It would behoove us to get a little bit more information about a lot of our topics.

Um, so we spent the last month doing that, and I'm going to in a moment um turn it over to Mr.

McVeigh to share more about what we learned and how we did that engagement.

Um I believe all of the council members were engaged in different parts of different conversations with different department directors.

Um then we also got some feedback from Miss uh Ms.

Britt, Dr.

Britt, um, as to her thoughts on the different what we heard and what she thinks would be most viable.

Um before we dive in, I also want to clarify something for the record.

We um misstated um an element of the college bound program at the last meeting, and I just want to be really clear that um the program is not it is automatic enrollment, so student children as soon as they are born are automatically enrolled in the program.

Um parents then have the option to add additional dollars to the program or participate in other ways, but it is an automatic enrollment, so I just wanted to make sure that that was clear for the record, and apologies to the department for having had that be misstated last time.

Um with that, I'm gonna turn things over to Mr.

McVay to tell us more about what we've learned.

So um thank you, Madam Chair.

I will try to give cliff notes to all this because I realize there's a lot going on in here, and I don't know.

I'm really sorry we sent this out in this format, honestly.

I mean, it works.

Um Ms.

Vang was very supportive of how this was all put together, but I realized it's a lot to digest in a very short period of time.

And um I will start off with um Council members, thank you for working with myself and with uh Miss Vang to make the interviews with department heads possible and with their program management staff.

Uh the general I'm gonna give you thirty-six thousand foot level overview of our interviews, and then we can get into the weeds with each individual department.

Um all four departments that are interested in the work that we are doing.

Um here at the audit committee, however, there is some hesitation generally to undergo an audit currently, as in like this calendar year.

Um that was unfortunately expressed by all four of the departments that we interviewed.

Um a lot of it's due to timing.

For one thing, there's been uh transition.

Um several departments have new um department heads.

Uh there's also the concern about available staff resources and triage with us as we can deduct these audits have being said, it's actually not gonna be that significant of a lift for them because we're gonna be doing a lot of the work ourselves.

Um, and then there was also a question about data utility, which we can get into a little bit um, we can get into further details on that with some of the departments, especially like with DSI in particular.

Um they all generally expressed a preference for a latter half of 2027.

That being said, we do have we are in conversation with Ms.

Vang last week.

There we there are ways to maneuver in terms of how we scope our questions, which we tried to do as you'll see within the um research questions that we proposed.

These are just to facilitate conversation, they're not actually the end all and be all at this point in time.

But uh circling back the um in terms of the latter half 2027, I actually and Ms.

Vang agrees with me as well that we can do audits yet this year for some as long as we frame the research questions in a certain way.

Because um, for instance, like with the Office of Financial Empowerment, there were questions that they had with um, and I know Councilmember Johnson, you can speak to this as well with uh equity in terms of their outreach to the public because they admit they agree that there are they need to improve on that, and that there's a lot of people that don't know about that particular program of college bound, and also in a whole range of things with uh DSI as well.

Um, we can really get into the weeds on that one because it's such a massive department.

That being said, um I don't have much more to add over a general um summary for all departments.

Um we can discuss individual departments, and I imagine it'd be a conversationalist you want to go through each um uh research question line by line item.

I will add um as a mile one just minor clarification, Adam Chair.

We have not heard back yet in full from Dr.

Britt regarding uh the uh costing.

She gave it basically at this point we have a very rough idea of where we're going to be in terms of cost for these audits, but she was we haven't gotten a specified um dollar amount yet from her, and it's in a lot with timing.

It was kind of like a rough estimate.

She needed to have more time to look at it.

I imagine she's gonna get back to us this week, if not early next week.

So it is Tuesday, so fingers crossed.

So with that being said, Madam Chair, I defer back to you.

All right, thanks so much.

Um again, Mr.

Pai for both that summary and also for coordinating so much of this work.

Um I think it would probably be helpful to hear from those of us who were part of the different conversations if we have things to add um to what you just shared.

Again, as you mentioned, we have very, very comprehensive um summaries in front of us.

Um, but it might help folks wrap their heads around it to hear from any any reflections or suggestions or insights that council members or anyone else did.

I Mr.

Lassetter or Miss Delworth, you did not participate in that conversation with department directors, right?

So any summaries that we would share from our conversations, and I don't know if either of my colleagues wants to start I can hold Ms.

Johnson.

Yeah, I mean, I I participated in the um college-bound discussion and appreciated kind of hearing from the director uh about not only just some of the program pieces but where they're currently at, and just getting clarification.

One of the things that I kind of shared with them as well is that this body really considered that topic as part because it came up in some of the mayoral discussion and conversations we had with the mayor.