city office quietly making sure our children in undeserved neighborhoods have access to dance, painting, theater, or music.

That work lives with us.

The Arts Council is the connective tissue between creativity and community well-being.

They fill gaps, they build bridges, they keep the lights on in spaces where imagination becomes opportunity.

Through programs like Spark at Washington Park, they provide free youth arts programming that functions as something far greater than enrichment.

It is a safe harbor, it is prevention, it is mental health support wrapped in paint, movement, performance, and music.

When a child is a safe place to create, they're not just learning art, they're learning resilience, they are learning confidence, and they are learning that their voice matters.

And that belief system fuels the Rock and Roll Institute.

The Rocket Roll Institute is what happens when young people are trusted with real responsibility.

Every summer, bands are formed on Monday, perform on Friday.

The students pick the songs, the students pick the band names, the students design the graphics, they manage productions, they rehearse relentlessly, and over 35% of them are on scholarship because access matters more than income.

Now I've watched shy kids find their power behind a drum kit.

I've watched anxious teens discovered that the stage is not something to fear, it is something to command.

I have seen nonverbal autistic children go from non-speaking to be in lead singers.

I have seen families who never imagined their child would stand under professional lights at venues like the Hard Rock and the Live and suddenly cheering up our venues like the Coronado this summer.

This is not in entertainment, this is transformation.

The Arts Council supports and strengthens organiz organizations like mine, the Rock and Roll Institute, because we all understand something fundamental.

The arts are not an extracurricular activity.

They are public safety strategy, they are an economic development strategy, they are a mental health strategy.

They are a workforce development pipeline like our production program.

They are how we tell the story of who Rockford is and who we are becoming.

When they secured a 1.5 million dollar federal grant to remediate a blighted building in my neighborhood, they were not just fixing bricks and mortar.

They were investing in a future where artists live, work, and create, where young people see a path forward in their own city.

The Rockford Arts Council exists so that creativity is not reserved for the few.

It exists so that every children and every zip code has access to possibility.

It exists so that organizations like the Rock and Roll Institute can amplify the talent already living in this community.

The question is not whether Rockford can afford to support the arts.

The question is whether or not you can afford not to.

Because when we fund the arts, we are not funding paint or guitars or dance or music.

We are funding our children and we are funding hope.

Thank you.

Thank you.

That concludes tonight's public speakers.

And now we'll move into our informational only section, where again we are hearing from Mr.

Rowe and Mr.

Gino for their quality report for Go Rockford.

And I'll turn it over to you, gentlemen.

Just as a reminder, if you can remember to speak clearly into your mic for the individuals watching.

Thank you.

Thank you for the opportunity to address the committee this evening and our community.

My name is John Girl.

I'm the president and CEO of Go Rockford.

Geno Eifreight is our board chair in his day job.

He is the president of Hard Rock Rockford, and we're grateful to have a strong board of directors who guides our work.

And so he's here to answer questions that uh committee members may have.

Why don't you start on a high note?

Uh we're officially here recapping the first six months of our fiscal year, which are the last six months of the calendar year.

Right before the uh Christmas weekend, we were uh thrilled when um national outlets and national audiences uh had a high note of positivity coming from our community.

Each year with Straw on State in the lobby of City Hall, uh we uh with uh partners at first staffing produce um letters to Santa.

Well, Mrs.

Claus and her elves make sure that every child who writes a letter, and now over many years that's thousands of letters and responses that go to those children.

Uh Mrs.

Claus and that positivity from our community was highlighted on MBC Nightly News and rebroadcast on multiple NBC affiliates across the country and additional online platforms and outlet shows throughout the uh holiday season.

That kind of publicity is important.

That kind of positivity uh helps change the narratives and improve the narratives of our community.

And that's just one example of the work that we're doing uh on behalf of the city and the region to uh help tell new narratives about our community.

That work is done in cooperation with the Greater Rockford Chamber of Commerce.

We have a joint program uh to amplify these positive stories.

That's one way we ended calendar year 2025.

Another way, uh on more of a data perspective is I wanted to let you know that uh this is just a key indicator grouping.

Uh our hotels uh did well last year, 60 percent occupancy uh for an a benchmark average across the the community, and for uh maybe a higher tier of hotels that we also track, about 70 percent occupancy, with record revenue up almost 8% over 2024 to almost 70 million dollars.

Demand, the total number of hotels booked and sold, hotel room nights was up uh over four percent to almost six hundred and fifty thousand room nights in the calendar year.

That work is driven by um or th those results I should say by the individual visitors who are coming to do business with our local uh businesses and um uh corporations, also by the events that our team with partners produce and bring to the community.

Just a few weeks ago, um about a week and a half ago now, uh, the AHL All Star Classic uh happened.

Got to give great shout out to the BEMO team and the Ice Hawks team in collaboration with their uh owners, uh Blackhawks, a phenomenal week of hockey at the highest level within the AHL was here.

I hope many of you, I know some of you, I hope many of you are also able to watch, either online or on broadcast.

It was nationally uh broadcast here and in Canada during the Olympic break uh for the NHL.

We had great airtime across the country.

Wanted to let you know that for that week on just Tuesday and Wednesday, we peaked over 90% occupancy in hotels, and for the week, occupancy was up over 28 percent.

Those types of events help change the narrative, improve the quality of life of our community for our residents, and drive real business growth.

When we're able to demonstrate to organizations like the American Hockey League and their commissioners uh that we can do that, it helps us book and win additional events for our community uh and for our partners at organizations like the chamber and others to bring new uh interest to our community and new uh investment.

One such announcement was just made um an hour and a half ago.

Uh, with our partners at the International Women's Baseball Center, we officially announced that not only will Rockford host the 2026 group stage of the women's baseball softball confederation world cup, the sixth uh highest ranked women's baseball teams this summer.

We are one of two locations for the group stage.

In 2027, we will host the official World Cup of Women's Baseball.

An exciting partnership and an exciting opportunity that builds on previous success uh from uh partner investment, including the City of Rockford's investment in Bayer Park in Southwest Rockford and in the International Women's Baseball Center.

So thank you for that.

Wanted to point out that the uh most recent round of funding to Rockford area restaurants uh just closed through our restaurant relief grant, our fifth and final round of grants to local restaurants who were unduly um burdened with a higher unemployment insurance rate due to COVID 19 shutdowns.

Those payments continued to follow them for three years following.

And so we just concluded the final round to 32 uh 34 restaurants, 450,000 dollars in total, 1.5 million dollars was refunded back to our local restaurants.

That's money that they paid because of the catch 22 that they were in because of the you know uh the mandates that they were required to close, which led to lower staffing levels, which increased their unemployment insurance to the state for following the rules.

I'm really proud that Winnebago County, that we were the only county that stood up such a program out of all the 102 counties in the state of Illinois.

So 1.5 million dollars refunded back to our restaurants, which has significantly helped them re repay the loans that they took out or the uh obligations they took on uh to make those payments.

Uh kudos to Representative West for securing the funding from the state of Illinois and to our team and our restaurant partners for uh advocating for it and then uh bringing that program forward.

As we look forward, a couple of things.

Iron Man is coming back for our second of three years and what we hope will be a multi-year extension that we'll announce later this year if all goes well on June 14th.

I want to say thank you to the city uh from the administration all the way down to public works and police and fire and many uh legal uh it is a community-wide effort to host such an internationally renowned uh corporation hosting that big of an event uh that will come back June 14th, and we're excited about that.

Two things to wrap up on.

Uh we're uh honored to be partners with the mayor's office and the county in administering and overseeing some of the back office functions, if you will, of Rockford and Winnebago County's America 250 celebration.

That's fully underway.

There's a few things I want folks and especially council members to know about so you can help amplify it.

There are now grants available to cultural organizations uh uh through the arts council will administer it.

It's through the funds that have been raised from the private sector uh for grants up to $2,500 for uh community-based events, cultural events, experiences that amplify the core values of the America 250 celebration that uh amplify the community culture and connection emphasis that we have here locally.

Those applications are available.

It's a very simple application on Rockford Region 250.com.

That's a sub page of the Go Rockford page.

Those applications will be open for a couple of weeks, and then a review panel that the Arts Council is putting together.

We'll review those and we'll be making grants out.

We want to get money out into the community to help our partners celebrate the semi quincentennial.

I did it.

I said it.

There are also through our public schools and our private schools in Rockford and throughout the entire county.

There are at all grade levels art and essay contests that are being rolled out right now in our schools.

We're excited to be able to recognize uh student uh accomplishment and success and uh as they celebrate through art and essay uh what they believe it uh means to be an American.

Finally, at GoRockford.com, we have an event submission page for any organization uh hosting any event related to celebrating the uh the this uh special birthday for our community, and so we want to make sure that we know about those so we can uh amplify those back to the community and promote those here locally and then beyond.

Um there's a whole lot more in the report.

I'm happy to at any time meet with any council member or committee member individually.

Uh but madam chair, um with that I'm happy to yield back to you and answer any questions.

Are there any questions or comments?

Looks like he left out.

So um, well, thank you so much for the information.

The opportunity to always be here and to work on your behalf.

We appreciate it.

Thank you.

Have a good day.

Thank you.

You can't go longer.

I'll do my best.

Next, uh, we'll move into item number two, which is an update from the mayor's office of domestic and community violence prevention.

Um and we have Miss Deanna and Ms.

Jennifer Kopchapalia here to present to us tonight.

Thank you.

Thanks um again for the opportunity to be here with you all tonight.

Um I do have um with me tonight my colleague and teammate Deanna Hernandez.

She is the project manager for our community violence, our community healing center, and so she's going to be providing an update on that very important program.

But first, very briefly, I will jump in and do as best as I can to cover um the update for you in a timely way.

I know you have a lot to cover tonight.

Uh I cannot, in the interest of time, go over all of the projects that we're working on tonight.

So you do have in your packet uh a pretty detailed, I think it's about 13 pages of an update on all of the projects, the status of them, and how we're evaluating them right now.

You also have a letter uh from a survivor from the Rockford Family Peace Center talking about her experience with the Peace Center over the past year.

Um I'm not doing a portion of the presentation tonight on the Peace Center, so I just wanted to note that.

Uh, these are the topics that we're going to be covering tonight.

We're going to talk a little bit about the medical response portion of our lethality prevention work, our work with Rockford Public Schools, our work with our human trafficking initiatives.

Throughout that, I'll talk a little bit about data, and then I'll turn it over to Deanna so that she can provide you an update on our healing center.

Um just to contextualize for you and remind everybody, everything that we are doing is informed by our strategic plan.

And our strategic plan is this community gap document.

It can be found on our website for anybody to read any time.

And I want to note that this is continually updated.

It was updated in 2021 when we expanded to community violence after we did several listening sessions with our youth.

It will be updated again in the next uh few months as we engage with a couple of listening sessions with our community and DCFS.

And so I just wanted to note that.

I'm next going to go in to our work on lethality.

And before I do, I just wanted to pause for a second and let everybody know that I'm going to start talking about strangulation.

And I'm going to start talking about lethality factors.

And so anybody who would like to not listen, to turn the TV off, to leave the room, to disassociate, whatever you would like to do, please feel free to do so now.

Uh but turning to our lethality prevention divisions, I wanted to remind everybody the data points that informed our work around the medical response.

And so you will recall that we in February of 2023 at the Rockford Family Peace Center to started deploying a uh data piece of data study called the danger assessment.

It's an evaluation of someone's lethality on the continuum of lethality if he, she or they are involved in an interpersonal violence situation.

It's a validated tool developed by Dr.

Jackie Candle out of John Hopkins University.

And she has done nothing but study domestic violence, homicides, or near homicides for her entire career.

And based on those homicides and near homicides, there's a certain set of factors that were present in nearly all of those before the death.

And so we can prevent domestic violence because we can predict domestic violence.

And so we want to give everybody who walks into the Rockford Family Peace Center an opportunity to see where they may be on that continuum of danger in if they are in an intimate partner violence situation.

And so we offer them not the full data assessment, but the danger assessment five.

So we ask them five questions to gauge where they are in that continuum.

And two of those questions are reflected here.

And since 2023, we float around these these outcomes.

But in 2025, 57% of the people walking into the Rockford Family Peace Center have been strangled.

And 72% of them are scoring at high risk of death.

It were these data points, along with voices of survivors that helped us really focus on that medical response portion of our medical continuum or of our strangulation response continuum.

You'll recall we've done work with 911, we've done tremendous work with the fire department and the EMTs there in helping empower them and understand what to look for and screen for on calls.

Certainly we've worked closely with our law enforcement, developed a strangulation supplement that they now deploy on scene that is seeing an increase of surviv of strangulation convictions at the Winnebago County State's attorney's office, and quite frankly, what we were looking at for the medical response before we started to deploy that data, the danger assessment, was really just looking at equipment that we could have inside of emergency rooms so that survivors who had been strangled could get the right exam.

But when we saw that data and began to hear from so many survivors that they had been strangled and they were stuff suffering from the long-term effects of that, we wanted to do more than just get a piece of equipment in there.

So we turned very quickly with that data to Senator Stadleman, who found us seed money to launch a medical-based response within UW Health Systems.

And those are the project partners on that response.

We started that last year.

And I just want to name and thank not only Senator Stodelman, but also Travis Anderson, Deanna Berg, Kim Woolgast, and Jennifer Perello at UW Health Systems Emergency Department who helped us lift this program up within that department and still are developing ongoing trainings and surveys with our medical professionals in the hospital to continue to inform and shape our work.

And so I wanted to highlight tonight some of the response or some of the results from that.

So since we started receiving referrals in September, we have received 36 referrals.

We have connected with 20 of those patients.

And this is a little bit about them.

The youngest was 16 years old, and they presented at the hospital after having suffered intimate partner violence.

The oldest was 78.

And you can see in between over half half of them had children, three of them were pregnant, and 11 had been strangled that night or day or had been strangled before then.

All 20 survivors, I am happy to report, were connected to services, and that included housing.

This is why we wanted to be there.

We knew from listening to our first responders, our EMTs, our police, and our nurses, that if we missed that window when they presented at hospital for help and could not get them connected to services, that very often the perpetrator was waiting in the parking lot.

So we had them in a moment.

And if we lost that, we often lost them.

And to that point, I mentioned we had 36 referrals.

16 of those came in when we weren't staffed.

We tried to follow up with them relentlessly to no end.

And so it demonstrates our point that we need to be in there as often as possible.

That uh funding allows for three people to be hired.

We've only been able to fill one position so far.

So this is all with one advocate so far since September, Anna Griselek, who is phenomenally launching that prog program and doing just a tremendous job at responding to those survivors' needs within the ER.

I want to next talk a little bit about some training efforts first with RPS and then just briefly with Rockford police.

You will remember that I very excitedly reported to you all last time I was here that we finally have a teen dating violence kit that has been adopted by Rockford Public Schools.

I was very happy that they actually adopted it nearly verbatim.

Um and I want to shout out to Andrea Carlson, our deputy director who's here with us tonight.

She wrote that and they adopted it.

And so it is because of her relentless effort in work with the schools that we do have something like this now.

And we started working with the schools in May of last year first to introduce the toolkit to all principals and assistant principals and ask them where should we go next with this toolkit.

They directed us to counselors.

They said to us that if we wanted to make sure that the people, the critical people in the school had the information we should certainly go through the entire school body, but that we should start with counselors.

And so you can see that we started doing that in September and October, and those are reflected in the green arrows.

What I want to lift up also are the purple arrows, because in the middle of this, we were contacted by the schools about a new law as part of the ensuring success in schools statute that requires schools to do things to ensure our children succeed in schools.

And one of those that was new this year and that they had to have in place by July of 2025 was in fact a response to domestic violence.

And so that we call it for short the 26A law, because that's the number that they've quoted it in the statute.

So we just use that for short.

The 26A law, if you think of it, is really more for you educators and IEP.

It's really the nuts and bolts within the building of the tree of what's going to happen specifically, case by case to keep that child in school.

The toolkit is really more broadly talking about what domestic violence might look like in one of your students, how you should respond to it, and how you shouldn't respond to it.

And most importantly, here are the resources in the community that you can get your student connected to should they disclose that they're experiencing this violence.

And so we have embarked with RPS on a very, very intense and robust set of training.

Again, Andrea Carlson from our team is leading this with members of our cross-coordinated community response.

Just this past year, or this past six weeks, uh, yes, in January, January 14th, we actually had um Kim Wogast from UW Health Systems and Shannon Krueger from Merritt come in and talk to our counselors about strangulation very specifically in our kids.

We're gonna finish this series of trainings with um all of the professionals that you see there.

We'll be doing an evaluation of the training in March, and then we'll be moving on to the next set of people inside those buildings to start working with in training.

Very briefly with Rockford Police.

When I was here last, um, we had reported out on our listening sessions that we were doing with police, and those the the feedback that we got from our officers informed a broader training that we launched with our with our new recruits last year.

Um Chief Red asked us after she heard the feedback from her officers to put together some sessions with our new with our new people coming on.

We launched that um in May of 2025.

Uh, you can see we've seen some significant increases across the board.

These are on a five-point scale, so a 1.4 means something to us.

Um, and then we did that again in August, and really at the end of last year, Chief Redd approached us and said, This is really wonderful for our new officers.

I want our field training officers to have that now.

And so in January, uh, we did a full court press, again, multidisciplinary team training, and trained all of the field training officers.

She and her team um kind of regrouped with us and we're evaluating next steps around training.

It seems as though our new recruit training, while they found it valuable, it was a lot for them before they hit the streets, and they really didn't have anything to contextualize within because they hadn't been on the streets yet.

So they've asked to receive that training a little bit further along the line after they've been out on the streets.

So we're gonna be deploying that a little bit differently going forward.

Um and then I'm gonna wrap my portion of this with um and a little bit of an update on our human trafficking task force.

So just a quick reminder about who is on that task force and some of the work that we are doing there.

We meet monthly.

This is not grant-funded.

I'm very proud of that.

Um I think we are one of the only non-funded grant task force in the state.

Everybody else has waited very specifically for funding to do this, um, but none of those people have.

And so we convene every single month at District 1 police station, and we do several things.

Uh, one of the things that we do is we've created two subcommittees.

The first one is a data subcommittee, and that is in partnership with UIC College of Medicine.

A team of students there and professors really wanted to get a better understanding of who is purchasing human beings for sex and use and abuse in our community, and also who are our kids who may be more vulnerable for this.

And just so I'm clear for one second for everybody here and who's might be listening.

When I'm talking about our kids, I'm talking about kids born and raised in this community, period.

Um, and so I'm not talking about anybody being brought here from other continents or countries.

So when we look at our task force, we look at that data subcommittee that is really looking at trying to get that snapshot that we hope to use in education and awareness because there are misconceptions and myths about who is purchasing our kids for their use and abuse and who may be vulnerable to it because every child is vulnerable to it.

This is indiscriminate, right?

Um and the other subcommittee for that is our enforcement subcommittee, and that is led by Jay Hanley.

And he has convened many of those law enforcement members around that table to come up with a process and protocol of what to do once there is an investigation needed.

Who gets called, under what circumstances, where does the child get taken, who's going after the perpetrator, et cetera, et cetera.

So they're working on building that out.

We are going to finalize those best practices in a community response protocol that every single agency around that table will adopt and commit to using going forward.

Those have to be full of best practices.

Those have to be trauma informed responses that help get our kids connected to services and hopefully the perpetrators arrested and off our streets and held accountable.

I want to talk to you a bit now about some of the trainings that we have launched.

The committee, the entire task force really saw one of our largest gaps is awareness and understanding of what this is across the boards, from kids to adults to professionals and every single profession.

And so they really emphasize to us we have got to do more about awareness in particular for our babies.

We started with several of those, those last three dot points, but first I want to talk to you about I empathize and a man named Randy James, who is currently a Rockford firefighter, and a retired Rockford firefighter named Chad Callison, who reached out on their own initiative to my office after they had gone through an I empathize training.

I empathize training is developed by first responders for first responders, and it is informed by survivors.

And Randy and Chad really came to us and said we are tired of seeing things that we are concerned about on scene and not entirely knowing what to do about it, and then finding out later we might have missed something really critical.

We need more information about what human trafficking looks like and where we might stumble across a human trafficking survivor.

They were exposed to this training in another training they went to, and so we worked very closely with the IEMpathize founders and directors to bring that here in November.

We had over 260 participants of it.

It was the first time, even though it is built by first responders that I empathize empathize trainers told us that they had law enforcement come through.

So I just want to give kudos to our law enforcement, not only Rockford City, but other law enforcement agencies who took the time out of their day to come to a free accredited training.

Um I hope next time those who didn't will give it a shot.

Those last three dot points are the trainings that we are deploying within our community for young people.

And Deanna's going to talk to you a little bit more about a couple of those, but briefly, not a number is deployed by Rockford Alliance Against Sexual Exploitation.

They are our only human trafficking agency in Rockford, Illinois, or the entire Northern Illinois region who does nothing except focus on survivors of human trafficking.

They are deploying that in the juvenile detention center, and they are deploying it in Jefferson High School.

They are reaching hundreds of kids within Jefferson and many, many, many within our juvenile detention center.

We are also, we've launched My Life, My Choice, which is another curriculum that was written by survivors of human trafficking for survivors of human trafficking.

That is deployed again by Deanna and her team at the Healing Center and in multiple locations around the community.

She's going to talk to you a little bit more about that.

And then finally, unfortunately and regrettably, we have come to the conclusion that we have got to start talking more to our elementary school kids about human trafficking.

We know they are being targeted, we know they are being groomed, and we are not doing enough to arm our babies with information about what it looks like when this starts to happen to you.

And so I'm very proud of the fact that we have deployed a curriculum called NetSmarts, and it is with our littles, our littlest of littles.

And what I want you all to know is I'm going to talk to you a little bit on the next page about the cases that the human trafficking team is studying and debriefing.

They've been referred by some of our partners.

They are not the same cases that the kids are disclosing on during these trainings.

So you're gonna we have debriefed 10 cases that have been brought to the human trafficking task force that we have case managed.

That does not include the disclosures that are happening every time these trainings are deployed in our community.

Those are not getting referred to the task force for a variety of different reasons, and they don't need to be right now.

We are managing those and getting those kids connected to services, but those are separate and in addition to what we are doing at the task force.

But just briefly, we have uh staff 10 cases.

You can see that they've all come from justice-involved youth.

Um most of them have come from juvenile probation, um, but the other handful have come from the state's attorney's office and youth services network and youth services network for those of you that don't know works directly with our juvenile detention center and often provides the case management for our kids who are on juvenile probation or who may have been um caught up in a station adjustment.

And you can see um our youngest child is 12, and our oldest is 17.

And so we do know that next month the state's attorney's office is bringing another case for us to staff.

And so um just wanted to give you a bit of that information.

And then just a snapshot of some of the questions that we ask when we evaluate the efficacy and impact of our kids' empowerment and information in the My Life, My Choice curriculum.

You can see these questions are really all about myth busting.

It's helping our kids understand that it can happen to them.

It doesn't just happen to people in certain areas and in uh these other three qu two questions that are up here.

Um, and you can see that our kids' information and awareness and understanding of what this looks like and how it can impact them is going up once they go through these trainings.

And then uh finally, just a quick note when we've been here before, we've talked to you about our effort to compare our last uh lagging indicator there, the NIBERS police data and the rates of reported domestic violence across the country to peer communities.

We are now able to compare ourselves to Peoria, Illinois.

It is the only city in the state that R1 has told us we can comp to.

Um, and they worked with NIBA's reported data, incident-based incident level data to create a baseline of domestic violence reporting between Rockford and Peoria.

And you can see since January of 2023, Rockford is outperforming Peoria when it comes to reported incidents of rates of domestic violence.

So we'll keep an eye on that.

Um I only have the 2023 because that's when the FBI lags very bad very significantly.

Chief Red is exploring the option of actually giving our data that we give to NIBERS to evaluate and that they give us a couple of years later.

She's thinking about working with R1 to see if we can get a snapshot of that much quicker than a two-year lag.

So we're working on that, but we'll see what happens.

And then finally, as I turn it over to Deanna, um, I just wanted to highlight and lift up all of our partners.

Uh we cannot for one second do any of this without each and every one of them.

Domestic and sexual violence and community violence are complex, multi-layered issues, and it takes a complex, multi-layered, sustained, relentless response.

And so I just want to thank all of our community agencies and members who are on that.

And now I'll turn it over to Deanna.

Yes, ma'am.

Yep.

If you'd like to now I can, but we we can hold them for the end too, whatever you prefer.

Yes.

Um thank you for um what you said about um awareness.

Umtims with our work with young people, and oftentimes with young people, I often find that we're speaking, we don't understand the same language.

Do you have a question?

Um I'm just wondering.

So I might say, Oh, how was your day?

And someone will say, clap.

And I'll be like, what do you mean?

Or cloud or T, or they'll do a hand gesture.

So I'm just wondering for and I have to get them to clarify what they mean for me.

And I'm just wondering, you talked, you use some words up there.

You say that you asked questions.

What is it that you all do to make sure that they understand what you mean?

I'm gonna defer to Deanna on that because I don't deploy the trainings.

Um all the people that do deploy the trainings are trained by the people who wrote or developed the curriculums, and most of them are survivors, and so they've trained our team on how to manage that, and so I'm gonna have to defer to Deanna on that.

That's the best I can answer it, but she might be able to give you some more examples of that.

And before you do, uh Deanna, just as a reminder, can you pull your mic down and speak into the mic when you're asking your questions, Alderman Fronty?

Okay.

Okay.

Good evening.

Um, for example, the My Life My Choice curriculum, you need uh parental permission in order to be part of the group.

And we explain to the parents in the consent form, and when we meet with them what the program is, what the topics include, and then we the curriculum is catered to the language of the youth.

The NetSmarts program is elementary age appropriate, and so it's also tailored to their language.

Of course, if youth do not understand specific word terminology, we re-explain it in different ways, we provide examples, or we walk them through a scenario so they understand.

Um, but generally a lot of our majority of our youth understand what harm is harm to themselves and harm to others.

And so they would understand what you meant by exploit.

Um, like I mentioned, a lot of the terminology when we're presenting it to youth could look different as how we present it to you.

All right, thank you.

And then speaking of terminology, um, you use several terms, and I'm just wondering do these terms have leak legal implications, and that's why you use them, or can they be used interchangeably?

So you say human trafficking, sexual exploitation.

I'm just wondering, and even nationally, we're hearing the word pedophile, and um I'm just wondering do these terms have some sort of very specific legal uh implication, and that's why we we're not really using them interchangeably, or we are using them interchangeably.

Yeah, uh, that's a great question.

Human trafficking can be labor trafficking, and so sexual exploitation is a component of human sex trafficking, and so that's a part of human trafficking, and what we're talking about when we're addressing human trafficking, we are addressing the sexual exploitation of human beings.

I have not, and our team is not moving into labor trafficking awareness or education at this point.

We're really still trying to understand where that is popping up in our community, but our team will be exclusively right now working on sexual exploitation trafficking.

Thank you.

Yep.

Thank you.

I love it.

I love to see that because I was I remember when this was literally a sticky note.

So, how far it's come to where you've gotten it is extraordinary.

Um so congratulations to you and your team, and thank you for the information.

Very, very simple question.

You mentioned something about um you said there was an organization that primarily worked with human trafficking.

I did not catch what the who that organization was.

Yeah, they go their acronym is RAC, RASE, and that stands for Rock for Alliance against sexual exploitation, and they have been around uh since 2009.

Perfect.

Thank you so much.

You're welcome.

Autowami meets I guess we're asking questions, so I'm gonna ask some.

Thank you so much for your work and your work as well.

This is a really important topic.

I hear a lot about this issue.

I've actually had just maybe not residents, but just citizens in this community that have come forward feeling just some concerns with um feeling comfortable enough sharing their story and getting the help that they need, maybe not submitting um police reports and things like that.

How do you handle those situations when you come across people that don't necessarily feel comfortable sharing?

They feel like if they share information, there's gonna be kind of a form of retaliation.

And they don't feel like they're being those that are doing the deed are being held accountable.

Um I completely understand.

Um it's their fears are reasonable.

Uh and I would just encourage them to please reach out to the Rockford Family Peace Center.

Um, you do not have to be a client to the Peace Center to get services.

We offer long-term survivor support groups.

You can be a client to the Pea Center.

You don't have to give any details uh about what you've experienced.

If you name that you are a survivor of this type of violence, we will believe you.

Um, and you can ask to just be a support group client where you could avail yourself to the the healing offerings that we offer within that center.

Um we do you never have to speak to a police officer with us, you never have had to file a report, you never have had to told anybody in your life before us.

Um there are no preconditions to getting access to healing and recovery.

Um there's a voices survivor group that informs the work of the peace center.

We meet every month.

They're actually we're meeting this month.

Um and they, along with the Amanda Reed Foundation, um, are sponsoring our first ever survivor summit.

Um anybody who's interested in that can go to the Peace Center website.

Registration is open right now.

Um, but they may not that that would really be for somebody who may not be connected to services yet, or maybe, but wants to understand what they might expect with the family law court system or what they might expect if a law enforcement arrives on scene.

Um and just some other connection to information.

The entire goal of the the day and a half that we're gonna do this alderman is to empower them and also help heal them.

Um and so I would I would suggest and hope and that they would at least consider checking out the peace center so that they can get connected to a team, quite frankly, uh, that will walk with them and support them in whatever they decide to do next.

Again, absolutely no requirement to ever engage with the criminal justice system.

Uh we are there for them and they get to decide what they want from us.

So that's my best suggestion.

Now, can I ask you because you work closely with the state's attorney's office?

Are you finding with the work that you all have put in for the last several years that we are seeing more convictions with regards to domestic violence?

Yes, we can say conclusively we are, and I'm exceptionally proud of them for that.

And and what I want to note about that is before this office opened, no state's attorney before this one was keeping data.

Nobody was checking, okay, we've got 14 convictions out of those 20.

Nothing, right?

Um, this state's attorney is.

Um, and when we went to them when the when they were when he was first elected, and and now Maria McCarthy, uh, she's now retired from his office, she immediately said, No, we have to start collecting data.

So they started to collect data, but then they also adopted the strangulation supplement with us.

And that has seen with our officers empowered to have that form on scene and not have to think about okay, what should I ask to make sure that this survivor is gonna be before or this perpetrator is gonna be before a judge in a few hours and they need to know how dangerous this is.

Now it's all right there on the form for our officers to fill out, and then the state's attorney gets that at first appearance with the judge.

And so our state's attorneys know if somebody's been strangled.

They're asking for strangulations for people to be held.

How many are being held is a different answer.

Um that's not the state's attorney's decision, though, right?

Um, and I don't have the data on how many are being held, but we have seen an increase in um the prosecutions and convictions for strangulation, and I can get you that data because the state's attorney's office has agreed to share that with us monthly and allow Region One data council to evaluate that for us because that's a lead lagging a leading indicator, right?

Um the other thing that they started to do, and it was a gap in our gap document.

They weren't listening to jail calls.

They are now.

When a perpetrator is arrested, they don't stop, they don't stop.

Um, they often continue to engage on the phone, uh, where they quite frankly um incriminate themselves.

Um, they threaten, they get family members to show up in court and intimidate and abuse, they wait for people outside the courthouse.

And so I always say when somebody says, Well, why isn't that survivor cooperating?

Well, what is stopping her from cooperating, right?

And so they have gotten a handle on that and they are charging now people who are doing that with felony uh with felonies.

And so they have seen an increase in those charges against perpetrators and then an increase in plea agreements once those perpetrators know what's about to happen with the case.

And so I'd be happy to get you that data.

Um again, they report it to me monthly, and I I can get you an email with that.

But yes, we are seeing that, and I just wanted everybody to know why and what was going into that.

I appreciate that.

And then the last kind of line of questioning is um it's related.

I know that we have our officers that are doing uh wonderful job working with you and helping these survivors, but I kind of want to shift to when those officers become the aggressors and what that looks like for levels of accountability.

Do you all have any handle on if there are officers within our police department that have convictions of domestic violence or you know, just I I want to kind of understand the level of how we are handling those particular situations?

There was kind of some recent news that came out related to a rock for police officer.

And um I want to feel a little bit more secure that there's a high like that standard for our officers should be higher than anyone.

And so when that is kind of violated or breached, I want to know that there's a high level of accountability.

Is there any way that you all have any say in that?

I know the police department is so autonomous and that there's not a lot of feedback that goes into their decisions and how they operate and how they run their processes.

I was hoping that I would hear that there's a piece that you touch with that.

I don't.

I don't.

I don't have any um any say uh influence or control over the what happens to an officer once that charge is levied against them.

I will note um the there was an officer just recently convicted, and he was no longer a Rockford city officer because he was removed um as soon as Chief Red wasn't made aware of the horrible things that he did.

Uh the one thing that I will say is that is serious.

You are right.

Um the the perpetrating officer is more dangerous than the regular person within the regular perpetrator.

Um and so what I also want uh everyone to know is that although we have officers on scene at the peace center, again, they have no access to our files.

Nobody on scene at the peace center, no agency has access to any of our files.

There's strict confidentiality in place at the Rockford Family Peace Center.

And so um the last thing I will say about that, and then I don't um I don't know if Chief Rudd wants to say anything, and I just want to hold space if she does, and if she doesn't, that's fine.

But um the last thing I will say is that in my experience, the officers who find out about an offending officer, they are the ones that want that officer held accountable more than anybody to get them off the departments.

Uh and so that's been my experience um here with our officers.

Um, but thank you for asking.

It's uh it's dangerous and and it's something we should be paying attention to.

Okay.

So Chief came in in the middle of your question.

So the line of questioning that I had was related to domestic violence with our officers and kind of what that process looks like if there's a special process that takes place to hold those officers accountable.

Um I know in California they have uh uh a weapons ban, so that if there is a conviction for an officer, then uh they are banned from using weapons, therefore unable to be an officer.

Do we have something like that here?

If you are convicted of domestic battery, you're not allowed to be an officer in the state of Illinois.

Okay, that's response.

Perfect.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Um Alderman Thunberg.

Thank you, Chairwoman.

Uh Jennifer, thank you for all the work in you do and and all those involved.

Um I appreciate your input just a few moments ago on the pursuing of the strangulation uh policy with the state's attorney's office and hats off to uh State's attorney Jay Hanley and for taking that seriously and taking as far as you can take it.

Uh obviously I think I think domestic violence is disgusting.

Um I know that uh years ago when you and I talked about this originally, I think this office was more focused on human trafficking at the time, and then over the course of time, I think domestic violence came into play as well.

Um so I I like to see you know, in in our conversation, I thought maybe human trafficking started kind of taking a back seat for a bit, but you assured me it did not, and uh I appreciate that.

So looking back, and it's just a simple question.

I mean, looking back and um when this all came about the there was something called, I think was it back door back page?

Uh and really you had talked about how you know that was really a driver for human trafficking.

And we know now that the current president was very uh had was very instrumental on getting that shut down.

Um so that is now gone.

I assume there's some other uh scrupulous sites that have popped up or taken its place, but at the time also you had mentioned that it it it you you talked about that Rockford seemed to be almost kind of a hub for human trafficking and the I won't say the word the what I'd like to say the people that that promote that and do it.

And the I won't say the word the what I'd like to say the people that that promote that and do it.

So now, if you were to say now in today's environment right now, and all the work that you've done and and the Peace Center has done, would you still categorize us?

The city of Rockford is still kind of being a hub for human trafficking.

Sure.

Have we made, you know, you showed us numbers of area and such and how we compare.

Have we made progress to the point where you may not say we're the hub any longer?

So thank you for taking me back to memory lane.

Um the so that data point was actually the national human trafficking hotline.

Illinois at the time the office opened was number two in the state.

Um I believe, please don't quote me on this.

I can check and get back to you.

I believe we're seventh now.

Um, Rockford within the state.

Um and that's a reported incidence of human trafficking.

We were number two.

Yeah.

Um have we made strides without question?

Um one of the things that I used to do in my free time was monitor what are called Johns boards, and that's places where people who purchase human beings for sex like to go and talk about their escapades.

Um and they started talking about us when this office opened.

They started talking about what is happening in Rockford.

They literally said we don't know what's happening in Rockford, but it's not safe there for us to do this anymore.

Um and that came very specifically after we shut down Chantilly Lace.

You'll remember that's one of the first things we did, um, followed very closely by the exclusive boutique.

Those have not reopened.

Um I am constantly monitoring those sort type of places popping up in our community.

Um and when this office opened, there were many more than there are now.

Um I'm proud of that fact.

There's, you know, we're not where we need to be.

But so I would say that we definitely have made progress.

We've made it less comfortable for people to do this here.

I think that we um lost a little speed after COVID.

We were doing sting after sting after sting and started uh we were arresting the purchasers of sex in our community, and that again they were online talking about I'm not gonna go to Rockford to do this anymore.

Unfortunately, they were just finding other communities to do it in.

Um, but they were leaving Rockford.

I don't know now.

Um I haven't been on a Johns board in a minute to see what the chatter is now.

Um but I will tell you that the enforcement subcommittee for the human trafficking task force works very closely with the state police.

Um Chief Red's team is also working very closely with the state police, and we are seeing those enforcement activities start to gain speed again, especially with some funding to the state police um to do those things.

Um and I don't know, Chief Redd, if you wanted to add anything else about that.

I would just add the um putting the information out in the public played a big part where that we were listing releasing names of the individuals who were arrested for buying sex, regardless of what community they came from, as well as working with our legal team and impounding their vehicles.

So I I think that was a lot of the conversation about not coming back to Rockford because of the price they would have to pay.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I I I'm just gonna take the brief opportunity to say um if you are somebody who is buying human beings for sex, get out of our community.

Um seek help, seek help, please, to the extent that you can be helped.

But to the extent that you can't, get out of our community and leave our children alone.

Um it is the scariest thing that we deal with.

Domestic violence is hard.

Human trafficking is merciless.

Um and and they are coming for our kids, um, and they know where to find them.

And so um it is one of the things that makes me exceptionally angry.

Um, and I think that anybody who is arrested for solicitation should be put on a sex offender registry for the rest of their life and should have a bunch of other different consequences that go along with it.

Um and so uh I just didn't want to let that moment pass without giving my two cents in there.

Thank you for for for entertaining it.

And thanks, Jennifer.

You say it a little more kindly than I do.

So thank you very much.

Thank you.

Uh Alder Woman Pronti, you had your hand up, correct?

Thank you.

Um a few years ago I had the opportunity to attend a presentation where they um state's attorney at the time talked about um statutes of limitation.

Um as it relates to children and um their opportunity to come forth.

Yep.

Are there any updates on that that you may be aware of?

What is that?

Is there a statute limitation?

Is there an age?

I can't say conclusively because I don't deal in that world all of the time.

I do not believe that there are statutes limitation on child sexual abuse.

I will get you that answer and send you an email and let you know.

Thank you.

Alderman Beach.

Thank you, Madam Chairman.

Jennifer, you know that I support what you do from the beginning.

And when Joe's uh Judge Collins was in office, uh she invited us to come down, and I was attending their meetings for probably two or three years.

Uh, been to do some of the courses, and I appreciate the efforts that you uh do in this area.

Um, but there's a question that's on my mind.

I'd like to present it.

Um, a constituent asked me about this.

But do you know if there are any domestic violent courses and community and continuum educations for mental health license required in the state of Illinois?

I do not know.

Do not know.

Uh if there would that be something you could support?

Yes.

Well, I appreciate that because this is an issue that's way beyond Rockford.

And um you have a lot of insight that would be able to draft some kind of legislation.

Have you ever thought of doing that?

Um I I have not thought of drafting that.

I we are right now um working on some other legislation, but I have not honestly um focused very specifically on the medical school.

You'll remember that we're working with medical students and UIC.

Um we'll be doing our third and fourths trainings with them and students right uh this coming year with the intent to permanently changing the curriculum in UIC College of Medicine to include domestic violence courses.

Um but I would um be happy to um look at legislation around requiring training for mental health professionals.

I would have to leave it to the experts at the uh LRBs with our dealt with our state delegates to draft the legislation.

Um, but I'm certainly happy to have discussions with it uh about it and um take a look at any legislation that's drafted.

Um thank you for that.

Yeah.

Uh also you have a video I think you show around uh two various groups.

I'd like to ask the chair of somehow they could arrange some time for you to bring the video here to this council chamber and show it.

Okay.

Uh I'd like to have the council members see that if they haven't already seen it.

It's very disturbing but very factual to the point.

So if that can be done at maybe one of our retreats or whatever you want to decide.

But um before you leave, I'd like to give you the name of that uh friend that I spoke to uh so you can speak with her as directly.

Okay.

All right, thank you.

If I don't catch you, Alderman, I'll give you a call.

Is that okay?

All right.

Were there any other questions or comments?

Keeping in mind we still do need to hear from Miss Deanna.

Yeah.

It's her first time.

I'm gonna let her get it out.

The floor is yours.

Thank you.

Uh, thank you for the opportunity for being here this evening and for your continued support to the community healing center.

Today I'd like to provide an update and talk about the progress that we have made since launch.

My name again is Diana Hernandez, and I am the project manager for the community healing center.

It is a project within the mayor's office of domestic and community violence prevention this evening.

I'll provide a brief overview, as I mentioned, of all the updates since we launched, um, and I'll share a timeline of our milestones.

Before I begin, I'd like to briefly outline what I'll be covering this evening.

I'll start with a visual overview of the community healing center's progression, highlighting key milestones from our launch to where we are today.

From there, I'll share an update on the work we're actively doing, including our core services and targeted prevention efforts.

I will also provide a focused update on our human trafficking prevention initiatives.

And I'll close with a snapshot of the impact we are seeing as we continue expanding our reach across the city.

To understand where we are today, it's helpful to look at how the community healing center has grown over time.

The federal project officially began on October 1st of 2022 after the city received its award notification in late September of that year from the Department of Justice.

Throughout 2023, our focus was on building the foundation, hiring staff, developing the infrastructure, creating operational systems, and strengthening community partnerships to ensure the center was launched intentionally and sustainably.

From the beginning, our model was designed to be community based rather than centralized.

Instead of expecting youth and families to travel to a single location, we prioritize bringing services directly to them and meet them where they were at, where they already spend their time.

We initially launched pilot programs and conducted outreach and community sites and schools to better understand where needs were most pressing.

As engagement increased and partnerships strengthened, these pilot efforts evolved into sustained on site programming.

On April 11th of 2024, the community healing center officially launched and began direct service delivery at the Boys and Girls Club Centrum Unit off Kilgren Avenue.

As demand quickly increased, we expanded our operations to the strong house on Irving Avenue in August of 2024 and began providing on site services at Washington Park Community Center.

As our partnerships continued to deepen, we established our primary office within comprehensive community solutions off Main Street, further embedding the community healing center within a trusted neighborhood-based organization.

In January of 2025, we expanded again by launching on-site services at Macintosh Elementary School.

During the 2025-2026 school year, we introduced the Youth Advocacy Board, creating structured leadership and civic engagement opportunities for young people across Rockford today.

The Community Healing Center operates as a multi-site trauma-informed coordination hub, providing mentorship, prevention programming, youth leadership development, and connection to essential resources across Rockford.

As we continue this work, we remain focused on thoughtful expansion and partnerships with schools and community organizations as opportunities and capacity align.

Building on the center's progression, I would now like to highlight the work we are actively doing today and why it matters for public safety in our city.

Local police record review has shown that nearly 70% of first-time justice-involved youth had previously been listed in police reports as victims or witnesses of domestic or sexual violence.

This tells us something very important.

Exposure to violence often precedes justice involvement.

We provide service navigation and case coordination, connecting youth and families to mental health services, community resources, and essential supports.

Through navigation, we also coordinate emergency and basic needs stabilization, including food, clothing, hygiene products, transportation assistance such as Uber and Lyft cards, and other supports that reduce stressors that often escalate into crisis.

Our mentorship model is relationship-based and trauma-informed, and really talking to youth at their level and meeting them where they're at.

Many youth we serve have shared that they lack a consistent trusted adult.

We intentionally build authentic relationships grounded in accountability, structure, and respect.

Staff are trained in trauma-informed practice and help youth develop practical skills, including emotional regulation, decision making, and conflict resolution that directly reduce risky behaviors and strengthen long-term stability.

This is exactly what our community asked for in the GAAP document, the need for navigators, credible mentors, coordinated support teams, and youth advisory councils that give young people a voice in shaping solutions.

We provide school-based restorative justice circles and prevention curriculum that address conflict before it escalates into school discipline or justice involvement.

We operate structured drop-in and enrichment programming neighbor in neighborhood spaces where youth already gather, meeting them where they're at rather than expecting them to navigate systems alone.

We partnered with City Foundation to facilitate youth support groups at the Stronghouse focused on emotional regulation and healthy relationships all throughout 2025.

In addition, we invited the Rockford Area Arts Council and to paint our mural with the youth in the Stronghouse Neighborhood.

And additionally, we invited Rockford Bardbell to lead a movement-based program that focuses on social emotional learning.

And we implemented a focused human trafficking prevention and response efforts, which I'll discuss in more detail in the next slides.

During the 2025-26 school year, the community healing center launched the Youth Advocacy Board.

The board currently includes 18 youth representatives from different schools across the city, including Auburn, East, and RESA.

This program provides structured leadership and civic development opportunities, equipping youth with skills in communication, collaboration, public speaking, and project planning.

Participants identify community priorities that matter most to them and engage in local government or community initiatives in constructive and solution focused ways.

They have attended council meetings to observe for now and school board meetings also to observe, but they're very passionate.

One of their top two themes is bullying in schools and in the community and teen homelessness.

We partnered with by any dreams necessary to provide additional leadership facilitation and support as the board was established, helping create a strong foundation for youth voice and accountability, to support consistent participation and reinforced commitment.

Youth receive a stipend for each monthly meeting that they attend.

As we look ahead, we are continuing our collaboration with Bienny Dreams Necessary to support recruitment and onboarding of a new cohort for the 2026-2027 school year, ensuring the board remains representative, sustainable, and youth-driven.

Through this initiative, we're not only elevating youth voice, we are preparing young people to actively participate in positively shaping their community.

Human trafficking prevention has been an intentional and phase expansion of our project.

In March of 2025, we began training staff on the My Life My Choice curriculum.

It takes months to get trained because they break it down into different parts and it's virtual.

And our NetSmarts program at Macintosh, we have 16 youth.

So currently we have 48 youth actively engaged in prevention groups.

We have received 12 since launch.

We have received 12 exploitation and victimization related disclosure through these prevention programming.

Five involves extortion and online exploitation.

One involved commercial sexual sexual exploitation.

And six involved domestic violence or child abuse victimization or exposure.

And I want to highlight that the two of five sex tortion and online exploitation were elementary aged youth.

Each disclosure was handled according to mandated reporting requirements and coordinated with appropriate partners to ensure youth safety and follow-up support.

These disclosures reinforce why structured prevention education and trusted adult relationships are essential.

When youth are educated and feel safe, they disclose, and that allows intervention before harm escalates.

To provide a snapshot of overall impact since launch.

Looks a little blurry, not sure why.

I apologize.

There we go.

Currently, 81 youth are actively engaged.

44% are between the ages of 11 to 17.

And since January 1st, we have welcomed 17 new youth intakes, showing the need and demand for our services and our growth.

In addition to direct engagement, we have made 59 referrals to community-based and therapeutic partners, strengthening coordinated support for youth and families beyond our immediate programming.

I do want to say that a lot of our youth really struggle with therapy or understanding what therapy or counseling is.

And we provide mentorship as we explain to them what therapy and counseling is, what benefits it provides to them, better understanding their emotions and regulating their emotions, and when they are ready, then we refer them to mental health supports.

From a community presence perspective, the community healing center has delivered services across five school and community-based organizations, such as the Boys and Girls Club, Centrum Unit Washington Park Community Center, Comprehensive Community Solutions, Macintosh Elementary, and The Strong House on Irvine Avenue.

Through outreach strategies, we have reached 1,865 individuals since launch.

Outreach includes tabling at community events, school events, partnering with the violence prevention coordinating council to conduct street outreach and go door-to-door in the neighborhood, attending neighborhood gatherings, distributing information and materials to families.

When families express interest, we follow up directly to provide information, assess needs, and connect them to services.

Outreach is not a one-time interaction, and it is often the step in building trust and opening a pathway to ongoing support.

Together, these data points reflect both service death through sustained case coordination, mentorship, and broad community outreach across neighborhoods.

As our team capacity grows, we will be able to expand both outreach efforts and follow-up coordination even further.

In addition to service reach, we are tracking measurable youth outcomes across all reporting periods.

22 youth completed our pre- and post-hope scale assessments.

Of those 12 or 55% demonstrated measurable improvement and hope scores.

We also had 27 youth complete our matched pre- and post program surveys.

The greatest areas of improvement were observed in decision making and hope in conflict resolution.

And decision making increase by 7.6% in conflict resolution increase by an average of 4%.

Decision making and conflict resolution and hope are protective factors directly linked to risk to reduce risk behaviors and lower likelihood of future justice involvement.

These findings reflect measurable growth in the exact skills and capacities.

We intentionally target through mentorship, restorative practices, and prevention programming.

And I do want to mention that we when I I keep saying we meet you with where they're at and speak to them in their language.

But we really really take the time to connect with youth and really learn who they are, their interests and their needs, and we focus on long-term engagement versus engaging them for a short period of time, sending them off.

We really take the time to ensure that they have followed up with services, that they have connected with someone from a different agency or partner organization, and that they have begun services before we begin to slowly um detach, unless unless the youth want to stick around, which we do have a lot of long-term youth since we have launched the community healing center.

The community healing center operates as a coordinated city effort rather than a standalone program.

We maintain ongoing partnership with the Rockford Police Departments, Community Services Unit.

They have been extremely helpful in getting resources to us for emergency situations such as clothing, school supplies, shoes, food.

We coordinate directly with assistant, Deputy Chief Paul Gallagher, and Chief Carla Redd to ensure alignment and prevention efforts and response to youth impacted by violence.

We collaborate closely with the Family Peace Center to support youth and families experiencing domestic violence or teen dating violence.

We also receive case management support and coordination from the violence prevention coordinating council, strengthening multidisciplinary collaboration.

In addition, we participate in joint outreach and community events to increase access to services and ensure families are aware of the available supports.

This coordinated structure ensures that youth are not navigating systems alone and that city departments are working in partnership rather than in silos.

As we continue this work, we are deeply grateful for the collaboration and support of our community partners.

We are also grateful to Youth Services Network, the Family Peace Center, the Westgate Coalition, and to the Mayor's Office leadership team for their continued collaboration.

This work would not be possible as Jennifer mentioned without the strong partnerships across sectors, and we truly value the collective effort that makes this initiative possible and sustainable.

As we look ahead, our focus remains on sustaining and expanding services to youth exposed to violence.

We will continue strengthening partnerships across city departments and community organizations.

We remain committed to being responsive to youth and family needs as they evolve.

And we will continue using data to guide improvement and ensure accountability.

We appreciate the opportunity to share this work and your continued feedback and guidance as we move forward together.

Thank you.

And I will redirect the presentation to Jennifer.

Well, that's the end of it.

Thank you so much.

But I'll turn it over to Deanna for any questions for her portion of the presentation.

Thank you.

Thank you, Deanna, for I'm trying to get this for it.

Just give me a second, then put it down.

Wait well.

First of all, thank you for the presentation.

I just want to validate your work.

I did have the pleasure of having hosting the youth advisory board, YAB, at my office for a few hours.

It was we called it Yab with Gab.

And we talked about I'm just full of funnies tonight.

No times.

But we talked about what it's like to use your voice to advocate a subject that I'm passionate about, obviously, but it was just it was so I loved listening to the youth.

They are full, they are they're intelligent, they were respectful, and they had like amazing ideas, and they they care about this community.

So it was just great to sit with them and hear about the things that concern them.

Um the things that are happening in their neighborhoods, at their schools.

We talked about laws they would even want to pass, and it was just great to talk to them about how they can use their voice and be heard in this community.

And I think that they walked away just feeling like wow, like just feeling more empowered about things that they actually have ability to impact.

So I was really, really um I love to I just loved having them there and just kudos on the program and just continue to do great with that.

So thanks.

Thank you.

Are there other any other questions or comments?

Uh just briefly, I just too want to thank you all for your presentation.

Obviously, I work closely with both of you, um, and it's just it's been a wonderful experience.

So thank you for everything that you all are doing.

Um that being said, I will uh let you go and thank you for tonight's presentation.

Oh, I'm sorry.

Um we do have another question, Alder Woman Ponte.

Uh, my apologies.

No, thank you so much.

Um, you had mentioned that you were doing some project planning, and I was just wondering what projects are there children planning.

Yeah, the youth advocacy board is currently working on a presentation.

Um we have a meeting actually this Friday, and we'll have some community members that will join and be part of the panel.

Um, but they are going to present on an issue that they care about that is here in Rockford, and they are divided into teams, and they have to do their own research.

And we gave them pointers to where they could um get research, and some of you all are part of that research.

Um, but they are to present that project and then think of the next steps and how to take action to making that solution, put it to implement it and put it in place.

Thank you.

Alder Woman Hoffman.

Thank you.

I just really want to commend you for maybe preventing the next generation of abused women teaching girls right from the beginning.

Um that that's the most amazing part.

I mean, I know what you do with the women that are already victims, but maybe if we can stop them from being victims, that would just be so great.

Thank you.

It would be greater if we could stop men from using abuse.

Yeah.

Yes.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Thank you for that.

Um, I just want to take the opportunity to highlight that the reason this violence exists is because people continue to use it as an option.

And primarily that's all due respect to the men in the room, men.

Um, and so I just want to take that opportunity to say that.

Thank you.

Thank you all so much.

Thank you.

Um, Alderman Bill.

Yes.

Thank you, Chairwoman.

Um first, obviously, thank you for all of your hard work.

It's been an amazing opportunity for me to be a part of just some of the great work that you guys are doing at Washington Park, at the Irving Stronghouse, at the Boys and Girls Club.

Um, know that you have a supporter in me.

Um, obviously, like you do, call on me when you need me.

Um, but when it comes to the sustainability of this initiative, um I believe that consistency is important, especially with the individuals that you are engaging with on a daily basis.

Um for either one of you who ever wants to answer.

What does sustainability look like when it comes to a funding uh from from a funding standpoint?

We uh we have every opportunity in the world to renew this grant.

We knew when we got it, we were only one of seven in the country, and we knew we had an opportunity for at least three more years, and then um the federal government fell apart.

Um we have a pending federal grant application that's been pending since it was supposed to start if we would have been awarded it in October.

Um and so we are losing hope that the Federal Government will reconvene about funding this position or this particular str uh program.

And so we are turning uh very aggressively towards state funds.

Uh we actually were just in meetings with comprehensive community solutions about working with them on a million dollar grant through um the R3 program through the State of Illinois where they would get funded um um for part of their I think their alpha program is what they were gonna use it for and then fund the continuation of this.

Um and then we found out that CCS can't apply for it because they're already um receiving different funds from the state that makes them aneligible.

And if we apply for it and let them be a pass-through uh because we're a city, um they look at our budget and we can only get 100,000 for a year, which isn't going to supply much.

Um we have found another grant that we are working on right now.

Um Deanna and her team are working right now.

And by the way, um just really kudos to Deanna and the entire team there.

Um this is a team that looked at a grant and said we're not gonna just let what lives on this paper be all we do.

Um they have it every single turner to corner come to me and say, can we do more?

Can we do more?

Can we do more?

Um so it should be funded.

Um and so we're looking right now, Alderman Bell at state grants to to grasp um that continuation funding, and that's what we're gonna keep turning to.

I'm hopeful um because this is in line with everything the state is doing.

This is violence prevention.

Um and and we have data uh and we have outcomes to show it, and m a lot of municipalities don't.

So that that's our plan right now.

And you s you mentioned October of twenty-five.

Yeah, that's when it should have started.

Okay, so meaning we're right now not funded.

We are funded because we took a shot, we had another year of funding, but when it opened early, we sh we took a shot.

Um and so nobody has heard anything from that.

Yeah.

So right now you have funding up until when?

Up until September 30th of this year.

We're currently in our project extension period.

We already went through our three years of the project period and we applied for an extension and we're awarded that extension.

Um, but it only goes until September 30th of this year.

Gotcha.

We'd love to uh get an update closer to that time.

Um I would be fully in support of um figuring out a way to fund at least the last three months of this year internally from from the City of Rockford to continue this this awesome programming.

Thank you.

Oh, you'll get an email.

Are there any other questions or comments?

Great, thank you.

Thank you.

We'll go ahead and move into tonight's agenda before we do, clerk will you please call the roll?

Here.

Here.

Here.

Here.

Thank you.

Item one uh is an approval of the 2026 funding agreement with the Greater Rockford Chamber of Commerce and the Regional Economic Development Organization in the amount of 75,000 dollars.

The funding sources of the redevelopment fund.

Do I have a motion to approve?

So move.

Second.

Are there any comments or questions?

Alderman Meeks.

My my question is more from the finance department related to the redevelopment fund.

I am wondering how much money we have in the redevelopment fund and if this will keep us at that negative balance we discussed several weeks ago.

So the the redevelopment fund is projected to be in a temporary negative position because of economic development uh projects that have been approved.

Um we do have a significant amount of debt retired this year, and um we believe that negative balance will be resolved, including this agreement um in the budget.

Um that negative balance will be resolved uh by 2027.

This is included though in in the budget.

So what is the negative balance again?

Um I I I can pull that up.

I don't have the number off the top of my head, but I can pull that up and and get an answer for you.

All right.

Uh while she does that, Ms.

Angela, did you have anything that you wanted to add um into context to this?

Most of all um really appreciate your consideration of this uh funding from municipal partners and and government is a common funding way for economic development work.

Finding from municipal partners and government is a common funding way for economic development work.

It's something that we have been slow back to the table since our merger, and we feel like we're more investable than ever now that we've created an economic development roadmap, hired the staff, and have our policies and procedures together to really start to move the needle in marketing the region to targeted industries, doing business retention visits, and breathing more life into the business community here.

Carrie, go ahead.

Ms.

I'm sorry.

Yes.

The balance in the redevelopment fund is projected to go 200,000 negative at the end of this fiscal year.

And in 2027, that number jumps to 1.1 million, and then in 2028, we turn positive again.

And that's based on very conservative revenue estimates as well.

Thank you so much for that information.

Are there any other questions or comments?

Alderman McFronty.

Thank you.

Or do we fund before the merger?

What has been our path support?

That's all.

So the the activities that we're funding tonight or that were proposing this funding agreement were we were funding RAIDAC to do the Rockford Area Economic Development Council was a separate, you know, that separate organization.

So their funding over several years was there was a variety of amounts.

There were several years.

Angela's got it right here.

Early on, we were at higher levels, um, between 200 to 300,000 a year for that activity.

Um it looks like most years, 2012 or 2013 through 2018, we were 150,000 a year.

And then as their activity level went down, we went to 100,000 and then to 50.

Um, but in the more active years, when when RAID AC was a full organization, we were anywhere from 150 to 300.

And now you're asking for 75,000.

Thank you.

Alder Momentorino.

Thank you, Madam Chair, for allowing me to speak on your committee.

Um, I unbeknownst to me, I did not know that this item was going to be coming forward, but I did happen to have a meeting on the calendar with the chamber.

Um so I did meet with Ms.

Larson and two other members of her staff.

And quite quite frankly, I I felt really more confident about giving them this money for a lot of different reasons.

Uh, we clearly see there was new leadership, um, a rebrand, new staff.

Um, they're putting a lot of effort into their marketing.

Um, we have comprehensive plans.

Um, I'm seeing more events in the community.

It just seems like there's a new energy that has been happening at the chamber, and I really like to see that.

So I I will be giving support to this item.

Um, but I did just want to say that because I think we all had questions because we haven't given money in in a while.

And there was just questions about, you know, is this in alignment with well for me?

I want to be giving money now to organizations that I feel are in alignment with where the city is trying to go.

And certainly economic development is very important to me and my ward and to the city overall.

So I definitely will be supporting this when this comes to council.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Yeah, I would um thank you, Madam Chairman.

I I just to add to what Otterman Torina or or maybe expand on, is um we've been working for a while with uh the chamber as they reformed our team and thought about like what is appropriate for them through an economic development lens to be doing for the region, and then how does that um partner with what City of Rockford staff and our economic development staff is doing, and um really feel that they're ready to be the regional voice, and it's a important when we're thinking specifically about primary wage employers that we're we have a focused team looking at um the retention, the expansion, and the attraction of these businesses as a region.

We have um more strength with those larger employers if we're looking at our full employment base with our flow full education base, um, all of those sorts of parts of the conversation, having a regional partner advocating and and getting those um you know it's bids for they're called RFIs, where they're putting them in to try and attract things with the state partners that we have and and using that full scope of again the full MSA or the full region really makes a difference.

And then our staff, the City of Rockford staff, we're reforming and making sure we're aligned to support them in all the work that they're doing to make sure if they bring, like they did about a month ago, brought a company in that was looking at several sites, two in Iowa, two in Illinois, that were available to help them do that marketing day and visit that company and try and really sell Rockford to them specifically.

And then, but we can also then focus our team on implementing the incentive tools, like thinking about where our TIFF dollars are going, thinking about our corridors and the like the corridor improvement program we did for small businesses or the TIF 5050s.

We're really doing implementation and thinking and meeting with and really zeroing in on Rockford.

So they can take that larger lens and really work with the state to bring them in, and we're really actively alongside them, but the strong voice for Rockford in all of it.

So we really feel like this agreement allows us to all like amplifies both our works at the same time, and we feel really ready to work and partner with the chamber on that.

Alderman Bell.

Thank you for allowing me to speak on your committee.

Um I too had the opportunity to meet with the chamber last week.

Um amazing meeting, answering a bunch of questions as it relates to uh where you guys are headed as an organization.

Um I forget I'm I need to ask this question for all of us, but also for for me uh to better understand uh so what other regional uh municipalities are you engaging with for funding?

Can you can you share that breakdown?

Um because I believe in our conversation we are not the largest ass.

Correct.

Um tomorrow we're meeting with the county.

We've met with McChesney Park, and we will be meeting with Loves Park to start, but our plan involves all the municipalities in the county to do funding requests.

Thank you.

And all the women meets so much.

And so I wanted to know there was uh kind of mention of the site readiness reporting.

And so how will that look?

I remember with RAEDC, they used to have uh website and they'd post all their stuff on the website.

Is that the direction that you plan on going?

Is this something we can hold in our hands and take a look at?

I just kind of want to get an idea of how that site readiness process will work because I know how important that is here before the developers come, you know.

Right.

No, so we partner really closely with R1 Planning Council on the infrastructure part of having a site ready.

But then when it is ready to market, right now you can go to uh Rockford Chamber.com under our economic development section and see some of the sites that are currently available uh for marketing.

We have an entire database uh behind that as well, and um meet with R1 monthly to take a look at the sites that are out there, what works being done on them, and um you know, moving more things ready to be marketed.

Do you see that growth happening right now from your perspective?

More sites being readied here in this community.

We hope so.

Um yes, I mean that there's there's right now we've got a lot of sites, whether it be Brownfield or um Greenfield, and it's really generate doing the marketing to generate those leads and get interested companies in here, as well as the ones that are already here.

That's our best bet, the companies that are already here helping them expand.

Well, I just you know, just from my little bit of experience at our AEDC, I know how important this work is.

This is something that I feel like I've been beaten, you know, into the heads of people with the city that we need this representation for our city, whoever's gonna do it.

I never really cared who was gonna do it, but I'm really happy that you guys are doing this work because it's extremely important and necessary.

So thank you.

Alderman Beach.

Thank you, Madam Chairman, for letting me speak again.

So is there a difference between site ready and shovel ready?

That's a great question.

Do you have an answer to that?

Um yes and no, a yes.

Um so site ready for um a developer to consider.

We'd want to make sure that we know our answers for their key questions.

So we wouldn't, so they're gonna ask us about power to the site, they're gonna ask us about other utilities, they're gonna look at the traffic patterns around and what traffic they could bring or not.

They're going to look at environmental issues.

There's a lot of different concerns.

So when we say site ready, we're thinking about what we first of all, we want to be able to present the best information as quickly as possible to them so that they don't have to go find four rivers and Comet and NICOR and all these different things.

We want to be that's the database they're talking about.

So one element of being site ready is just is literally just having it all lined up.

Because we don't we don't have to have every site site shovel ready to attract somebody because they might want to orient some things on a property themselves, right?

But we have to have those answers.

Or how do we look at and and honestly, the like shovel ready is we're doing a lot of that with public works where we're looking at roads when you see us, we've talked about different sites and different grants that we've gotten to maybe improve some things at um the intersection of two and twenty.

There's a piece of land there that we got some grant work and ahead of time to make sure that we could look at maybe the roads.

We're doing a study with some HUD dollars the other side for the other side right down there by two and twenty to think about what we would need to learn to plan for.

We know we're gonna have to do road improvements and some other things there, right?

So it's not that we don't try and get something closer to shovel ready, and so we actively work on that too.

But what we're talking about with Angela is just knowing what's available, what's being marketed, what brokers have out, what we have out, and then understanding the capacities it has currently so that when someone asks, we can say, hey, within you know a year, you could have this up to this speed.

You could put a spec, you could have Comed, you could have whatever.

Well, I appreciate that answer, but when I drive around places other than Rockford and see the building go up, it makes me wonder what they've got going on that we don't have going on.

And if we need to allocate money through CIP or others to get that stuff shovel ready, so when these corporations come in, they don't want to wait around for us to make these uh asked for the different utilities.

Uh some places have uh fast track uh teams ready to go to make sure that if you want to build today, what can we do right now, this moment to help you get here?

And I think that uh in some respects, um uh while a lot of the work you're doing is wonderful, we need to step that game up a bit uh to start tracking.

Now, just recently, 300 and some acres of property bought down Cherry Valley.

Where do they get those leads from?

Why are these corporations coming down there?

Why are they going out to Loves Park and Manchester and other places?

Why not here?

Why don't we build build on the synergy of the airport and the thousands of acres they've got left out there to develop?

I I just I'm just trying to get my hands around this for our city.

And I just feel like we need to maybe get more involved to help you if more money needs to be allocated through CIP.

We need to take a look at that every year when this comes up to to devote some of this money to get some of this property ready, so when those big boys come down the line, we we say which one do you want?

Which it's all there.

The the sewer is in, the water's in, the utilities in, the gas is in.

What do you want us to do?

I don't know.

Am I nuts?

I I appreciate that perspective.

Um so yeah, I'll take the money.

Well, um, so honestly, every every I every year we have a capital approval program.

And I don't I don't recall.

Um that does a great job for us.

There's there, there's no question.

Uh I'm not being critical, while I am in some way saying, do we need to rethink the way we allocate what precious resources we have to attract those large companies to come into Rockford for jobs, growth, and the reduction of property taxes for our people.

So I I would um so I appreciate the perspective, and I'm glad that you want to be aggressive about it.

I feel the same way.

Um so thank you for that.

And what I'd say is first of all, like you have been planning towards this.

It's a slow build because we're a bigger city than all of the all of the areas you mentioned around us.

Um we have a lot more that we deal with.

Um we're just we just have more people, we have more traffic, we have everything.

So you have been approving CIP projects that are contributing towards the build towards getting what we need here in Rockford for primary wage.

When you're looking at the big corridor improvements that you have been doing, and then you've approved water wells.

You've you've really you've approved different things for our our water maintenance dungeons, like water is a huge part of development.

And um, I've learned more than I ever thought I would about what needs to be looped and that kind of thing, right?

Like the you the amount of money that we have been putting into our made our major are I using the wrong terminology, but like their major roads.

Like you have been putting a lot of prep into this.

I want to make sure that you know you have what we're doing right now, and so I think we'll aid in what you want to see ultimately is um asking for funding for a partner who it now has hired some expertise to help us think about the next projects that we're doing.

Like they are gonna be even they're gonna amplify our voice with these conversations and these types of employers to be what like giving us even more information about where people could be where companies could move into Rockford.

So then again, as we're working with public works and they're setting up their projects, um, we can get the right improvements in the right place, like you're talking about.

We're we're on our way there.

I feel strongly that we've made a lot of improvements around the airport.

It's pretty ripe and ready for development.

And um I again take credit.

It's you have been spending money.

It's just a longer build with a bigger city like Rockford.

Um so we're getting there, and this partnership is going to help us again strategically plan the next one to five years of those kinds of investments.

So we get there.

Thank you.

Alderman Derkey?

Thank you, madam chair.

I just have a a quick question.

Um we get rejected by companies that you actively seek and market to.

Do we have uh do we collect data on as to why?

Do we do an exit, in a sense, an exit interview?

And they basically said this is why we didn't do it.

Do we have that as a data set?

For the visits that we've been part of, yes, we absolutely do.

We do it.

So um there's Illinois Economic Development Council, it used to be called Internet Intersect Illinois.

That's part of who funnels some things.

We'll have a debriefing call with them after.

Um it it really varies on the ask.

Um I can tell you we need buildings ready with higher ceilings.

So when we mark when we go out with buildings that we have empty, the ceilings are not often high enough for the cranes, right?

That's a so we we collect information such as that and we think about that.

Um we did some driving around, honestly, to some old industrial buildings on Friday to look and see if there's some that potentially have that kind of ceiling height.

How could we save it and what could we do?

How could we get it ready to Alderman Beach's point?

Like then what's what are the steps to get there?

So we we that's an ex very specific example, but I'm just giving you like yes, we do collect that, and um it will be part of what we're working on with Angelo's team.

So that would be a in a sense, it's a qualitative data set, but you could still use it to be measurable.

So that's not then apparently that's not organized.

It's just a piecemeal bit by bit.

So is have we moved into something more quantitative that's that's in a sense measurable?

And if if that has happened, can is there a synopsis?

What are the top three reasons people reject Rockford?

So we track project all the projects in the region so that we can see you know what we bid on, what we won, what we lost.

There hasn't been a lot of activity in in the past few years, so there isn't a track record, but we we do have that database, we are capturing that information.

So hopefully a year from now, two years from now, we'll we'll be able to share those themes.

Any Alderwoman means?

Thank you so much.

That just reminded me when I heard the word data, because I wanted to ask a question.

Will you with will your organization be able to help us acquire data surrounding kind of workforce development?

I know that for instance uh when we built the casino, we uh collected data related to the number of our individuals that lived in the city of Rockford that worked on that site.

And I think when I read the data, it was around like 17% of the number of people that worked on the casino actually lived in the city of Rockford.

So when we hear that kind of data, it makes it really difficult for me to see us funding, you know, developments and all of these things, and then we're not seeing that return when it comes to the workforce development side of it.

Will your organization be able to help us track that data so that we can get kind of a better handle on that from our city's perspective?

Right now we partner with the workforce connection, they um hold a license to some software called Lightcast.

And so any time we're doing a development project, we reach out to them, they partner with us to share that data.

So you will be able to receive that data.

Okay.

So then I guess for from our perspective, Sarah, when it comes to developments, are we getting that data on all of the developments that we have development agreements with?

And if not, can we make that a requirement?

We can, yes.

So we we do track that um in some of our larger ones.

We've we've looked into that a little bit.

It's not necessarily part of our compliance process.

Like to check on that, but um, but yeah, that would be a great thing, I think, for us to be able to be looking for looking into a little bit more.

That would be helpful.

Thank you.

All right.

Are there any other questions or comments?

Alderman Thumbert.

I guess I'll chime in a little bit.

Uh I I'm excited to see your team being put together.

Um I think it is instrumental that the importance of your organization going out and marketing our community.

Um, I like to say primarily Rockford, but uh you know, we know that when it comes to funding like this and all, we know the government does not produce anything, it's the private sector that is the means of production.

Um but there is an element of government involved that where if we can lace help lay some of the groundwork to attract private investment, the dollar that we spend as government, uh it it goes a certain distance, but not nearly the distance that a dollar spent in private investment, which then produces goods and services goes.

So uh us as a community, we are it's imperative that we have and attract this private industry because we then are able to as much as I don't like the word all the time, taxes, uh, but we are able to capture some of these taxes from uh that private investment, the the goods and services that are produced from that, and it's an ongoing revenue stream, which then go back to our residents in the form of new roads and all the such.

So I'm excited to see your team come together and uh really get out there and pounds of pavement.

Thank you.

It's I'm an impatient person.

Um I've been with the organization only about 18 months, um, but we definitely have built a very strong team, a very stronger systems, processes, accountability.

Um, like I said, we are more investable now than we've ever been.

We'll be even more valuable to you a year from now.

Promise.

Promise.

Are there any other questions or comments?

Clerk, will you please call the roll?

I will thank you.

We have one item under a resolution.

Um item one is a resolution calling for a public hearing and convening a joint review board in connection with a new South Rockford industrial tax increment financing district to have a motion to approve.

So move.

Second.

Are there any questions or comments?

Clerk, will you please call the roll?

Aye.

Aye.

All right.

Thank you.

Second.

Are there any questions or comments?

All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Any opposed, same sign?