I'm gonna start the meeting.

It's 6 30 p.m.

Tuesday, April 21st for the Chess Committee, Community Development, Housing Education, Social Services, State and Commerce.

Welcome everyone.

Hello.

Angie, would you mind uh helping us take attendance?

Sure.

Uh Goldberg.

I'm here.

Uh growth.

Uh present at about two minutes away.

Okay.

Um McEwen.

Present.

Halleck.

Present.

Price.

Present.

Sylvestri.

Present.

Uh Walston.

I don't see her.

Uh I go.

Weirs.

Present.

Okay.

And Jaeger.

Yeager's excuse.

Oh, excuse.

Okay.

You have a quorum.

Hey.

If there's any other members of the Board of Representatives present, uh, please let it be known.

Representative Camporelli's present.

Madam Chair.

Hi.

How are you?

Kendrea's here now.

I'm moving her over.

Okay.

Welcome, Representative Walston.

You are set in.

Hello.

Good evening.

Good evening, everyone.

Good evening.

Okay.

All right.

So I'm going to call the first item.

Chest 32.012 public hearing to solicit public input on the program year 52 community development block grants and home investment partnerships program.

We're going to have Moira Sotch.

Would you like to take it away on this item?

Sure.

Thank you.

Good evening, everyone.

Thank you for joining.

I appreciate that.

I'm Moira Sodge.

I'm the community development administer here for the city.

With me is Anita Carpenter, our grants officer.

And Arnold Canidal is also hold uh online.

Our polygon, he's upstairs.

So tonight we have either two agenda items.

First is I need to discuss with you the city's annual action plan for our HUD funding for the upcoming year.

And then second item is the applications for this year.

So I just would like to give very brief presentation of what we hope to do with this year.

If I can share my screen.

Hold on, let me make you a co-host too.

Hold on.

Thank you, Angie.

Yeah.

And I'll be there visually.

All right.

Okay.

All right.

Bye.

Can you share more or no?

All right, yes.

I'm there now.

Here we go.

Sorry, thank you.

Um, so for our program year 52, uh the reason it's called program year 52 is HUD has been funding the community development block grant for 52 years.

So we will be going into our 52nd year.

So the overview.

So HUD gives these funding, they give two programs, community development block grant and the home funding.

Community development block grant is to support low and moderate income residents of countries, uh cities, counties, towns across the country.

Uh home is specifically same population targeted, but uh specifically to provide housing for that population.

Um so we get this year we expect to get $945,000 total for our home for our CDBG funding, and I didn't do the math for our home, but it's about 400 and change that we will be getting 400,000 in change.

So sorry, I should have had that math with me.

Some of the projects that we funded in the past, I've shown some of you this recently.

We've some of our public service projects again targeted towards low and moderate income residents.

We funded a pantry van for person to person where they bring meals to various locations throughout the town, throughout the county, and provide housing, provide food to people in need, meeting them where they are.

So I think they have one drive next week at a stop and shop somewhere in Norwalk or Darianne.

So they we're providing literally the funding for the van that gets the food to the people.

Another program we funded is the salary of a food pantry manager for the food bank.

Again, food gets to uh residents where they can go there.

They have different organizations go to the food bank and then they shoot the money out to the food or rather two other organizations.

And one of our favorites is the Stanford Veterans Resource Center, it's a new foundation, a new organization that we've started funding about two years ago.

They have various uh veterans can come into it's in the old town hall, they can go in and get uh computer training, job training, um all sorts of sort of social services and supportive services there.

Some public improvement projects we've been funding.

This is a playground playscape at children's learning center over on Hillendale.

We replaced an old one.

Uh that is a uh preschool or I guess a daycare and preschool, so you get infants all the way up to five years of age can go there.

We helped fund a new playscape there recently.

Uh we have funded a generator for Inspirago, which Inspiraco runs a myriad of programs for uh population here in Stanford.

Uh we put up a generator over there on their in their headquarters.

And again, a different CLC location.

Actually, no, the same CLC location.

We funded these new cabinetry over here for their classrooms.

We made some of them are wheelchair accessible, ADA accessible, uh, and those have to be heavy duty because they're being used all day, all year by lots of children.

So that was a that was an exciting one.

Our timeline for this year, our applications have been up.

Uh they all had to be in submitted by the week before last.

We are now reviewing them.

All of the members of the committee have uh access to see them on our platform.

We will be scoring them, and then next month there'll be another meeting where the committee decides how to dole out the community development funding to all the applicants.

We've had 30 applications come in this year from I think it was 26 different organizations.

Um, as always, way more need than we have the funding for, but we will, I know we will do our best to get uh you know get it spent as best possible.

Um after that happens, we will be pushing, we'll be doing appropriations.

The approvals will go through the uh appropriate board of finance and board of reps.

Uh then we will finalize the annual action plan and submit it to HUD by August after all of these approvals have been done.

Um after that, we have a public another public comment period, but public comment period starts today, and then we have another one after in August.

And hopefully, and our plan is October one, we'll start the actual funding for our nonprofits.

So it's a it's a long cycle, and there's a lot of paperwork involved, but I think we handle it okay.

So that's really basically just what I wanted to explain to everyone.

I do want to go over so our funding for this year for community development, which is what we're here about tonight.

Has there it's broken down by HUD regulations for certain things.

20% of it can go to program or should go to program administration.

That'll be 189,000, 124.

Our public services is capped at 141,843.

That's 15% of our total allocation, and then public facilities and infrastructure and housing, which are all the um sort of construction type projects to uh take the balance of that.

So 326,241 for public facilities and infrastructure and 2884 for our housing programs.

Um we I that is our annual, that is our annual action plan.

This will be posted.

The the draft of the plan will be posted on the community development page tomorrow.

There's a 30-day window for public comments.

Um then we get going on that.

So thank you all.

Thank you.

So will we be hearing from the public on this item?

We can hear from the public.

We did get one letter, which I believe you received um from support of uh SPEF.

And that's Beth.

Yes, what's Beth?

Sorry.

Um I don't have in front of me to read it.

I don't know if it's it was submitted.

It was submitted.

You I believe she's on um here too.

Uh you have to open the public hearing, by the way, just to let you know.

We have people on now for the public hearing, correct?

Yes, I I believe Anna was the one that sent the email, but she said she would like to speak.

So I'll I'll put our mic on.

Okay, well, sure.

Um, so are you all finished in from yes?

Okay, so thank you all very much.

All right, we are opening it up for the public hearing now.

Thank you.

Oh, hello.

Hello, Anna, welcome.

Thank you.

Uh hello, my name is Anna Gallegos.

I am proud to serve as the design team uh uh um leadership training institute and the people empowering people program through the Stanford Public School Foundation.

Uh I am here not only to support this program but to speak from the experience about this impact.

People empowering people, that's called PEP is more than the leadership program.

It is in a space where parents, especially Spanish speaking, gain confidence, knowledge, and support step into leadership roles in their schools, neighborhoods, and across the city.

Many of the design team, we are graduates from PLTI or PEP before participating in these initiatives.

We were engaged in our family and communities, but we didn't always see us as leaders.

Uh, and we didn't know how to navigate systems or make our voices here.

Through these programs, we build skills and communication, advocacy and problem solving.

We learned how to work together, lead and take action.

And importantly, for the PEP program, we do this in Spanish.

Um in a space where we felt understood, respected, and empowered.

When one parent becomes empowered, they bring others, they advocate for the children, support the neighborhoods, and help build a stronger and connect communities.

PEP and PLT and PLTI opened the doors for us.

Today, the impact of this experience is visible across the city.

These are not the small roles.

There are positions that shape decisions, influence policy, and strengthened our community.

Graduates are now serving in meaningful leadership roles through the city.

Among ads are members of the board or representatives and elect and appointed positions, presidents of PTOs and leadership in the parent teacher council, serving on the mayor's multicultural console, leading organizations like the Ecuadorian Civic Committee that once I was the president, the Ferguson Library, the Stanford Senior Center, the Hispanic Advisory Console of Creative Stanford, the Stanford Prevention Consort, NAMI, NAMI and the NWCP.

We have even served as a city census coordinators in other city departments.

We continue to hear from community members.

We are ready to this opportunity to participate.

And behind behalf of the design team, I strongly urge you to support funding this program, the PEP program, so that more parents can gain the skills, confidence, and opportunity that we did.

Thank you for your time and for your continuous support and commitment to a strength and need or the Stanford committees.

Sincerely, the 19 members of the design team.

Thank you.

Thank you, Anna.

Angie, do we have anyone else from the public?

Okay.

Linda, there's did she say Linda?

I'm sorry.

I speak later, Anna.

Sorry.

Okay, sorry.

All right.

No other hand is raised.

So that was the only one that sent us a message.

Okay.

So for now, uh Regan, is that what I heard?

Begin.

I'm one of the applicants, so I'll speak later.

Oh, okay.

Thank you.

All right.

So since there's no other hands raised, I will be closing the public hearing now.

Moving on to item two, chess 32.013 public hearing of the year 52, CDBG proposals 26 through 27.

And before we open it up, I just want to do a couple quick reminders.

We will be getting in uh after we hear of everyone, we will be putting in our scores by I think it's May 9.

But I highly recommend just highly recommend doing it as soon as possible in case there's any glitches or you have issues, and it's top of mind.

With that being said, also if anybody has any conflict of interests, um, not only do you have to abstain when you're voting, but there's a section for you to fill that out that you are not putting in a score for that.

But that also means tonight when we ask questions.

Uh, it also means you can't really advocate if there's a conflict of interest as well.

And in general, we can ask questions, but keep them brief because it's three minutes per applicant to speak, and we don't want questions to allow somebody to speak for 20 minutes where somebody else had three.

So with that in mind, let's begin the fine best part of this committee.

Go ahead, Moira.

You have the floor.

Great.

Thank you.

Thank you again.

Um, I'm assuming that most of the applicants are online already.

Thank you all for joining.

Thank you for taking the time to uh submit these applications, and thank you all for the um work that uh oh sorry, do I did I see a hand up?

Representative Walston was that yeah, that was me.

Um I was just thinking about the conflict of interest.

I know that they have to recuse themselves from voting, but are they just are they supposed to be like sitting and listening to their organization, you know, present themselves?

Are they supposed to leave the room or anything?

No, you can sit just um you're just not allowed to advocate because this is a public hearing, so anyone could listen, but you're you shouldn't be advocating for uh any issue that you have that there's a conflict of interest.

But we do have our parliamentarian here if you would like to add anything to that.

I think from a procedural standpoint, there isn't a requirement to leave the room.

Um from an ethical standpoint, I wouldn't think so either.

Okay.

I hope that answers your question, Representative Walston.

Sure.

I'm sorry, Maya.

I feel thank God floor.

Um sorry, I have a question.

Also, oh is this okay.

We're gonna come back to where does anybody on the committee have any questions before we begin?

We need to disclose not at this point.

Not at this point.

Right now we're listening and we're taking our notes, but I was trying to remind people not to advocate because it's a fine line when you're asking questions that it can appear to be uh that you're advocating for them.

Okay.

Any other questions before we begin?

Okay, Mary, you have the floor.

Thank you again.

Thank you.

So I was just as I was saying, I just wanted to thank all the applicants for taking the time and participating in this and for all the good work that you do.

I know uh I've worked with most of you over the last few years, and you really do awesome work for the residents of Stanford, and we really appreciate it, appreciative of all of that.

So uh for tonight's program, we have as I said, 30 applicants.

We broke them into two categories, public improvement, which are construction type projects, and public service, which are more uh counseling sort of uh look less solid, less physical type projects.

Um we're going to hear from the public improvement applicants first in the order in which their applications were submitted, and then the public service applicants second in the order in which their applications were submitted.

My colleague Arnold, who's on the uh screen now, is uh also with us.

He will be giving he will be keeping time.

Every applicant has 30 seconds, 30.

I'm sorry, three minutes in which to present.

Arnold will give a 30-second warning.

Um, and then he will tell you when the time is up.

So please be mindful of your time and of Arnold's uh direction.

Um there's a lot of applications, 30 to get through.

So um thank you all, and and thank you guys to the committee too.

I know this is a long night, so thank you.

Uh so I'm unless there's any questions.

I think we'll just begin with the will you be announcing each absent, and then at the end, are we in between each person allowing just a few minutes for questions?

Yes, I think I think that makes the most sense if after each applicant, if anyone has anyone on the committee has any questions for each one.

Um so we'll begin now with the uh public improvement.

And the first applicant was Abelis, and I believe Nancy Mandia is here from ABLUS.

Yes, I'm here.

Can you hear me?

Yes.

I am so sorry.

My video is not working.

So I am here though.

I'm glad you can hear me, not see me though.

Sorry about that.

Um hi everybody.

Um Nancy Mandia, development and grants manager at ABLES.

And we would like to first thank you so much for the opportunity to apply for much needed funding to benefit our community members.

Um, for those of you who may not know ABELUS, we provide services and supports for over 800 individuals with special needs and their families throughout Lower Fairfield County from birth through their lifespan.

Uh currently we have administrative offices, which um houses our um admin employment, clinical health, and day hab programs in our headquarters in Greenwich.

But um, hopefully you guys know that uh we opened up our second location last year at 78 Harvard Avenue in Stanford, and that's where we offer enhanced services to our community members, and that also houses uh the therapy center that moved from a building previously in Stanford.

Um, able is the largest provider in Stanford supporting individuals with developmental disabilities.

Currently, our residential program in Stanford um operates 36 properties, who uh supports over 80 individuals with varying degrees of independence.

And um we have another additional 42 residential facilities located throughout Lower Fairfield County.

Uh this application currently, able is requesting funding for the renovation of a bathroom for a residents located at 38 Little Hill Drive.

And this is a single family home, and it supports six of our ableist residents who live in this home and have a range of intellectual and both physical disabilities and age ranges from young adults to uh retirement age.

This bathroom currently is severely worn despite efforts to maintain it, and now requires a total renovation to improve the safety and meet the ADA accessibility standards.

The project includes you know, a full demo replacement of the shower base, sink, toilet, um, grab bars, shelving, and um everything needs to be in compliance with ADA requirements.

Uh though these improvements will enhance the independence for our um clients and also um provide additional comfort, ease of use, and um we have some residents that have limited mobility, so this um renovation will um help them tremendously.

And um overall, this project will modernize the bathroom, make it safe, functional, and accessible, and it's uh a fact that ABELES just remains committed to caring for our community members throughout their lives, and this renovation will improve the quality of life for most of them.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Do we have any questions?

See men.

All right, thank you very much, Nancy.

Thank you.

Appreciate it.

I have a question.

I'm sorry, Nancy.

Just a moment for quick question.

Sure.

I want to make sure that I that I understood.

This is a bathroom remote for one of the facilities that serves uh six individuals if I have that correct.

Is that do I have the right?

Yes.

Yes.

That was my only question.

I just wanted to make sure that's you're correct.

Thank you.

Thank you.

All right.

Our next applicant is in Spirica.

And I believe Brett Nelson should be joining us.

Uh I am here.

Thank you, everyone.

Uh, my name is Brent Nelson.

I'm the vice president of operations for Inspiraca.

Thank you for the opportunity to present Inspira's request for funding for a public improvement project that would replace both the fire escape and the ADA wheelchair ramp at the site of Inspiraco's Emergency Women's Shelter.

For those of you who are may not be familiar with Inspira, um, our organization strives to end homelessness and housing insecurity by helping individuals and families achieve stability through support services and affordable housing.

And Spirica serves over 500 people nightly and over 4,000 people a year across our 12 facilities and multiple programs, making it one of the largest providers of services to the unhoused in Fairfield County.

We provide emergency shelter, permanent supportive housing, deeply affordable housing, rapid rehousing services and housing retention services and other support services, including our education, employment and financial empowerment program.

We're grateful for the continued uh support from the City of Stanford and the CDBG program.

Uh in Spirica respectfully requests funding to replace the wheelchair ramp and fire escape at Woodland Place, which is the site of Inspira's women's housing program.

Uh, this program provides emergency shelter and support services for up to 25 single women at a time.

Participants live in a dormitory boarding house style facility with shared bedrooms, bathrooms, and common rooms.

The program serves 30 to 40 women each year.

And Spirica's Women's Housing Program is the only emergency shelter for single women in the Stanford area.

In 2025, Inspiraca had a capital needs assessment conducted on all of our buildings.

And the need for replacing the ramp and the fire escape were among the first priorities listed in that report.

The wood railings on both the fire escape and the wheelchair ramp have deteriorated over the years due to wood rot and require frequent replacement and repairs, and the composite planks on the wheelchair ramp have also become damaged over the years.

Again, thank you for your time and your continued support.

All right.

Thank you, Brett.

Do we have any questions?

I have a quick question.

I'm so sorry.

Could you repeat the address?

Oh, it's 8 Woodland Place, not to be confused with 8 Woodland Avenue.

It's right on the corner of Pacific Street and uh Woodland Avenue.

I'm sorry, Woodland Place.

I confused it myself.

Anyone else?

Okay.

Thanks so much, Brett.

I think we'll see you later.

Yep, see you shortly.

Thank you.

Um next we have uh ARI of Connecticut, and I believe we've uh Gerard Gasparino joining us from ARI.

Yes, thank you.

Uh I'm Gerard Gasparino at ARI of Connecticut.

Uh first, I'd like to thank uh this committee for all their past support to ARI and helping us get a bunch of capital projects uh completed over the years.

Um ARI provides services to nearly 100 individuals with developmental disabilities here in Stanford.

We have uh four group homes, a little smaller to enable us, but we uh we've stayed small intentionally to provide that highest quality of service to our individuals.

Um tonight we're requesting $18,742 to repave uh the driveway at our five Tallyhoe Lane property on the corner of Taliho and High Ridge Road.

Um, you know, as we all know, you know, parking lots and driveways get uh destroyed over the years.

And uh with our aging population and growing need uh with mobility issues, uh, it's it's that time to repave this parking lot and fix things up with drainage and and other things to ensure a safe and uh accessible uh driveway for our individuals.

Um we do thank you for all of your past support and and hopefully we can get this project going pretty quickly.

Uh we're pretty ready to go with it.

So thank you again.

And uh if you have any questions.

Any questions?

A quick one.

Um you had mentioned that 100 individuals that are beneficiaries of the program.

How many folks are living at uh five Talleho Lane?

Yeah, sorry, it is a seven-bed group home.

Uh currently we have six individuals residing there.

We're filling that seventh bed as we speak.

And it is an it is a fully accessible home.

We do have a ramp.

Uh we have had individuals who are wheelchair bound in the home.

Um, you know, so it is it we keep it as fully accessible as possible.

Thank you.

Thanks.

Anyone else?

Thank you very much, Gerard.

Thank you.

Uh, next we have uh Janita Hayes, who will be joining us from Optimus Healthcare.

Janita, are you on?

Yes, I am.

Can you hear me?

Yes, thank you.

Good evening.

My name is Janita Hayes, and I am the grants coordinator at Optimus Healthcare, a federally qualified health center, and the largest provider of primary care in southwestern Connecticut.

And this year, Optimus is proudly celebrating 50 years of service, delivering comprehensive patient-centered care across 24 sites, two of which are in Stanford, and also including 11 school-based health centers.

Optimus serves more than 42,000 medically underserved residents in Stanford, Bridgeport, Stratford, and Waterbury.

We provide family centered primary care, in-person and via telehealth, and offer a full range of services, including adult medicine, pediatrics, OBGYN, dental, and behavioral health, along with some vital programs such as Marion Y HIV AIDS, breast and can't cervic cancer screening, the transitions clinic podiatry, nutrition, acupuncture, and chiropractic services, just to name a few.

Ensuring care reaches those who need it most.

Tonight we are respectfully requesting 50,000, 488,000 in CDBG funding to complete essential parking lot improvements to one of our Stanford sites located at 805 Atlantic Street.

The total project cost is 55,488 with a $5,000 cash match provided by the Optimus Foundation, a standalone nonprofit established to fundraise for Optimus's capital and program needs.

The parking lot serves patients, staff, and community partners, of which 97% of those we serve are low and moderate income individuals.

Over time, the lot has deteriorated, creating safety hazards and accessibility challenges, particularly to our seniors, individuals with disabilities, families with children and patients managing chronic conditions.

Grant funds will be used to fully renovate the lot, improving traffic flow, pedestrian safety, visibility, and ADA compliance while expanding the life of the asphalt.

This project is about the safe and reliable access to health care and not about the aesthetics.

At this location alone, Optimus serves more than 4,400 Stanford residents.

And safe on-site parking is critical to ensure patients can keep their appointments.

This project aligns with Stanford's consolidation plan and 2035 comprehensive plan and can be completed within five days once funded.

And this is an update since our submission.

In conclusion or in closing, this modest investment will restore safety and accessibility at a heavily used community health center, ensuring continued access to essential health care services for Stanford residents.

Thank you for your time, attention, and consideration.

Thank you so much, Janita.

I see President Goldberg has his hand raised.

Yes.

Given the changes we've seen in the health care uh systems, uh, particularly for low and moderate income individuals over the last, well, since the Trump administration came in and made the changes.

Are you seeing utilization go up dramatically at this facility or is it been relatively stable?

Um it has increased over, I would say over the last two years.

I can't give you the exact numbers, but I can definitely assure you that they have been increasing.

Um that's wearing your parking lot out quicker.

Correct.

Okay, thanks.

I yield.

No problem.

Representative Walston has your hand up, and then representative Gross after Walsing, you have the floor.

Um, good evening, Miss Hayes.

Um, quick question.

I know where you guys are located, and I know about your parking lot.

Um are you looking to do like a serious paved job on it or just putting the stripes down?

We're doing a full rehab.

So it we will be um doing the asphalt along with um any um the coding that's necessary along with the striping.

Okay, and you said that um there's a $5,000 cash match.

That is if you get the grant.

Okay.

All right, thank you.

I just want to be sure that was a full thing going on over there.

No problem.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

Representative Gross and then Representative Price.

I uh sorry, what percent of uh like the people who use the facility at this location?

What percent are our low income?

We we have 97%.

That is okay.

Thank you.

No problem.

Gina Hi, thank you for your presentation tonight.

Um, I I'm sorry if I missed it.

Uh can you speak to the size of the parking lot that we're talking about?

Because $50,000 is a lot, and I was curious as to the size of the parking lot.

That is a wonderful question.

I did not mention it.

Um, let me see if I can locate that.

If I can't, is it all right to send you that information?

Of course it is.

Of course it is.

Thank you.

No problem.

See Representative Walson's hand is up.

Is that another question?

I think that was left up.

Representative Walston, is your hand up for a reason?

Quick question.

One more question about the parking.

Um, Mrs.

Hayes, do you guys park across the street over at that um at the other parking lot when it's overloaded with you guys?

Wonderful question.

Our lease with them has actually ended.

Um, and so um going forward, we will during this project time.

Um, if awarded the grants, we will be working with um, I think I believe it's BLT um who has the harbor parking.

And we will also we have a long-standing relationship with Holy.

Oh my goodness, the name is escaping me.

Holy Jesus Christ name of Jesus Christ Church.

There it goes.

Um we also have a long-standing relationship with them, and I know that our facilities folks are going to be speaking to them about whether or not our staff can park there as well.

Okay, okay, thanks.

No problem.

Thank you.

Is that all the questions?

Thank you, Janita.

I appreciate it.

Um next, we have uh the housing authority, otherwise known as Charter Oak, and I believe Natalie Cord should be here.

I'm here.

Thank you.

Um you guys can hear me good, right?

Yes, yes, okay, thanks.

Um, so thank you for the opportunity to print present this tonight.

Um, so we're proposing a security system at Worms or Congregate, which is one of our buildings located at 28 Vine Road in Stanford.

Um it's a 50 unit building.

Um, it was built back in 1989.

Um, and it serves 40 low-income elderly um vulnerable residents at that facility.

Um there is a big need to enhance security um with our elderly.

We have you know some increasing concerns about the resident safety.

Um, so we wanted to uh make sure that they felt safe in their living in their homes as well.

Um the population, as you know, with the elderly, they're at risk for victimization, and there's always safety concerns um in the building and and outside the building.

Um part of the project description is to install the security system, uh, you know, be very strategic in placement of of the camera system, of obviously building entrances and exits, definitely in all the common areas and as well as the exterior grounds, because at um at worms or there is grounds that the residents do go out um in the back and in the front um um when it's weather is nice.

It will have 24 seven monitoring and recording.

Um the grant that we're requesting with the CDBG is 37,884.

Um, and overall that will um improve the resident safety, give them a peace of mind.

Uh we'll will be have the ability to reduce unauthorized access and any incidents that may occur within the property.

And um, you know, I believe a security system is a real strong deterrent deterrent for any criminal activity.

Um so the request of 37,884 will improve the monitoring, create a secure living environment for the vulnerable population at worms or congregate and address any concerns, um safety concerns the residents may have.

I hope I did that under three minutes.

Yep.

Two minutes.

I first have representative price, and then I have representative Celestri, and then QA.

I'd like to just say one thing.

I believe um, I think on this uh spreadsheet that I might have sent you, sent you.

I have a different amount.

I think that was my mistake of 34,000.

We had some questions on entering the budget.

So if I sent you something with 34,000, that was my mistake.

Um they were requesting the seven.

The total request is 37.

The total project was 41.

Yeah, for I don't have it up, but yes, because we're gonna contribute.

We have a match that we're gonna contribute.

Yes.

So they were they were there's a 10% match requirement.

So the 37 uh they're they're entering 3788, and then it's a 37,894 request.

Okay, so you'll and that is corrected in Zoom grants, I believe.

So I'm sorry.

And it's okay.

Uh, representative price, if you have the floor.

Thank you.

Natalie, thank you for your presentation.

Natalie, thank you for your presentation.

There's uh uh a quick actually, I think I might have two questions for you.

Um, leading up to this conversation that you and I are having right now.

Was there an incident that led to this conversation that we're having, or was it a series of incidents?

Can you provide maybe just uh a quick a quick about uh bit of background on this?

Sure, sure.

So um we do not, I mean, the the building itself is uh secured with uh intercom system for buzzing in.

Um we have not been faced with any major um security incidents there.

Thankfully, we're trying to be very much more proactive.

Um, because we do recognize that the elderly are, you know, they are targeted and victimized um all the time.

So we do not have a current incident that have that has occurred in the recent.

We're just being more proactive in um in our approach because we do not have a system at Wormsor Congregate.

I got you.

And at Worms are who's gonna monitor the CCTV?

So we have um we have an IT um, so it's gonna be recorded.

The idea is that this system will record, in addition to we have an IT support staff and we have staff that is on site.

So the idea will be, for example, the the system will be up in multiple computers, even if the staff is not on location, it will be able to be monitored from different locations as well.

Thanks.

And I do want to add one more thing.

We do have um attendants that are in the building as well to help the residents so they can monitor as well the actual camera system as well.

I got you.

And do the tenants live in the building or they just uh come in for a shift?

They come in for shifts.

So they're they're 24-7 though.

So we'll shift them out.

I yield.

Thank you, Representative Price.

I have coming up.

I have Representative Sylvestri, then McEwan, then Walston, Goldberg, and Camborelli.

Yeah, that's right.

One of my questions, but just to verify, it's not replacing any current correct.

Okay.

This is a whole new system.

Representative McEwen?

Thank you.

Uh so for the funding, is that covering both the system installation and any ongoing maintenance or monitoring costs, or is that just installation?

That's that's covering the installation and ongoing cost to it.

Yes.

Got it.

So to the latter for the ongoing costs, how long would this grant cover those types of ongoing costs?

And after that period, does the organization have you anticipated putting that kind of funding in your in your operating budget?

Yeah, we're we're gonna put that in our operating, obviously, the maintenance of the actual system.

You know, obviously there's gonna be times where you need to um, you know, service the system and do all that great stuff to make sure that it's monitoring properly.

Um, we will put that in our operating um budget to make sure we have that in there for that.

Okay, got it.

And and what uh I'm sorry, how long would you say that the portion of this grant for the monitoring?

How long will that last?

That funding last for that portion.

No, I I'm sorry, I might have misspoke.

We are going to do the monitoring for our with our operations.

We're this is really just for the installation.

I apologize.

Okay, so this grant is largely for the cost of installation.

Yes, cost of installation, the purchase of all the equipment and all of that.

Yes.

Got it.

Okay, that's helpful.

Thank you.

I apologize.

No, not a problem.

Uh, and then I think my last question, um, I think you had mentioned that this is a new system for this building.

Do you have similar systems in other buildings with similar amounts of you know low-income and elderly residents?

Yes, most I would say the majority of our other buildings do have a security system.

Um, and this would be the same type of system that we will use um because we know it works well and we're able to to view it in different locations.

It records to um a file, so we'll have that backup information as well if there's any ever any incidents.

So we have used um this type of system in other buildings.

Got it.

Thank you very much, Ms.

Cord.

You're welcome.

Uh Representative Walsin, you have the floor.

Hi, Ms.

Cord.

How are you?

How are you?

Okay.

Most of my questions have been answered, but I just have a uh question about if a resident gets in distress inside their apartment.

Is there something already set up that they can reach out?

The apartment, they're pull courts for distress.

So they're they're actual that's kind of different.

We don't monitor in the units, it'd be it'll be common areas and exterior areas, not in the units, but there is a poll cord system in the units for emergency purposes.

And I can remember um one of the reps he mentioned.

I'm I'm mentioning about security details.

Will there be someone at the door?

Like, is it 24-7?

Do you guys have that security or no?

At Worms are there is an intercom system, but also at Wormsor, um, there is we have attendant cares that is there for they're there 24-7.

So they do shifts.

So there is a able-body person walking around the building, but they're not really security, right?

They're just there to make sure the residents are their well-being of the residents as a release, but they're not security, so to speak.

Okay.

Thank you.

Thank you so much for the answer.

You're welcome.

Senator Goldberg.

Thank you.

I appreciate your recognizing me.

Quickly, have you had a um a security consultant or the police department come out and offer you a um a review of your security protocols and perimeter uh uh security?

And have they come if you have done that, have they commented on your proposed solution?

We have not had the police do uh security survey.

We with our the vendor that we've used in the past, they have made recommendations on the bright setup for security in that building.

Um so I would say yes on the vendor side, no with the no with the police department.

Okay, do we um okay?

And you and I don't suppose you've had any other city department that would be involved in security since you're our uh you know, our official vendor do any sort of assessment or give you any feedback.

The engineering department or the building department, nobody's come out and and looked at it.

No, no, okay.

Okay, thank you.

I yield.

Thank you.

We have anyone else from the committee impressions?

Uh that uh representative Camborelli, you have the floor.

Thank you, madam chair.

Um my first question is I I believe that EMS has a satellite uh office right on the premises, right?

Right in the on the grounds.

Um EMS, you mean the space next door to the Worms or Congregate on Bine Road?

I I I was told that Willard Manor and yours are connected, right?

You're right across from Willard Manor.

Yeah, we're across from Willard Manor.

Yeah, and it's in my district.

And um, we heard from the EMS people earlier on I believe it was the fiscal committee that they have uh a trailer on premises, EMS.

And I know that the police are are generally surrounding there only like two blocks was a satellite office of the police.

So, and with no incidents, I'm just having a hard time understanding why this very elaborate system is needed.

I know you cannot get in the building because I've tried to get in the building several times.

Um it's a buzz in, and there's usually staff 24-7.

Yep.

Um, and like you said, they have the pool cords and everything, and it is right across, it's like in the same complex from Willard Manor.

Well lit, a half a block off a higher edge road.

I would respond by saying I think we don't want to wait for an incident to occur.

Um, as much as we do have uh the staff there, uh, we have attendance there.

Um, you know, the residents are able to walk outside on their own.

They're not required to sign out of the building, so to speak, right?

Because these are able-body elderly residents.

Um so even outside of the premises, if something was to occur, someone may not see it, right?

And we we haven't had an incident, but we don't want to have an incident either that we can't really um protect the the population there either.

So we're just being trying to be more proactive and reactive to um if something was to ever happen there.

But this would only record the incident, it wouldn't prevent the incident from happening or send the police if an incident were happening.

That that's why I'm correct.

Yeah, it records that it records that you have the dot, you'll have the video recording of it if any such incident was to happen.

Um it's not preventative at all.

Um maybe a deterrent, but yeah, I mean, you don't it's not gonna prevent anyone from doing anything.

Right.

All right, thank you.

I yield my time.

It looks like there's no other questions.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Natalie.

Thank you.

Uh we have Brent Bauer from the Family Centers.

Good evening, everybody.

Thank you very much for letting Family Centers present uh this opportunity tonight.

Uh a little bit about family centers.

I am the facilities director.

Um family centers has been around since uh 1891.

Um we use an integrated model to provide uh health services, uh education, and um human resources to underserve families in the Fairfield County area.

Um about a year ago, we purchased the property at uh 986 Bedford Street.

It's right on the corner of Bedford and Hoyt.

Uh it's a three-story building.

Um currently where you doing health uh human services there.

Um family center services uh over 26,000 families a year.

Um out of that, um, about 15,000 are Stanford residents.

Um 76% or 67% of our clientele is low to moderate income families.

Um our services provide a uh a two two part system.

We have our qualified uh federal federally qualified health care systems that includes our school-based health care centers that we have in the middle schools and high schools in Stanford.

Um we just opened last year our uh Turner River uh student-based health center.

Um, and then the second part is our education and uh human services.

We provide daycare, we provide uh education, um, and basically uh gear families to um uh become independent.

The project we're talking about is at 986 Bedford Street.

Um we're looking to do a park or a uh entrance renovation.

The concrete area around the um entrance to the building um is about uh 50 years old.

Uh it's been patched and fixed and and added to, and um what we're requesting uh respectfully um is 72,540.

The total project will be 79,794 approximately will be contributing the 10 percent.

What we're looking to do is um at the property, there's two parking areas.

One is a covered parking area that's under the building, which houses about approximately 12 spaces.

The other part of the parking lot is outside the building.

Um what we're looking to do is is combine access from those two.

Um right now the exterior part is about three to four feet lower than the covered part.

Um we'd sorry, we'd like to alter that so you have ramp access and we'd like to replace all the concrete.

So we have uh ADA access from both parking lots.

Sorry, is there any questions?

Representative Goldberg.

Yeah, so similar to the question I asked previously, given that uh one of your core missions is medical access.

How have you seen your demand for services evolve over the last two years?

And how does this project tie into that?

One of the projects we did at this building was an upgrade to the elevator.

That was one of the first things we did, and we're actually referring a lot of our clients there that have access needs.

Um, some of our buildings, um, we we run a uh healthcare clinic in um Greenwich over on 75 Holly Hill Lane, and that has great access, but some of our buildings are you know older.

So having this type of building and improving the access there, it gives a it gives our our our clients an option.

We're also on the public stop there, um, which has really been great on Bedford Street.

We're getting a lot of public transportation people, which is making it convenient.

Um we have people with walkers, people with chairs.

Um, and it it's been it's been pretty good.

One of the ideas here is that people who park on one part, they have to kind of walk around all the cars and then come up to the uh the inside portion.

We'd like them to be able to just park and go.

Right now there's stairs prohibiting that.

So we'd like to integrate the two.

And have you seen demand for your services change dramatically over the last 24 months?

That might be a little out of my range.

Okay.

I'm I'm working on parking lots and fixing buildings, but uh that building has been really busy.

Okay, thank you.

I yield.

Yeah, of course.

Thank you.

Are there any other questions?

Yes.

Um, uh what I know you mentioned, uh I guess family centers serves 26,000 families a year.

Is that across all locations?

And if so, how many are served a year at this location?

Yeah, 26, yes, 26,000 um clients over our whole operation.

Um it says that um our Stanford residents um last year were 14,400.

We're all of those at this one location.

We we we have that location.

We also have the public school um health care clinics in the middle schools.

We also have the high school um school based health centers, so it's across those locations.

So it's across those locations.

We have, I think there's six middle school locations and two high school locations, plus the Bedford.

So that would be across those, I believe.

Okay, you only have the aggregate, you don't have the individual location.

Yeah, I don't know exactly if you'd like, I could I could talk to the health care director and find out how many clients we are servicing at the Bedford location.

I'd be happy to do that.

Okay, thank you.

Sure.

Hello.

Um, so I I admittedly I'm a little confused on the scope of the project.

So I am so I I see from a quick Google maps, there's the the outdoor portion of the parking lot and then an indoor cover portion.

And it looks like there is like maybe three steps or so that lead into what might be an entrance.

Is that the steps you're looking to eliminate or transition into an ADA accessible entrance?

Yeah, so if you're looking at the outdoor parking lot, there's steps, and it goes to like a patio type area.

Um, and then you have to walk around to the right, and the access is basically right near Bedford Street where you pull into the uh complex off of Bedford Street.

There's about um 75 yards of walkway in front there.

Um, the ADA access, it's it's actually a curved sidewalk, and there's just an asphalt bump that's about three feet wide.

We'd like to reconfigure that so it's you know 10 feet wide and flush with the uh the driveway, and then on the side to the open parking lot, there's about a three to four foot grade difference.

So we'd have to incorporate a long ramp or um actually lower the the the patio a little bit, um, giving access from both sides.

That's the part where I was talking about a lot of the people park outside, and you'd have to walk all the way towards the dumpster area and then up back up the driveway to get to the uh the entrance.

Okay, that's that's helpful for me to understand.

And then um, so the the requested amount for the 72,000 approximately.

Um is that is the entirety that's the entirety scope of the project, or are there other improvements to the parking lot or the building that are being made?

We have a we have another project.

We're we're gonna redo the parking lot.

Um, I don't know if Google Map shows it.

We've been doing uh upgrades since we moved in.

We just did the drainage system in the parking lot.

Um so new catch basins were put in, stuff like that.

The parking lot does need to be repaved, the outdoor portion, but this project would just be the concrete.

Um the concrete, and there is an access panel in the concrete.

Um, I guess it was for uh putting in equipment and stuff in the in the basement.

This is a 1973 building.

That panel is rusted and old and iron.

It would have to be brought out, re-engineered, reinstalled, and this part of this walkway is above the basement, so it's suspended concrete, it's not just laying on on packed earth.

Got it.

So the scope of the project would be kind of redesigning and improving that the accessibility, and then also replacing and redesigning that basement access.

Yes.

Yep.

It would be it would stay the same, but there'll be some engineering in there and it's suspended concrete, it's not just poured.

Got it.

Okay.

Thank you very much.

Yeah.

Representative.

Uh yes.

The um the building are are you do you own the building or are you a tenant of the building?

We own the building.

Uh we moved in not this past November, one November before.

And are there other tenants in the building?

No.

Uh we we occupy the whole building.

Thank you.

Yep.

Any other questions?

Thank you very much, Brett.

Thank you.

Thanks.

Uh, next up, we have Pacific House.

Uh, we have Carmen Cologne uh representing uh requesting for the first one there.

Good evening, uh ladies and gentlemen, and thank you so much for your time.

And um, as was stated, I'm Carmen Cologne.

I'm the CEO of Pacific House.

First of all, let me start.

Can you hear me?

Yes.

I'm sorry.

Let me start by stating that Pacific House has been uh around for over 40 years.

And one of the things that I would like to highlight tonight is the fact that a couple of years ago, we our shelter clients were staying in the shelter for over two years.

To date, we have brought that number down to moving them permanently into housing to 90 days.

Uh, that is a great data statistic because what it means is that we can bring more people from out in the streets.

At the moment, we know that there are about 41 homeless, uh homeless individuals out in the streets.

Men, there are 30 and there are eight women and there are four families.

And I'm uh stating those stats because we are we serve as the point of entry into the homeless system.

That means that anyone going into any of the other shelters in Stanford stops first at our hub.

That's the point of entry into the system.

Individuals and families and single women don't have to necessarily call 211 to access housing.

They can come directly to our hub right on Pacific Street.

Tonight we are requesting uh $50,000 for our emergency shelter food program.

We do spend on a yearly basis about 200,000 in food.

And that's because it does serve for our 72 clients that are in our shelter year long.

And in from December to March, we have about a hundred men that are in our shelter, but we also feed those individuals and families that are coming through our doors in our hub program.

Um so and we are also requesting, we have two requests.

We are requesting $5300 to buy a refrigerator for our food program in our emergency shelter.

I'll open it up for questions, but again, thank you so much for all your support over the course of the years, and we are delighted to make sure that we bring everybody in in the city of Stanford and don't have anyone that without a home around Stanford.

Thank you, Carmen.

Thank you.

Representative?

Thank you, Carmen, for your presentation.

Um, just uh a quick question about the refrigerator.

Uh $5300 is that I'm assuming that's a walk-in refrigerator.

That refrigerator actually is a commercial refrigerator.

It's a commercial refrigerator and it's a Turbo Air Deluxe.

Thank you very much.

Uh can you thanks very much?

You're welcome.

Thank you.

There's no other question.

Representative Gross?

Yep.

Um, hi Carmen, thank you.

Um are you just speaking on the emergency meals service and the refrigerator?

You're not talking about the air conditioning repairs, but we're talking about that later.

Someone else will be Jen Broadburn is here to speak about that.

I see.

Okay.

Um sorry, just because uh you mentioned a few numbers.

How many or the I guess the meal service is that that's at one location?

That is at our emergency shelter on a daily basis.

We have 72 men.

We also have the walk-in individuals that come into our hub requesting shelter or permanent housing.

We are the point of entry into the homeless system from December through March.

We have 100 men every single day.

December through March, 100 men every single day.

That is correct.

We are spending, we are spending close to 200,000 on food on a yearly basis just for our emergency shelter, not for our permanent supportive housing program.

Right.

Does it what's the the emphasis on on men?

Does it only use servicemen?

Yes, our emergency shelter is for men, and we call inspiring our sister agency.

Women go to Inspiraca.

I got it.

Okay.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you.

See, Representative Walson, you have a question?

Yes.

Um, for the emergency food shelter program with the 50,000, is it only for food or is it to go like to help the person who is cooking?

Or is it just strictly food?

It's strictly food.

We do not have a commercial kitchen uh in our emergency shelter.

So what we we do have warming uh what we call there's some warming units, but we do not have a commercial kitchen.

If we had that, then we you know we could hire a person to cook, but it is strictly for the meals.

Okay, when was the last time that the shelter received the refrigerator?

I don't have the exact day because I have been here for two years at Pacific House, but I can get that for you.

But I do know that our shelter that our refrigerator, the one that we have, um, it's in its last leg.

Okay, okay.

And you guys have a working stove that's not on its last leg and all of that too.

We do have a we have warming uh warming centers.

There, there are these units that we warm up food.

Okay, so no cooking facility at the shelter.

We don't have a commercial, we don't have a license for a commercial kitchen.

So you don't have a stove because I don't understand what the warming so you have microwaves.

It what they are is that they are units that you place trace inside of them, like an oven, really large ovens to warm up the food.

They're stainless steel warming stations.

That's what they are.

Okay.

I yield.

Thank you.

Don't see any other questions.

Thank you, Carmen.

Uh and also from Pacific House, we have uh Jennifer Broadbyn on another request.

Uh good evening, everyone.

Um, I don't know why my uh sorry, I'm my video is not showing up.

Um it normally works okay, but uh anyway, so I'm Jennifer Broadbend.

I work for Carmen Cologne.

I'm the associate director of housing development, so I work on the permanent supportive housing uh side of our agency.

Um and as Carmen mentioned, we're 40 years serving Lower Fairfield County primarily in uh in Stanford.

Currently we have 15 properties.

We have 12 properties that are in Stamford, and we're requesting tonight 24,750 to replace five failing AC condenser units at our Spruce Street property.

And this building houses 16 low to moderate income individuals, um, men, uh many who have transitioned actually from our emergency shelter.

Um the current units, they're aging, they're unreliable, and they are definitely creating a health and safety concern.

In this particular house, we have an our oldest resident actually is a 96-year-old man.

Uh, and we also have one blind resident.

So, you know, the units they're they're aging, they're unreliable, and this investment would help stabilize the living conditions for these folks.

Um, they would prevent emergency breakdowns and ensure that our residents remain safe and comfortable in this housing.

Um the new units would also be energy efficient, and they would help reduce our operating costs in the in the building and absolutely support long-term sustainability.

And ultimately, this requests it helps us preserve the quality of our affordable housing for the individuals who have already faced um you know significant hardships.

And so that's what our request is tonight is for um, you know, for 24,750.

And like everyone else, we've got 10% um matching through our operating um, you know, our operating budget.

Um, so I'm just gonna jump in here.

So first I have representative Walston, then Representative Price, and I have Moira and myself to follow.

Do you have a quick question?

Um she said it was five failing.

I didn't get that part.

Five failing condenser.

And how long have you been on this?

Well, in this location on Spruce Street.

We've owned the property, I believe since 2013, and this property itself was built new in 2015.

So it's uh while it's not that that old, I guess, comparatively, if you had your own home.

Um, but I have to say that our our folks uh they're they're hard on everything.

I I don't know how to put it any other way, but um yeah, so uh the units they're like the refrigerator at the shelter, it's definitely on their last leg.

Two of our units are absolutely not working last summer.

If you can imagine, I mean if anyone can remember how hot it was last summer, um, it was uh you know a very difficult summer uh for our residents in that building.

Um we did purchase some window units, which we would put back into our you know our portfolio and use in other locations on an emergency basis, but we would you know, so I I I understand the question.

Thank you.

So the condenser um before you moved into that building or bought that building, you haven't checked the record to see if they replaced it or not before you got there.

No, these were new back in 2015, and I have to tell you we've spent thousands of dollars trying to get these units um, you know, to an acceptable uh to an acceptable level.

And it's just it's in if it's they're it two of them don't work, and the rest of them they're very inefficient.

So that's the reason for our um our request tonight.

Okay, thank you, and I yield.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Representative price put his hand down.

Myra, would you like to go first?

Thank you.

Thanks.

I just have one quick question.

Jennifer, how at this location is this temporary shelter housing or is this permanent housing for these residents?

This is permanent supportive housing.

So our residents, um they have supportive services.

And I don't know, Carmen, did you want to answer that question?

You answered at Brett Landley.

It's permanent housing with services.

Thanks.

And you asked my question, so you can move on.

Oh, two people.

Um yeah, sorry, you might you might have said it.

I'm just how many units are you purchasing?

There would be five units for uh for this particular property.

There's yeah.

Are they are they window units?

No, these would be no, they're it they're central air uh units.

Um, so these would just be the condensers.

I see.

Yeah.

How many, how many uh rooms are at the property?

There's 16 um single room occupancy uh units.

So 16 individuals live there.

Got it.

Okay, thank you.

Okay.

Thank you, Jennifer.

Thank you all.

Have a great night.

Thank you so much.

Um, real quick, uh price, did you have a question?

No.

No.

Okay.

Thank you.

Thank you, Jennifer.

Okay, thank you all.

Have a great night.

Me too.

Next up, we have uh Children's Learning Center, and we have Monica Lucera Flipo.

Hi, good evening, everyone.

Thank you so much for the opportunity.

Um Monica Michera, I'm the CEO of CLC Children's Learning Center.

And I have to say it was lovely to see um two of our previous projects, CDDG funded projects highlighted earlier.

Um really proud that CLC has had such success and demonstrated success in making great use of these public funds in the past.

This this application is for improvement at our 64 Palmer's Hill Road facility.

The um other projects that were shown were at our Hilling Hillendale facility.

Just a couple important details about CLC.

Um, you know, CLC has been operating in Stanford since 1902.

We're about to have our 125th year anniversary.

Um, and we are Stanford's largest publicly funded early care and education program and the second largest um early childhood center in the state and the largest provider of free meals to children under five in the state.

So we serve 800 children each year, and about just to give you a sense of scale, about one-third of every um entering kindergarten class in Stanford Public Schools is coming out of CLC.

So in supporting CLC, we're really supporting the foundation of our educ or K-12 education system.

Um 90% of CLC um children come from low or moderate income families with over 50% um from families that are living at or below the poverty line.

And um 99% of our families are residents of Stanford.

So at our Palmer's Hill location um at 64 Palmer's Hill Road, this this request is to make safety and paving improvements to our play outdoor playground areas, um, despite multiple repairs over time, the paving the pavement um, you know, it's asphalt pavement and it's got cracks and you know, roots growing out of it and things like that.

And we propose to replace all of that walkway area with um cement, which is more durable and will ultimately lead to better safety conditions for kids.

Um we're also planning to add safety gates um to the playground area that will make for better egress during emergency evacuation as well as just safety during outdoor play.

Um we have um this is part of a larger um outdoor play area improvement project.

We also have funding from the Rotary Club to replace, remove and replace um our toddler play areas.

Um and also you may have heard that we are in the process of beginning to build a building next door at 60 Palmer's Hill Road.

It would used to be the family centers building.

Um and part of the vision for that project is that some of these play spaces will be shared between 60 and 64 Palmer's Hill.

So, you know, we're really just getting prepared to be able to safely serve all of our wonderful children um at this location.

So um I will stop there and let's see if you have any questions.

Thank you, Monica.

Does anyone have any questions?

Yes.

Oh, we'll set up our walls to um representative Walston, would you like to go?

Sure.

Hi Monica, how are you?

It's me.

Hi.

Um, how much are you looking for?

Um let me get that exact number.

of our wonderful children um at this location so um i will stop there and let's see if you have any questions thank you monica does anyone have any questions yes oh we also have our walls so um representative walston would you like to go sure hi monica how are you it's meant hi um how much are you looking for um let me get that exact number um all right hold on one second it is 100 and sorry my computer is not letting me see things hold on one second but i can answer i thank you that'd be really great because my computer is not show letting me move i have a hundred and twist one hundred and forty seven does that sound right for total project cost of 14949 yes okay thank you thank you representative thank you so much yes um so you mentioned that there is the uh that the the playground was in or is intended to be a shared space with a neighboring organization if I know it correctly we're building a new building so we have multiple we have six sites across Stanford one of them is at Maple Avenue that is at the site of the future um lower school project that Stanford Public Schools is building so we need to vacate that space in the next couple years so we've purchased the building next door the former family centers building to build a new head start facility so we will be building a new head start facility with new play place spaces as well but in order to serve that many children we need to have um there's very specific guidelines about how many square outdoor footage outdoor play area square footage you need per child so yes we will be you know we're really creating a campus um between those two addresses got it so the the other building is is part of the same organization that's sharing that this playground that's helpful yeah um and so you had mentioned that the the scope of this project includes repavement of the area I think surrounding the park including safety rails as well as any other changes being made not with this funding so it is part um we are we have we've secured funds from the Rotary Foundation to um replay remove and replace some aging playground equipment but this particular funding is really to just redo all of the all of the paving around all the walkways and then put install safety gates safety gates in the in the fences okay all right thank you welcome uh monica I have one question is it gonna be like a rubber based um um playground area like you did at the CLC and Hillendale I'm sorry a rubber replaced is that you rubber based um matting like you know where yeah so the playgrounds themselves have rubber based matting this is the walkways that go from you know from the classrooms out and then once you go outside there each of the individual play areas is fenced in for safety um and then in that space that's all rubberized but we're this is really the all of the access which is to the play spaces and then also for emergency evacuation.

Thank you.

Yeah no worries thank you yeah I I'm sort of just wondering what um I guess like how big is the area on which the work is being done sure um I have some photos if it's helpful yeah that would be good sure let me just pull those up it's multiple playgrounds in one large area I would say it's like about an acre in total of outdoor play space but let me share my screen if I may oh I don't have the ability to share no hold on I'm I'll give you access I'll send I'll do a send request so can you see my screen yes yes okay great so um so this you know this kind of gives you this is like you're walking out of the building and so it's this is walkway that goes all around just shows kind of the outdoor scope as well as some of the cracks so really like you can see the building the in distance you're talking we're talking about like four different playgrounds and the walkways that connect them um all on the inside of our fence that that is um that is to our um parking lot okay thank you that's that's very helpful thanks any other questions monica thank you very much thank you everyone have a good night yeah uh next we have building one community and I believe it's uh Marissa Munoz yes I'm here thank you um if I can have the ability to share my screen as well that would be great I just have a short presentation great all right can you see my screen not yet no there we go yes okay great thank you so much thank you so much for your time it's a pleasure um to present to you today um I am the newish executive director of V1C started a little over two months ago and

Um if I can have the ability to share my screen as well, that would be great.

I just have a short presentation.

Great.

All right.

Can you see my screen?

Not yet.

No.

There we go.

Yes.

Okay, great.

Thank you so much.

Thank you so much for your time.

It's a pleasure um to present to you today.

Um I am the newish executive director of B1C, started a little over two months ago.

And lo and behold, we are embarking on a major renovation project uh starting next week.

Uh this has been in the works uh since last year.

Um thank you, and I'm grateful for my predecessor for planning that, um, but we're so grateful to be breaking ground soon.

Um, just to give you an overview of our organization, uh Building One Community works to uh help integrate immigrants um into the community here.

We provide resources, uh services, um, referrals to the Lord to the immigrant community.

Uh since we started 15 years ago, uh, we have served over 22,500 uh community members, and last year alone we served over 5600.

Our um the services that we provide range everywhere from English language classes, um citizenship classes, we provide uh legal services as well as academic enrichment, uh workforce development, and uh family services case management.

Um, in addition to all of that, um our center, um, we own the building at 417 Chapan.

Here you go.

Uh, we bought it about three years ago, and the goal was to have this be a safe haven, a beacon for our community.

It functions as a community center.

You've given all the programming that we have.

Um, we're open Monday through Friday from 8 a.m.

uh to 8 p.m.

and on Saturdays as well from 9 to 1.

Um, so this was a former bank, as you can see.

Um what we would like to do is extend the first floor out past the drive-thru to get gain some square footage.

Um but overall, the impact is to really increase capacity um with the construction and the renovation project over the next six months.

We will be able to add over the two floors, two more consultation rooms, two more conference rooms, um, an indoor hallway for safety for our participants, um, three more office areas and a staff eating area as well.

In addition to that, um, we will finally have 88 compliant bathrooms, three of them, and an indoor waiting area again for safety for our participants.

Um, as you know, we have a partnership with many uh different food shares and organizations, and sometimes lines can form outside uh for some of our programming.

Um, this will give you an overview of our proposed floor plan currently.

Uh going forward on the first floor again.

You can see the extension on the bottom here that allows for an indoor hallway that leads into a conference room.

We have a larger reception area as well.

Okay, three minutes.

Moving on to the second floor.

Um, you can see we have uh two additional private office spaces as well as client offices to do case management with the privacy needed and an additional conference room and an extended kitchen.

And so that's that's all I have to share.

Um if you have any questions, I'd be happy to answer them.

Okay, thank you, Marissa.

Thank you.

Uh Marissa, I'm sorry, could you please go back two slides to the list of change?

Yes, thank you.

Yes.

No, I'm sorry.

Representative Chris.

Yeah, thank you.

Um what what is the I guess current square footage and the proposed square footage?

Um, I don't have that off the top of my head, but I can get that to you.

Okay.

Um I guess would you be able to share the slides so you have with the grading clock?

Sure, I'd be happy to.

Um, who should I I'll email them to um the person that sent me the request for this um meeting.

Actually, Marissa, if you send ever and any other participants that are answering questions, or if you just want to send that to me, this is me, Moira.

So I'm just uh okay, I'll send that to you.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

And uh Representative Walston, I see you have your hand up.

Yes.

Uh my question is for the record, how much is uh B1C asking for?

We are asking for 80,000.

Okay, thank you.

Any other questions?

Um next we have uh mutual housing, also known as Connecticut Housing Partners.

And I think Monique Moy here.

Yep, that would be me.

Hi.

Hello.

Hello, everyone.

My name is Monique Moy.

I'm the senior property manager for Trinity Park Apartments.

And I want to thank you for this opportunity.

We're looking for funding in the amount of 61,000 for window resealing and a community room heating center.

Our target population.

Um Trinity Park serves 48 low and moderate income residents in Stanford's West Side across 48 affordable housing units.

Most households earn around 60% of area median income with 25% extremely low-income units, households.

Residents demographic, there's 44% Hispanic and 42% African American, with children making up nearly one quarter of the residents.

Families face food insecurity, health challenges, transportation barriers, child care needs, and unemployment with many living one emergency away from homelessness.

There's safe, stable housing is essential to prevent displacement, support education and employment, and promote long-term stability.

The community in this community we're serving.

We also house um the six love after school program, and they also have a summer camp program.

This this project will support um HUD's three core goals: decent housing, a suitable living environment, and expanded economic opportunity.

Stanford has a severe housing cost burden.

78% of low-income renters are cost burdened.

Preserving Trinity Park's deeply affordable units directly supports the city's goal of increasing and maintaining affordable housing stock, especially family-sized units.

50% of Stanford renters cannot afford their rent, and housing costs continue to rise.

In the zip code 06902, the two-bedroom housing wage is $51 an hour, while the average renter earns $22.69 an hour.

Minimum wage workers would need to work $125 hours per week to afford a modest two-bedroom unit.

If Trinity Park units were lost or converted to market rate, residents would have no viable housing options nearby.

This community room supports the after-school program.

And during the extreme cold weather, we had to use space heaters, or we had to close the program because we couldn't provide enough heat for the children.

The funds would support two critical capital improvements.

Exterior window seal upgrades, caulking all exterior windows to reduce air and water infiltration, improves energy efficiency, lowering utility costs, reduces mold risk, blocks pests, and preserves the building envelope.

The new wall-mounted heating system for the community room.

Monique.

Yes.

Okay.

Well, thank you for this opportunity and your attention to my application.

Thank you, Monique.

Thank you, Monique.

Monique, thank you for your presentation and thank you for everything that you do at Trinity House.

Um, I may maybe I missed it.

I was hoping you could help me out.

How many um how many folks do you have living at Trinity House that will be benefited by this project, please?

Uh the 48 units that are there.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Yep.

Um I guess how many mentioned the uh the summer and after school programs.

Are those serving the kids of residents or are they open anyone?

It supports the residents, children in the building.

Right.

And we we've also extended it to our park parkside community directly across the street.

Okay, and those are just those come with living in the building.

They don't have to pay anything extra.

No, we don't charge them.

We fund it for them.

And then they also receive donations.

Great.

And then I do know how many kids off hands are in either the summer camp or the after school programs.

Last year they served um 52 students.

Okay.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

I don't see any other hand raised.

So our final public improvement applicant for tonight is from Ferguson Library.

And I believe we have Chris Vincent.

Yep, I'm here.

Hi, Chris.

Thank you.

Hi, everybody.

Thank you.

Good evening and thank you for the opportunity to speak here tonight.

Chris Vincent, I'm the coordinator of administrative services at the Ferguson Library.

We're asking for $24,000 for a project that'll create an ADA compliant entrance to the Weed and Memorial and Hollander branch of the Ferguson Library located at 1143 Hope Street.

This enhancement will provide for easy access to persons with disabilities who are wheelchair, walker, and mobility scooter bound, as well as mothers with strollers, delivery personnel, and just people with lots of books in their hands.

The project meets the objectives of the City of Stanford's annual action plan, which states expand and improve public infrastructure and improve access to public facilities, especially for LMI patrons.

The Wheat Branch last year was visited by more than 24,000 customers, just under 23,000 of them Stanford residents.

Due to enhanced accessibility, we anticipate a 10% increase in customer usage, many of whom will be low to moderate income and persons with disabilities who did not use the library due to the lack of ADA accessibility.

The weed branch is also directly on the public bus line, which is used by much of the low to moderate income population, not only in nearby neighborhoods, but from other areas of Stanford as well.

The library will promote this new entrance through our website, mailings, and email to alert the public of the new accessibility.

The library provides services such as access to free internet, computers, information and educational opportunities, digital resources, and free programs.

And a large percentage of our customers are low to moderate income who don't have access to these precious resources at home.

The Weed Memorial and Hollater branch is located in a census track that is comprised of 40% 45% minority, traditionally underserved by underserved populations.

These individuals rely upon the library to provide many resources that they do not have access to.

Ferguson Library successfully implemented and closed out dozens of federal, state, corporate and foundation grants.

And I personally have completed a number of capital improvement projects involving Connecticut State Library grant funds and currently working on with the city on an HVAC replacement project at our main library using federal and state um American Rescue Plan Act funds.

So we thank you for we thank the committee for their time and welcome any questions.

Thank you, Chris.

Anyone have any questions?

Yes.

Did you mention during the presentation that for this branch there isn't currently an ADA accessible entrance?

We have a ramp system that comes up to the doors that are on the parking lot.

There's two sets of double doors that are the entrance to the building, but unfortunately both the sets of double doors are manually operated.

One of our librarians who sits in the information as information desk just inside the library branch has to physically get up from her desk and help people in when they have strollers or they have an inaccessibility due to uh wheelchairs and other um uh uh mobility issues.

Got it.

Thank you very much.

Representative Gross.

Thank you.

Um, what sort of I guess services are operated, if any, out of the uh library branch, like I don't know, classes or workforce development or those kinds of programs.

Um out of that branch, there's many of the services that all the branches have for the most part.

Um youth programs, children's programs, um their educational programs, um pretty much everything that's offered at the main branch of the library downtown is offered at any of the branches of the library.

I um with the Ferguson Library, and I just wanted to add a lot of what is happening at our libraries is individual instruction, especially when it comes to a workforce development.

Someone will come in and they're applying for a job, but they don't have an email address.

And then it it turns into a series of meetings around upskilling.

And that occurs at all as Chris mentioned at all of our branches.

Yes.

Yes.

Okay.

Um, how many how many staff are at the We branch specifically?

The weed branch is one of our smaller branches, and you know, when they're smaller, they're efficient.

But um, there's usually at least there's always at least two people there.

We have um one full-time adult services librarian and a part-time children's librarian.

It's super it's managed by um Denise Lyles, who's the director of the Harry Bennett branch as well as the Wheen and Memorial Hollander branch.

And as well as several part-timers, but any at any given time there's going to be two to three people there working.

Okay, that's helpful.

Thank you.

Any other questions?

Thank you, Alice.

Thank you, Chris.

Appreciate it.

You're welcome.

Thank you.

So those were all of our public improvement applications.

Um, so we will now move on to the public service applications.

So thank you again to all the public improvement applicants.

Appreciate your time.

Uh so our first public service.

Do you?

I'd like to make a motion for a five-minute recess.

Um, all in favor.

Oh, wait, sorry, we have a hand raised.

Uh John Gutman, is that on purpose?

Yes.

Can you hear me?

Yes.

Do you have a question?

Yes, I don't know how it's working behind the scenes, but for this next next segment.

Is it possible to give the on-deck agency a heads up when you're announcing the next one?

We could do that.

We could say um who's coming on and then up next.

Yes, exactly.

Okay.

That would be appreciated.

You got it.

And so I have a motion and a second for a five-minute recess for a restroom break.

And I'm gonna do a voice vote.

All in favor?

Any nays?

Abstentions.

All right, that passes.

Um we were all the same.

Well, I was looking at it at the end of my LSO stand up.

Yes.

So oh, uh 30 applicants or split influence.

Public improvement public service.

Well, actually we did 13 because the civic now snuck in their public as well.

They understand the requirements.

Oh, I was trying to find size.

So for all of them, some are some do.

So we have a large funding.

One uh total.

Um, we're gonna start about thirty seconds.

Um just making sure everybody's back, and we said five minutes.

So just so you know the first three that we'll be hearing from are Saint Joseph Parenting Center, followed by River House Adult Day Center and the Connecticut Institute for Refugees and Immigrants.

Okay, we're we're gonna start it back up now.

You have the floor, Maura.

Thank you.

So this we'll start the public service applications.

We have uh eighteen that we did hear from Pacific House already, so we have seventeen left to hear.

So, as I said, our first applicant is Saint Joseph Parenting Center and uh Brian Frenzick.

Our mission is to prevent child abuse and neglect by strengthening families through parenting education and support.

At St.

Joseph Parenting Center, everything we do is grounded in a simple but powerful truth.

A child's well-being is shaped first at home.

Our community invests in schools, after school programs, and early education, and those investments are critical.

However, if a child does not have a stable supportive home environment, those gains can only go so far.

With Stanford, our largest sites supporting about two hundred and fifty families.

In 2025, 72% of the families we served were Spanish speaking.

95% of our parents are below, are at or below the 200% of the federal poverty line, and 97% are at or below 50% of the area in median income.

What makes our work effective is not just the parenting classes.

It's the bilingual case management that surrounds them.

Without someone who speaks their language and understands their experience, many of these parents would never access the services or be able to stay engaged.

Our case managers build trusts.

They help parents navigate complex systems, connect them to food, housing, and mental health care, and support them through some of the most difficult moments of their lives.

That relationship is often what keeps a family stable and what keeps a child safe.

It costs about 3,000 for us to serve a family.

Once a child enters the child's welfare system, that cost rises to more than 45,000 per year.

In Stanford alone, serving 200 families, 250 families represents about 750,000 in prevention services.

If even a portion of those families were to enter the system, this cost could exceed 11 billion dollars.

This is about children growing up in a safe, stable home.

It is about parents gaining confidence instead of fear.

It's about breaking cycles that have existed for generations.

We are requesting 20,000 in CDPG funding to support bilingual case management in Stanford, ensuring that families who need us most are not left behind.

When we strengthen parents, we create safer, more stable futures for their children.

Thank you for your time and your commitment to Stanford's families.

Thank you, Ryan.

And do we have any questions?

I see a few of them.

Ryan, thank you for your presentation and the work that you do.

You said that the 20,000 was to support bilingual services.

Can you elaborate on that just a little bit, please?

So we about 72% of the families that we serve are Spanish speaking.

We offer our parent education in both Spanish and English, with our Spanish classes being the larger of the two.

With an addition to the access to our parenting education, we have each individual family has a case manager who helps uh do a comprehensive intake when they first come to us for services that does a needs assessment and helps keep them engaged to classes and makes those outside referrals to oftentimes the other critical resources their family needs to stabilize.

Got it.

Thank you.

And the 20,000 is that for salaries for case managers.

Where is it my question, I guess?

Yeah.

Yes.

So that would help support a part of the salary of one of our bilingual case managers.

Thank you.

And again, thank you for the work you do.

Thank you.

Um, all right.

Anyone else before me?

That was actually my question.

It was to clarify that we've moved on to the public services.

So if anybody is discussing whether it's going towards salary or other services, um, that was exactly what I was going to bring up.

There we go.

Um, no other questions?

So our next would be uh River House Adult Day Center.

And I believe we have uh DeAndrea Hernandez.

Good evening, everyone.

Thank you for having us tonight and for allowing me to present.

Um, my name is Dee Hernandez.

I'm the executive director of River House Adult Day Center.

We're a medical model uh adult day facility located in Coscob.

We service um aging adults throughout Lower Fairfield County, including Stanford, Greenwich, Darien, New Canaan, Upper Westchester, and some other some of the lower parts of Greenwich that connect.

We, as a medical model, we provide um nursing care, daytime care to our aging adults in the community that come to River House with the intention of keeping them longer at home safely, um, which prolongs or delays the amount of time that it takes before they're they're forced to move into um skilled nursing or some type of memory care facility.

So our main goal is keeping our participants at home for as long as possible by providing safe and efficient uh daytime care for them.

So as a medical model, we pride ourselves on ensuring that all of our staff are trained properly, that they have the ability to service these uh aging adults in place.

We have adults ranging from, I think our lowest right now is 55 up into 102.

Um we work with the families, we present provide respite, we provide medical care on site, such as um medication monitoring, uh vitals, we provide hygiene care and continence care, meals, transportation, and support.

So tonight I'm asking for support for our transportation program.

We do have a bus that we lease out from rideshare that that is funded through Greenwich, the town of Greenwich, and that bus picks up our participants within Greenwich.

We unfortunately have not been able to secure a grant to provide the same type of transportation in Stanford.

We had previously received CDBG funding for a lease for a vehicle, but the funding was never enough to cover the full cost.

So after two years, we ended up returning that lease.

So now we've decided that we're working very closely with Norwich Transit, and Norwal Transit has been providing our Stanford participants with transportation.

Transportation costs are free to our participants.

So River House um carries the burden of paying for transportation.

Transportation is $7 a day per participant.

So for we're asking for $30,000 to help support the transportation program so that Stanford residents can safely and efficiently get to River House and back home on a daily basis.

On the average, 15 clients per day use Norwalk Transit to come to and from River House.

Some days it's 20, some days it's 10.

But on average, it's about 15 participants that we service.

Trying to think what else I want to say in my three minutes before Arnold puts up his little sign.

So we we definitely need the support.

Our families need the support.

We really want to be able to make sure to provide um accessible, safe ADA compliant transportation.

And by using Norwal Transit, we're able to service more participants.

Oh, my time's up.

Sorry.

Thanks, Arnold.

I didn't see the bottom part of the sign.

Oh, we saw the three minutes part.

Um, so that's that's why we're here tonight.

So thank you all for for allowing me to speak.

Thank you, Dee.

Do we have any?

I see a few questions.

Uh sorry, yeah.

Thank you.

Um just so I'm understanding this.

This would pay for a lease to use a bus.

Sorry.

You get like sorry, no.

I was saying that in the past we did receive CDBG funding for a lease.

Currently, we are con we are contracting with Norwal Transit.

They are providing all the vehicles, the drivers, the transportation, and they bill us $7 per participant per day.

That's round trip transportation.

So just as an example for um here.

Sorry.

For 15 participants at five days a week at $7 a day.

That's about $525 per week, um, which totals about $27,000 a year.

The remainder of the money would be used to make sure that the staff are properly trained for um CPR, first aid, ADA compliance.

And then we would uh use the remaining money to assist families who are coming to visit River House that are not necessarily currently participants, but are they looking to join and giving them the opportunity to try the transportation to see if that's the best way for them to um come and go from River House.

Are they are they shuttles that they're using?

I'm trying to just get it.

They have a fleet of um, they have a fleet of ADA compliant vans, truck uh buses.

They're they're all uh C DL driven by CDL drivers, and they're all trained how to deal with uh our aging adults, people with cognitive impairments.

Um they have a fleet.

So it allows us more flexibility.

These the vehicle that we have only seats seven.

So it really limits limits us to the number of people that we can pick up and drop off.

But by using Norwalk Transit, we're able to bring many more clients to and from River House.

And if if for example, my driver is not available to come in one day, we can't provide transportation.

But Norwich Transit has a fleet.

And so we can call them and say, hey, we need Mary Joe and Michael to be picked up today, and they will pick them up, bring them to the facility, and then um pick them up in the afternoon and take them back home.

So it really is a wonderful service, and their staff are trained um to work with our population.

Right.

And so the fleet serves throughout Fairfield County.

It's it's their paratransit.

They have a contract with with Stanford and and up the line, and they are the state-funded paratransit company.

So they provide transportation to aging adults and people with disabilities all throughout Lower Fairfield County.

So I think they service anyone three-quarter of a mile off the post road.

So we are on the post road, so our facility is central to where their drop-off locations are to where it's accessible for them.

And then all of our participants that are in Stanford are in that transportation hub that they can pick up from.

So, okay.

So it would only serve those in Stanford along the post road or three, three quarters of a mile.

Well, if they're in Stanford, it's part of their that's their that's their main transportation hub.

So it doesn't matter that they're off the post road when they're in Stanford.

Um they do pick up.

We have some participants in Greenwich who have had to use the bus on occasion, and they have to be within three quarters of a mile off the post road.

But they will pick up from anywhere in Stanford.

Yes.

We haven't had any issues with Stanford pickups because it is the it's a transportation hub.

So the whole the whole town is accessible.

Right.

And then do you know of I guess how many uh like what percentage of those people are use your facility are from Stanford?

Do you know?

Um 43% of our participants are from Stanford.

Okay.

Great.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Do you have a question?

Thank you.

Hi, Ms.

Hernandez.

Um, my question is uh related to kind of the breakdown of the cost.

Uh so you mentioned that was approximately $7 a day per uh per rider.

Um and at 30,000 and so or 30,000 exactly.

Um yeah, I think you'd also mention there was about 15 individuals per day on average, um, somewhere between 10 and 20.

Yeah.

So I I sent a sec uh supplementary um, well, I I had a additional, there was additional follow-up questions that I answered um through the portal.

I'm not sure if you receive those, but it's 15 clients a day, five days a week, $7 per day is $525 per week.

That totals 27,000.

And then an additional 2100 would go towards staff training, making sure that they're all able to properly um assist the clients on getting on and off the bus.

Um they're all CPR and first aid trained in case of an emergency.

And then the last five uh $900.

Sorry, it's a weird light that I have is making everything blurry.

Um the last $900 would go towards providing an additional 80 plus rides to people who are um one-offs, they might not necessarily always be on Norwal Transit, but if the family can't bring them one day and it's or if we have a participant from Stanford who would like to come to River House for a guest visit, they're not necessarily um already registered with Norwork Transit, but we can get them set up to do pickup and drop-offs for those guest visits until they're enrolled in our program, and then they would be part of that group of people that are being picked up and dropped off.

Got it.

Thank you very much.

That's that's very helpful.

Um, so I guess my question is, you know, the the funding you had mentioned, the math you kind of broke down carries us through for about a year or so.

Um, so what is the plan after that and on an ongoing basis?

Would it be to kind of utilize uh CD uh C D BG funds continuously to fund this kind of program?

Or do you have a plan or a source for other funding?

Um transportation is part of the service uh that we provide, it's part of our daily rate.

So um we use we try to keep our our costs down for our participants as low as we can.

If we are able to secure funding to help subsidize the cost of transportation, it's one less expense that the families have to pay.

Um for a lot of our individuals, when we look at when we assess income, we're looking at the individual.

Um, all of our participants, with exception of one or two are over the age of 65, which makes them fall under the HUD definition for low income.

Um, so the majority of our participants, almost all of them are very low income and they don't have additional funds to help pay and secure the cost of adult daycare.

They can't afford to take Ubers or transportation.

Not only can not afford it, but they can't navigate those apps and the systems in place to help them schedule those things.

So they really do rely on our transportation.

We we use um a lot of our own uh operating costs to help fund the cost of transportation.

We do fundraising.

We we ask our donors to assist with um with any additional expenses that we have.

It falls under our general operating.

So it's a lot of fundraising, a lot of grant writing, and a lot of um event, you know, events within with it for the purpose of fundraising that we we try to raise these funds to help support these families and transportation is one of the biggest things.

Um while there is paratransit in Norwalk for aging adults, a lot of times they are isolated because there is a lack of transportation and handicap accessible transportation specifically.

So being able to utilize this type of service and to be able to work with Norwal Transit to bring our participants back and forth safely really has um changed a lot of lives because it allows them the flexibility and opportunity to get out of their homes and come to a place where they can socialize, where we're making sure that they're eating properly, their medical care is being monitored and taken care of.

And um they're exercising, they're laughing, they're having fun.

And without the transportation, they would be stuck in their homes.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

I think that's all thank you.

Thank you, everyone.

So next up we have uh Connecticut Institute for Refugees and Immigrants, and then following them will be person to person and liberation.

I'm gonna jump in really quick.

Uh, just a reminder for all of the participants when we're answering questions from the committee.

Let's try no it's hard.

We're all passionate um to keep it brief and to the question just to be fair to everyone who went before.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Um so next, I believe uh Chris Altrock from uh Siri Hi, thank you so much for the opportunity to uh share this request with all of you today.

Um Chris Altrock with the Connecticut Institute for Refugees and Immigrants.

I'm the director of philanthropic uh partnerships there.

Siri's been around since um for 108 years.

We have offices in five cities throughout Connecticut.

Stanford is one of those cities.

Uh we've been in Stanford since 1975.

Um, our office there is uh 175 Atlantic Street.

And this request has to do with the immigration legal services that we provide at the uh Stanford office.

Um, as you can imagine, legal services are um increasingly in demand right now among this population.

Uh there's there's tremendous complexity around legal issues for the immigrant population right now with birthright citizenship being uh debated, statuses being removed.

Um I have heard of uh things that are uh will happen or may happen with the Afghan population, Ukrainian population, which there's a very large Ukrainian population there in Stanford, ICE detainments, Connecticut being sued uh for being a sanctuary state, and on and on.

Um and while that's happening, there there are fewer and fewer organizations that are offering um uh low cost and competent legal services for immigrants and and a number of really bad actors trying to take advantage of the people.

Um in addition, these legal services are absolutely vital for sort of the the broader contribution that immigrants make in a place like Stanford because that it it leads to stable employment, stable housing, family neighborhood stability, and and uh providing the pathway for them to live and thrive there in Stanford.

In 2025, we served uh 358 immigrant clients through our immigration legal services uh office in Stanford.

Um, 158, uh 154 of those lived within Stanford itself.

Uh the others were in Greenwich, New Canaan, Norwalk, and Danbury.

These were immigrants, some were refugees, some were foreign-born survivors of trafficking.

Um in addition to providing these legal services, we do wraparound services, so workforce training, uh, health services, English language learning, youth services, and housing.

Uh, we're asking for $15,000 that will help us to serve over the course of this grant, uh, about 400 people through the legal services department there, at least 200 of them being uh Stanford residents.

Thank you, Chris.

Thank you, Chris.

Anyone have any questions?

Representative growth?

Thank you.

Um I guess what roles and like in particular is the money be supporting.

Uh salaries, I guess.

Yeah, this this money would go towards uh salaries, fringe, and and indirect.

So it's it's largely we have two attorneys, two case managers, and an admin person um in our Stanford office.

Okay, thank you.

Representative Walston.

Yes.

Um good evening, Mr.

Altrick.

400 people, you said that this uh 15,000 will help, and at least 200 people from Stanford.

That's correct.

Okay.

Well, where are the other 200 from?

Uh so in 2025, uh, most of the folks that we were serving that weren't Stanford residents were Greenwich, New Canaan, Norwalk, and Danbury.

Okay, I have another question.

Have you applied for grants also in Greenwich and New Canaan and other places too?

New Canaan.

Okay.

And we we did apply to the city of Danbury for uh grants.

Uh they recently gave us 10,000.

Okay.

Okay.

That's good.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

All right.

Thanks.

Representative?

Hi, Ms.

Ralrock.

Um my question is uh similarly similarly, excuse me, related to the destination for the funding.

So you had mentioned that some of the funding will go to supporting salaries for, I think you mentioned two in-house attorneys.

That's right.

And does the organization have or kind of solicit pro bono representation from attorneys in Fairfield County?

Or are the attorneys that are in-house handling the majority of the casework?

We do uh so we do the answer to your question is yes.

Um there are fewer and fewer attorneys who are offering pro bono assistance because these cases often take years, and it's just difficult for uh folks who are doing full-time legal work elsewhere to devote years to cases.

But we we do that as often as we can.

And our our services are very low cost, and if our client can't afford it, it's free.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

And no other questions?

Okay, thank you, Chris.

Thanks.

Uh person to person, uh Ruta Bax.

Ruta, are you on?

Okay, Ruta's hand is raised.

Hi, I am on.

Can you hear me?

Yes.

Okay.

So it seems that um my um my video isn't working, so I'll do my my best to communicate to you verbally.

Um so good evening, and thanks for the opportunity to speak.

I'm the development officer and the grant writer at Person to Person.

We're also known as P2P.

Um, we've been serving uh Stanford uh since 1968.

Um organization-wide, we serve between 25,000 and 28,000 individuals.

Uh about 60 percent of those tend to be Stanford residents.

Um, so as an organization, we address both immediate needs and long-term stability.

So that includes emergency financial assistance, four full-time food pantries, campership programs for the summer, scholarship programs, and our financial opportunities center provides employment and financial coaching.

Um, so 100% of our Stanford residents are low-income, and they're all eligible under the HUD lower middle income national objective.

Um, so you know, we know, and a lot of others have said uh 47% of Stanford households are cost burdened.

Um, and nearly half fall below the level needed in income to meet basic needs locally.

Um, so our clients are mostly working families.

If they face a sudden crisis like a job loss to medical emergencies or rising housing and utility costs, it can really turn, you know, turn it into a uh financial crisis for them.

Um so what we're asking for is $30,000 in support um for our caseworker admin salary who supports our casework team.

So our casework team, um, they're bilingual in Spanish, Haitian Creole, and English, and they reflect the primary languages of the people we serve in Stanford.

Um so a lot of our clients come from diverse uh often immigrant households, and this language capacity sort of ensures uh that they have uh accessible culturally responsive um and community responsive um needs.

Um so the casework admin essentially um is very very important um more than ever in this environment because she manages the application workflows.

She ensures that each case moves efficiently through intake and eligibility verification.

Um she reviews and organizes documentation and ensures that every case meets strict CDBG and HUD compliance standards.

She will also monitor case flow and prioritize so that urgent situations are addressed quickly and appropriately.

So in a high volume role, she ensures that services are not only delivered, but that they're accurate, efficient, and in full compliance with both federal and CDBG requirements.

So in this coming year, we anticipate through the emergency financial assistance program, which is what her case workers do.

Approximately 1700 Stanford residents, all of them low income.

Sorry, interrupt Arnold, you were saying something we couldn't hear you.

Oh, I'm sorry.

Uh what was the is my time up?

Okay.

All right.

So let's try to address it through questions.

If there is anything you didn't hear, I'm happy to supplement.

I see, I'm not sure whose hand that is.

That's hers.

Oh, that's our hand.

I'm sorry.

Thank you, Richard.

I don't uh, oh, Representative Gross.

Yeah, thank you.

Sorry.

How many case managers, I guess, do you have is the most important?

So specifically uh serving uh Stanford clients.

We have three case workers.

They're also welcome to visit the three caseworkers who are in Norwalk, but most of them come to our Darien office and work with the three dedicated um caseworkers there.

So the office, the office itself isn't there, yeah.

Yes, it is.

Yeah.

And like I said, the the clients are welcome to come to Norwalk.

We also have an office in Stanford at uh the members credit union.

So we can also meet with clients there occasionally.

Right.

But you you said though that you served you said you served 65% Stanford residents.

Yes.

And specifically through the emergency financial assistance program.

Uh we anticipate serving about 1,700 clients in the coming year.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you.

Do we have any other questions?

Representative Price for you.

Oh no.

No.

Okay.

I think that's it.

Thank you very much, Ruta.

Okay, thank you so much for your time.

Have a good night.

Thank you.

So next we'll hear from uh Liberation Programs, followed by Wheel at Forward and Domus Kiss.

So from Liberation, uh Richard Leverano.

Hello, can you hear me?

Yes.

Yes.

Awesome.

Okay.

Started my timer.

Good evening, everyone.

My name is Richard Liberano.

I am the director of institutional giving at Liberation Programs.

We are a substance use treatment prevention and community outreach organization.

Started in Stanford in 1971, still serving Stanford in a far greater capacity than we did back in 1971.

Thank you for the opportunity to present tonight.

Tonight we are requesting funding for our integrated mental health services program, specifically part salary of one of our counselors.

So as most of you know, I would assume all, the need for mental health treatment has exploded over the past few years.

And here in Stanford, our existing integrated mental health services program started with Stanford Health back in 2022.

We would have, and we still have this today.

We still have clients come to primary care locations in Stanford in the Stanford Health System and receive mental health care in the same building.

So there's no need to go to another doctor's office.

There's no need to go somewhere else.

You go down the hall and you receive mental health care.

Fewer than 100 clients were served in the first year.

We're at 549 since then.

Over 400 people served between two locations last year.

This program seeks to improve access to mental health care, improve mental health, and provide lasting mental health support with the addition of warm handoffs to liberation programs if an elevation in care is needed.

This grant specifically is going to cover uninsured clients who live in Stanford.

About 80% of the clients who receive services from integrated mental health services are LMI.

And the 150 clients, 125 clients, sorry, that we would serve with this program would all be LMI.

And we would measure based on surveys based on observations from the counselor based on standard assessments.

The goals for 90% of them to improve their mental health as their time with us continues.

A number that we sit above currently.

But as we continue to grow the program, because the need continues to grow, it's important that we keep that base.

So we're not sacrificing quality of care as we're expanding quantity of care.

And we appreciate that we've had past support from CDBG, and we were looking at other private foundations as well.

And we would appreciate your continued support.

Thank you, Richard.

Thank you.

Do we have I see Representative Wilson?

You have your hand up.

Yes, I do.

Good evening, Mr.

Liberano.

Good evening.

Um I have one question about uh the meth does your methadone clinic and the mental health clinic, do they work hand in hand?

They work very closely.

So this program was started for folks who don't necessarily need methadone treatment or treatment for a substance use disorder.

Um substance use disorders and mental health disorders co-occur super frequently, but there are more folks with a mental health disorder than there are a substance use disorder.

So if somebody in integrated services is identified as having a substance use um a substance use disorder, our counselors at the integrated health program who yes, it's it's in partnership with Stanford Health, but they're our counselors can make warm handoffs to uh liberation for either methadone treatment for basic outpatient care for intensive outpatient care if need be.

So they work they work fairly hand in hand.

Yes.

So how long for your clients coming there?

I'm just I'm going to segue to where I'm going.

How long do your clients go to the methadone uh clinic until they're clean, or is this for years and they're still going to the mental health?

So I I always like to, I always like to bring up that we have one client in particular who's been with us since 1992 receiving methadone maintenance services.

And we call it methadone maintenance services because it's a maintenance drug.

It's um it's like how folks take a pill every day for heart disease or taking insulin for diabetes or something, just a common frequent medication that you take to make sure that you're doing all right.

Um, there's folks who need to stay on it for 20, 30 years.

There's some folks who are with us for six months, 12 months, a few years.

Yeah.

So it varies.

We work with people all the time.

They let us know what they need, and we work with them to get them what they need.

Okay, and my last question, you said that this money would go for uninsured clients.

Yes.

I'm kind of concerned with an uninsured client and why are they uninsured?

Uh a lot of clients come to us without insurance because of a lot of barriers to care that they may experience.

A lot of clients who come to us have little to no internet access.

A lot of clients who come to us aren't necessarily working with the state system.

Um, and that could be for a host of reasons.

That could be simply not having the documentation they need to get insured.

That could be a foundational distrust of the system.

We we don't ask them super super much why don't you have insurance?

But if they come to us without insurance and they tell us I need help, we're going to help them.

We have some scholarship funding, especially for our outpatient substance use programs.

Not necessarily that much for this program.

And but we don't ever want to give up that philosophy of if you need help, we're here to help.

So mainly the uninsured clients, just a lot of immigrants who uh not necessarily, not necessarily.

Folks who folks have had their insurance coverage lapse.

They could have lost their jobs and lost their insurance that way and never either um gotten on Cobra for however long or never registered with the state.

There's a there's a whole host of reasons.

We don't ask immigration status as well.

That for a lot of folks, uh, if they are immigrants, um, documentation regardless.

Some folks sort of get scared when that question's asked, so we try not to ask it.

So how do you how do you keep up then with the mental health if you're not asking, you know, uh do you have a driver's license?

Do you have a passport?

So you just randomly helping people and not really getting their name and stuff.

No, we get we totally get names, we get addresses.

Sorry, that Richard, this is Chair Pollock or co-chair Pollock.

Um, gonna try to ask if we refrain from details that aren't specific for what this grant is being asked for, just it is.

Representative Walson, I'm trying to keep it from getting too specific for protection for people involved.

If you can follow what I'm saying, but if you could rephrase it um and ask a question about the specific grants, that would be helpful.

Yeah, I am.

He said that the money is going for uninsured clients.

And if we're going to give money to uninsured clients, wouldn't you like to know uh a roll call of the people who are coming through, but they're not taking any information, like he said they don't have they're not really asking any questions, but where's that?

We're going to give them um grant money.

Yeah, I understand what you're saying.

So if you want to ask them, are you taking through questions or interviews?

But I don't want to get into specifics in the meeting.

I don't think I'm being specific.

All right, please rephrase your question and uh try to answer it towards it, Richard.

If you don't mind, Representative Walson.

I do mine, I yield.

Okay.

Uh we have up next I ask a question.

I have up next, sorry, Representative McEwen and weird and ingress.

Okay.

Thank you.

Uh so my my question is related to the the destination for the fund, the use of the funds.

You mentioned that portion of it is used to supplement the the cost for uninsured individuals.

And I thought you had mentioned, I may have missed her earlier in the presentation that part of the cost was to fund uh part of the salary of a mental health counselor.

And I just wanted to confirm it that both of those were intended uses of the funds.

Yeah, so I I apologize if that was not clear.

The um so the salaries of these counselors, we try as often as possible to bill insurance, so we can pay our counselors, like we can always pay our counselors, but we try to bill insurance for the services rendered, which is the primary source of income for this program.

But to meet the need, we know we have a subset of clients who don't have insurance.

Those are the those are the clients for this specific grant that we're going to be focusing on and providing reporting on the subset.

So the costs that are being subsidized for the audience individuals is the is the salaries of the counselors.

Yes, that's right.

I'm sorry if that was unclear.

No, that might have been me.

Thank you very much.

Is it representative for next?

Yeah, I think I think my question is kind of along those lines and probably really simple to answer.

So um the rest of your funding, I'm assuming 100% of it comes from insurance.

Uh not necessarily 100%.

It is a large, it's we are primarily our revenue comes from fee for service, but it's government grants uh for this program specifically.

We have a few um private foundation partners.

So whether it's build private or public insurance, whether it's grant funding from Demis, the city of Stanford, the the Demon Fund based in Greenwich as a private funder, but funding our whole program.

It's it's a mix and it's a mix that if if you can read between the lines a little bit, there's a reason I'm asking for grant funding for the program.

It's it's just it's difficult to have insurance cover the full thing with where mental health specific rates are.

Okay.

So you're just to clarify, you were specifically applying for this grant to cover uninsured.

Correct, to cover the costs that to cover the costs that we wouldn't receive from giving out uninsured care, uncompensated care.

And then that that funding goes to the salaries of our counselors, pays in part the salaries of our counselors.

So it's to sort of try and recoup some of that because we're doing the work regardless.

Great.

Thank you.

Mm-hmm.

Senator Gross, I think was nice.

Yeah, thank you.

Um are your offices, are they they're in Stanford Health?

We have offices.

Oh, I'm sorry.

Was that the was that the poll question?

They're your offices are are in, are they just in Stanford Health facilities?

Uh the we sh we have offices in the Long Ridge Road Stanford Health primary care location.

And we have, because of the demand for this got so high.

We have a new outpatient clinic.

I can still call it new.

It's been open for less than a year.

We'll call that new, called Pollock Place.

That's at 15 Commerce Road in Stanford.

We now offer after hours care because the Long Ridge Road building closes around when people are getting out of work.

So we now offer care after hours at Pollock Place.

So for Stanford clients specifically, we have two locations.

We also have a third location in Greenwich on Holly Hill, but that's for specifically Greenwich residents and it's unrelated to this specific rent.

Great.

And then I guess do patients do they need because I know you do substance abuse services.

I mean, does there have to is it related in a way, or can anyone use the mental health services?

Anyone can use the mental health services long as they're in Stanford Health Primary Care patient.

Um if you need mental health services and you're a client of ours, we offered mental health services for our clients.

This started as this specific program, integrated mental health started with Stanford Health clients.

So Stanford Health clients receive the integrated mental health services program.

And then, like I mentioned earlier, if a handoff is needed, we can absolutely do that.

And having the space now at Pollock Place to do this makes it so much easier because we can just walk you to building number one and hook up at the admissions counselor and get you in.

If you need methadone, we have a 90 minute intake to prescription pipeline's not the right word, but the process.

There it is.

A 90 minute intake to prescription pipeline.

So process did it again.

So if you need it, it's right there for you.

Great.

And then I mean, well what percent of your patients are insured versus uninsured for the mental health services?

For the mental health services, it's around 60% insured, 40% uninsured.

It's it's a large amount.

Got it.

Okay, thank you.

Um, I think that's all our questions.

Thank you very much, Richard.

Of course.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Uh so next we'll have uh Ed Spilka from Wheel of Forward.

Good evening.

Can you hear me?

Yes.

Hi, so uh thank you very much for the opportunity to present.

My name is Ed Spilke.

I'm a board member at Wheel It Ford.

Wheel at Ford started five years ago and is a pioneering nonprofit lending library for durable medical equipment, DME, assistive technology and related products.

We are redefining the traditional loan closet model by introducing scale technology and reliability.

So just as people turn to a public library branch instead of a book kiosk when they need a specific book, local hospital systems and social service agencies depend on Wheel at Ford for a vast inventory in order to have timely access to essential equipment like wheelchairs, hospital beds, walkers, etc.

Poverty is directly tied to poor health outcomes.

DME is proportionally three times more expensive than prescription drugs due to the lack of insurance.

At the same time, it's made to last for five to 10 years, but it's only used for four months on average, and then it gets thrown out.

So what we do is we collect it before it gets tossed, and then we sanitize it and we distribute it.

When clients are finished, they return it and the process starts all over again.

Our website is translated into six languages.

We use state-of-the-art management systems, and we have over 15,000 items in inventory.

Last year we loaned out 7500 pieces of equipment in Fairfield County.

Stanford remains our largest community, and it's about 20% of the total.

We hope to be helping out approaching a thousand people in town.

And our request for $30,000 works out to a bit more than $30 per person, but we will save each of those clients on average $400.

The benefits are e are easily measured and impactful.

By operating on a never say no basis, we offer a new approach to health equity.

We provide stability and dignity to community members when they are at their most vulnerable while delivering measurable social and financial impact.

And we are green because we keep and have kept over half a million pounds of DME out of the local landfills.

So with your help and continued help, we will be able to provide a unique and needed service to community members.

Thank you so very much.

And I'm happy to answer any and all questions.

Thank you, Ed.

Thank you.

Representative Walston, I see your hand up.

Is that for uh Wheeler Forward or is that from earlier?

No, um it was left up, and I just want to say hello, wheel it forward.

My constituents love you, my constituents love you.

I refer them to you all the time.

Thank you so much.

We're so glad to hear that.

Yeah.

Do you have any any questions?

Representative Price.

Representative Price.

And thank you for your presentation and the work that you do.

Um, I do have a question for you.

When when you do lend out the equipment, how is the how are the costs determined for what you're going to charge people that you're lending the equipment to?

What where do where does how are you coming up with the numbers, please?

So, one, we don't charge anything at all.

So it's free now.

What we do ask for is what we call a suggested donation.

So that if somebody has the ability or the desire to present some funding to us, we're happy to accept it.

And there's actually a chart up on the wall in the Stanford warehouse that shows what the average cost of of a wheelchair is, et cetera, et cetera.

And people can choose to do what they want.

Now, the reason we've taken that model is because we think it's really important.

I know from your perspective and foundation's perspective that we'd be able to self-fund to the extent that we possibly can.

And so we've been working very hard to dial in what the what we should ask, et cetera.

And currently about a third of our revenues come from that suggested donation line.

Thank you.

Representative Gross.

Thank you.

Um I'm just trying to understand the model here.

Are you where do you get the equipment from initially?

So we um collect it from throughout town.

Actually, one of the things we do is on hazardous waste day in Stanford.

We collect at that time too.

Dan has been one of our biggest supporters from the get go because he doesn't want to have the stuff coming in to the landfills.

And so they collect it and we we take it at that point in time.

We have, you know, through social media, et cetera, et cetera.

Everybody, many, many people know that we exist and that we will take this.

In the mornings when we get to our office, there's usually a stack of stuff that people have dropped off there for us to utilize.

We have drives with many of the high schools in Fairfield County, uh, you know, through rotary clubs and the like, they do these collections for us.

And so really about 95% of what we loan out is stuff that we're able to collect from others.

That 5% is one of the essential things is, you know, where when we say we have a never say no basis, in order for the healthcare systems to rely on us, you need to be able to have what they need at that time.

So there are times where because there's a mismatch between what is needed and what we're collecting, we will then purchase from direct from manufacturers at wholesale costs.

But overall, and for the most part, um, it's stuff that we collect.

Are you collecting from mostly like individual donations?

Are there like facilities that you're taking old models from or it's it's mostly individuals.

Um of the old age homes and the like do it.

Uh some of the organizations are troubled and are resistant to donating in large ways because they are concerned that they're taking on a liability should there be an issue.

And so very often, more likely it's on the individual side that we have it.

Um, again, this stuff is made to last for five to 10 years, but it's only used on average for four months at a time.

So it's just it's so inefficient, yet there's such a need for it.

Um, we just have sort of put ourselves in to take advantage of that and kind of arbitrage the difference, you might say.

Right.

And then same thing.

Are you are the people who who you're lending to there?

They're mostly individuals.

Oh, yeah, absolutely.

Um, I mean, I guess when I say that, I want you to understand that discharge planners from the hospitals suggest us to them.

We have relationships with uh almost 200 PTs and OTs who direct their clients to us.

Sometimes they come in to get the specific equipment they're looking for for their clients, but overwhelmingly it's it's individual clients.

Great.

Thank you so much.

Representative Goldberg, you had a question.

I have an RD, Representative Goldberg, and then Representative Lears.

Yeah, thank you.

Um my question was actually a follow-up.

You mentioned that you have drop offs.

Um, it seems like we might take this moment for you to tell us where those of us that might have equipment you could use could drop it off.

So we are located in the back of 48 Union Street.

Um, and so there will be signs that would direct you back there.

But as you go back, there's a loading dock area, and you'll see our our office, and you'll probably see a pile of other things there that people have have beat you to.

Okay, thanks.

Or do you uh my question is about eligibility requirements?

If you if someone needs some gear for a temporary basis, are is there any eligibility?

Not at all.

It's it's free and it's open to anybody who needs it.

And they keep it for as long as they need it.

They return it when they're finished with it.

We then sanitize it and put it back into the inventory system.

They can go onto the website, check it out, come in, pick it up, and and the process just starts all over again.

And and do you make any specific efforts to target people who may struggle with the costs or access to any of these things?

Well, it's clearly the group that we want to work most closely with because the need is so overwhelming in that context.

Um, I think through the relationships with the social service agencies, um, we get it in that context.

Uh, you know, we develop relationships with uh the various housing groups where there are needs in that regard.

Um, sometimes through churches and relationships who've developed there, they will direct um there both their own members and and others from the community to us.

So in whatever way we can help, that's what we try to do.

The the two groups I was hoping to hear were seniors and veterans.

Uh well, so I would tell you that seniors are about 70%, a little bit more even of our clientele.

Um, also LMI are 75% plus of our clientele.

Veterans, I I don't have that number specifically what breaks out there, but certainly again, because we're available to anyone and everyone, very often, you know, the percentages will flaw fall out.

So if they're 12% of the veterans in the area, our clientele might be that or slightly larger.

And my final question is do you take chair lists?

I it depends on the on the nature of it.

You know, we we've learned early on that very complicated, expensive pieces sometimes are problematic because they require too much work and it's too expensive for us.

But um, I think in general, the answer is yes.

Thank you.

That all our questions.

Thank you very much, Ed.

Uh thank you, everybody.

Good night.

We have Domus Kids, and that will be followed by Silver Source and Pacific House.

So from Domus, we have Tom Langan.

Good evening, everyone.

My name's Tom Lang and I am the Chief Justice Officer for Domus Kids.

I am here this evening to speak on our Project New Hope program.

We are asking for 40,000 to support our street outreach workers and also to cover other program expenses, such as uh recreational activities, foods, and youth family relief.

Um the the mission of the the Project New Hope is to end youth violence in the city of Stanford.

So you know, I always set up is like we have a large mission for a small program.

So um we work with young men and women, 12 to 26 years old who are at risk of committing a criminal activity or community violence.

How do we do this?

We meet the young people where they're at.

We work non-traditional hours, weekends, evenings.

Um, our staff starts working when the school day ends when the young people are at the most risk of of getting in trouble or doing some things like that.

So what we consider ourselves is um is violence interrupters.

So um all of my staff who works for work for me are from the Stanford community because of our deep relationships within this community um and being embedded and knowing the families and knowing the kids and knowing everybody.

You know, our philosophy is is when we're around the young people are most likely to not commit any violent acts.

What we do is we position ourselves, we go to all of the basketball games and sports activities, we're at the football games, any community activities that are happening.

There's there's most likely going to be a project new hope staff member there.

Um we uh we can attend those community events.

Um we uh we practice uh a trauma responsive care based in positive youth development and love.

Um what we do is we provide mediations on in the moment.

So if we are at one of these sports activities and we see that something might be about to happen, my staff will intervene and they'll kind of have talk to those young people and split it up and make sure nothing uh nothing happens.

Um we also off operate out of this program in anti-violence, um, which is a program that we run with liberation in the Stanford police department.

We run that out of um, we run that out of the PAL.

So if we get any young people who we think may need that, we'll refer them over to that program.

Um we also domus, as I think most of you know, we're part of a larger organization that's been embedded within the Stanford community for over 50 years.

So whenever appropriate, we'll do those internal referrals to the Domus programs.

A lot of our young people will refer to Domus Works with us, which is our workforce development program, Invictus, which is also our um our re-entry program or school engagement.

Um we we run morning workout programs with with the the young men and women.

So as we try to get them engaged and try to get them charged up, we run a morning workout program.

So our uh so our staff is out there working out with those kids and getting them engaged and doing all those things.

We do recreational activities with them on the weekends.

When you know, we'll say, like, hey, we're gonna go to uh we're going to New Rock City on Saturday night.

They're gonna be with us, right?

So they're not gonna be out in the community, they're not gonna be going to those priorities, they're gonna be out there with us.

We also refer young people to our local community partners.

So we'll do referrals to the boys and girls club.

Uh we'll do all of all of those things with with the young people.

Um so thanks for uh for having me come here tonight.

I I appreciate the the support that we've had with you guys through through the years for everything.

I'd be happy to answer any questions that anybody has on this program.

Thank you, Tom.

Awesome.

It's awesome.

So, Representative Walston, you have your hands raised?

Yes, I do.

Uh good evening.

How are you?

Good, how are you doing tonight?

Thank you for Langan.

At first, you know, um, I used to think that, you know, like I had my own thoughts about Domus and a friend who met one of your guys that came out of there.

He asked me, did I know someone named Deshaun Gomez?

He met him a few weeks ago at work.

And when that young man gave his testimony two weeks ago, my whole mind changed about Domus.

He he is the face of Domus.

And I'm I just want to say thank you for doing a good work in investing in the children.

Really appreciate that.

He yeah, he's a young person who obviously came up through our program.

So thank thank you for saying that.

My mind is changed since since then.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

Um, we're gonna jump in again real quick as a reminder.

Uh questions are great to ask for clarity, but we're not supposed to be advocating during this public hearing portion.

Uh, just wanted to set that as a reminder again.

Thank you.

Do we have any other questions?

Um, Representative Gross.

Um you mentioned uh like like I guess like community sports games.

I mean, what what sort of how do you identify what sort of events to target?

Yeah, so we'll go to like all the local like high school events.

So if there's like a basketball game that's gonna be happening at like Stanford High, West Ohio, we'll look at the schedule.

We'll we'll look at all of those um things.

You know, we'll go to the middle school basketball games.

If we find out about a block party or something that's happening in the community, you know, we like I said, it's a smaller program.

So we really communicate a lot with the rest of the Domus organization.

We serve over a thousand young people in the city of Stanford every single year.

Um, a lot of those staff who work in those programs also work for me in this program part-time.

So we have a pretty good pulse on on like what's happening in the community, and we kind of know is like what events we need to we need to attend and and what we need to go to.

So it's like really communicating across the board um to uh to make sure that we have a staff presence there when when possible, you know, like sometimes we we won't have the staff member there, but uh, but we try to get to all those things.

The salary here is specifically supporting those staff members.

Yeah, so it's split, it's supporting like the staff members, and then it's also support supporting like other program expenses, like I said, to to pay for like uh recreational activities that we're doing, to pay for you know, youth family relief if it comes up, uh, food, like a lot of young people, we feed them.

There's been a lot of stuff that's going on around now around food insecurity.

Um, we we run a small our offices are located at 174th Street, but we're never there, right?

The staff is out in the community, they're out on the street doing the work.

We have a small food pantry there.

We've actually had to spend some money to like supplement that as well because everybody's looking for food.

You know, we have young people who are looking and their family have those needs, and we supply them with that as well.

Um so you put on you said like you rec events, like what other sorts of events does.

Yeah, we'll do like rec events.

We'll do, like I said, we have a workout group that we're doing.

We're we're trying to figure out like a bike club to do with the young people, something that we've been working on like recently.

So we'll do those things with them.

But really, what we've noticed through the years is where we feel we're the best positioned is to be at the these events, to be in the community, to have the pulse on that.

So we do those rec activities, we do all those things, but really where we think we're at, we're at our best is when we're going to like these events, going to like the hot spots, right?

Like we know where the kids are hanging out on the weekends or hanging out in the evenings, and our staff will go to like those events and those areas because that's where we feel like we're at our best doing that, right?

So that's really where we're we're positioning a lot of our our staff.

I mean, sorry for all the questions.

I mean, you you engage with uh like our specific youth, like in your program.

Like what does it mean to be in your program?

Yeah, so we'll get referrals from like the we work closely like with the police department, we'll get like community referrals, we'll get a lot of those things, but but really we'll we'll carry like a small caseload, but a lot of it is just being in those, you know, being in those spaces and being in those areas and then referring them out to the other domus programs, right?

Like so, if we have someone who's at that school engagement, it's getting them connected to that program, and then they can provide those more like face-to-face services with with the young people.

So got it.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Tom.

Um, next up, we're going to hear from Silver Source Inc.

I'm going to ask also if we can keep our oh, I'm sorry, I do see a raised hand.

Uh we I was a little late.

Sorry.

I I did want to ask one sort of uh question to the Domus gentleman, if I may.

Yes.

Um, I know Domus is a very large organization, has a lot of programs.

How do you keep the various grants segmented so that we know that the grant for your program doesn't end up you know supporting, not that we wouldn't want to support all of what that Domus does, but we wanted to make sure that this grant goes to your program as opposed to Domus Kids as opposed to your other uh very good work in the community.

Not questioning your work in the community, just trying to understand how you keep these things from being fungible.

Thank you and I yield.

Yeah, that's a great question.

I mean, it goes it's like um it gets allocated when we apply for a grant like this grant right here is for Project New Hope, all this money will go towards Project New Hope.

Um, if we apply for like Domus Works, we apply specifically for the program.

So even as I mentioned, like we'll refer people to the young pro to the other programs.

This money that we're using is specifically to fund that street outreach worker and the program, the um the other program expenses for this.

If someone were to donate money to Domus and they don't have a specific, you know, they just give a donation of Domus for a thousand dollars to Domus General, that would go into like the Domus General Operating Fund.

But our development team breaks down all that stuff on the specific grants.

That's why I'm here today, presenting specifically for Project New Hope.

I hope that answered your question.

Thank you very much.

Um going forward, if I could just ask if we could keep our questions directed just to the application at hand and our answers, we could type just in the interest of time.

Um, but and if there are any follow-up questions from any of the board members, uh committee members, uh, feel free to email them to me.

You know, the more expansive questions.

Feel free to email them to me, and I will be happy to forward them to any of the uh applicants.

I'm asking you to send them to me just so that this way the answers will get spread among the entire committee.

Um and next up, we're gonna hear from Silver Source and follow, which I had said Pacific House, but we already heard from Pacific House.

So after Silver Source, it'll be in Spirica and New Covenant.

Um, so we have Mary and Delaney from Silver Source.

Good evening.

My name is Marianne Delaney.

I am the chief development officer at Silver Source here in Stanford.

Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak this evening and for your continued support of Silver Source on behalf of the older adults we serve.

Silver source serves seniors in need in Stanford with an average client age of 79, 70% of whom are women.

Everyday Silver Source provides a critical safety net to keep seniors safely housed with the heat and lights on, access to enough nutritious food and the medical care they need.

Our clients are referred to us by Stanford Hospital, Protective Services for the Elderly, Area Medical Providers, the Stanford Police and other first responders, city and state agencies, and partner community organizations who turn to silver source when an older resident is in crisis.

Tonight we respectfully request your support for our uncovered medical expenses for low-income seniors program, a core part of Silver Source's individual assistance program.

This program addresses serious gaps in coverage by helping seniors pay for essential services such as dental vision, medical procedures and lab fees, assistive devices such as dentures, eyeglasses and hearing aids, and high cost prescription medications and co-pays.

For seniors living on fixed and extremely limited income, even modest medical expenses can become overwhelming.

Many seniors simply cannot afford the medical care they need.

This year, Silver Source is requesting $36,500 to assist a projected 165 very low income seniors at an average cost of about 220 per person.

Last year alone, Silver Source covered nearly 100,000 in uncovered medical expenses, and that demand continues to grow as inflation continues to drive up the cost of rent food and utilities.

The choices our clients face between housing food and health care are real and often very terrifying.

We regularly see seniors delay treatment or stop taking prescribed medications because they cannot afford them, putting their health and well-being at serious risk.

CDBG funding has a direct and measurable impact.

Every dollar goes directly to medical providers, no funds support agency overhead or salaries.

All seniors served are living at or below 150% of the poverty line, with little remaining after basic necessities.

We respectfully ask for your partnership in helping Stanford's older residents live safely by removing cost as a barrier to essential medical care.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Thank you, Mary.

Do you have any questions?

Marion, thank you very much for your presentation.

Thank you.

Next up, we have Inspirage.

Brett Nelson, I believe, is here.

Yep.

Thank you again, everyone.

I'm still here.

Um, for our public service grant.

Uh Inspira seeks a program grant of $26,000 to enhance food security and improve health outcomes for low and moderate income families experiencing homelessness by expanding access to nutritious high-quality meals at our Triage Center.

Launched in January of 2025, the Triage Center provides immediate low barrier overnight shelter for families who would otherwise remain unsheltered due to capacity limitations in Stanford's emergency shelter system.

And Spirikus Triage Center primarily serves OMI households, that's low and medium income households, including families sleeping in vehicles or in other safe, unsafe environments.

Typical night, 15 to 20 individuals are served with demand increasing during the colder months.

In 2025, the Triage Center assisted 106 families, including 162 children.

Access to the Triage Center is coordinated through the Fairfield County's Coordinated Access Network, that's the CAN, in partnership with 211, ensuring equitable and prioritized access for those with the highest need.

To date, 46 of those families that we've served in our Triar Center have transitioned into Inspiracas residential programs that are on their way to permanent uh housing.

In addition to safe overnight accommodations and essential supplies, the Trios Center provides light touch case management and referrals to housing and supportive services, contributing to positive housing outcomes.

Additionally, while current services include a light dinner, breakfast, and takeaway lunch, these meals are limited in nutritional value.

Many participants, particularly children, lack consistent access to balanced meals, which can negatively impact health stability and engagement in services.

CDBG funding will support a strategic enhancement to this course service by enabling Inspiraca to provide approximately 50 nutritious chef prepared meals per week through a partnership with Cook Unity.

Cook Unity offers fresh, ready-to-eat meals that meet diverse dietary needs and emphasize quality, portion control, and nutritional balance.

This partnership will ensure reliable, consistent meal delivery aligned with the needs of families in crisis.

Thank you again for your time and your support.

Thanks, Brett.

Thank you, Brett.

Do we have any questions?

Okay, thank you very much.

All right.

Have a good night, everyone.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you.

Good night.

After that, we have uh New Covenant Center, John Gutman.

John?

Yes, I am there.

I'm trying to get on the video now.

It's not working for me either.

Very odd.

We can hear you fine.

Okay, very good.

I will uh start right now.

So I'm John Gutman, the director of Stanford Area Programs for Catholic Charities of Fairfield County.

Thank you to the chess committee of the Stanford Board of Representatives for considering New Covenants total request for $20,000.

Many of you will know us as the only soup kitchen within 10 miles of Stanford that is open every day, 365 days a year, providing lunch on seven days, dinner on six, and breakfast five times per week.

We average about 400 to 450 meals a day, both in-house and to partners like Pacific House and in Spirica.

We also distribute groceries three to four times a week in our food pantry to over 700 families and 1,500 individuals each month.

And between these two food programs, New Covenant Center provides 600,000 meals annually to low-income people, almost 100% of them living below the poverty line.

Our cost to purchase healthy food for both food programs is projected to be $50,000.

And we respectfully request $10,000 toward that expense.

Our second request is for $10,000 as well.

And this would support the hiring and part of the salary of a second case manager for our hugely important case management program.

We did not participate in the CDBG program the previous year, but in CDBG Year 50, we were awarded $5,000 toward the salary of our first full-time case manager, which was very much appreciated.

In the past two years, this case manager provided critical wraparound services like housing assistance and placement, job skills and job placement, and hundreds of referrals a month in areas such as mental and behavioral health and medical eye and dental services.

We recently placed two of our guests at Wegmans on the Darian Norwalk border, as well as the Sachs Offith store in Stanford.

In the last year, we placed seven people in supportive housing in addition to the dozens of placements we make in the Pacific House and in Spirica House emergency shelters.

Our case managers are trusted by our guests and clients, and we have established many partnerships with other nonprofits who are unified with us and one another to make a real difference in the lives of people who have the greatest needs.

For this to continue, we respectfully ask the Board of Representatives to consider and support our request of $20,000 to continue helping to create those paths of sustainability at New Covenant Center.

Thank you.

Thanks, John.

Thanks, John.

Do we have any questions?

See no hands.

Thank you very much, John.

You're welcome.

Thanks, and we're going to hear from uh SPF, followed by uh United Way and Women's Mentoring Network.

From SPEF, I think we have Regan Allen.

Yes.

Hi, everybody.

My name's Regan Allen, and I'm here on behalf of the Stanford Public Education Foundation, also known as SPEF.

Thank you for your service and for the opportunity to present our request for funding for our people empowering people program, also known as PEP.

SPAF has served Stanford for over 30 years, supporting students and families so every child can succeed.

In addition to PEP, we run school-based mentoring, kindergarten readiness programs and tutoring and support for newly arrived students.

Across all our work, our focus is on removing barriers and expanding opportunity for Stanford families.

A key part of that work is ensuring that parents, especially those who have been under underrepresented, have the tools to engage, lead, and advocate.

And that is exactly what PEP does.

PEP is a free 10-week leadership program for Spanish-speaking parents and caregivers, and it's delivered entirely in Spanish.

Participants build skills in communication, problem solving, and leadership, and then apply those skills by planning and carrying out real community projects.

For many, this is the first time they see themselves as leaders.

The need for this program is clear, clear.

While more than half of Stanford public school students are Hispanic or Latino, and over 40% of Stanford residents speak a language other than English at home.

Barriers like language access and unfamiliarity with systems still limit civic participation.

SPEF direct sorry, PEP directly addresses those barriers.

And this need is immediate.

We were not able to run a full cohort last year due to funding constraints, and we already have parents waiting for the next session.

This funding would allow us to meet that demand and bring the program back at full strength.

Over the past 15 years, PEP has had meaningful impact in Stanford.

Graduates have become leaders in their schools and communities, serving on boards, organizing community projects, and advocating for their neighborhoods from cleanup efforts to cultural events like Stanford's first ever Bolivian flag raising.

PEP is more than a program, it's a pathway to civic participation, especially for Spanish speaking residents who have not always had access to these opportunities.

With this funding, we will serve approximately 40 parents and support at least four community-led projects.

And the impact extends far beyond those numbers.

When a parent is empowered, families and communities grow stronger.

This request aligns directly with the city's goals to support low and moderate income residents and increase civic engagement.

We're really proud of PEP's impact over the past 15 years, and we're committed to continuing this work.

Thank you for your time and your consideration.

Thank you, Regan.

We have any questions.

I think how many staff members is this supporting?

So we have a coordinator who runs the program, then we have two facilitators that do we have two cohorts.

Then we also provide um child care.

So it's a child care person, and then the rest of the funding also supports.

We we do dinner for everybody.

If somebody needs transportation, we provide that.

Um the funding also supports just like the things like supplies, binders, handouts, printing, things like that.

Great.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Any other questions?

All right.

Thank you very much, Rika.

Thank you.

Good night.

Good night.

Next up we have United Way.

Uh we have Doug Ordonez.

Doug, are you here?

I see you, Doug.

You're still you're muted.

All right, all right, all right.

I think I see you have two links on.

Yeah.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Are you able to remove this one?

Just Doug loved it in.

Can we try it now?

See who is Doug?

We lost one Doug.

Uh Doug, if we could you could come back on and we'll let you in.

Yeah, that's right.

Right.

I'm gonna go on to the next one.

This is the muted one.

Yeah.

All right.

Doug, are you there?

While we're while we're waiting to sort that out, can I direct a question to staff?

Yes.

Okay.

So I don't want anyone to feel targeted.

Um, but kind of a general question I have that I'd like the staff to look into or to get answers for is for these multi-program providers.

Um, how do they go about or do they have a process in place?

Where we can ensure that the grant they're asking for, doesn't end up or is is only going to the program we specifically funded.

Um I don't I don't exactly know how to to look into that.

I'm hoping that with your experience, you will know the right way to ask that question.

But I do think it's something we need to ask for the multi-program providers.

How do you segregate our grant to just go to what you're pitching?

Thank you.

And I I'll lower my hand and take my answer uh offline.

So I I can address that, I believe now.

Um when our uh before these are all reciprocal um no reimbursement grants.

Sorry.

So first of all, before when the nonprofits have to pay out the fee first, and then they submit receipts to us to you know an invoice to us showing the backup, showing that they've paid all of these fees specifically to within that grant, uh whatever's requested in the grant.

So they have to show ADPs if it's going to personnel, um, the supplies, the purchase of a generator or equipment if it's that sort of grant.

So before we reimburse them, and then on top of that, they also have to show the demographic breakdown of the actual participants that are um funded by this grant.

So if they say they're going to help 20 people, they have to show us that they have helped X number of people and it's broken down and in that way.

So we do have a pretty good handle on that.

Um and they also have to have in the request in their application, they have to answer how they have their financials set up as well.

Good answer.

Thank you.

I appreciate that.

And I think the public does too.

I'm sorry, I'm also in the physical committee, and I'm used to asking these sort of nerdy questions.

So I'll yield.

We like those kinds of questions.

So thank you.

That was a good question.

It looks like we have done back.

Yes.

And actually, that was a good setup to our request.

All right.

So thank you everyone for your time this evening.

I apologize for the technical difficulties.

My name's Douglas Rodonias.

I am with United Way of Coastal and Western Connecticut.

We serve more than 25% of the Connecticut's population across 27 communities in Fairfield and Southern Lynchfield County, including Stanford.

And I'm here this evening to specifically request 25,000 um to serve approximately 20 to 30 Stanford residents through our Alice Critical Needs Fund.

And for those who aren't unaware, Alice stands for asset limited income constrained employed.

So these are Stanford residents who are working, but as you know, things are incredibly expensive right now.

And so even with a job, a steady paycheck, they're one financial emergency away from a crisis.

And so Alice Critical Needs was set up to help people excape those emergencies or to deal with them when they don't have the savings available to help themselves.

So in Stanford, 45% of house households live at or below um the Alice threshold, including including those in poverty.

And as you know, housing costs in Stanford are 37% higher than the state average and 63% higher than national average.

Um that's why Alice Critical needs is so important.

It's fast, it's flexible, um, it offers a lot of time financial health um when other resources can't for some of the situations that uh Stanford residents are coming and asking for.

We partner specifically with Stanford agencies, uh, including many of the people who've been on this call this evening, like Silver Source and Person to Person and the CT Veterans Affair.

Um they do the screening.

Uh, they identify the need, and if their resources aren't able to help their client, then that's when we come in and they enroll them in our website.

Uh we take a look at it, make sure all the background documentation is there, uh, proof of identification, proof of need.

Uh, we approve, and then we send funds out to them either via debit cards or through direct check payments to vendors.

Uh, last year when we piloted this program, we got over 350 requests.

We ended up um providing financial assistance to around 70 Stanford households alone.

The most common requests in Stanford utilities, child care, and transportation.

So these are the things that actually can keep families stable.

Thank you.

Thanks.

Thanks, Doug.

Sure.

Any questions?

I just have representative Grace.

Doug, thank you for your presentation and the work that you do.

A quick question of the 70, I think you said about 70 families that you helped us, or did I get that up?

Did I have that number about right?

That is correct.

Can you ballpark me on the average amount that you help these so many families?

So we have a cap of $600 to provide to each household per year.

Last year, like I said, it was a pilot program.

The total amount of funds we dispersed were 150,000.

And so 66 of the and most of those families did receive the full cap of 600.

Thank you.

Yep.

Thank you.

How many um how many staff members do you have?

For this program specifically, we are working with just um the uh community impact coordinator.

So she does the internal processing of the request once the agency partners have submitted them.

And then our finance department handles the actual checks that are sent out, and the coordinator does the debit cards.

For the C D BG funds, we're looking specifically to use these funds for utilities, household child care, where we can track payment via checks directly to the vendors.

Right.

Okay, thank you.

Yep.

Any more questions?

Thank you, Doug.

Thank you.

Next up, we're going to hear from community from Women's Venture Network, and that'll be followed by Community Health Center and the Roman Center.

So we have Lonnie Gippus from Women's Network.

Women's Mentoring Network.

Hi, good evening, everyone.

Thank you so much for hearing everybody tonight and what we are requesting.

So I am the executive director of women's mentoring network, and we are requesting 24,000 to go towards our E to the Fourth Power program.

The program has been in existence for some time and it has been funded by the CDB funding in the past.

And it is to really support really direct services.

It is going towards staffing and our case managers, but it goes directly towards the programs that we provide.

E to the fourth power, it stands for employment, education, economic mobility, and empowerment.

So we are working with those who are living paycheck to paycheck, the Alice population, as mentioned before.

And those who are underemployed and unemployed.

And with that, women are coming and individuals.

We work with everybody in the community.

They're coming to our door and saying, I need a job or I need a better job.

And we we dive into it with them.

Like what do they need?

And then we start to work with them.

Our main services are workforce development, financial literacy, and computer and digital literacy.

We've really focused a lot more on the computer and digital literacy.

And we're actually having our staff do computer classes, both in English and Spanish, in addition to one-on-one services.

We do have workshops where we partner with professionals in the community.

So most of the companies in G, Synchrony, Hearst, Media, Gartner, you name them, all the bank banking institutions, they're doing our financial literacy programs for us from Chase, Bank of America, Key Bank, First County Bank, and Ives Bank.

They're all part of our program.

We have over 300 volunteers and we're utilizing them every day.

We know that every penny coming into the household is important.

So we want to make sure that our clients are addressing their finances.

We are making our members more competitive versus all other job seekers.

So as you can see what's going on today, many people are getting let go.

There may be people who are let go and they're coming to us and they may have made 100,000, but they didn't save anything and they have nowhere else to go.

Um we have a lot of clients who are on the verge of homelessness, to tell you the truth.

We've seen it happen recently, um, where people there was miscommunication with finances of one thing led to another, and they've ended up in the women's homeless shelter of inspira.

So, you know, we're trying to help individuals manage their finances, be more economically empowered by getting better paying jobs, and that's our focus.

Any questions?

Thanks, Lana.

Of course.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Um, yeah, I'm just I was looking at the obligation.

So the 24,000 would support says the executive director and program director.

Is that right?

Most really the program director and the program director, as I mentioned, we provide our services, all our services in Spanish and English.

And the computer skills classes are actually being done by our program director.

Um, but all the others are volunteers who do the uh, you know, the presentations.

We meet with individuals one-on-one in our office as well.

Right.

Yeah.

And when I say we, I actually meet with clients on a daily basis as well, just to let you know, even though I'm the executive director, I meet with clients still.

It's a small organization.

Right.

Is it just those two?

Are there's only eight positions?

What's that?

Are those only two big positions, the executive director and program director?

Are there other staff?

Those are the two full-time employees, and then we have contract and contractors who help us out as well with our uh with our programming.

Well, what kind of contractors?

Very specific, um, very specific.

I have a development person.

Um, I have someone who helps us out.

We actually serve in Westchester County.

So we have someone who we hired under a different grant to help us out with the Westchester County services along those lines.

And we're growing our, we're getting more and more Spanish speaking clients because they're actually referring so many of their family and friends to us.

Um, and and they trust us.

We also have a student program, which I'm not talking about tonight, because this is really for the adult program.

But you know, when our clients trust us, we're working with their kids too.

We have a first generation achievement program.

So, you know, we're a two family program.

We're a long-term program, and we incorporate professionals from the community to bring this advice to them that is just immeasurable.

Like you can't measure it.

It's like uh so great for our clients to hear directly from professionals.

We recently went to Indeed, they invited us there, and we're going to synchrony um in June.

And these professionals invite us into their spaces and work with our clients one-on-one and in groups.

Thank you so much.

Thank you, Lana.

Uh, next up, we will be hearing from community health center, followed by Rome Center, Kids in Crisis, and then building one community.

Uh, so for community health center, uh, Nicole Seagriff.

Yes, hi everyone, and thank you for all your attention in this marathon session.

So I'm Nicole Seagriff.

I'm a nurse practitioner and the regional vice president of the community health center.

And so the community health center goes by CHC.

And we were started in 1972.

We've been in the Stanford community since 2005 when we were invited to come as a dental clinic and then expanded two years later to include medical and behavioral health services.

So in the uh, you know, 20 years that we've been there, we continue to offer medical, behavioral health, and dental services in Stanford.

And we serve about 7,000 low-income Medicaid and uninsured patients every year.

And that translates into about 35,000 visits just at our Stanford location alone.

With the passage of one big beautiful bill, the number of people without insurance is going to rise in our community as it will in other communities as well.

And this is going to uh result uh be a result of patients' loss of Medicaid and inability to buy insurance due to the high cost.

And so in Stanford alone, we anticipate that there will be about 4,000 to 7,000 individuals who are expected to lose their insurance as we start 2027.

And that number comes from the mayor's stay covered task force that CHC is a part of.

And as one of the state's leading federally qualified health centers, it's our mission and truly our privilege to care for uninsured and underinsured patients.

But as the number of those without insurance in our community is anticipated to rapidly increase, starting at the end of this year and into 2027 and for the next few years.

And so as some background, typically, when we care for an uninsured patient, we receive about 20% of what it costs to provide that care.

And so for the $10,000 worth of funds we've applied for from CDBG, they would be to help offset our expenses for uninsured and underinsured patients and to allow for Stanford residents without insurance or who don't have enough insurance to be seen for primary care services.

And so we hope with this funding to potentially be able to bridge the gap for around 50 patients who could receive medical behavioral health or dental services.

And in my last 40 seconds, I know we've talked about some high numbers of people that will be impacted, but I often think as a nurse practitioner about the power of one and the impact that each person has on their family, their communities, and networks.

And when we wrote this application, I thought about the woman that will miss her mammogram because she can't afford it and die of breast cancer when we could have, you know, treated it if we caught it in time, and the person that will struggle with crippling depression that you know won't go in to get health care because they're um you know afraid of the overwhelming costs.

And so you know, we uh love what we do, and we just want to be able to have the resources and support to do it.

So thank you for your consideration.

Thank you, Nicole.

Thank you.

Do we have any questions?

Representative Gross?

Thank you.

Um I'm just wondering is this sort of request like this amount of money?

Is it like it's sort of triggered by the sort of federal landscape changes?

Yes.

So we've applied for CDBG funding um in the past, but we've never applied in this way.

And it's um really our efforts to try to have a plan around the uncompensated care that we anticipate will drastically increase.

Great.

Thank you.

Any other questions?

Thank you very much, Nicole.

Thank you.

Uh next, we will have uh Cody Baird from the Rowan Center.

Good evening, Cody.

Hi, everyone.

Thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to speak right now and the time.

Thank you for your time.

Um, so I'm uh Cody Baird.

I'm the COO at the Roan Center.

Um, and we provide something that no one else does in Lower Fairfield County, and it's critical.

Uh, it's immediate crisis response and uh long-term healing for survivors of sexual violence and trauma.

For nearly 50 years, we've served Stanford and the surrounding communities as the region's sole sexual violence resource agency.

We are one of nine member centers of the state's uh sexual violence alliance.

Um we offer free multilingual and confidential services, including a 24-7 crisis response, counseling, advocacy, and long-term trauma therapy.

We actually started in a trailer behind Stanford Hospital with volunteers accompanying victims uh for their exams in the hospital.

We also provide prevention education to over 22,000 uh K through 12 students each year.

So, quite simply, we we don't exist outside of the Ramone Center.

So we are a vital part of this community.

Um, over the past year, we delivered more than uh 8,200 services across the region with nearly uh 2,500 of those serving Stanford residents alone.

Um what we're seeing is not a plateau.

It is sustained and it's growing demand across every service we provide.

If you've seen any headline, even in the last 24 hours, you know how relevant our services are.

Um for survivors, uh the impact of trauma extends far beyond that initial experience.

It affects mental health, it affects stability, employment, family systems, and for low-income residents, those challenges are compounded by real barriers to care, including cost, access, shortage of trauma informed providers, and this is the gap that we provide to the community, right?

So we're the government funding and federal funding fall short.

The nonprofits are the ones who take that up.

Um through this request, we're seeking 25,000 in CDBG funding to support the full continuum of care we provide for Stanford residents.

That includes our 24-7 English and Spanish helpline, uh, our crisis counseling and advocacy, which includes our hospital police and court accompaniments, support groups, um, and our long-term therapy through trauma recovery practice, which is open to any trauma, not just sexual violence.

Um crisis response is not enough.

Survivors need the full continuum of care to heal.

Um, so with this funding, we anticipate providing over uh 1,200 helpline contacts, more than 2,000 crisis services and over 200 long-term therapy sessions for Stanford residents.

The outcomes are obviously incredibly meaningful.

I don't need to dive into it, but they survivors have access to consistent trauma-informed care.

We see reduction in anxiety and depression and PTSD improvements in their stability and overall well-being.

Uh, this work is especially critical for Stanford's low-income residents who often don't have this access.

We work closely with Stanford Hospital, Stanford PD.

Um, when public funding is incredibly limited with this current government uh looking for uh local care is is really important.

But I thank you for your continued partnership and your commitment to the community.

So I really appreciate your time.

Thank you, Cody.

Cody, any questions?

Representative Gross?

Thank you.

Um staff members do you have uh operating the 24-7 helpline?

So we have 13 full-time staff, we have four part-time staff, and we have five MSW interns.

All of our staff works on the hotline, and we have about 27 volunteers that take various shifts.

Everyone has been a fully certified uh sexual assault crisis counselor.

Um the need is large.

Like I our staff does what they do, and then they also respond to the 24-7 hotline, which is which is four shifts, right?

So 365 days a year, there's four shifts of people.

So someone who calls, they will always have they will always have a person on that line, and that's all of our staff, and that's volunteers too.

Great.

Thank you so much for your testimony.

Yeah, buddy.

Thank you so much.

Have a great night.

You as well.

Uh next we have Chris Blake from uh Kids in Crisis.

What do you mean, Chris?

Hi, I'm Chris Blake.

I'm the managing director at uh Kids in Crisis.

And I was going to start off by saying thank you for all the years of support, but I'm going to finish by saying thank you for how thoughtful you guys are and for the long nights that you put in.

Um tonight, uh Kids in Crisis is uh respectfully requesting from uh the folks in Stanford uh $20,000, and that's to fund uh counselor for children experiencing homelessness and that stay at our kids in crisis safe haven shelter.

Uh there are in the whole state of Connecticut, there are only 14 emergency shelter beds that are exclusively for children in the entire state of Connecticut.

And 10 of those are with us.

Now that's not homeless beds for families, that's for children that are not with their parents.

And 10 of them are ours out of the 14.

And so when a child is in crisis and they don't have anywhere to go, they don't have a placement, they don't have uh a foster home, DCF brings them to us, the police bring them to us, uh, EMTs bring them to us.

So we're the place that kids land until a plan gets put together for a group home or a more permanent placement.

And we've been doing this since 1978.

And that's on the shelter side.

We also have a 24-7 crisis helpline that uh families, kids, uh folks can call.

Uh recently we just this year started the texting part of that.

Um, the idea is that uh most of the kids that we work with uh will call or text uh from their home whenever they need help.

So we're able to go out with to them to Stanford or throughout Fairfield County.

Um, so the idea is that before they need a shelter, we can go out to them.

Um so sometimes uh the police will call us if they get somewhere and they see it's not a crime, but they just need somebody, they'll they'll call us.

So we'll go out with um for all kinds of reasons.

But this past year we've served 700 uh kids.

Either through going out with one of our five old cars or through the shelter, we serve 700 kids, and most of those kids have come from Stanford, the biggest, not most, like in 50%, but about of all the towns in Fairfield County, um, the biggest number has been from Stanford.

Um today we had five kids in the shelter.

Last week we had nine.

The numbers change a lot, but overall, if you count the number of nights that uh kids have been in the shelter, last year we had 2,249 shelter nights in the in the shelter.

And um we have definitely seen an increase.

I know the number uh of times the question was asked about the last couple of years.

If there's um been an increase, and there certainly has been two quick stories of kids from Stanford, and then I will give you back your time.

Uh, but in the last uh few months we had uh uh one, we always drive kids to school.

We try to keep them in the same routine.

So we drive the kids that are staying with us at the shelter, we drive them to school no matter where their school is in Fairfield County, we drive them to school.

But recently, one of the kids from Stanford that was staying with us um had an opportunity for a college interview up at Yale up in New Haven.

And it was the first time we ever got to drive a kid up to Yale.

So that was a cool ride for one of the school trips to go up there.

And that was a kid from Stanford.

And then a second story from Stanford is uh this was just a few weeks ago.

A kid came to us and they always get a medical checkup.

We have a uh nurse practitioner on uh on the team, and uh he had a tooth abscess.

And he got a um, we got a dentist to fix his tooth for free.

And he went around to everybody saying thank you.

And um I have never in my life seen any kid say thank you for a root canal that got done, but he did, and uh so just in a way I'm saying thank you for his behalf.

Um, so anyway, that's the ask um for um $20,000 for a counselor to help this population of kids that are uh stuck in uh in between some really bad times.

Thank you.

Okay, thank you, Chris.

Thank you, Chris.

Do we have any questions?

Representative Gross.

Um You said that this will support one counselor, and how many counselors do you have?

Uh we have 90 uh on staff.

Um many of those are in schools.

We have schools throughout, but in the shelter itself, we have um oh my goodness, it varies because of the um the number of kids that we have, right?

We have to have a certain uh number of counselors full-time, depending on the number of kids, but we have 90 full-time staff, and probably about 30 of them are um at different times in the in the shelter.

Great, thank you.

Thank you very much, Chris.

Thank you.

And last, we have building one again, Marissa Munoz.

Hello again, good to see you.

Um let me share my screen.

Uh, let me know if you can see that.

Yes.

Okay, great.

I'll be quick.

I'm not gonna recap um our mission.

You got to hear that earlier um in the work that we do, but uh, let me just do our slideshow.

Um there we go.

Okay.

All right.

All right, moving on.

Um, so we are requesting $30,000 to support our workforce development program.

Um, our workforce development program consists of a skills development program as well as an entrepreneurship program and supports our day worker center as well.

Um, so we provide OSHA training multiple times throughout the year, all in Spanish.

Um, we also provide a culinary uh class uh twice a year where students leave with a serve safe uh certificate.

Um we do two cohorts as well of our immigration entrepreneurship program.

Uh, we're currently nearing the end of one of them, again, all in Spanish.

And then uh we have a new digital literacy program um that's been enhanced over the last year thanks to a gift of laptops.

And so we have three levels of IT skills um where participants can circulate throughout the entire year.

Um, just to speak a little bit more about our digital digital literacy classes.

Again, we have our level one as basic as learning how to use Zoom, email, all the way up to digital skills where to level three where they can even uh learn the entire Microsoft suite.

So they're looking at PowerPoint, Excel, things of that nature.

Our entrepreneurship program, I think is pretty awesome.

Um it is uh a five-week program, classes take place twice a week.

Um, again, all in Spanish at the end of the program, they leave with a business plan as well as they can be reimbursed up to $500 for business expenses as they launch phase two of this.

If they want to continue on and get additional support is group mentorship as well.

Um once a year we have a community day um where not only organizations and local organizations can showcase their work, but this is an opportunity for our community participants or entrepreneurship um program participants um to showcase um what they've created and launched along the way.

So uh last year again, um we served as an entire organization, about 5600 um individuals.

Um, and in workforce alone through all of these programs, we served over 760 individuals with nearly 5,000 touch points, meaning that they keep coming back for additional classes.

Um many of them um in their cohorts.

Um a great results uh to share with you is that 80 per 85% of our learners earned a skills development uh program certificate through our programs.

And you'll see on the right side, we also have a day worker program as part of our workforce center um that supports our day workers.

Um as you can imagine with the seasons, um, we get more traffic during the winter when it's a little bit slower.

Um, but we approach it holistically and on Sundays, every other Sunday.

Um we provide uh mental health support in Spanish as well as food, free haircuts, and other basic needs.

Um that's it.

So that we're good.

Yep.

Thank you, Melissa, Marissa.

Sure, representative price.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Marissa, uh, again, nice to see you.

Thank you for your presentation and the work that you do.

Um, I just had a quick I was curious about your the entrepreneurship program uh that you that you have for for women with the 500 uh seed money.

What kind of businesses have you seen get started?

Can you speak to that just a little bit?

Sure.

And it's both women and men.

Um see at this program.

Um we have a lot of uh beauticians like nail salons, beauticians, a lot of food comes through as well.

Um we have cleaning services.

Um so those are probably some of the most popular that we have.

A roofing, I mean, yes.

Thank you.

Representative Gross.

Thank you.

Um, how many staff here are supporting the workforce following program?

It's three.

Currently, it's three full-time staff that support this program, all of these programs.

Great.

Thanks.

Yep.

And I wanted to note too, just to meet them where they are.

Um, these are not taking place primarily like nine through five uh office hours.

Many of these are taking place on the on the evenings from 6 to 8 p.m.

Um and on the weekends from nine to one.

Thank you, Marissa.

Thank you.

So that was our last public service applicant.

Um we have one more uh presentation, which is me.

So one of the other things you would need to uh you'll have to vote on and allocate is the administration portion, which we are allocated 20% of the total grant goes to CBG administration.

And that's a total of 189,124 that goes to support our salary, all the extras that go in with that, pens, papers, copy machine, all the things the city charges us for, etc.

So we'll have to vote to allocate that also next at the next meeting as part of it.

So thank you.

Thank you, Mar.

Sure.

Uh, can we get a thank you to everyone who's presented?

Moira, Arnold, Anita, everyone who's here tonight.

Thank you for staying for so long.

Um, quick reminder again, all of our votes and assessment.

I can't think anymore, but it's all due May 9th.

I'm gonna request if everybody in the committee hasn't logged in yet or attempted to to do it by this Friday to give us time to troubleshoot.

Um that is the 24th.

And with that, do I have a motion?

Motion to adjourn.

What was that?

Motion to adjourn.

Second.

All right, um, let's take this by a voice vote.

All in favor.

Okay, thank you, everyone.

And I just thank Angie as well.

She's been a huge indeed.

So thank you, Angie.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

Good night, girl.

Good night.

Um, if anybody has any questions about how to use brand, there's two first of all reach out to me.

I will help best I can.

I'm still not super familiar with it.

There's also Zoom Units University.

I think the link to that.

I did send an email to the whole committee saying if you have any questions and you and I so this way if they reply to all in there, you and I will be in this way like today we were able to troubleshoot if one of us doesn't see it right away.

Yep.

It was yeah that was kind of no it was perfect.

I do have a question