The Fiscal Committee of the Board of Representatives held a remote budget hearing to review funding requests from several city-affiliated organizations for fiscal year 2026-27. Co-chair Andrew Zachary opened the meeting at 5:31 PM. Present were committee members Eric Morrison, Representative Le Pine, Representative Bouchard, Representative Graham, Representative Goldberg, and later Representative Dorsey. Note on date discrepancy: The transcript indicates the meeting occurred on Tuesday, April 14, 2026, but the official date provided for this summary is April 15, 2026.
Mayor's Multicultural Council
Stamford Senior Center
Curtain Call
Palace Theater (Stamford Center for the Arts)
Stamford Youth Peace Foundation (Beyond Limits Academic Program)
History Center (Stamford History Center)
Silver Source
All right, let's get started. Good evening, everyone. My name is Andrew Zachary. I'm co-chair of the fiscal committee of the Board of Representatives. It's 5 31 on Tuesday, April 14th, and this is a remote meeting for budget presentation. Present tonight are other committee members, representative and co-chair Eric Morrison, Representative Le Pine, Representative Bouchard, Representative Graham, and Representative Goldberg. And we are ready to go. All right. Thank you. Carmen or Pilar. You're presenting for the Multicultural Center. And promised you'd be fast, so that's great. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. Do you mind if I share my screen? Because I think they'll just help aid us and go a little faster. That's great. Please do. Okay. Could I ask everyone who is not presenting to mute your microphones, please? And you can see my screen. Okay, perfect. All right. Well, getting us started real quickly. Um, quick introduction introduction of myself, Carmen Hughes, Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion for the City of Stanford, and I'm here presenting with uh Pilar Pelez, and she is the chair of the Mayor's Multicultural Council. Um, she just accepted this role um at the beginning of this year. Uh, and really just want to start us off revering us with you know about the mayor's multicultural council. You know, we're really um we're put in place uh well over a decade ago as actually the brainchild of the board of representatives, and really it's there to inform, celebrate, promote, understand, and appreciate and respect the many diverse cultures that enrich Stanford. Um, and really at the top of the page here, what you see is the mayor's unity pledge. I won't read it, but um that pledge really just talks about the fact that Stanford is the 19th most diverse city in this nation, and we truly do affirm that our differences make us stronger, smarter, and more innovation more innovative. And so through the mayor's multicultural council, we really do uplift and um create events where we can celebrate people from all backgrounds, faith, and make sure everyone feels like they're welcome and safe. And here on this page is our chairs of the mayor's multicultural council. Um, and they do phenomenal work to make sure that everything we do is done with in a first class way. Um and really what we're asking for is, and I'll just leave these pages on the screen so that way um you can read it, but for those um who are listening in and can't read the page, I will quickly just read through them. Um our strategic initiative for this year is that um our greatest sense of pride and strength as a city comes from the diversity of our residents, businesses, and and visitors, and celebrating diversity as Stanford fosters unity, inclusivity, promotes understanding, and a richest community, and with hate crimes on the rise in this country. The events of the MMC strives to bring people together through unity, social activities to create a more um harmonious and vibrant environment environment. And I'll just call you to this page here, which really highlights the types of events that we're doing. We're asking for our budget to stay flat to last year, which was $10,000. Um, and you know, I'm not sure how we will do it, but um, I'm sure we will. But our events, our signature events is the um Jazz at the Ferguson, which just happened. The room was full, and we had um JARS jazz artists from all different types of jazz there, and it's a free event. All of our events are free. We have Stanford Day, typically in June, but this year it'll be May 31st. Um, and that's another great event that's gonna happen in um Mill River Park, and it's a day where we truly have all different cultures come out and demonstrate their um their traditions and heritage. Um and we also have vendors that are there. This is the first year where we will have um we'll we will be supporting local businesses, so um, there'll be an opportunity to take advantage of that and shop local, another um important theme for the mayor. And then in September, we always do our rhythm and rumba and salsa, which um it's always a popular favorite that it's sold out that we have to do it twice. Um, and then throughout the year, we are constantly promoting health fairs, flag raisings, um, we're in parades, we're doing different uh cultural events and community events, and we hope that you will approve us to um stay flat as last year because with the um increased demand, our events are getting bigger with rising costs and um with a reduction that we get every year with in-kind donations. Um we will be will need to continue to get creative to make sure that we are able to get this all done with that budget. So with that, I will ask for any questions and I will stop sharing.