Thank you. Thank you, everyone, and welcome to this session of the Government Operations and Fiscal Policy Committee. We have a number of items on our agenda today to look at our minority-owned business purchasing program to get an update and a report out on the report that was done and expedited legislation that we have before us. We will then be going into and looking at our racial equity and social justice work and have a director ward with us later today. And then we have the office of legislative oversight who has done a deep dive in looking at community engagement and racial equity. So I think you can see a theme of our items today on government operations and fiscal policy. We're going to kick off with, I when we get to that Miss Wellens. Thank you so much Madam Chair and good morning so as you said we are here to receive a briefing on the Montgomery County Maryland 2024 disparity study, which was conducted by contractors engaged by our procurement office, MGT impact solutions who specialize in this area of conducting disparity studies in procurement systems. We are scheduled to receive their briefing and they have an extensive PowerPoint, which is part of your packet. Unfortunately, we're waiting on the MDT representatives to arrive to provide you with a PowerPoint, but let's forge ahead. So as you mentioned, this is co-sponsored, the legislation to continue the MFD minority female disabled program within our county procurement laws. That bill is co-sponsored by council member sales and council member Joondo. They are the lead sponsors and I believe that all other colleagues are co-sponsors and this bill would extend the program for an additional five years until the close of 2029 And the reason that there is a sunset and that it's periodically reviewed is because under the applicable supreme court case law particularly the crossing case We have to show the continued need for the program. And indeed, there is a continued need for the program as evidenced by the very extensive disparity study conducted by the contractor, MGT. You can see a summary of the continued disparities that have been found on page, if you see on page two of the staff memorandum, gives you a snapshot of the continuation of the disparities in the awarding of county contracts. And to lead you to some other aspects of the packet in addition to the bill text, there is an executive summary of the packet in addition to the bill text. There is an executive summary of the disparity study as well as the PowerPoint presentation as well as the impact statements. And you can also see a link and for the public who would like to delve into the full report, it is available online and a link has provided in the staff report as you can imagine hundreds of pages with many appendices. I would ask at the chair's discretion if our office of procurement would like to add anything at this point in terms of providing more context about the study itself. Great, that would be terrific if our office of procurement, if you could introduce yourself and talk to us about the program, what has been happening with it. And I think in particular Ms. Wellens did a great job on the packet and raised a number of questions. And I know we're waiting for the contractors to come, but maybe if we could, we could even start delving into some of their recommendations that came out of, I think, a lot of the qualitative pieces of the research they did, I thought was very interesting. Yes. Good morning. My name is Grace Dennell. I'm the division chief of business relations and compliance in the Office of Procurement. The minority female disabled program is under my division. This program has been with us since more than 30 years now. It's the first social economic programs that the county had. This disparities, we have been doing disparity studies over the years. The law requires us to do one every five years. However, because the budget constraint and sometimes the time that takes to get a qualified vendor to do the study, for example, this last one we did why in 2014 and this one was conducted in 2022 started in 2022 and we received their report a couple months ago or one month ago and The cover period is from July 1st of 2015 through June 30th of 2021. So it does show that the data is, there's a gap between 2021 till now. So from what we could see, there is a gap between when we talk about the disparity study, usually they're looking at availability against the county utilization in terms of minority-females disabled. So in the disparity study, the availability would be for the time period of the study, which is a few years ago. But then the utilization we have data for, actually is pretty quite up to date. So if you look at our MFD report for especially, the couple latest the years, we have made a lot of strides in terms of percentage, as well as dollar amount in terms of percentage, as well as dollar amount, in terms of spending money with minority-owned businesses. Minority, female, and disabled. I think that's my... Great, and so I know you said that the report period was from 2015 to 2021 that we did it and we understand there were delays in getting this report done. In the legislation, Ms. Wands, I think I believe its sunsets so that there are plans to do another report. Are there safeguards in place to make sure that the next report is done in a timely fashion and we don't have as much of a lag as we did this last time? Yeah, we would start, for example, the sunset is a 20-29 December, then if we start early in terms of putting the solicitation out and get proposals in earlier enough, we should be able to get some better results in terms of proposals. Great, because December 2029 comes faster than we all think. Thanks since we're starting entering into 2025. so does procurement have a timeline now that they know this is the date at which we are going to release RFPs for this and move forward? Have you planned that out yet? So, the RFP itself would be quite similar each time. So the requirements and what we want them to be looking at. And then under the law, the disparity studies actually pretty strictly detailed what they are supposed to be looking at. So we should have that skeleton ready to go. At the time, we just need to make sure we have all the templates in terms of procurement regulations and other attachments are properly attached. Yeah, I think what I would like to request on behalf of our committee is over the next couple of months if procurement gets back to us with actual, you know, it doesn't have to be the exact day, but month and year in which an RFP will go out for this because we cannot have what happened the last time with so much time going by to make sure that the report is done. This is an incredibly important program for us here in the county for the people, you know, our businesses having clarity in it and understanding and making sure that we're following the law so so we don't jeopardize it, is of paramount importance. So I'd request that we have more details on the next round going forward. We are joined by our colleague, Council Member Sales, apologies for the technological issues we have this morning. Council member sales, we just began, unfortunately the contractor has been delayed, so we did not have an opportunity to go through their presentation, but we have been talking to the Office of Procurement about the process and Miss Wellens did do an overview of the expedited bill that you and Councilmember Jawando have put forward. So that's where we are at this time. Thank you for joining us. I think I'll turn it over to my colleagues at the other questions but I would like to spend some time going through some of the recommendations from the report. So. Yeah, okay. I think if we turn to the packet, I think it starts on page three and I don't know if some of these we can go down them. Some of these may have been for more for the contractor. So to the extent you can answer some of these, I think it would be of use to compare Montgomery County to other jurisdictions in terms of addressing inequities in procurement and are there jurisdictions that you've looked at or have seen that have identified as implementing best practices and things that we may want to adopt here in Montgomery County. Yes. So for the report data, I would let the MGT consulting answer the question. They actually also did disparity study for WSSC, PG County, as well as the state recently, maybe some other surrounding jurisdictions too, so they may have some insight on that. In terms of procurement practice and our MFD program, we actually do have a quarterly compliance meeting with all of our surrounding jurisdictions in Maryland as well as Fairfax County. So we do need quarterly and our compliance folks, especially MFD program. We do discuss a lot in terms of our effort for enforcement, implementation, benchmark, and lessons learned. We do have that forum, and we do learn from each other a lot. Great. All right. All right. I think another follow-up question we had is understanding that the timing for the study was from July of 2015 to June, the end of June of 2021. And it only covered sort of the first 15 months of the pandemic, did the pandemic and the county's associated procurement actions responses have any impact on the study's methodology or conclusions? I don't want to answer for them, but as far as I know, at least from our requirements, there's no change, and the disparity study data does include everything happened during that period. So it's all in there. Great. Maybe we can go down to one of the recommendations on page 39 of the study was that county staff acknowledged that the policies guiding the administration of the MFD program and related contracts are well written and clearly articulated. However, they express concern that the program lacks enforceable measures and effect if sanctions to ensure compliance. While the framework for administering the program is solid, there is a perceived gap in the ability to hold parties accountable, which diminishes the program's overall effectiveness. I didn't know if the office of procurement had any response to that. So, when we go into details in terms of implementation, we are talking about active 2600 contracts we have. And then I would say 90% of them are applicable for the MFD program. So I have one program manager that manages these. We were looking at some automation in terms of a system tracking. For the most part, we want to make sure that when the county pays the prime, the prime will pay their subs in time on schedule. And also the subs are performing the work that the prime told us that they were going to allocate it for them. So if we have a automation system, that will definitely make it easier in the last 30 years. We have doing this kind of by hand and And then are doing random check. And then because he's very experienced, he knows that which contractor he needs to pay attention to. So he would do random check with them and talk to the prime contractor as well as subcontractors. But in terms of the enforcement, one will receive complaints or one will talk to a subcontractor. They say they either didn't get a work or they if they didn't get paid. Then that's one we have to make sure the two parties are together and we talk to both of them and come up with a solution. Some of the enforcement measures we can do is either withhold payment to the prime to make sure they pay the South before we release the payment or to the extreme we can terminate the contract. And we have practiced that in the past. But of course, when you talk about withholding payment or terminating contracts, you do have to make sure that the service is still provided. The operation of the department is still continuing. So there's a lot of pieces going on whenever we do enforce this program, but we do definitely have a dedicated person to do these things. Another related thing I think also is because some of our measures or things we do are not always being told to the community or subcontractors probably don't know. These are the things that they can reach out to us and then get sometimes even reimbursed for the work they did. So I think the outreach and then educating the vendor community is also one part of the things that we need to do. And where are the plans for the automation system? So we have been looking looking hoping to get something like an e-procumence system. So it's not just one piece for enforcing the MFD. We're hoping to get something like a suite that does the betting, accepting all the best electronically, even from those drafting solicitations. So there's a whole, from the drafting solicitations to the award of the contract would be a full suite of e-procumence system. And then within that, you would have the vendor registration, certification, and then compliance enforcement. Not only for MFD, also we have local, small business program as well as wage compliance programs. So there are some systems out there We have local, small business program as well as wage compliance programs. So there are some systems out there that do all these things. And so we are in the process to take a look what's available and what we can look at in terms of our budget. Great. And I think we talked about this last year during the budget process and I know director Shetty isn't with us But maybe as a follow-up as well as we can I'd prefer to have a follow-up on that before we get deep into the budget Because our time when we talk about the budget for departments is always so crunched and I know this was a topic We discussed last year during budget for procurement But maybe we could get an update on that before We get deep into the budget to see where the department is Just wanted to check are we ready to turn it to the contractor to go over the Great. Yes, Madam Chair. Thank you so much. Absolutely. And we'll come back to the questions, but looking forward to the presentation. Good morning and my sincerest apologies, definitely under estimated traffic. Good morning. My name is Vernetta Mitchell, Director with MGT Consulting Social Impact solutions. And we are very pleased to present the findings of the county's disparity study for their minority and female and disabled business enterprise program. So the presentation that we're going to provide today is a brief overview of synopsis of the details that are in the study itself. Oops, Next slide. Yeah. That's okay. You're absolutely fine. Absolutely fine. Yeah, I tried that. Oh, that one. Okay. So in this presentation, we're going to provide an overview of the objectives of the study, an overview of the company, MGT, the objectives of the disparity study, and then more importantly, the results and opportunity to continue the questions that I heard that we're being asked as we came in. MGT is a national management research and consulting firm nationally recognized but locally focused to assist our clients with enhancing efficiencies and operations within the organizations. We have many arms to the company that MGT performs. However, one of our sweet spots is the Sparity Studies, in which we'll talk more about today. I won't go into detail about the staff, but this is the team that worked on the county study. But I do want to highlight the sub-consultants that we utilize to assist us with this study. McMillan Communications and Cressalis collaboration are Maryland-based M and WBE firms. Skybase 7 is a public research, public opinion poll research company and create a heart marketing assisted with the website. And all of those firms are also either M or WBE. The Sparity Study is used to determine whether there's evidence of discrimination in a marketplace which the county actually does business. The county's disparity study involved a collection of qualitative as well as quantitative analysis to determine if discrimination does exist. And disparities studies can provide actionable results that can be used to narrowly tailor a supplier diversity program. And I think I just heard Grace talking through some of those just a few minutes ago. The objectives of our study with the county is twofold. Determinive disparity exists in awarding contracts to minority female, minority and female own businesses that qualify and are available to perform four categories. Construction, professional services, other services, and goods, as well as participate in contracts within the relevant geographic market area. And we'll talk more and explain what that RGMA is in a few minutes. If disparity exists, the termative past discrimination against minority and female businesses in the county's procurement categories persist due to the county's direct action or passive participation in discriminatory practices within the marketplace. The study had very complex task throughout, just very briefly a highlight. We reviewed the county's existing procurement and supply diversity program policies and procedures. We also had conversations with staff who have some component of either procurement or the MFD program to really understand how the programs and the policies and procedures are being operationalized. We conducted a legal review to understand the legal landscape, particularly within the fourth circuit where the county is located, collected data, prep that data to fill in any gaps and do research such as identifying if some of the contracts were led to minority women or minority female owned businesses that are not certified but are recognized as M&F. Conduct the utilization analysis and this whole middle section is all of the preparation for the data which is the baseline of the study. The final task there is understanding and identifying the findings of the study, provide remedies and selected practices that the county can consider for improving or addressing and narrowly tailing their program to the studies findings. Goal setting for aspirational goals and then of course the report. So here are the numbers. The utilization results, how much money did the county spend? Overall, the overall spend that we analyzed was $3.5 billion that was for the study period that we discussed earlier or that Grace pointed out earlier. The utilization of non-minority and female businesses was about 78 percent and 22 percent was spent with minority and female businesses for that study period. The highest utilization we wanted to point out is that Hispanic American firms accounted for 8.4% of the dollar spent of that $3.5 billion and African American firms accounted for 7% of that spend. This is a further breakdown of the overall aggregate slide that I just showed you a few minutes ago, really understanding the dollars and the percentage of spin not only by the business ownership classification but also by the four categories that we analyzed for the county. And so overall, the greatest utilization across all of the categories was African American firms at 14% as well as Asian American firms in other services as well as Asian American firms at 1.9% or 2%. Hispanic American firms had the greatest utilization and construction at 16% as well as Native American firms at 0.23%. Now minority female firms have the greatest utilization and goods at 16%. So this provides an understanding of where your greatest participation is and also helps the county to identify where can we conduct more outreach, understanding businesses, and where they are in terms of their ability to meet the criteria of the different bids with the county. For the disabled own business, the amount spent with diso, they disabled owned businesses was $237,000.01% and that was only in professional services. So there is definitely room for continued outreach and engagement of disabled owned businesses. The relevant geographic market area, as you see on the map here in the county's listed, it defines the focus in which the county conducts this outreach and seek to have MFBE firms bid on county contracts and procurements. These counties were determined by the data that we collected from the county that identifies where firms are located and which the county spent at least 75% of its dollars. And so that determines what that geographic market area is when you're looking at moving forward with your outreach and engagement and the program's focus. Availability is another key factor in your disparity study and that is really understanding what firms are available in your market area that provide the types of goods and services that the county procures. Part of our preparation of the data was to actually assign NAICS codes of commodity codes to every transaction of the data that we received at $3.5 billion. That helped us to truly understand what is it that the county procure and what have they procure during that study period. Then we also identified on the availability to understand availability. We went to Dunn and Bradstery and pulled firms that were located in your relevant geographic market that have those exact same NAICS codes and commodity codes based on the county's speed. And what we found is the availability in the market area and we broke it down by the business ownership classification. So African American firms at 12%, Hispanic firms at 7%, Asian American firms at 5%, Native American firms at little less than 1%, and non-minority females at 18%. The graph to the right, I'm not going to go through each detail. Hopefully you have this presentation, but it also breaks it down by the different categories so that you can truly understand where you have more MFBE firm availability versus areas that there can be some additional outreach to encourage firms to bid with accounting. And here's what everyone's been waiting for. What is the disparity? Disparity is calculated as a ratio. It is the percentage of FBE availability divided by the percentage of MFBE utilization divided by availability times 100. That gives us a ratio and that ratio will tell us whether the disparity is substantial underutilization if it's between zero to 80 that substantial under utilization. 81 to 99 is under utilization although not substantial 100 parity and then anything over 100 is over utilization meaning that you're utilizing more MWBE firms in the marketplace than they're available in your spin. So what we decided to do was to really just kind of turn it into just text to easier understand. You're welcome. So the bold indicates that there is statistically significant. So once we also calculate the disparity ratios, we conduct a statistical significant testing using a T test. And the bold means that it is statistically significant disparity. If you look at it from an overall pragmatic point of view, MBE firms, the total MBE firms of African-American, Asian-American, Native American, Hispanic American, there is substantial disparities, statistically significant disparity, for non-minority females the same. So in aggregate for the program overall, there is statistical significant disparity with the MBE, MFBE firms in the county study. Any questions about this particular slide? Okay, sure. I just wrote it down and then I was going to try to remember it. Thank you. And thank you for being here. What is what are other services? What's the definition of that? Sure. Other services are security services, auto repair, janitorial services, those types of services that do not require a higher level of experience or knowledge so your professional services would be consulting firms like MGT lawyers accounting firms etc. Thank you. Claire's that up for me. You're very welcome. Okay. One also just briefly talk about the private sector and I should have talked about this kind of at the beginning. There are three pillars of data and findings that we need to understand as we determine if disparity exists in your marketplace and what remedies to put forth toward that. One is your quantitative data. That's all of your spend data during that study period. The second is your qualitative data. What are the firms experiencing in your marketplace? And are they facing barriers because of their race, ethnicity, and gender? And the third pillar is the private sector marketplace. What is occurring in the private sector marketplace and does the disparity exist in that section as well? So the private sector indexes were calculated to examine whether MFBE firms in any of the categories received a proportional share of sales. So here we look at sales, we look at revenue as part of the disparity index. Desparity indices were also reviewed for employer firms, which are how we view employer firms and the researches is some of your larger firms who have multiple employers. And then non-employer firms, we relate to as your smaller firms, your sole proprietors, et cetera. And so the employer firms and all the disparity indices in the American business survey is what we use to calculate that are statistically significant within a 95% confidence level. So we did all of those calculations and our analysis shows that there's consistent underutilization of minority and female business firms related to their availability in the marketplace largely amongst the African-American and non-minority female categories, business ownership classifications. And so if you look across at the table, you'll notice that you have disparity and no disparity, you have bold and unbolded texts across the board to give you an understand a broader picture. The industries in the private sector now is also directly online with the industries that we studied in this county's qualitative data as well. So what are businesses saying? What were some of the outcomes of the interviews? We collected information through surveys, in-depth interviews, business engagement meetings, direct emails from businesses in the counties relevant geographic market areas to really understand if they felt that they had been discriminated against while trying to do business in the marketplace. So Hispanic American firms reported that they had the highest indication of discriminatory treatment with 17% and other groups reported non-minority females reported 10%. African American firms reported 7%. And we did not get any indication of discrimination or discriminatory treatment from African Asian American and Native Americans. All MFBE groups except Native Americans indicated experiencing some form of discrimination or disparate treatment compared to nearly no indication from non-minority and female owned businesses. And firms also indicated experienced discriminatory treatment in the informal networks or social networks in the area double standards in the performance of work and the refusal to work with minority and female owned businesses. And so our findings. Firm availability was highest for non-minority female firms at 18% and African American firms at 11.58%. Minority female business utilization, unclassified or non-MFBE firms are utilized more than MFBE firms. The utilization with MFBE firms was at 22% with non-minarity females being at 5.3%. Disabled on business enterprise utilization was $237,000 out of the $3.5 billion. Significant disparity was found for minority and non-minority female firms, especially in goods and other services. The private sector disparities, minority and women wages, as well as earnings of self-employment for minority and female business firms were significantly less than those non-minority male counterparts for 2016 to 2020. And then in the qualitative results, many MFBE firms reported obstacles, such as informal networks, limited access to capital, limited communication from the county. They also expressed concern about discrimination with lack of support and challenges competing against large firms in the marketplace. So our recommendations based on the findings of the report, again, analyzing those three pillars that are talked about quantitative, qualitative, and private sector. For your race and gender neutral, and we do recommend having a race and gender neutral component to any program, is to broaden the small and local business program initiatives to include DBE firms and set contract-specific goals. While we did provide aspirational goals for the county, the contract-specific, they should not be applied to every contract blankly. Really need to analyze each contract's merit and what that goal should be for each contract. Enhance the data collection and I heard Grace talking about the research that they're doing for better data collection. Continue outreach efforts like the procurement fairs and the workshops and administer surveys to gauge effectiveness of those outreach sessions that the county is conducting. Taylor the MFD program to address the disparities that we've identified, following case law as the guidance to that. Expand the division's office and their staff. There's a lot of moving parts to successfully and effectively increasing the economic mobility of firms in your marketplace. And it takes a team to really understand and work with businesses, not only the businesses, but work internally to understand where their opportunities that MFBE firms can bid on. Adopt the aspirational goals, like I mentioned earlier, and I think the next slide has the goals on them. They are aspirational. So any purchase that the county makes, and they make a purchase with MWB or MFBE firms, then those expenditures get counted toward the county's overall goal. What are we trying to achieve over a set period of time? And we'll talk about that in the next slide as well. And then review the MFBE program every five years. It is very, very important that any race and gender conscious program is designed and developed and narrowly tailored to the most relevant data that is available. And so every five years is a recommended timeframe to reevaluate whether or not disparities still exists within the county's marketplace. Okay, and here are our goals. So I'll start with the bottom line. The current goals from the last study, 16 for construction, 19 for professional services, 23 for other services, and 8% for goods. Based on the expenditures, based on the 10 people, 20, 14. So increased availability, increased utilization are the metrics that are used when calculating these goals. So 22% aspirational goal for construction, 25% for professional services, 24 for other services, and 10% aspirational goal for goods. And that is the last slide. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for that terrific presentation. We appreciate it. And I just, I do want to say I completely understand the traffic and I appreciate you coming here and giving such a great presentation after stressfully sitting in traffic this morning with the weather and everything. Thank you. I do. I think all of us have experienced that. So. You've been feel special. No. So we very much appreciate that. I will say we were also joined by Director Shetty is here. I think we started and deleted to some of the questions already on some of the recommendations. I think just to recap for folks, the committee has already stressed the importance of making sure I think that last recommendation on when it's sunsets and the need for another study, we have requested from the Department of Procurement to get really an update on when that schedule to put out the RFP for the next study and have that really in writing. So we all can plan for that because it will come very quickly as we know. The other thing that we started delving into was the automation system to address some of the concerns about enforcement and sanctions and we also requested particularly before we get into budget season and update on how the E-Precurement system and moving towards that is going. So I think we've addressed some of those. I think one of the other big findings I'd like to ask out for, turning over to my colleagues, is looking at the goal setting that was recommended and changing it since the last time the goals which set were in 2014. Does the office of procurement agree with that? Have any, you know, moving forward, does that look good? Yes, we can adopt the new goal set by the new Dispurchase Study starting January 1st. It's perfect. All right, I've been talking a lot, so I'll turn it over to my colleagues to see Council Member Katz. Thank you very much Madam President. Earlier on that presentation you said something about being certified versus being recognized. What is the difference on that? Great question. So I'll answer the question then elaborate if I may. Certification is a validation that a company is owned at least 51% owned and operated, at least 51% by minority women on business. But certification is not a requirement to doing business. And so there are other ways to identify firms that may be minority and female owned who do not possess certification. The certification is the most accurate way to determine that, but again, it's not required to doing business. So at the beginning of the study, we started collecting all types of data sources and databases that we're familiar with with doing these studies across the country. For this particular market we had a lot of source data from other clients in Maryland that we've worked with that we use as a cross-reference from for the county study. And so if we know that a company was a minority or let's say more specifically an Asian-American own firm, but they did not have an active certification. We knew that they were still an Asian-American own firm. So there were still ways to make sure that we captured that information. So what Grace's job and her team's job is going to be now is to encourage that firm to continue with that certification because they need to be certified to be counted toward the goal. So there's kind of a double-edged sword there. Good. Does it matter for the procurement if the company is located in Montgomery County? For our MFD program, the location is not important. They do have to have a certificate like Renetta said. The most popular certificate is from M.DOT. So at least they need to have existence with M.DOT registered as doing business in Maryland so that they can get that certificate. But we have businesses from all over the country. That as long as they have that certificate, then we count them. Okay. On page 40 of your slide, I was making notes as I was going through here. When that listing, it says price discrimination is one of the gripes. What does that mean? Does that mean that somebody has the same price and they won't use them? What does that mean? So, it's the qualitative slide. So, price discrimination is where is a fancier term for bid shopping. So if you have a minority firm and a non-minority firm competing for a scope of work, let's say draw wall for construction, for example. If you have those two firms competing for work and the prime contractor doesn't want to accept the price from the minority firm but that price is lower, they may go to that non-minority firm and ask them if they can meet that price. So that price is lower. They may go to that non-minority firm and ask them if they can meet that price. So that's bit shopping. And so then the prime contractor then can say, well, I didn't use this firm because he was higher, the minority firm because he or she was higher. And I'm using this firm that I really wanted to use in the first place. Unbelievable. It happens. It really is. I mean, that'd be something. And then the, on that same slide, it's denial of opportunity to bid. And I guess it's the same answer that somebody wouldn't even allow you to bid, even though you might be a much better deal. Absolutely. And so how that happens in the market is, let's take our prime contractor again, for example, they one would not accept a bid or two, they don't accept any calls or emails from minority firms, female firms that are interested in submitting a price. So those are those, or they'll say, you're not qualified, so I don't want your price without really understanding their qualifications at all. So businesses did discuss that that was something that was happening in the marketplace. Even though these minority female owned firms are successful on so many other contracts when they are looking or seeking to expand their business, a particular firm that, you know, they're wanting to work on a project just will not do business. Army, so that's why we need the law. I mean, unfortunately, but that's the reason. And the last one and the President mentioned prior to, I think, prior to you sitting down, that one of the other jurisdictions, if you could identify somebody and say, this is the one that you should copy, what jurisdiction would you copy? Oh, does it have to be a Maryland? Anywhere. Anywhere? Okay, okay. I will say as a disclaimer that there are a lot of great programs that are happening across the country. And a lot of it is due to intentionality, really understanding business, understanding how businesses operate and understanding the internal operations of their organization. And so, wow, who comes to mind? WSSC has a pretty robust program. Yes, they do. And they're very intentional with their data collection, their outreach, their supportive businesses. I will also say, I would also say that the city of Charlotte also has a pretty, is the city, not a county, but Mecklenburg County has a really good intentional program as well. You put me on the spot. Well, you don't have to be on the spot. You can get back to us too. I can absolutely get back to you, but there are definitely some very elements of a very good programs and the programs are only as successful as the leadership desires them to be. So in writing there could be some very good programs, but if there's not buy-in from leadership it's very hard to implement those processes. Thank you and thank you for all that you do. Thank you. Council member, your free time. Yes, thank you. I'll echo the comments. I really appreciate all of your thoughtful work. I just wanted to dig in a couple of the questions in the packet a little bit. Specifically to one related to the macroeconomic dynamic, well actually really both relate to the macroeconomic dynamics. One was a point in time issue and one is a cyclical challenge. But we talk a little bit about how the pandemic impacted firms and whether or not there's anything that we can glean from the study and from the data on the 50 months of the pandemic related issues on businesses, although there are pandemic related issues that reverberate well beyond 50 months, I'll just note that. And then ongoing inflationary pressures and how those macroeconomic, and I had a third one which is potential issues and how it will impact minority businesses if you have anything green from the data or if there's anything just from your perspective on tariffs since you know that is going to be the next big conversation I doubt that you have anything in your data to suggest that but it might be helpful and it's on the same theme of challenges of what impact would, you know, presumably smaller firms because, you know, we're talking about women own firms and, you know, person of color own firms. But really, we're talking about smaller firms, oftentimes, and smaller firms have different access to different things and that is supposed to. So if you could just speak to those issues, that would be helpful both to what the data shows, and then if you have anything based on your expertise and your understanding of what you might expect. Absolutely, thank you. Let me start by just saying, base, the type of research that we do, we are always trying to understand what's happening in the market. So we're always reading those briefs, those white papers, those reports, the statistics on the economy, et cetera. So while that particular type of information those reports, the statistics on the economy, et cetera. So while that particular type of information was not requested as part of the study and not needed for the study, we're always seeking to understand how we can best assist our clients with thinking through the next step. So one of the things that I will say is that understanding what's happening in the market is critical to a successful program because you really need to understand how to pivot in terms of what the county is requiring in terms of goods and services and qualifications of businesses. So if tariffs come about or increased tariffs come about, it is not only going to impact small, it's going to impact all businesses. And so how will the county adjust and shift to that? And how can you ensure that whatever or however you adjust and shift to that is not negatively impacting the utilization of minority women on businesses. So, you know, it is dangerous for me to actually say what I think is going to happen in a macroeconomics, you know, given inflation, et cetera. There are reports there. I haven't seen any in a few months or so, so I can't really remember exactly what they're saying. But what I would like to say is that when you think about how the county utilizes its tax dollars in the most responsible and accountable way, the consideration of how to make sure that minority and female owned businesses are not booted out in that thought process is extremely important. Small businesses often pay more anyway for their goods and services because they just do not have that line of credit or they do not have the volume of sales or purchases that medium-sized and larger companies have. So there's always just a little bit of a disadvantage there because they're goods and services. Their goods are a little bit more expensive in most cases than your medium-sized companies. And so in thinking about that and understanding the economy of what's happening, it's really important for Grace and her team, the procurement team, and anyone else in the fiscal responsibility to really kind of think about, we need to buy X. It's going to cost us X percent more because of, to look at construction. After the pandemic, and actually during the last part of the pandemic, costs on construction goods skyrocketed, and it impacted so many different budgets. But the important component of that is to continue to think about, okay, so if cost of goods is increasing for us as the owner, it also is going to be impacting our smaller firms. So what can we do to assist them? Some of the initiatives that we've seen is to assist with those purchases of the goods where you have discounted rates because of larger volume. So can a county purchase the dius, right? And then have a company come in and install. So you still have that inclusion of minority and female on firms, but they're not having to pay three times more for that because you have a better discount than they do. So those just some creative ways of thinking about that. In terms of the data regarding the disparity study, the last 15 months of the study does include, in all of the data in that $3.5 billion, does include your expenditures of items related, COVID-19-related items. So, PPE increased communication with your community, translators to get the word out about what's happening. And so they're in that data, there were minority women on firms that were actually utilized in some of those pandemic related expenses as well. So we did include those because those are the curable opportunities in which firms can't compete for those. Does that help? Great. I want to turn to our colleague, Council Member Sales, as we wrap up this section. Do you have any questions or comments before we move to the bill? Thank you, President Stewart, and to the Go committee for welcoming me here today. I also want to be doing this to the board. I'm going to be doing this to the board. I'm going to be doing this to the board. I'm going to be doing this to the board. I'm going to be doing this to the board. I'm going to be doing this to the board. I'm going to be doing this to the board. program by five years to address systemic wealth disparities. And as presidents do not mention the disparity study is vital for assessing its effectiveness. And I hope we can find ways to monitor disparities more frequently to ensure qualified minority female and disabled on businesses can utilize the resources and opportunities that we have to succeed. And so I did have a few questions, follow up questions. Given the marketplace discrimination that exists for the MBE firms operating in the private sector, how has the Office of Procurement explored ways to address the obstacles mentioned by local businesses and residents, such as creating the informal networks, limited access to capital, challenges, and competing with larger businesses, and discrimination issues? issues. Yeah, thank you for the question. So we have done a few things lately in the recent years to try to address some of the issues. One is to implement a preference points mechanism in the RFP process. One, so there's evaluation points that the evaluation team would give for each and every proposed, uh, proposal. And then they, um, if they come in with a full deck of minority subcontractors with their proposal, um, exceeding the set goal for that contract, then they could get up to 10% of the total evaluation points. So that's one measure that we try to encourage the prime contractor to come in from the front end to bring in minority firms to begin with. Also recently we have transformed one of our program managers position from a marketing outreach manager to supplier diversity engagement manager. So her main focus now is to make sure the minority and female owned businesses out there will have more information and have more access to our procurement process and understand our opportunities and procedures. So those are some of the things and then we do have a very good relationship with WSSC's minority compliance program office. So actually we have been talking with them to see what they have been doing. One of the things Verneta mentioned is in terms of the data collection. It could be very helpful WSSC is doing it not only to get all the data from minority subcontractors. We should also collect data from prime contractors for all of their subcontractors, including now minorities subcontractors that they use. By doing that may help us to get a better understanding what are other opportunities. So a lot of times we do get prime contractor to say, we can do this ourselves. We don't need minority subs. But if we get a full picture of, okay, then what are you using as subcontractors with non-minority businesses? Then definitely there are opportunities that we can say, then try in this area, see if you can find some minority firms. So there are some measures that we can also study and explore to increase the opportunities for the minority subs. So we have rolled out quite a few programs to offer grants and financial opportunities for businesses who want to start or grow or expand their work force. Are you working with any county agencies, community partner organizations to conduct outreach to better educate some of these qualified firms, including our minority chambers, the economic development corporation, our small business navigators. How are you working with other partners? Yes, yes, we do work with them on a weekly basis, I would say. We have, per human has two annual events, once slated specifically for minority and local and small businesses in the spring. And in the fall, we have our procurement fair. So those are definitely our reach effort. And then, large events that hosted exclusively by Percument. And in those events, we invite all of these agencies that you mentioned to our events. And then on the other hand, we conduct, or we participate about 40 events, working with these different agencies. So we will have an exhibit table, or we are invited as a panelist to talk about procurement. So we do work with them very, very closely. And then how often are you evaluating your outreach and engagement with the businesses that you are working with to better understand if they're getting the information, if there are other ways that they're getting opportunities from other jurisdictions? How often is that happening? So another thing I want to mention is we do have an online monthly open house. And then since we moved it online, it's a pandemic. We actually get about 50 to 70 vendors online each month. And after each one of our event, we do a survey from the vendor to ask if you got the information that you came here for or what are some other information that you would like to see for our next event. And then we do a evaluation with our diversity engagement person on a new basis to make sure that she has a plan in terms of the engagement. Okay, and so I know that this last study took, you know, a very long time. Are you already proposing ways to ensure that we're evaluating in between the five year period or ten year period more regularly to ensure we're going to be meeting the goals that have been recommended. So the law requires us to do one every five years. So our goal is to start the solicitation process earlier this time so that we definitely will get one done by next five years. Great. All right. Thank you so much. Thank you, Council Member Sales. I feel like we could spend the morning. It's really the whole day digging into the excellent work that was done. Some of the takeaways I think we have from this morning. We discussed getting a firm or schedule on the next solicitation going out, more on the automation. And I think it would be helpful, I don't know if the Office of Procurement is developing this, but given there's probably about between eight and nine different recommendations coming out of the report, one of the things that we'd like to do as the government operations and fiscal policy committee is we'd like to send memos to our colleagues on our committee to make sure that our colleagues are fully informed of what's going on. So any written responses to the recommendations that came out of the report, that we could share with colleagues and make sure they know what the office of procurement is doing in response to the excellent recommendations we saw. And I just want to say, the data are great. And I haven't talked about tea tests in a while. And I think the qualitative pieces of what you're hearing from our businesses and who we're working with is very important. And I appreciate the report and the outreach, the office is doing already. So thank you for all that work. I look forward to the updates. And I think with that we have an expedited bill before us, any questions or comments on that. Seeing none, we will recommend this move forward to the full counseling given it as an expedited bill. We will be voting on this, our meeting on December 10th on this Tuesday. All right, so that is all for our first two items. Thank you again for coming. We are now going to move over and welcome Tiffany Ward, our director of our Office of Racial Equity and Social Justice. And I think we are also going to be joined by Miss Selina Mendi Singleton in a moment. All right, Director Ward, how are you? Good. What? Oh. Sorry, I get you microphones off. We go. Great. Well, welcome, Director Ward. We are glad to see. Have you here today to give us an update on the Office of Racial Equity and Social Justice as we do with a lot of the departments that come to the Government Operations and Physical Policy Committee. We like to touch base with you in the fall before again we get into our budget season. I know you and I had some conversations and raised some questions that we were hearing during last budget from departments about the budget equity tool changes that were happening there as well as the process that goes into your office and what is done there. I know you were provided with a number of questions that are as well as the process that goes into your office and what is done there. I know you were provided with a number of questions that are in the packet. Thank you for responding to those. But before we kind of dig into all that, I wanted to give you an opportunity to provide an overview of the work that the office is doing and any updates you'd like to let us know. Sure, thank you. For the record Tiffany Ward, Director of the Office of Racial Equity and Social Justice. The office continues to turn. We are now Office of Eight. We have fully staffed all of the FTEs that Council and County Executive so graciously bestowed upon us. And so we're happy to have our data and Ms. Onboard, our community engagement manager on board, and of course our policy team and training staff as well as our admin. We'll talk a little bit about our training work. We continue to do our trainings. As you all know, every employee's requires to have eight hours worth of racial equity training every year and we have a little bit of a change this past year to that. We have, we've offered advancing racial equity and social justice as well as understanding structural racism, which comes out of our office, which are both four hour offerings. So that would equate to your eight hours as well as offering several other trainings. We now require that those two trainings be done every two years instead of every year. And then departments can use either trainings that they put together that are issue specific to their departments or other trainings that we offer to fill that eight hours. So that's one of the changes or updates, I wouldn't say change updates, for the Office of Racial Aquinas Social Justice in this training program. We also continue to work with partners, our partners in TED and OHR to put together a dashboard so that supervisors and managers can more easily track the trainings of their staff members. We expected that Dashboard will be up and running by April May, so knock on wood. By the time we are here again in May or April, that Dashboard will be up and running and folks can actually get those trainings and we'll see how their employees have completed those trainings and where they are in compliance. So we are very grateful for our partnership with OHR and Tubs in that work. And then we continue to do self-guided trainings as well as live, facilitated virtual trainings and we have created webinars that accommodate up to 300 people so that we can get as many people in front of doing that training as possible. And our policy, our policy department or division in our very many department, we are always iterating and trying to, I don't want to say perfect, but trying to get a better tool, both the CIP budget tool and operating budget tool every year. So we are always working on that and doing outreach and talking to stakeholders who are both participating in that process using the tool, getting feedback from them about the ease of use, the difficulty of use, helping us understand how better to deliver the tool as well as analyze the tools. So always doing that. You all should have received as well an amendment that we put forth on our requirement that our Office through racial equity impact statements for every supplemental appropriation. A few, I guess last summer, we did what we called a revamp process, where we talked to stakeholders about the use and impact of our reas. We have a small team of policy analysts who do our budget tool for both the CIP process, operating budget process, and all of our reas. And they're doing all of those things oftentimes concurrently. So we wanted to make sure one that we have the capacity to do all of those. And then we wanted to see the impact of the work that we're doing with reas so that we could either possibly re-delegate that time to other needs within both the county and the department. And so as a result, what we are asking for in that amendment is that our office no longer do reas on every single supplemental appropriation that is asked for, but that they, that we do reas for general fund appropriations. So that's money coming straight from the general fund. So right now we do reas on federal grants that are asked for state grants. In the, you know, our per dollars, all of those things. And so during COVID, especially, I think we pushed out maybe almost 100 reas a year, which can be taxing and requires a fair amount of research and labor on our part. And so we wanted to make sure that we are doing things that have the most impact and that give you all the information you need to make the decisions that you need and the spaces where you actually are going to use it. And then we are, as we come into 2025, the REAP, which is the racial equity action plan, is due for every department at the end of 2025. So that policy team, as well as our data analysts and our community engagement manager, will turn its attention to creating guidance and for a framework for departments to do their reaps. So that's the biggest thing there and lastly, our newest many division, his community engagement. We, as you all know, have the task of helping the county look at or do community engagement through a racial equity lens. And so Harriet Shengurai, who comes from our Office of Community Partnerships and has been with us a little while now, has we've deployed a survey to departments and to external stakeholders, including individuals and providers to the county to talk to ask them about how they are doing community engagement, what data they're collecting, if they are reporting out, reporting back to community once that community engagement is done, and then we are talking to our external stakeholders about how they're receiving that communication, what best, what the best way to contact them and any difficulties or best ways to get in touch with them. So we'll use that information. I'll talk a little bit about this as well after the OOLO presentation on the Community Engagement report to convene a task force which will include departments who are front facing as well as stakeholders like OOLO and others who are working with the community regularly so that we can talk about the community engagement continuum and some of the best practices for community engagement, particularly with community's color. Thanks, that's all I have for that was a fast overview, but I think that's it. It's a fast, but had many pieces to it. And I appreciate it. And I think we probably will dive into the community engagement piece once we have the OLO presentation. I will say when we received the packet, I was glad to see that one of the big questions I had is, okay, what do we now? What's the next step on that? And I'm glad to see the department looking at the community engagement piece that will delve into a little bit more. Ms. Menecine, thank you for an excellent packet and putting things together. I just wanted to turn it to you if you had anything to say before we got into our questions or things. Good morning, Madam Chair. I actually do not have anything else to add questions are things. Good morning, Madam Chair. I actually do not have anything else to add at this event. Great. So I have two sets of questions, one on the amendment that we received early this week and the other on OBET, and then I'll turn to my colleagues. One, we did just receive the amendment. Obviously, it'll go through our processes of being introduced and have a public hearing and come back to us. I think in my, and I know you and I have talked about this a bit in looking at what we've received an introduction. I think it would be helpful to, as we prepare for this, to have more information and data, some of which you share today on, you know, how many of the reports have come in, have been on federal grants, state grants, or things that are not general funds so that we can have a better sense of the magnitude that your office was looking at. And then also just so that I think we'll want to on this committee have a conversation with you all when it comes before us. Looking at, where do we make that cut off of what does get a racial equity and social justice impact statement, what doesn't, and what information has been useful to the different committees. So I will say I want to talk to my colleagues, especially the chair of other committees who receive many of these to see, you know, when we do one, even on a federal grant, which most of the time we're saying like, oh, it's a federal money or state money, it's matching, we're going to move forward with, are there benefits of having that racial equity analysis and to make sure we don't lose anything in this process? So I think for me those are the conversations I want to have leading up to that and I thought I'd tee that off since we're here today. Before I turn to my colleagues, I did want to delve a little bit more into the new a bit that folks are going to get. And I think one of the things from a conversation that we had earlier in the fall that we answer is a question that we receive, or I'll say I receive from folks about timing of everything. And I think it's really helpful for you to go through the, you know, a year in the life of your office. And what it is like. And when you start looking, because you're doing budget all the time, because we're looking at capital budgets, we're looking at operating budgets, you're doing work with all the different departments. And I think it's helpful to have a full understanding of the workflow that goes for your office so that when you know the departments receive information they have a greater understanding of that workflow. Sure. I'll circle back to the first part of your comment around the numbers. So in our most recent annual report, we do have a breakdown of the numbers and how many supplemental we've done that are tax-supported, that are federal grants, that are state grants, that are CIP, and that are operating as well as MCPS. And so I will highlight that and send that over to you or to anyone else on Council who'd like that information as well. But that's also available in our annual report. The second part was talking to your colleagues. That makes absolute sense, Definitely willing to do that. And as far as year in the life of analyzing budget decisions with the racial equity lens. So we start to develop the framework quite frankly for the CIP budget this year we're going to start actually next month. We put together what projects at what stage we'll get a look, meaning a racial equity assessment from us. We then start to put together a list of questions or a list of the projects we think should get our assessment. Then we start to look at the tool again. We then deploy the tool. The tool is deployed meaning we put together a training. We put together technical assistance schedule that's in the summer month. So I would say like April, we are finished with the questions May or so, May, June, we are putting together a training starts then, either June or July, August, September folks are getting us back their responses. We give our responses back to the County Executive Department and OMB around October. So then, and I would say, I'm trying to remember now, we are also creating our budget equity tool for the operating budget that summer as well. So we are, while we're receiving analysis from receiving responses from our CIP tool. We're putting together our operating budget questions and tools and oftentimes also getting feedback from our last last years experience and then deploying that tool September, right, late September, which has been the last two budget cycles, then offering technical assistance in October, meaning we're having one-on-one, we're having group sessions where we're talking to people about what projects are going to pick, how they're going to, how to use the tool, what the metrics are, what the ratings are. Then folks are getting us back responses. I would say, yeah, late October, early November, we are still now in the process of then analyzing those responses and then getting ready to send those responses to departments into OMB and January, December, January, February, right? For the March sendover to council, right? All while doing Rias. And that's a team of three, mostly. I do an assist on the CIPs. The CIP analysis and operating budget analysis, and that, well, for real too. Meaning I see everything that comes out of the office. So I'm the last set of eyes. And so it is a concurrent system that really isn't a stop and go for us. There really isn't a season. It is always. And so for us, it's always. And so for us, we are always in session. We definitely are with, we need departments to take some onus and some ownership when they need support from us. And we give them tools to do that with our technical assistance office hours with our one-on-ones. And with just generally making ourselves available to departments and quite frankly to other stakeholders whether it's the CE or OMV and others. So that's a little bit, or I guess the big bit, of how we are working in that it is a constant workflow for us. It is there is not a season really. And then we are also shifting with the needs of our other partners, OMB, CE, and others around when resources need to be deployed, when we should be available and how and how to you know we're giving them presentations on what we're doing as well basically. Thank you thank you are there over here I'll turn to my colleagues council member Freetson. Yeah appreciate the overview all the work that you're doing obviously this is a bit of an iterative process of managing and figuring out how we implement what is new for us and the work is nuanced and challenging and comes with it lots of dynamics. I just think that the point that was raised by Chair and Council President is important. William Donald Chaffer used to say it comes out of my left pocket or it comes out of my right pocket it's still my money and he was referencing the difference between state dollars and federal dollars at the Board of Public Works he used to say it all the time and there was this inclination at the Board of Public Works at the state level that there was some dramatic difference between if you're talking about a contract that utilized state dollars versus a contract that utilized federal dollars if the level of oversight should be dramatically different. And his point was it shouldn't be because these are dollars that are intended for the benefit of the residents of the state or of the county and we should be providing oversight on all the dollars to make sure that they're going to their highest and best use and in this case to ensure that they are addressing racial equity concerns. So I hear you on the need to focus and to ensure that limited human resources are directed in the areas where they're needed the most and would have the most impact, but I also think that we need to be sensitive about the fact that residents don't care who is caching the check. They care about the services and the impact of those services and we generally shouldn't care about where the funds are coming from, we should care about who is benefiting from the funds who is impacted as a result of the funds are coming from, we should care about who is benefiting from the funds who is impacted as a result of the funds and what the impacts of our decisions are going to be. So I just think that warrants more conversation, more discussion and more thought. I do think that prior to the bill coming over, I think it would have been helpful if there was more direct dialogue on that with the committee and with Miss Singleton. And I think it's a legitimate conversation for us to have, but I think one that perhaps the bill will give us the opportunity to have that conversation. The other option would have been to have the conversation prior to the bill coming over, but I appreciate the need for the conversation. I think it's a legitimate one, but I think it is a conversation that we do need to have. And so I just wanted to acknowledge and note that and appreciate that it was mentioned at the beginning. Thanks. Sure. I know more Director Ward, excuse me. You did do some one-on-one interviews. Yeah, we didn't do this in a vacuum, for sure. We talked to stakeholders. We talked to, we reached out to council members. We did one-on-ones with my team and had a whole set of questions and asking folks how they were using it, where they were using it, what they were reading, what they were not reading, and how the reas were impacting decision making. We had the same conversations in the CEE's office, we had the same conversations with OMB. We had a conversation with Ms. Mindy Singleton about the rea process as well. This was not definitely done kind of in a dark room deciding we just don't want to do this work. We really are thinking about impact and so I'm happy to bring more light to that process as well. I guess I guess I will speak as the chair of this committee having had some general conversations with you. It was surprising to get the bill. Okay. So I will just say the way it was transmitted. But I appreciate that everybody has, you know, I know you are having conversations, but to see as I think a council member Freetz and said to have it sent over without more of a oh we've had the conversations now we're moving forward that step okay I got you didn't happen so I think that's what we're saying that all of us about our work have conversations all the time about how we should be doing this how we should be doing that I know you were exploring that. The fact that it had moved forward in such a formal way for us to receive an amendment to the Racial Equity Act, which is, you know, very important to all of us in our work. I think that's the piece, if I may, that took us by surprise. Sure. I appreciate that. Thank you took us by surprise sure I appreciate that thank you So just to clarify Understanding where all the work that was done, but also where we sit as the committee got a council member cats Thank you very much Madam President First of I did want to mention that in its inner packet, but O bet stands for operating budget and equity tool Yes, and we do that in government all the, but O-BET stands for operating budget and equity tool. And we do that in government all the time. We have our own language, and we just need to make certain that the public is aware of what it is. I applaud the idea that you're going to a qualitative data. You know, so many times during your budget process, which is the fastest movements of fire hose, of information that comes flying through here, so many times the departments have said, you know, that's not fair. I've done all of these things and you didn't see that. I didn't even know you were looking at that. I didn't know how you were looking at it. This is the way to get air partners to be air partners. So I sincerely appreciate that you're going away from the transition for that. And as far as the surprise, I guess surprises happen, but in all fairness, I think it's logical which you're suggesting. And I think we need to figure out what's the best way to do it. But I certainly understand why you're suggesting what you're suggesting. And with that I'll turn. And the other thing is that I have, and I think it's really more under OLO than discussion, the fourth discussion than it is for this one. But I do think the whole idea for the communication piece is key to this whole thing. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Katz. Well, I think all of us are kind of like, let's get to that old hour of work. And one of the reasons that we wanted to structure this Go committee session to have you Director Ward here with us today to kind of just lay the foundation on what your office is doing, a look forward so that we could look at the excellent work that our office of legislative oversight has done looking at our community engagement specifically and then see how we can bring all these pieces together. Is our hope today. And so Ms. Mindy Singh, I would thank you very much for your work on putting together the packet. And I'm going to now turn this over to OLL to walk through. And I know we have a number of guests who are also here with us today. Yeah, that sounds good. We have a number of guests who are also here with us today. Yeah, that sounds good. I do not believe councilmember sales is still on zoom. I don't think so. I think, yeah, I'm still here. Oh, she is. I'm sorry my apologies Okay. So while we're queuing up the slides, good morning. Thank you so much for having us. I'm Jan Raepenia. I'm a performance management and data analyst in the Office of Legislative Oversight. And I'm joined by my colleague, Chitra Kalyandurg, who is a legislative analyst in OLO. And we look forward to sharing about OLO report in 2024-08 community engagement for racial equity and social justice. Firstly, we'd like to thank our colleagues in OLO who supported us with this project, our former summer fellows, Kayla Jones and Diana Carrillo, and our project supervisor, Dr. Elaine Bonner-Tompkins, and we would also like to thank the community partners and county staff who contributed their time and insight for this project. So we're gonna start with a briefing on the report which should take about 20 minutes. Okay, so for today's briefing, we're just gonna start by giving a quick overview of the Community Engagement for Racial Equity and Social Justice Project. Now we'll get into key concepts from the report. Next, we'll share best practices that we found in our research for advancing equitable community engagement and government decision making. And then we'll follow that by sharing the key project findings and recommendations from the report. We'll end the briefing by sharing briefly on a few promising ongoing efforts to advance equitable community engagement and county departments. So just a quick overview of the report. So the goals of the community engagement for Racial Equity and Social Justice Project were to understand community engagement in the county and to assess how the county's engagement practices aligned with best practices for equitable community engagement and county decision-making. So our research involved analyzing county data and reviewing best practices research, county policies, and other documents, interviewing department staff, and holding focus groups with by-profit community partners. So getting into key concepts from the report, the first is what exactly is community engagement. So for the report, we use a very broad definition for a community engagement which we adapted from a definition that was offered by the Institute for Local Government and that is community engagement refers to a broad range of methods used by government stakeholders that allow community members to become more informed about and or influence government decisions including policies, programs, and practices. So these are just a few examples of community engagement methods that are common in the county. So for instance, social media posts, town halls, advisory committees, are examples of different community engagement practices that are being used by county stakeholders. But these methods vary in how much voice and influence community members have in the decisions that are being made. So in our report, we use the spectrum of community engagement to ownership framework that was developed by facilitating power to understand the varying degrees of community engagement. The slide has a graphic of the full spectrum of community engagement to ownership, and the graphic shows the six developmental stages of the spectrum, which are ignore, inform, consult, involve, collaborate, and defer to. And for each stage, the graphic also explains the impact community engagement goals, message the stage sends to the community, example activities that characterize the stage, and guidelines for how government resources would be allocated within the stage. So on this slide, we have, again, each stage of the spectrum of community engagement to ownership, and here what we're highlighting are the examples of activities that are included in the spectrum that characterize each stage. So these examples really illustrate how community engagement practices vary as you move along the spectrum. So for instance, examples of engagement practices at the informed stage or stage one include fact sheets and presentations. An example of engagement practices at the stage four stage or the collaborate stage include community organizing and citizens advisory advisory committees. So, community engagement practices that are further down the spectrum increasingly amplify the voice and power of community members in government decision making. And in our report to make sense of community engagement practices in the county, we grouped the stages of the spectrum into three broad categories of community engagement practices in the county. We grouped the stages of the spectrum into three broad categories of community engagement. So stage zero represents no community engagement. Stages one and two represent one way community engagement where community members are informed of decisions and might have some opportunities to provide input but generally do not have much influence in shaping decisions. And stages three, four, and five represent two-way community engagement where community members increasingly have more voice in influence in shaping government decisions. And so we often use these terms as well to describe the varying levels of community engagement. So now with that broader understanding of community engagement, we can define what specifically equitable community engagement is. So equitable community engagement is community engagement that advances racial equity and social justice by centering the needs, leadership, and power of black, indigenous, and other people of color or BIPOC and community members with low incomes. So going back to the spectrum of community engagement to ownership, practices within each stage of the spectrum can vary in how equitable they are. The key is to what extent BIPOC are centered in each stage. So, for instance, examples of equitable one-way engagement practices include providing fact sheets and multiple languages and holding public hearings and BIPOC communities. And examples of equitable two-way engagement practices include holding town halls and by-pock communities and also having advisory committees that are representative of by-pock. So, centering by-pock in each stage of the spectrum is very important but the practices that are going to have the most potential to advance racial equity and social justice are those equitable two-way community engagement practices that that have the most potential to advance racial equity and social justice are those equitable two way community engagement practices that amplify the voice and power of BIPOC in decision-making. And just to know the spectrum of community engagement to ownership, essential principle is to center BIPOC and other excluded communities in each stage and also to move towards community ownership. And it is important to recognize that equitable community engagement is necessary to advance racial equity and social justice. So equitable community engagement ensures that policies, programs, and practices accurately represent the needs and priorities of all community members, not just the segment of community members at the common engagement methods favor, which primarily is white community members. And it also ensures that policies, programs, and practices benefit by pop community members instead of excluding or harming them, which is a likely outcome of government decision-making that ignores the needs and priorities of BIPOC, and which, of course, undermines racial equity and social justice. So that brings us to what are those best practices for equitable community engagement. So in our research, we found eight themes of best practices for advancing equitable community engagement and government decision making. So I'll briefly describe each of them. The first is to develop a shared understanding of RISJ among government and community stakeholders. So this involves normalizing racial equity and social justice through training on structural racism, the governments for maintaining racial inequity and applying a R.S.J. framework. The second theme is for governments to make equitable community engagement and organizational priority by creating an environment in which it is valued and adequately resourced. So equitable community engagement requires sustain, meaningful and permanent collaboration with BIPOC communities, which requires time and financial resources. The third theme is centering the needs and expertise of BIPOC in organizing collaborators. So this involves engaging BIPOC community stakeholders in decision-making processes early and often, and also providing resources to BIPOC community organizations to support BIPOC in organizing and advocating for their needs and priorities. The fourth theme is to build and maintain relationships and trust across various BIPOC stakeholders. So this theme is foundational to equitable community engagement, especially given the deep history of BIPOC exclusion and government. So to effectively build trust in BIPOC communities, relationship building must be sustained and permanent, not temporary and transactional. The fifth theme is for governments to make it easier for community members to engage in decision-making through creating engagement opportunities directly in BIPOC communities that are welcoming and safe and that remove barriers to participation. This can include strategies such as providing interpretation and childcare and also compensating community members. The sixth theme is for government and BIPpop community stakeholders to co-create and enforce an equitable community engagement policy, including co-creating structures that hold stakeholders accountable to implementing those policies. Number seven is for governments to operationalize equitable community engagement by using various tools and resources that are offered in the research literature, including community engagement toolkids and community needs assessments. And the eighth and final theme is for governments and BIPOC community stakeholders to use data to inform equitable community engagement strategies and track results. So data can be used to help target engagement efforts based on the characteristics and needs of BIPOC communities, and data can also measure the extent to which engagement efforts are equitable and to which the extent to which they are achieving desired outcomes. So in our report we found that several of the best practices for equitable community engagement are reflected in the county's RISJ Action Plan regulations. So the regulations layout a recommended process for departments to develop community engagement plans that are submitted to the Office of Racial Equity and Social Justice for review. So if departments create a community engagement plan as proposed in the regulations, it can encourage them to follow best practices for equitable community engagement by, for example, planning for how historically excluded communities will be included early in decision-making, planning for ongoing collaboration and engagement with partners, identifying and addressing barriers that prevent communities from engaging with county government, and compiling research on affected communities including languages, customs, and historical data. So now I'll hand it to Shethra for the remainder of our presentation. Okay, thanks, Jenry. So one of the goals of the project was to understand what community engagement practice are being used in county departments and the extent to which those practices are equitable. So to do this, we interviewed staff from 11 county departments and we also met with representatives from local organizations who primarily serve by Pock. And our research led to four major findings and one main recommendation which I will discuss in the next two sections. So our first key finding is that community engagement in the county is characterized by racial inequities and disparities. We analyzed data on constituents who registered to testify before We found that predominantly white communities were overrepresented in constituent engagement, while predominantly BIPOC communities were largely underrepresented. I'll share more detail about this analysis in the coming slides. We also found that the county's current engagement practices have racial inequities I'll share more detail about this analysis in the coming slides. We also found that the county's current engagement practices have racial inequities embedded in them. This results in stronger engagement among white community members than among BIPOC community members. And these inequities are rooted in a history of governments at all levels, structurally, including white voices in government decision making and structurally excluding bypock voices. As noted in this table, the constituent engagement data we analyzed consisted of over 7,000 public testimony registrations and over 15,000 public correspondence records. The county does not collect race and or ethnicity data when constituents register to either testify in front of the council or when they submit correspondence to the council. So in order to analyze whether racial or ethnic disparities exist in engagement through these two channels, we used zip code information from these records and we compared it to census demographic data. We looked at zip codes with populations of over 30,000 and identified three zip codes with the highest proportion of white constituents. 20814, 20815 and 20817 shown here on the on the map in red. On average 67% of constituents from these zip codes are white. And while these zip codes account for 10% of the county population, they accounted for 15% of constituent codes with the highest proportion of BIPOC, 208-866-20877, 20906, and 20904, shown here in Orange on the map. On average, 74% of constituents from these zip codes are BIPOC. And while these zip codes account for 20% of the county population, they accounted for 8% of constituent engagement with the council. So this analysis suggests that common community engagement channels used in the council, namely public testimony and correspondence, foster stronger engagement among white constituents than among by-pock constituents. Even when by-pock are accounting for a larger proportion of the population, their voices are likely overshadowed by the overrepresentation of white constituent engagement through these channels. Our second finding is that the County Department's primarily use one way rather than two way community engagement methods and that these one way methods center two-way community engagement methods and that these one-way methods center by-pock community members in limited in inconsistent ways. We found that departments are mostly equipped to share information with community members through one-way channels. They offer limited opportunities for community members to shape decision-making. We did find that language accessibility is a common strategy used by departments to center BIPOC in one way engagement. For example, translation or interpretation services are often used. However, we also found that there are many more resources dedicated to reaching community members who speak Spanish than BIPOC who speak other languages, including English. Our third finding is that county staff experience several challenges in carrying out equitable community engagement. For example, we heard that departments have limited resources, time, or staff to carry out equitable community engagement. We also heard that departments lack an overall standard for equitable community engagement. And lastly, we heard that there is generally a reluctance within county departments to center race and to prioritize racial equity in county operations, including in community engagement. And I also want to note here that when we spoke with BIPOC community partners during our focus groups, they also observed that county departments experienced these challenges. Our last finding is that despite the challenges noted in the previous findings, some county staff are working to center BIPOC in their community engagement work. We found that many of the community engagement practices used by these staff align with promising practices found in the research and with the practices that are used by BIPOC community partners in their work in the county. However, we also found that staff are often using equitable community engagement practices at their own discretion. And this is because these practices are not typically part of department policy or practice, nor are they documented in any formal way. Based on these findings, we conclude that in order for the county to meet its RESJ goals, it should consider transforming its community engagement practices toward promoting equitable community engagement in government decision making. So we provide the county council with one main recommendation and six supporting recommendations which can serve as a starting point toward this work. Our primary recommendation is for the County Council and the County Executive to convene a collaborative effort with County and BIPOC community stakeholders to jointly develop, implement, and evaluate an equitable community engagement framework that builds on the county's existing efforts. We note in the report that this framework has the most potential to advanced RESJ if it centers engagement with BIPOC communities. We also offer six supporting recommendations for what the collaborative can focus on when developing the equitable community engagement framework. These recommendations largely reflect suggestions that BIPock community partners shared with OLO. So the first supporting recommendation is that the collaborative can focus on implementing community engagement learning pathways for county staff. They can focus on providing county funding for community leaders to organize and advocate for their needs and their priorities. In strengthening channels for one way and for two way engagement between county and BIPOC community members. And in developing an accountability structure and determining resource needs for equitable community engagement in county departments. Before we conclude, I just want to highlight a few promising efforts for advancing equitable community engagement in the county that have been ongoing. These include the hiring of the community engagement manager in the Office of Racial Equity and Social Justice this past April, which Director Ward spoke about earlier. The community engagement manager provides training and technical assistance to county departments on equitable community engagement and reviews community engagement plans submitted by departments and direct reward is available to answer any questions about that. Another promising effort is the Climate Justice Co-creation Initiative, which is a cross-cutting, cross-departmental, county and community initiative that is working towards a paradigm shift in community engagement related to climate justice issues and representatives of the CJA CI have prepared a presentation to share with the committee today. So thank you, that concludes OLO's presentation and we will turn it back to the chair. Great. I think if we have other presentations, we should bring people down now just as a reminder, our, I appreciate everyone here, our committee has a hard stop today at 1145. So just to let folks know, we had some technical difficulties and traffic this morning so we need to get started a bit late but Appreciate the report and everyone here, but No objections for my colleagues. I think if we just roll through the Present other presentations we have and then we can stop for conversation Thank you. Good morning. My name is Jane Park and I'm currently working as Senior Fellow for Innovation at the Montgomery County Collaboration Council. I have the privilege of serving alongside our Executive Director Elijah Wheeler as a member of his leadership team. of the CJA's Co-Creature Initiative and the CJA's Co-Creature Initiative and the CJA's Co-Creature Initiative and the CJA's Co-Creature Initiative and the CJA's Co-Creature Initiative and the CJA's Co-Creature Initiative and the CJA's Co-Creature Initiative and the CJA's Co-Creature Initiative and the CJA's Co-Creature Initiative initiative launched by DEP over three years ago, and response to a letter submitted by the Montgomery County Racial Equity Network, also known as the Moore Network. The Moore letter, which was signed by 28 community organizations, criticized DEP for failing to meaningfully engage frontline community members who are most impacted by climate and racial injustice in the development of its climate action plan. A key demand was for the county to shift from a traditional top-down one-way community engagement approach to one where low income residents of color are deeply integrated into planning processes as collaborators and co-creators with the government. In the early stages of building the CJCI, we recognize the need for there to be a trusted entity outside of government to manage and coordinate this effort. Given the collaboration council's unique role of supporting collaborations among local government and community-based organizations, combined with our deep commitment to an equitable community engagement approach, the Collaboration Council assumed to the role of administrator and co-convener of the CJCI in the spring of 2022. The partners to the CJCI include DEP, HHS Latino Health Initiative, five community-based organizations and several community members. You can see the names of the participating entities listed on the slide. And the next slide, please. We were pleased to see such close alignment between OOLO's report recommendations and the goals and direction of the CJCI. Specifically, CJCI is actively implementing OOLO's recommendations to educate and guide county staff, build the capacity of low-income communities of color to organize and advocate, and develop new channels for two-way engagement between the county and grassroots community members. So on this slide, we have many of the members that made up the C2CI initial team. I'm sorry can you just just for the work? It's just for the record. Yeah we all know you but just to make sure. To make sure everyone else has it. Maddie Noggie is my name. I co-direct everyday canvassing to the local advocacy based nonprofit and they use the HE series as my set of pronouns. And I had the privilege of being a part of this group, as you can see on the slide, alongside CASA, FACES, LOIC, Department of Environmental Protection, and a few community members that we invited be a part of the group, a part of the space, just to have representation that wasn't just based on organizational networks. And we spent a lot of time considering the process of developing this space. We understand that the how is just as important as the what, so the way that we do the work internally reflects how we want the work to happen externally. And as part of that process, we had to go through a few different steps. One of them was going to be familiar with each other as a group, building trust and building relationality. We had to then set a shared pathway for our direction, which is something we had to co-create, which meant this kind of iterative process of brainstorming followed by kind of refining that brainstorm process, those ideas, and then sharing them back out to the full team, which is exactly what we hope to see in county governments, same kind of process. It's very two way, slow relational process. And then co-develop the actions to support the ideas that were developed. And one of the ways that we did it as an example in our space was in the very first meeting, that first meeting actually, we did a brainstorming activity where we asked the group, what is your vision for this co-creation initiative? And from that question came a set of answers. And the top answers were supporting community members so that they can show up with their full selves, meeting providing childcare, food, or financial support. The most popular answer was actually about power building and community building. This idea that if I don't have the wherewithal, the confidence, the time, the resources, the knowledge to show up in county government and advocate for myself, then I can't. So we have to spend the time getting people built up to show up. And then the second thing was building food access with the second most popular item was building food access with the second most popular item was building food access and sustainability. So after kind of refining those ideas, we landed on power building and belonging as our top priority. And that meant us doing what we want now call popular education workshops, which Dan mentioned earlier, which is us using the wisdom of the community to develop a workshop that kind of shares climate justice, priorities and information, and also build up leadership so that folks can go back to their communities and then build up power by talking to folks, getting them activated, sharing information with them, and doing the work essentially of organizing. That then led to us also thinking about government pathways, which is to say, to build off of the OOLO report, if we build up strength and power in our communities and give them an advocacy platform, the government has to be ready to receive the advocacy. So then we have a second track to do that work. And that was part of the process that was kind of built into this coalition space that we developed. And that again, all builds on what OOLO has prioritized. And I should say sort of as an asterisk that I personally really proud to see the work that government has done to get us to this place. It is much more work to be done, but the fact that we're having this conversation, the fact that we're talking about the engagement to ownership spectrum, I think is really meaningful for us moving to a place where community leads government in all cases. There's actually one more slide, but I said all those things. Hi. Good morning, David DelPos, HHS Latino Health Initiative. Climate resilience work cuts across all departments and agencies and we intend to engage diverse body of stakeholders as we move forward. The CJCIS focused on centering those most vulnerable to climate change and drawing on their lived experience and insights to co-create climate justice solutions. DEP and HHS are key partners in this work. and drawing on their lived experience and insights to co-create climate justice solutions. DEP and HHS are key partners in this work. The impacts of climate change on our community's health are profound. The climate crisis is a health crisis. From a community health perspective, climate is a social determinative health. Impact such as air pollution, extreme heat, flooding, and superstorms all exacerbate existing inequities and health problems, addressing the climate crisis in this context requires an intersectional approach. Another key partner in this work is the county's Office of Racial Equity and Social Justice. The CJCI aligns and complements with the Office of Racial Equity and Social Justice's work. After all, we can't meanfully talk about climate change without talking about racial inequity and climate change's disproportion about racial inequity and climate changes disproportionate impact on marginalized communities. This is an ambitious effort that will best be served incorporating lessons learned along the way while intentionally building capacity amongst key stakeholders. I Doug Weissberger with the Department of Environmental Protection. So we've been waiting for a while and we're now poised for implementation using existing county resources. And we pursue that with three, through three interrelated program components. And the first one is training government staff and equitable community engagement for 101 with a climate justice sort of focus. So comprehensive training program for county staff to help them understand the disproportionate impacts of climate hazards on under-resource frontline communities and how climate hazards were frequent in intense storms, increased number of high heat days, et cetera, exacerbate existing inequities. Climate action is not just about reducing emissions, but building resilience among residents most vulnerable to climate impacts. We want to provide that overview. And this is particularly relevant for outward facing departments whose work intersects with climate resilience. So housing and community fares are given the climate impacts on housing. HHS, given climate changes at verse health impacts as David noted. The goal is to equip staff with the skill set and tools to embrace an equitable community engagement process that facilitates meaningful partnerships with frontline communities. Training components will include an overview of the engagement to ownership spectrum, power dynamics, overview of the key OLO findings, over fresh drawn structural racism content already covered by the Office of Racial Equity and Social Justice, strategies for building trust and a field visit with Maddie's organization every day canvassing to see equitable community engagement in action. We propose to start in February March, probably leading closer to March, and then again in the spring and summer for a second cohort. We're thinking about 20 to 25 staff members each. The second component is training frontline community members and climate justice sort of 101. And we're calling those participants climate justice fellows. And through recruitment on the part of all the CJA, CJA C.I. partners, we'll identify frontline community members interested in training and ongoing collaboration with the county. And the goal is to help them understand climate change impacts and health, financial stability, quality of life overall, how to engage and collect qualitative data from neighbors to inform prospective climate justice solutions, leadership skills, and working with county officials to formulate policies and initiatives. And as mentioned, we'll utilize a popular education methodology, a horizontal learning structure in which everyone is both teacher and student to intentionally create this environment where frontline community members can more easily participate in identifying challenges and envisioning new possibilities. And the climate justice fellows would be paid, by the way. And we intend to launch this, hopefully, this spring. And then finally and we intend to launch this, hopefully this, this spring. And then finally, we intend to experiment in collaborative governance. So ultimately we intend to bring the two trained groups together, the government staff and the climate justice fellows using a third party facilitator. And the goal here is to help county officials more fully comprehend frontline realities and help frontline community members gain greater insight into the workings of government policy and decision making. And this awareness and mutual understanding we believe will lead to an ongoing process of trust building, across power divides and co-creation with ideas emerging from these climate justice fellows. We don't want to prescribe how this will work. It's no doubt it will be iterative and require adjustments along the way, but to help sort of crystallize for you how this might play out. One can envision residents asking for climate justice solutions related to for for example, dealing with high heat at bus stops or flood mitigation and mold in basement apartments, expedited apartment conversion from gas to electric heating for safety and for emission reduction. So I'll now hand it back over to Jane and Maddie to talk about $3 million community change grant application to the EPA. We're all crossing our fingers on that, still haven't heard. Yeah, this is gonna be our last point. So on behalf of the Collaborative, the Collaboration Council submitted a federal community change grant to the EPA last summer. And we're waiting to hear the outcome. We were recently told that we're at the final stages of merit review, although with the change in administration we're not quite sure what to expect. We requested $3 million over three years. If awarded these federal dollars, we're sure that we can sustain all of the efforts that Doug just spoke about. And then if we do get the grant award, there's more that we hope to do, which Maddie will speak to. Yeah, I mean, one of the things that we hear very often from community and from community-based partners, from different agencies and from individuals, is that they want to have access to information. When we think about equity, we think about folks having equal access to resources and information is one of those resources. So one of the ideas we hope to fund with this grant is an information hub. Some centralized sites that is multilingual, that is easily accessible, obviously, and that is going to make it easier for us to share our data that we collect from community. So just as an example, everybody canvassing, we collect a lot of notes, so do a lot of interviews, deep listening, that means we have robust notes that are often pages long to turn those into reports so we can share back with community, would allow community events to have the same information that we have and being that they were kind of to share their information with us, that allows them to then move into the driver's seat. With that information, start making decisions about what kind of budgetary decisions think we're going to be best for them in their communities, what kind of policies will be best for them communities, etc. And that information doesn't just something that the community is also asked for I've also heard that same request from case managers, resource navigators that say, I wish the folks that I help knew as well as I did what was available for them and then not being able to do so in a centralized way. And then we also have heard the same thing from even WorkSource Montgomery. We had a conversation with them a long ago and they share that one thing that would be great is to have some, again, some hub where everyone can go and have access to the same things. It would make their job easier and of course it would make the job easier for folks to get jobs using that same resource So that's our hope with this $3 million grants. I don't know if there's anything else that there is left on our presentation. Thank you guys for listening Great anything else from OLO or No I don't know where Jan was. No, we don't have anything else to say. Great. And I don't direct a word if you want to jump up to because I think there's a lot we can unpack today. I think it's the start of an ongoing conversation. Really not the start, right? It's a continuation because of the work that OLO has been doing on this, which is excellent and to hear about the collaboration that's happening and how far it's come is just, it's incredible really. And then thinking about next steps, where do we go from here? So I think those are the three buckets over the next little while that I think the committee will look at. First just on the OLO report and the collection of information provided to us. I just had one technical question. I meant to send it to you all beforehand in apologies. I didn't. When you were looking at the correspondence and doing that analysis. Did that include individual council member offices or the central correspondence that we receive? It was the central correspondence. I think it would be interesting, not that I think the results will be very different knowing that I'm a district council person. But seeing if in the next step in the future looking at district offices and lots of times some constituents are maybe a bit closer to either the staff or the district council member and send things versus sending things to the centralized location. So that's just something for in for a future analysis. Otherwise, I think, you know, the report is so detailed and lifts up so much stuff. I particularly love the chart on the spectrum of community engagement to ownership. And would love to work with Miss Singleton. I think this would be a great one of our lunch and learns for our staff here at the council to have a deeper discussion of what that means for the work that we're doing and really unpacking that. But overall, I think the report and the analysis is excellent and is going to be very useful for us in many endeavors. So any, I don't turn to my colleagues anything on the report specific before we turn to the example of how this work is being done. Council Member Katz. Thank you very much, Madam President, and thank you all very, very much for all that you do. I always mention, I think, to every group, you do a lot of work and you never get enough things. So we want to be very clear on that. And I also appreciate the fact that when we're doing canvassing, especially the topic matters. There are people whose eyes glaze over on some topics and others, you know, get so very excited about it. So I don't know how we can capture that, literally, but how we're engaging is certainly something that's important. And to the point about the zip codes, one of the zip codes on there is 2087, which is Gathusburg, parts of Gathusburg on some legislation, on much legislation, is not under the county's legislation. They have their own zoning. They have their own. So in some ways is that skewing what we're being, what we're understanding? I understand that there's zip codes that are directly affected, others that aren't. So I think, and I don't know how we could capture that, but if we could, and to the council president's point, the many times someone will contact the council, the district council members office, and say, I hate this, I love this, and many times it's probably I hate this, where did we get the love? But you know my point, and somehow we need to get you involved so that you're capturing that as well. The only other question to have and I don't know whether it's now or later or whatever but first off if you all could send us the power point presentation that would be helpful and the only other thing is that when you talk to the community stakeholders, have you come up with a best practice? Each person is an individual. They're people. They're not going to answer their door when you're not going to. But is there a best practice? And how are we getting them engaged at these various events? Because as I say, it depends on the topic and with that I yield back, thanks. Thank you. Anyone want to respond to council member Katz? I can make an attempt. With canvassing as you mentioned, there's an expectation that we have that just as an example figure, this is our actual figure, but it's not the same in every zip code, one of every eight doors is going to open. So we understand that we're not going to get represented as sample all the time from knocking doors, but if we knock 60,000 and we build a room relationship with the people that we knock doors and speak to, then we have access now to their neighborhoods in a way that we couldn't have before because we have a true relationship with that person. We come to their homes, we help assist them, we go to food hubs with them, we do the work of trying to see what it's like to live in their shoes, that have their actual lived experience. And that gives us a great access. But with cabbasing, as you all know, there's also a flyer ring or door hangers like I love it every door. And we've now gone through many iterations of different kinds of hangers or flyers with different kinds of language and multiple languages that have also given us a sense of what works and what doesn't. As an example, we do find that surveys, QR codes, bit links that are on flyers or door hangers that are left in, relatively affluent, comparatively affluent neighborhoods, tend to get a lot of responses, which is not the case for neighborhoods that are, the many of the zip codes that were mentioned in the report as being underrepresented zip codes. As door hangers do not get the same level of response. So that kind of multimodal kind of approach to engagements, I think it's going to be necessary, especially for folks that have many barriers to participation, which are ones that aren't typically because they there is a lack of desire, you see that because there's a lack of trust, or because there is a lack of access. So if I work two, three jobs, if I'm a valet, that works from six to midnight. And then I work as Cyphernt Shift doing Uber when all the clubs are getting let out and the bars are getting let out. And then I come home and have to get my kids prepared for school. There's probably the time that I'll be invited to a town hall. I probably won't be showing up. Because I have enough going on to not think that this is a priority over getting food in the table So understanding that reality also allows us to say when it comes to engagement We definitely need to provide childcare. We have to give food and depending on the context This isn't a universal blanket truth at least not for everyday canvassing We also want to provide a financial we want want to compensate people for their lived experiences. Therefore, they're expertise that they're coming and giving us in community conversations. So I hope that kind of touches on. It gives you an answer. There's no. So I'll first answer as I'm supposed to touch the mic. But there is no easy answer and there's no exactly correct answer. The question is how can we best engage the most people? We're not going to get everybody, but how can we engage the most people? Thank you. Thank you and I'll just say I really appreciate the point you raised it. Especially with the canvassing and going out to meet people where they are, because I think too often as was lifted up in the report, the way that our government and governments are traditionally structured is people come to us. We have, you had to come to us today. We have structures in place, committee structures, meeting structures that, you know, built into it is people coming to government. And as much as and I think this council has tried to do it, our council staff has done it as well. Going out into the community and you all are lifting up a great example of how we can go to where people are. And as you said you you start talking about one issue and you realize that none of us live single issue or single identity lives. And so once you start that conversation, all the different pieces of where we need to connect people really comes through. So thank you for lifting that up. Councilmember Friedzen, I think that. Hi. I guess one other question I have for the work that's happening on the climate justice work, since you had to do the grant report and everything, are you all kind of writing up a case study of this work that can be used as an example for other work to be done? Yeah. I mean, that's an aspiration. can be used as an example for other work to be done. Yeah. I mean, that's an aspiration. Yeah. Is to be able to do that. I'll give you another whole day, James. So I think part of if we do get the EPA grant, that's another piece that we would allocate funds towards is beefing up our documentation capacity to be able to document all the great work that's happened. But even short of that, I think our goal is to be able to do that. Great. And one other question I have, you know, are there other departments in the county government that you have been working with or talking to about this effort other than DEP at this point. Yeah, of course, HHS, as David mentioned, and certainly Harriet in the office of racial equity and social justice in Tiffany, reached out to DHSCA and talking to them about the training program for government staff and they were very interested in this effort. Yes, we're starting small, but we intend to, and the OLO report is sort of a great opportunity to sort of build our capacity and expand to other departments. And as we, you know, as I said, we intend to have this training program in February and March, we wanna reach out to a lot of departments and say, hey, you know, this would be valuable to you, do you think so? And would you like to participate? So great. If I could put, oh, sorry, you mind it. I was gonna say we're taking recommendations. Yes, so I'm going to give you one. So thinking about a communications hub, as you talked about information hub, you know, our tab's department is really looking at a great deal of work now on how to provide information to residents. So our 311, just to get into the weeds a bit a little bit, has moved into our Tevz department and they are looking at how we use AI to help answer some questions, knowing that there are things around AI that we need to be careful with, but how are we using technology to do that and how are we providing information to folks. So I would connect with Director Roper there and her staff and thinking about what are some of the innovative ways that once you've done this collaboration work, understanding where it goes on that spectrum of the two way versus the one way communication, but how they're thinking about collecting that would be really helpful. I'm just going to add, we had conversations with the planning department as well. They're very interested in establishing something sort of akin to this. That's great. Terrific. So let's move to next steps on this. I think we have an ambitious recommendation from OLO and I know Director Ward you started to tee up some of the work that your office is doing and I don't know if you want to go more in depth there about how we can take the recommendation from the OLO report, what's happening on the ground and moving this work forward. Not to land it all in your lap. So as I said earlier, we are convening that task force work group that OLO suggested both with internal and external stakeholders, meaning community members, members across government. And so we will be sending out a memo in early January, inviting folks to this task force in using the OLO report. Best practices, of course, the continual, our survey results and their results as kind of the basis to create a framework and county-wide guidance. I think that that's first and foremost here. I think that what we found and what OOLO found that there really is not a standard of doing this work across across government and I think that folks would really appreciate guidance and standards so that they kind of know what the expectations are how to do that and then can build from there. So we are setting that forth in January. Terrific. Any other questions or anything? Good. It sounds terrific. Thank you very much for this. I will do some follow-up with Miss Singleton and our OLO staff of thinking about how we can share this information very much for this. I will do some follow up with Miss Singleton and our OLO staff of thinking about how we can share this information with more of our staff here on the council. Ms. Director Ward, did you want to say one more thing? I was going to connect with you. I would love and we would love to have folks over here who are doing this work. We know that council offices do community work all the time and I think that they would benefit both from the cohort as that Jane and Dougher talking about as well as participation in the task force that we are starting Okay, thank you, and I will just say I just I so appreciate this work and I love that DEP and HHS and other county departments are working with our non-profit partners on this. I will share that you know lots of times when I was the mayor in Tacoma Park, we always talked about community engagement. We actually use the the spectrum a lot and we talked to our staff and we had staff who were hired to you know either do planning or engineering for safe streets and all of a sudden we said now you have to do a community engagement and understanding that community engagement takes skills it's it there's a lot that goes into it and it's not just tagging it on to someone's job description who has not had the training, the thoughtfulness and the support to do this work. And I feel like with this OLO report, with the work that you all are doing, Director Ward, the work you're continuing to doing is really taking us and our county government to this next level. And I just want to say I so appreciate everything and look forward to continuing the work together. Alright and with that we are done thank you all and more to come. We'll have a great afternoon. We are adjourned.