Good

evening, everyone, and welcome to the Whitehall City Council Committee meetings of Tuesday, February 24th, 2026.

There are 10 pieces of draft legislation, which we'll get to here in a moment.

But before we jump into that, we do have a presentation this evening, and

Mr.

Alexander, if you please lead off with an introduction.

Yes, thank you, Mr.

President, members of council.

I'll have the pleasure of introduction of my friends, Jared Berger.

He is the executive director of the Kid Again, which is a nonprofit that serves uh disabled ill, terminally ill uh children here in Central Ohio.

They have a small population that they serve in Whitehall that I met Jared maybe three or four years ago and now serve on the board of the Kid again co-chair and finance committee.

But we've had plenty of discussions about the work we do with Kid again, the work we do here in Whitehall, and when I mentioned the Department of Neighborhoods and some of the discussions around that, he thought it would impair that he'd come and speak about how he could find some synergies with the organ uh with the department like that with the Kid Again, but also uh health and human services organizations in general and what it looks like from a top-down model from the state, the county, down to municipalities like Whitehall.

So thank you for indulging.

Uh, he's been informed that you have a lot to discuss tonight, so he'll get through it in 15 minutes or less and entertain any questions.

So thank you.

And

thank

you.

And on behalf of council and the city, I'd like to welcome you and thank you for coming out this evening.

Wonderful.

Well, thank you, President Potter, uh, members of council.

It's my privilege to be here this evening.

My name's Jared Berger.

As uh Auditor Alexander said, I'm the executive director for the Akidagan Central Ohio chapter.

I also have the pleasure of serving on the public policy committee for the Franklin County Human Service Chamber.

Start with some information about Kid Again.

A Kid again

is a nonprofit organization that serves families raising children with life-threatening medical conditions throughout the Central Ohio region.

We're founded 31 years ago in Central Ohio, and we've grown to serve thousands of families throughout our region, raising children with over 400 unique life-threatening medical conditions, giving children and their families an opportunity to get a break from medical settings such as the hospital therapy centers, doctor's offices, and allowing families the opportunity to spend quality time with their loved ones, uh, which is something that is frequently robbed from the families we serve.

We do this by hosting annual activities that we call ventures for our families, taking families to places like the zoo, coastside, Zumbeezy Bay, the wilds, giving them a cost-free, carefree opportunity to be in community with their family and loved ones.

So

families using children with life-threatening medical conditions face a number of barriers that I'm sure many of you are common and well familiar hearing uh citizens of the city of Whitehall experiencing.

Those include things like social isolate isolization.

A lot of our families think to themselves, I'm the only one.

I'm the only one who's experiencing this reality of raising a four-year-old with cancer or raising a child with sickle cell or another very serious medical condition that really does take away a child's uh childhood in many ways and causes these kids to grow up quicker.

Time spent apart from the family.

I just heard from a family the other day who told me moms at nationwide children's hospital, essentially living at nationwide children's hospital with their daughter, while dad's at home taking care of their two boys.

The parents see each other on the weekends if they're lucky.

Think about the strain that that puts on marriage, the strain that that puts on the childhood.

And this is why it's important to create these experiences for families to be together as a family unit.

Financial insecurities, food and housing insecurities.

And just an overall sense of depression and uncertainty.

What is tomorrow going to look like?

So when we think about a department in neighborhoods in the city of Whitehall, a department of neighborhoods can work in a very rapid way alongside organizations like the Kid again and the general population here in Whitehall to address these concerns in a very quick and efficient manner or to at least make sure that as elected officials, as the mayor, as individuals who proudly serve the city that you call home, that you know what are the top level needs that are facing your constituency.

Because in Franklin County, a Kittagin serves over 1,100 families, nearly 1,200 families.

But in the city of Whitehall, we're currently serving five.

One thing that we would do once a department of neighborhoods is stood up is me and my team, we would work directly with that department of neighborhoods to make sure that families throughout the city of Whitehall know how to take advantage of the services that organizations like a Kid Again and other like human service organizations provide that can enhance their quality of life.

Like many human service organizations, the work we do is rooted in research and best practice.

We go out in the community, we seek corporate and individual dollars, sometimes we even seek public dollars.

And when we do that, we want to make sure that we're positioning ourselves in a way that the dollars that come into our organizations is done so in a way that we're serving the interests of those partners that invest in us.

We want to make sure that our partners, when they invest in us, they know that the work we do is time tested and measured by research.

So our partners at the Nationwide Children's Research Institute tell us that 88% of children enrolled in Kidten tell us that their quality of life is improved.

77% of families feel closer as a family unit, and 75% of parents feel less depression and sadness because of their involvement in a Kid again.

But

a Kitten is just one of the very many human service nonprofit organizations that serve families throughout Franklin County and the city of Whitehall.

Nonprofits that help people navigate social determinants of health and enhance economic stability, quality education access, health care, neighborhood building, and that social community enrichment that is so important to so many of us.

Nonprofit organizations generate about $2 billion in annual revenue to the Central Ohio region.

And we employ over 22,000 people through a variety of organizations, and we serve hundreds of thousands throughout Franklin County, including many, many right here in Whitehall.

Our dream is to create an atmosphere where the people we serve are healthier, happier, flourishing, contributing members of their community, which will in turn produce a thriving and robust economy, and our potential as a robust growing Central Ohio region will be fully realized.

And I feel that a best practice in really helping us take advantage of that potential that exists is by investing in a department of neighborhoods, which could collaborate with organizations, whether it be nonprofit organizations, our for-profit partners, and of course our government entities to ensure that the feedback, the needs of our community are being heard in rooms like this and are being measurably determined for organizations like a Kidogen, the Middle High Food Collective, and many others to be able to react to the needs that the Department of Neighborhoods discovers throughout doing their work.