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Equity Board Auto captions

Wednesday, July 6, 2022

6:00 PM · 2h 8m
Topics tracked across meetings:
Issaquah Police Department - 20 minutes Introduction & Overview (I) 1/3
Community Equity Assessment Update 2/2
Section
3. APPROVAL OF MINUTES
3a
Minutes of June 1, 2022
Action · packet pp.3–6
Staff report:
APPROVAL OF MINUTES a) 06-01-22 Equity Board Minutes Page [0001] CITY OF ISSAQUAH Equity Board 6:00 PM Virtual Meeting Wednesday, June 1, 2022 MINUTES
4. AGENDA ITEMS
4a
Finance Department - Introduction & Overview (I)
Robert Hamud, Chief Financial Officer · packet pp.7–26
Staff report:
Finance Introduction JULY 6, 2022 | EQUITY BOARD MEETING ROBERT HAMUD, CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER
4b
Community Equity Assessment Update
Monica Negrila, Human Services Manager · packet pp.27–45
Topics: Equity
Staff report:
▪ Assessment Process ▪ Update ▪ Next Steps Discuss: ▪ Other ways to engage the community ▪ Survey? ▪ Research details
4a
Report Out
Discussion · Ray Manahan, Committee Chair · packet pp.47–58
Staff report:
Committee is focused on increasing community engagement around Equity. Committee Members*: • Cristina Abonce • Ray Manahan • Kelly Munn
6. STAFF REPORT
6a
Equity Related Updates
Information · Monica Negrila, Human Services Manager · packet pp.59–61
Topics: Equity
Staff report:
Staff report Equity Board July 6, 2022 Many thanks to the members of the Equity Board for their participation in numerous events, activities, and initiatives last month!
0:00 all righty i want to welcome everyone to
0:03 our issaquah equity board meeting for
0:06 july 6 2022. well the year is passing by
0:09 fast we are starting our meeting at
0:13 6 02 p.m
0:15 um we do have quorum
0:18 so um annika are there any individuals
0:22 who are accident i don't think
0:23 everyone's here
0:26 thank you shay yes not quite everyone is
0:29 here i do know that there are some board
0:30 members who are traveling
0:32 um or have
0:34 other excused absences so
0:36 i know um lucrecia choto she has an
0:40 excused absence um i know that megan
0:44 richly and she also has something going
0:46 on today so she's not able to join
0:49 um and so those are the members that i
0:51 heard from
0:54 and there might be some others who are
0:56 running a little bit late but we do have
0:58 quorum we have
0:59 uh six members in us in uh in attendance
1:03 we have a alisa lorna kelly
1:06 ray pretty and ushay so you're good to
1:11 all righty um
1:13 let's go ahead and
1:17 call roll man um is that what we're
1:20 gonna do next
1:21 um i think you actually called everybody
1:23 out that was here so
1:24 um other than that i think we can move
1:27 forward
1:28 with um
1:30 [Music]
1:31 going over uh the previous week's agenda
1:35 um just to go ahead and approve the
1:37 minutes from before
1:39 um has everyone had a chance to look at
1:42 the previous agenda or the former agenda
1:45 for last week
1:48 if yes then we'd like to go ahead and
1:50 give everyone a minute to check it out
1:54 um are there any um amendments for
1:58 our previous agenda
2:03 alrighty if there is no amendment or
2:06 objections to the minutes i'd like to
2:08 propose that the minutes be unanimously
2:10 approved
2:14 alrighty and it looks like
2:16 we've been second in for that
2:19 then we will go ahead and move forward
2:24 with our next agenda item um but before
2:27 we start that i'd like to just make a
2:29 quick few announcements just to make
2:31 sure that we um are taking into
2:33 consideration anyone who may be
2:35 participating as a visitor tonight
2:38 um you want to make sure that we are
2:40 concise and we speak clearly for our
2:42 interpreters
2:44 we also want to make sure that our
2:46 comments and questions are relevant but
2:48 we also want to make sure that we type
2:50 the word comment or question and not the
2:52 actual comment or question that we have
2:54 in the chat box when you're ready to
2:55 speak we want to make sure that we speak
2:57 them aloud so that
3:00 everyone that is on the phone can hear
3:02 and of course we want to give everyone
3:04 an opportunity to speak if they have
3:05 something to say um
3:08 but that's all we have for the
3:09 housekeeping rules monica did we have
3:11 anyone who wanted to make a public
3:12 comment tonight
3:14 thank you say we do have a couple of uh
3:17 community members who expressed interest
3:19 in making a public comment so we do have
3:22 tonight with us uh sabah mahanian and
3:25 ted lucas from
3:27 the baha'is of issaquah and they also
3:31 were our collaborators um in the
3:34 juneteenth event and they expressed the
3:37 interest in making a public comment
3:40 so with that saba and ted i will make
3:44 you panelists and we will
3:46 love to invite you to
3:49 make a comment
3:51 and typically we do have five minutes
3:54 time for each person who's interested in
3:57 making public comment
3:59 um so approximately yeah but yeah it's
4:02 also pretty we are pretty casual here we
4:04 are not gonna start uh
4:07 timing but uh welcome both uh ted and
4:10 saba
4:18 you should be able to turn on
4:21 your cameras and mics
4:32 okay oh wonderful okay i can see myself
4:36 yes hi
4:39 uh wonderful so uh if you don't mind i
4:41 will just
4:43 read my prepared statement and
4:46 please
4:47 stop me if
4:49 if you need any
4:52 any comments or investigation or
4:55 clarification
4:59 at the risk of being formal to the
5:02 esteemed members of the equity board of
5:04 the city of issaquah
5:07 it has often been said that regardless
5:10 of how progressive and well-meaning a
5:13 community such as ourselves may be
5:16 yet the statistics for the discipline
5:19 and expulsion of minority students of
5:22 color
5:23 still reflects
5:24 the same
5:26 national average
5:28 this sad statistic was brought up
5:31 by our equity board member
5:34 and also our
5:36 school district representative miss
5:38 lorna gilmore if i understand correctly
5:41 at our juneteenth celebration in
5:43 issaquah
5:45 this topic characterized as educational
5:48 equity is no doubt of utmost importance
5:53 to not just our institutions
5:57 tasked with educating our children and
5:59 youth but to all of us as citizens of
6:02 issaquah community and undoubtedly to
6:06 this equity board
6:08 while we have every trust and confidence
6:11 in our teachers and our
6:13 and their
6:15 dedication to the education of our young
6:18 it is perhaps a wonderful opportunity to
6:21 engage in a community-wide
6:24 learning and dialogue regarding this
6:26 topic
6:28 it is hoped that our teachers and school
6:30 administrators would also appreciate
6:33 that they are not alone
6:35 in carrying this burden of improving the
6:38 state of equity and fairness in our
6:41 community as well as our educational
6:44 system
6:45 this topic is undoubtedly quite complex
6:48 and can benefit from much consultation
6:51 and dialogue
6:52 how to start this dialogue and what
6:55 venues or fora would lend themselves to
6:58 properly address this topic
7:01 would need much discussion and
7:03 consultation
7:05 perhaps ms gilmore or others who have
7:08 studied or addressed this topic in the
7:10 past can let us know
7:12 what has been tried in the past
7:15 what type of
7:16 conversations have taken place and what
7:20 they see as areas of great need or
7:23 challenge
7:24 for dialogue and or
7:27 learning
7:28 that this equity board and all community
7:31 volunteers can pursue
7:35 respectfully submitted
7:37 sabo mahanya
7:42 thank you very much saba
7:45 so so much for your comments and for
7:47 your suggestions and of course for being
7:51 such good faithful partners with us
7:53 over the last few years as we embarked
7:55 on this journey so thank you so
7:57 appreciate you
8:01 ted
8:02 welcome do you have also a separate
8:04 comment or
8:06 i together with saba or
8:11 not a formal
8:12 presentation but to celebrate and really
8:15 uh salute
8:17 and
8:17 in our presence here support the equity
8:20 board particularly salute the wonderful
8:22 juneteenth event that took place two or
8:24 three weeks ago so many of you were
8:26 present we were there had the good
8:27 fortune of being there and it was a
8:29 great great community building
8:30 experience
8:31 and it generated such good conversation
8:34 and dialogue and real soul-searching i
8:36 think that we began to share and that's
8:38 a real expression of community building
8:40 and growth kind of
8:42 um and one of them was what the as saba
8:45 has said that lorna brought up
8:47 and we just are putting it out there as
8:49 a perhaps a topic of interest
8:52 and the baha'i community ourselves and
8:53 many others would love to uh
8:56 contribute to um support offer resources
8:59 for
9:00 uh together with you uh brainstorming
9:02 equity board
9:04 town school district here in the area of
9:07 educational equity
9:09 could be lots of ways to go with that so
9:11 it's just here to kind of support saba
9:14 and express
9:15 our great gratitude to the equity board
9:18 and support going forward thank you
9:24 thank you very much we so so appreciate
9:26 you
9:30 shay and equity board members
9:34 we don't have other uh community members
9:37 signed up uh to speak i just wanted to
9:40 mention uh that we do have paul wally
9:43 from right to breathe is in attendance
9:46 at this point paul did not
9:48 express interest in making a public
9:51 comment but he's here um to
9:54 observe and to support
9:58 and
9:59 with that
10:00 i think that concludes the public
10:02 comment section for tonight
10:05 thank you
10:07 all right and thank you both uh ted and
10:10 saba we also want to thank you paul for
10:13 joining us tonight
10:16 before we jump into our agenda items um
10:20 i'd like to just remind everyone that
10:22 the state of washington and the city of
10:23 issaquah continue to have declared
10:25 emergency due to the covet 19 pandemic
10:28 and under chapter 115
10:30 um the one under the chapter 115 laws of
10:33 2022 the city of the supra has
10:35 determined that
10:37 um an in-person meeting cannot be held
10:39 without reasonable safety due to these
10:41 factors this meeting is being held
10:43 remotely
10:44 um so we will ask that if anyone has any
10:48 comments at this point related to our
10:50 public comments
10:52 and now is a great time to speak or if
10:54 we have any questions or concerns
11:02 all righty then we will jump right into
11:05 our first agenda item and that is on
11:08 our equity assessment and work plan
11:10 development update um monica it looks
11:13 like you'll be presenting for that one
11:16 uh shay apologies i think we have one
11:18 agenda item before that oh oh i'm sorry
11:21 we have
11:22 yes
11:24 so we have our guests from our finance
11:27 department tonight our chief financial
11:30 officer
11:32 do you see that on your agenda
11:34 um i think my agenda may be out of order
11:37 then because it looks like um i'm
11:39 pulling the one from the website and it
11:41 has the first
11:43 uh the pdf agenda has the equity
11:45 assessment first and then the office of
11:48 sustainability
11:51 and then maybe from last month i'm so
11:54 sorry that's me oh okay
11:56 i'm sorry i thought it was the july one
12:00 yes you are correct that is the deal i'm
12:02 sorry i pulled up the wrong one
12:04 no worries let's try this again this
12:07 time with the right one
12:11 all righty um so correction i apologize
12:14 for that you all um
12:16 our first presentation is coming from
12:18 the finance department and it looks like
12:20 robert hammond and um our chief
12:22 financial officer will be going over
12:25 that presentation
12:26 um robert are you ready
12:31 yes i am thank you uh monica did you
12:33 want me to share on my end of the slide
12:36 that was my question to you robert
12:38 whichever you prefer will you tell me
12:40 what's easier on your end
12:44 i am actually i don't really use uh
12:47 themes and not webex so
12:49 i might take a second
12:51 yeah i would be more than happy to uh to
12:54 share my screen uh
12:56 for sure no problem at all
12:58 yeah it's not letting me share for some
13:00 reason so if you could i'd appreciate
13:01 that
13:02 yeah
13:02 okay
13:04 sounds good give me just a moment
13:23 and
13:24 i believe that you should be able to see
13:27 do you see can you confirm that you can
13:30 see the finance
13:32 yes thank you
13:35 and actually i apologize let me
13:37 [Music]
13:39 try again
13:53 i apologize board members i have too
13:55 many things open here
14:04 oh why
14:06 struggle with my
14:12 sharing of the screen
14:17 i could try from my end um if you like
14:19 me too
14:21 uh wait it's still not letting me i'm
14:23 sorry
14:24 yeah no i can also allow you if not i
14:27 just
14:28 there you go
14:31 now it should be i think it should work
14:33 now
14:38 okay great yes thank you well thank you
14:41 everybody i appreciate this opportunity
14:44 i'm just going to introduce myself a
14:45 little bit here again my name is robert
14:47 hammut and the chief financial officer
14:49 for the city of issaquah started here
14:51 about nine months ago most recently came
14:53 from the city of snoqualmie so a little
14:55 next door i'm very familiar with this
14:57 aqua since i lived next door for five
15:00 years and uh obviously frequented the
15:02 community a lot for the businesses and
15:05 and everything else in town um
15:08 i've been in public sector about 17
15:11 years right now
15:13 a little bit more than that actually if
15:15 you count internships so my whole career
15:17 has pretty much been public service i
15:18 have a bachelor's degree in government
15:20 and a master's degree in public
15:22 administration i'm originally from
15:24 california born and raised in the san
15:26 diego area so pretty close to the border
15:29 and the grandson
15:30 grandson of immigrants in the middle
15:32 east and my wife's an immigrant
15:34 from south america actually brazil
15:35 specifically and she's a small business
15:37 owner she has a cookie business that
15:39 she's established as four employees
15:41 and has done it over the past year and a
15:43 half uh during a tough economic time uh
15:46 and i've served on internal equity
15:48 committees for multiple governments so
15:50 it's something i've done before
15:51 and i
15:52 will also have a brief introduction
15:54 monica and spanish as well um
16:03 you know
16:04 robert hamoud
16:05 of directors
16:34 [Music]
17:05 [Music]
17:28 thank you so much robert for that that
17:29 was great you're welcome
17:31 um so my staff and just a side note on
17:34 on that we you know we really strive to
17:37 you know service we're going to talk a
17:38 little bit about utility billing and our
17:40 services and we we
17:42 certainly try to provide translation
17:43 services we're available for even for
17:45 the finance department as well
17:48 my finance department this is my team i
17:50 really apologize because we did have a
17:52 typo i don't have two jennifers actually
17:54 i have two jennifer's now but i don't
17:56 have three um
17:58 yes i thought i did i apologize um it's
18:00 actually
18:02 amanda gutierrez our senior payroll
18:05 analyst there on the right so i
18:06 apologize about that um you can see my
18:08 team here we have a great group i'm very
18:11 you know very educated group very
18:14 diverse group as far as their
18:15 backgrounds and um
18:17 really all committed to public service
18:20 and um you know we try to put a smile on
18:22 the front counter we deal with internal
18:24 and external customers quite a bit so
18:26 i'm going to talk about that a little
18:27 bit more
18:29 next slide please
18:31 so again what does finance do a lot of
18:34 people just think we do the bean
18:35 counting we just you know
18:38 playing calculators all day but we
18:39 actually do quite a bit for the city we
18:41 manage all the revenues and expenditures
18:43 and we try to do it again in a
18:44 transparent and equitable manner
18:46 we respond to both internal and external
18:48 customers for services such as utility
18:50 billings again you pay your water bill
18:52 you pay your super bill with us
18:54 tax reporting again if you have
18:56 a business license and you pay
18:59 on your business each quarter that's
19:01 through my staff
19:02 um budgeting
19:04 so again the annual and biennial budgets
19:06 of the city and all of our related
19:08 agencies as well including the public
19:10 utility
19:11 accounts payable so anything the city
19:14 pays for
19:15 any vendors we we do all the payments we
19:17 do all the receivables
19:19 obviously processing payroll is probably
19:21 one of our more critical roles everybody
19:22 has to get paid in the city and we also
19:24 manage all the contracts for the city so
19:26 anything that goes to the city
19:28 ratification any agreements even
19:30 agreements with other agencies and other
19:32 cities that we have like for port
19:34 we have agreements with several other
19:36 cities nearby like north bend still
19:38 economy
19:39 we manage those contracts
19:41 and so we ensure compliance with all
19:43 state and federal local reporting
19:44 statutes
19:46 annual reporting and grants compliance
19:52 and your investment in the city so all
19:54 residents and this is something that i
19:56 think gets lost sometimes
19:58 all residents business owners workers
20:00 and visitors to issaquah pay taxes and
20:02 fees to the city
20:03 um and again that's regardless of the
20:05 status in the city it's regardless of
20:07 passing through an i-90
20:09 um for a thrift jassing up but costco
20:12 everybody pays something when they come
20:14 here to step foot in the city property
20:16 taxes directly through your house or
20:19 they're paid for as part of your rent a
20:20 lot of people don't realize that even if
20:22 you don't own a home obviously that tax
20:24 gets passed to you if you're renting an
20:26 apartment for example
20:28 business taxes so again business taxes
20:30 here we have a ordinance they're paid
20:32 quarterly to the city based on kind of
20:34 your total revenue total taxes of your
20:36 business
20:37 um so again that's part of what what's
20:40 paid to the city utility taxes so
20:42 anytime you look at your water bill your
20:44 sewer bill cable bill cell phone even
20:46 your garbage bill you look at the bottom
20:48 and you see local taxes yes that's us um
20:51 and so a small portion of those bills
20:54 go directly to the city so again like i
20:56 said everybody
20:58 that
20:59 lives in the city of
21:01 of the city of issaquah pay something so
21:04 again sales tax same thing a sales tax a
21:06 little different less than ten percent
21:08 of the sales taxes you pay so the rate
21:10 that you pay um
21:13 in issaquah is 10.1 percent a little
21:16 less than one cent on that dollar goes
21:19 snowplow and we excuse you issaquah so
21:22 the problem is we get less than ten
21:24 percent of that most of that does go to
21:25 the state that goes to sound transit so
21:27 very small portion less than one cent
21:30 actually goes directly back to the city
21:33 and then funds and fees i know everybody
21:34 hits the traffic fines but they stay
21:36 local
21:37 um they do go to supporting our court in
21:39 supporting uh our overhead and our
21:42 services
21:43 parks fees so anytime you rent a picnic
21:45 area anytime you
21:47 sign up for one of our programs at the
21:49 city for recreation for sports camps for
21:52 your kids
21:53 but that obviously is an investment to
21:55 the city and again water and sewer also
21:57 go to the city
22:01 next slide please
22:07 this is us next one
22:10 oh i'm sorry
22:11 so the investment to the community this
22:13 taxes and fees collected from the city
22:15 goes directly to services
22:17 again to all residents workers business
22:19 owners and visitors so we do put it all
22:21 back the city does not tend to to sit on
22:24 money all of that goes everything you
22:26 pay gets reinvested back into the
22:27 community and there's funding for
22:29 essential services such as police fire
22:31 municipal court and emergency services
22:34 city infrastructure funding for water
22:35 sewer roads parks trails and open space
22:38 management
22:39 funding for community services such as
22:41 park recreation programs human services
22:43 economic development and environmental
22:45 sustainability and uh just a just a side
22:48 note on the front
22:51 when you pay taxes to the county you pay
22:53 taxes to the state
22:54 the portion of all the taxes are go
22:56 there
22:57 some of that it doesn't necessarily mean
22:59 it goes back directly to the city of
23:01 issaquah in our case everything the city
23:03 collects which again is a small piece of
23:05 everything you pay on your tax bills
23:07 stays here so i think it's very
23:09 important that everything we collect
23:11 again stays here it's reinvested
23:14 next slide please so how does finance
23:16 insure equity for city programs and
23:18 services
23:20 ensure responsible spending of money
23:21 tied to the biennial budget ordinance so
23:24 again we're monitoring every cent that
23:26 comes out of the city every cent that's
23:27 paid every cent that's received that's
23:29 being monitored by finance on a regular
23:31 basis we ensure proper contracting for
23:34 city services and programs such as
23:36 construction projects and other vendors
23:38 for services
23:39 we present weekly reports of all city
23:41 expenditures and payments to the city
23:43 council for approval
23:44 and more most importantly if we see
23:46 something we're the ones that say
23:48 something i think finance unlike other
23:50 departments
23:51 because we service every department in
23:53 the city we serve as external customers
23:56 we service contracts with other
23:57 communities
23:58 other vendors um we're kind of on the
24:01 we're kind of at the front we are
24:03 literally the front counter for the city
24:05 when it comes to identifying things that
24:08 that might be wrong might be off might
24:10 be so if there's a questionable expense
24:12 or a finance item of concern
24:14 um we call it out to the mayor the
24:16 council we believe that there's a
24:18 contract that's not equitable the
24:20 contract maybe the contractor has a bad
24:23 history of not being equitable not being
24:25 fair it's up to us to do our due
24:27 diligence and bring that up to the
24:29 appropriate parties within the city so
24:30 again we really try to monitor and we do
24:32 we serve a critical piece of this equity
24:35 um tony has a question i'll go ahead
24:38 hold on a second
24:43 how in an equity lens employed when
24:45 establishing contracts with vendors or
24:48 solicitations or rfps we actually tony
24:51 we actually do have provisions
24:54 for equity and diversity we have
24:55 statements that we ask for in our rfp
24:57 process
24:58 monica i think that's fairly
25:00 but we have been doing it at least since
25:02 i have been here
25:04 yes and i'm happy to actually i've been
25:06 working with natalie
25:10 sorry
25:14 no yeah i was going to add a little bit
25:16 information because i know that um
25:19 i personally started working with your
25:21 team robert with natalie uh and with jen
25:24 in economic development in um
25:27 uh in trying to look at ways in which
25:30 the city can have more equitable
25:32 procurement practices so for example in
25:35 contracting practices so for example for
25:38 our human services contracts
25:42 we are working with
25:43 staff in the finance department and
25:45 looking at um how and what what are some
25:48 of the things that the city can do to
25:50 support small non-profit organizations
25:54 or you know businesses on the business
25:56 side who are minority owned or owned by
25:59 um um
26:02 um black african american people of
26:04 color uh so definitely we we are looking
26:07 into that on the finance team is looking
26:10 at what we must do in terms of state and
26:12 federal requirements and then we are
26:14 coming from the uh from the business or
26:16 non-profit side and looking on how can
26:18 we advocate for those uh you know small
26:22 business owners or non-profit leaders
26:25 who may not afford um
26:28 uh you know doing business in the city
26:30 so definitely those are there's aspects
26:32 that we are looking for
26:34 um we also started on a project on how
26:36 can we educate and how can we outreach
26:39 the community and how can we educate and
26:41 teach small business owners or those who
26:44 want to have a business on the steps
26:46 that they need to take
26:48 um in order to have a business license
26:50 at the city right or open a business so
26:54 um so those are some of the upcoming
26:56 projects and things that we are tackling
26:58 uh with with our finance team i'm not
27:01 sure if that tony answers at least
27:02 partially your question
27:04 um but definitely
27:07 there are quite a few
27:10 quite a few details too
27:12 but it does actually answer my question
27:14 but i did have a follow-up if permitted
27:16 or i can wait till the end
27:19 yeah no i think so robert's right yeah
27:21 of course
27:22 okay so i want to follow up that so when
27:25 an rfp is communicated when the city uh
27:27 puts that out that is basically from
27:29 what you're saying monica and robert
27:30 you're saying that that rfp is put out
27:32 and it's maybe language in an rfp that
27:34 says like uh business owners people of
27:37 color highly encouraged to apply
27:39 correct
27:40 okay that's great that's great that's
27:42 fantastic actually
27:44 and i know our hr department just on our
27:46 hiring is also working on that very very
27:47 hard too and and also that goes into you
27:50 know advertising of
27:52 of certain positions where they're you
27:54 know what which magazines which
27:56 audiences are targeted so
27:58 and and i will say this i mean in kudos
28:00 to monica i think compared to other
28:02 cities i work for i think issaquah
28:04 really you know having a human services
28:07 department or division having an equity
28:09 board they do a lot more than other
28:11 communities around us do so i think they
28:14 really
28:16 practice what they preach so to speak so
28:18 it's and it's it's great to be part of
28:19 that it's great to see that it's very
28:20 hard for me to see that at the city yeah
28:23 and i think it's fantastic from an rfp
28:25 process that's like almost unheard of so
28:27 that's fantastic
28:30 tony also i think um
28:33 you're gonna hear on equity board
28:34 members uh today we have robert with us
28:37 from the finance department next month
28:40 we will have our um
28:42 city administrator wally bob kowitz from
28:44 the executive department but then in
28:46 september we'll have our police
28:48 department and our economic development
28:50 department and i look forward to hearing
28:52 more but um for example our
28:55 team in the economic development
28:56 department they
28:58 issued a
29:00 micro enterprise
29:02 project last year where they outreach
29:05 and trying to find businesses who are
29:08 small businesses minority owned and try
29:11 to provide that technical assistance to
29:13 encourage them so they can they can tell
29:16 you a little bit more about kind of like
29:18 the successes and lessons learned there
29:20 um again like recognizing and admitting
29:23 that
29:24 great encouraging uh ideas but so so
29:27 much more that needs to be done right
29:29 just we're just at the beginning of of
29:32 this journey but definitely you'll heal
29:34 more from from john davis hayes a couple
29:36 of months on that
29:41 there are so many aspects right when we
29:43 start as you start at board members
29:45 learning about the different departments
29:47 and they're we are starting to peel the
29:48 onion there are so many aspects to
29:50 equity and in each
29:52 sector and how can we do right
29:54 i know robert
29:55 you and i had a conversation that long
29:57 ago with some other internal staff
30:00 members on how can we even approach
30:02 budgeting from an equity perspective and
30:04 how do we reach out to the community's
30:07 most impacted when we budget right and
30:11 again there's still so many things for
30:13 us to consider
30:15 um but i'm excited like you said that at
30:17 least we are taking those intentional
30:19 steps to look at the many facets
30:22 and faces
30:25 okay sorry um should i put the
30:28 presentation back on or
30:32 where are we
30:38 thank you for that clarification monica
30:40 and thank you for your question tony i
30:42 think we're
30:44 quite interested in how
30:46 we can learn more about what the finance
30:47 department is doing to help
30:49 minority-owned businesses
30:55 okay
30:56 um thank you so much so robert should i
30:59 continue with the presentation here yes
31:01 get back to sharing
31:03 okay
31:05 uh i think this is the next slide right
31:09 yes so an example of community services
31:12 um just something recent was the cares
31:14 act
31:15 so again everybody knows that the arpa
31:18 the american rescue planet that
31:19 everybody's been talking about since
31:20 2021 but before that
31:22 in the midst of covet
31:24 congress passed the cares act
31:26 pretty much right when it started in may
31:27 of 2020 when other businesses were
31:30 closed in the community to provide
31:32 coronavirus relief to state and local
31:33 governments
31:35 about 500 000 of the funding was
31:37 allocated by council for small business
31:39 response grants and dispersed to
31:41 businesses in need beginning in august
31:43 of 2020. about 250 000 of additional
31:46 funding was dispersed and following
31:47 months to additional businesses that
31:49 were in need
31:50 20 000 was allocated to extend outdoor
31:53 seating opportunities for restaurants
31:55 and 30 000 for were for restaurant
31:58 winterization grants these assistant
32:00 programs
32:01 programs are open to any and all
32:02 businesses in issaquah that met a
32:05 minimum
32:06 standard of requirements
32:08 so um
32:10 and i'm just going to just personally i
32:11 was still with the city of snoqualmie up
32:14 the hill
32:15 in 2020 with our cares act program and
32:19 just a really interesting anecdote about
32:20 that that fits into
32:23 fits into equity
32:25 had a call out we had a lot of
32:27 businesses that we heard that were not
32:29 doing well
32:30 we used about 500 000 for grants and we
32:33 tried to reach out to local businesses
32:35 and we didn't get the take up we thought
32:36 we would and somebody came to us and
32:38 said that a lot of our local businesses
32:40 were actually
32:41 you know owned by um especially people
32:44 from korea people from china um east
32:47 indians and and in some of them there
32:49 was a language barrier so what we did
32:51 was we actually worked with an
32:53 interpreter
32:54 translated all of our cares act
32:56 materials how we were going to help the
32:58 businesses what types of grants were
33:00 available translated those languages
33:02 hired an interpreter go on site to some
33:04 of those businesses and talk to them and
33:06 we ended up having a huge take-up rate
33:07 of those businesses and they're very
33:09 grateful for the help and it was just
33:10 one of those things where you know we
33:12 weren't
33:13 we weren't thinking about the language
33:14 but then after that and everything we
33:16 did after that point we made sure that
33:18 we did translate those documents we did
33:20 translate anything coming out of the
33:22 city
33:23 two business owners in languages that we
33:25 identified that that a lot of the
33:26 business owners spoke
33:28 and um it was really helpful i think
33:29 they were grateful the city was
33:31 appreciative
33:32 and so were the business owners i think
33:34 and it made them more part feel part of
33:36 the community that we were able to help
33:37 them serve them and work with them like
33:39 that
33:44 and that's all i have um
33:46 for further resources again
33:48 these are just the links on our website
33:49 to our utility billing website tax
33:52 information
33:53 our budget document and our annual
33:54 financial reports
33:59 and if anybody has more questions
34:02 feel free otherwise thank you so much
34:10 thank you robert and i didn't see any
34:13 questions or comments in the chat
34:16 um but i'd like to just open the floor
34:18 in case someone does have a question or
34:19 comment
34:23 actually this is tony i do have a
34:25 curiosity question for robert
34:28 um the uh on the cares act i know that
34:30 there was a lot of businesses across the
34:31 nation who were some of them some were
34:33 bad actors um
34:36 were there any it's really just
34:37 curiosity if you can't tell us that's
34:39 fine but were there any bad actors in
34:42 terms of uh in the city of issaquah
34:44 in the city of issaquah as far as i know
34:47 jen davis has her economic development
34:49 coordinator would probably know but more
34:51 than i but as far as i know
34:53 um i'm not aware of bad actors so part
34:55 of it was the businesses had to sign a
34:57 contract they had to go through steps
35:00 they didn't go through steps they have
35:01 to repay the money um i'll just say this
35:03 when i was in stockholm i caught a bad
35:05 actor i caught somebody that
35:07 was going to that we actually cut the
35:09 check for they were going to pick it up
35:11 and then
35:11 just by happenstance the city staff
35:14 members saw that that the person that
35:15 owned the business was about to move to
35:17 arizona and was not notifying us and
35:19 that would have violated immediately the
35:20 contract so we did contact the business
35:23 we did rip up the check before it's
35:24 delivered but that's the only bad actor
35:26 that we could find um
35:28 i think what's happening on the federal
35:30 level those were mostly you know kind of
35:32 larger businesses and a larger area that
35:34 were happening but but yes we put
35:36 contracts in place there was actually
35:38 some guidelines from the state on how to
35:40 do that because the state normally
35:42 doesn't allow what they call gifting of
35:43 public funds so we actually had an
35:45 attorney general's opinion from aj
35:47 ferguson on on how to
35:50 develop those contracts how to enforce
35:52 them and work with the department of
35:53 commerce on that so that's what we did
35:55 cool that's great thank you
35:57 you're welcome
36:02 thank you so much everybody i appreciate
36:03 it appreciate the time today
36:05 okay thank you robert you're welcome
36:08 did anyone else have a question or
36:10 concern
36:14 looks like we're all questioning i think
36:16 tony was the only one with questions
36:17 today oh i see kelly
36:20 oh wait a question
36:23 oh okay perfect
36:26 my question goes back to the public
36:28 input and it's really a couple of
36:30 questions so bear with me
36:32 the first is um
36:37 as more of a community resource is there
36:40 any way to
36:42 create an environment for public infor
36:46 input that is less
36:50 like like we got great great information
36:53 or great question
36:54 and i know we're not going to try to
36:56 have a dialogue back and forth but how
36:58 do we make people who do how do we help
37:01 people who do public input feel welcome
37:04 because i i have
37:06 done public input myself and brought
37:09 lots of people to do pumpkin put and it
37:11 is really off-putting and
37:15 scary and
37:18 doesn't seem worth their time and so i'm
37:20 just trying to figure out do we have to
37:22 follow certain rules
37:26 by the city and is there any space for
37:29 us to make it more welcoming
37:33 so i'll try to take a stab at it some of
37:36 it's kind of a probably a city clerk
37:37 answer but i'll try to take the best
37:39 stab i can at it um
37:41 so if you don't have a quorum of city
37:43 council members
37:44 if you have a quorum then you have to
37:45 notice it you have to record it there's
37:47 there's different public
37:49 acknowledgements you have to do but if
37:51 it's just a community meeting say even
37:53 with three council members not four four
37:55 would be the quorum then it is pretty
37:57 open now i've you know other cities i've
37:59 worked for we've tried different
38:02 different ways to do public input i keep
38:04 going um
38:05 and sometimes like you say it can be
38:07 daunting if you go into a council
38:09 meeting at night and you're standing for
38:10 the big dice and you're just not
38:12 comfortable with it but i know the mayor
38:14 has done community listening sessions up
38:16 in the different neighborhoods here in
38:18 issaquah and i think that's helpful
38:20 getting to the people seems to be at
38:21 least the cities i work for
38:23 the best way going to them rather than
38:26 coming to you it seems to be the best
38:28 way to work and especially if you had
38:30 you know
38:31 an area that had what had an immigrant
38:33 community in your city we had one where
38:35 i worked for a city that had a
38:37 predominantly latino community we went
38:39 to the community we actually had a
38:40 potluck in spanish asking them what
38:42 their needs were asking them how to do
38:44 that so in this about be the same thing
38:46 you know trying to identify and that's
38:48 something that we talked about a lot
38:49 especially with budget because again
38:51 taxes impact everybody
38:53 how do we create more forms that we get
38:55 more
38:56 interest and
38:58 that's that's the difficult one i've
39:00 been actually struggling with that my
39:01 entire career in government
39:02 because i really do i want to see more
39:04 public input i'd love to have more
39:05 public input yeah i know last night the
39:09 the city council
39:10 made a motion to set aside about two
39:12 million as far as the new capital
39:14 investment strategy of the city
39:16 just for public input going to the
39:18 public to say how do you want to spend
39:19 that 2 million we have a community
39:21 survey forthcoming so
39:23 maybe coming out of the community survey
39:26 having more public events i know that's
39:28 something again our communications
39:29 department is working on the mayor's
39:31 everybody in the the organization is
39:33 interested in better outreach i think
39:35 that's that's really one of our goals
39:37 and monica you want to elaborate a
39:39 little bit but i i know you hear my
39:41 concerns i'm sure
39:43 yeah no thank you i think definitely the
39:45 cities has been
39:47 so much more intentional about how to
39:49 engage and how to make it more inviting
39:51 to the community and i think there are
39:53 multiple ways and at the same time i
39:56 think
39:58 it's um
39:59 i don't know that we are anywhere close
40:02 to engaging with everyone but i think
40:04 just even just asking the questions that
40:06 you're asking kelly just and by being
40:09 more intentional right it's like we
40:10 talked so many times it's like instead
40:12 of inviting people to do and follow our
40:14 rhythm how about we go to the public and
40:17 you brought up great questions like if
40:20 if there's a community group that that
40:22 meets on a sunday afternoon can we go to
40:25 them instead of inviting them to be here
40:27 with us on a wednesday evening right so
40:29 then those types of things i'm kind of
40:31 like how can we go
40:33 and uh meet people where they're at
40:36 uh and also just making ourselves though
40:38 available and making it easier for
40:41 everyone i think in the past for example
40:43 people had to attend in-person
40:46 uh meetings to make comments right now i
40:48 think uh people can email at any time
40:53 they can show up in person or they can
40:55 just call in or show up online which i
40:58 think it's it's still
41:00 better than it used to be but i think
41:02 really the key is
41:04 to really go out to those community
41:07 members that we want to engage with
41:08 build those relationships right
41:11 once we build a trust with the different
41:14 groups and community members then it's
41:16 easier to even just like have the
41:18 communication or a phone call
41:20 to say hey the city is discussing this
41:23 what's your input because automatically
41:26 the input then will come because there's
41:27 that's trust built but we need to go
41:30 back to the basic of really building
41:32 those effective and trusting
41:33 relationships with with our community
41:36 right and that takes time and effort and
41:39 that there's gonna be more than one way
41:41 right so those are those are my two
41:43 cents that i would like to add to that
41:46 so just
41:47 i didn't ask the question right because
41:49 really i'm talking about our meetings
41:51 i'm literally talking about our public
41:54 input that we control right here and can
41:57 we be more welcoming and encouraging to
42:00 the that one or two people who show up
42:02 that's what i was really asking
42:06 thank you kelly
42:07 and i thought about it
42:10 go ahead sorry and i yeah
42:12 yeah i see we have a couple of comments
42:14 and questions ray do you mind if we jump
42:18 ahead i think alyssa has a comment
42:19 that's relevant to this part of the
42:20 conversation would you mind if we allow
42:23 her to go first
42:25 thank you
42:27 yeah um thank you for for restating the
42:30 question that was what i thought it was
42:32 and that's what my comment was related
42:35 i was just going to say in a very low
42:37 level if i walked into a room of people
42:39 and said
42:40 hey i really think this was great
42:43 and everyone just kind of looked at me
42:45 and no one said a word
42:47 did not feel encouraged to make a
42:49 comment again and and i say that as
42:51 someone who is guilty right because
42:53 we've had other public comments shared
42:55 in this forum and not had any comment
42:58 myself to to say about that that comment
43:01 and and i think i think that that's a
43:04 part of it right us as individuals
43:06 really you know
43:08 and i'm saying this about myself right
43:10 actively listening and and having some
43:13 feedback to the comment that was shared
43:17 i think would make me feel you know if i
43:20 was walking into the room making this
43:22 comment would at least make me feel like
43:23 people heard me they didn't just turn
43:25 stand look at me
43:27 and not say anything so that that's one
43:29 thing i think would make people feel a
43:30 little bit more comfortable making
43:32 comments is actually getting some type
43:34 of feedback
43:38 alyssa thank you so so much for that
43:40 comment and kelly thank you so so much
43:42 for clarifying what your question was
43:45 and so then in trying to answer your
43:47 question about okay in this meeting what
43:49 we can do and what we cannot do
43:51 absolutely i think acknowledging and
43:53 thanking community members and making
43:56 them feel welcoming please by all means
43:59 i think that would be something that it
44:01 would be unique for us you're absolutely
44:03 right elisa i think it just makes it so
44:06 uncomfortable or like you make a comment
44:09 and then awkward silence
44:11 i think it's you're right like i i would
44:14 think twice two about coming back and
44:16 and right but yeah feel free to i know
44:19 it's weird some you know we've been
44:21 meeting now for a half a year we really
44:24 many of us did not have a chance to meet
44:26 in person yet so hopefully we'll go back
44:28 to meeting in person having a chance to
44:30 to to have that in-person interaction
44:33 but yes filthy uh
44:35 board members to to acknowledge and
44:37 thank those community members who who
44:39 are making comments um i think
44:42 as a norm for public comment sections
44:46 and you're gonna see a city council
44:47 meeting sometimes this is even repeated
44:49 that the board or the commission does
44:52 not have necessarily an answer if
44:55 somebody let's say they ask a question
44:57 or they are asking you to take a
44:59 decision or not to take a decision you
45:02 as a board may not have an answer for
45:03 them but we can commit to following up
45:06 after we do our research or after you
45:08 make your recommendations or a later
45:11 time but i think making people will feel
45:13 welcoming and just trying to build out
45:16 that relationship with our community i
45:18 think i would just say go for it
45:21 board members does that help a little
45:22 bit kelly with your initial question
45:25 yeah
45:28 yes and so yeah including timing uh i
45:31 know it's a rule it's like
45:33 they're set up a five minute rule but
45:35 sometimes then if let's say if you have
45:37 30 people signed up for public comments
45:39 use the board can decide you know we
45:40 only have like one minute or like timing
45:43 is also an issue you can be flexible
45:45 with that so feel free board members to
45:48 just invite the community and and uh
45:50 build that relationship with them
45:53 so thank you for those excellent
45:55 questions
45:56 straight back thank you
45:58 and ray if you're you're ready we would
46:00 love to get your question as well
46:04 yeah um
46:05 robert thank you for being here i have a
46:07 a question um and based on your answer
46:10 it'll lead to another question but um
46:12 and i have an ulterior motive for this
46:14 question although it might sound
46:15 personal um you mentioned your wife has
46:18 a business um
46:20 is that business located in issaquah
46:23 it is not
46:25 okay
46:26 all right um what we're trying to do we
46:28 have we have a committee that reports to
46:30 the equity board that involves community
46:33 engagement and a lot of that is building
46:34 relationships with existing businesses
46:36 but um
46:38 that's why i was asking that question uh
46:40 but regardless of that where is where
46:42 what is the name of your wife's business
46:43 just for our reference it's called
46:45 cookie a lot it's a cookie company
46:49 and where exactly is it located
46:51 um she works out of a commercial kitchen
46:53 actually up in skagit county because we
46:55 had problems down here trying to get
46:57 space
46:58 um and so it's still you know the
47:00 headquarters is a home-based business
47:02 but it's out of a commercial kitchen
47:04 i see okay and she's she sells
47:06 wholesales so she sells the metro market
47:08 for example
47:09 ah okay
47:11 thank you you're welcome thank you
47:15 all righty and thank you for that
47:17 question ray um
47:19 and next i think i saw we
47:22 had lorna and lorna are you ready
47:26 and then kelly yeah
47:28 thank you all
47:30 kelly thank you so much for asking that
47:31 question i definitely wanted to comment
47:34 on saba's public comment but
47:38 i would definitely say that there was a
47:40 lot in there and i also felt part of the
47:43 comment was really
47:45 towards the school district and i really
47:47 want to make sure that i am separating
47:50 my role
47:51 in this board as
47:53 not school or school member
47:56 or staff
47:58 based and so i definitely wanted to have
48:00 a conversation with monica and then also
48:02 separately with saba about the comment
48:05 because i want to make very sure that i
48:07 am separating
48:09 who i am in this work
48:12 as an equity board versus what i do
48:15 as a school district staff so there was
48:17 a lot of information that saba had uh
48:19 said and you know asked about and i was
48:22 just wondering about that myself so
48:24 thank you very much kelly because
48:27 briefly thought about texting monica or
48:30 you know
48:31 asking monica on the chat section i said
48:34 nope this is a bigger conversation
48:36 and so i think that's what my question
48:38 for monica is
48:40 is that something that we should just
48:42 acknowledge when a public comment comes
48:44 and then say we will follow up with you
48:46 at a later time would that have been an
48:49 appropriate way to go
48:51 i think i'm just trying to learn what my
48:53 how
48:54 i respond especially if it's something
48:56 that speaks to me or directed towards
48:58 something that i've done said or worked
49:01 as an equity board member
49:04 yes absolutely a great great answer is
49:06 to acknowledge think and then following
49:08 up later
49:09 um especially since you you don't know
49:12 and it might lead to a longer
49:14 conversation and outside different right
49:16 so i think it's always good to to to
49:19 acknowledge and then we say if needed
49:20 definitely we follow up afterwards and
49:23 we can if needed sometimes we can even
49:25 set up a separate meeting uh with
49:27 someone just to go over and explain or
49:29 further if we need to do research or
49:31 find out more information or anything
49:33 like that or just share like you said
49:37 so yeah that's an excellent response
49:40 thank you
49:41 yeah thank you
49:44 and kelly um were you ready to ask your
49:47 next question
49:49 yeah um
49:51 i'm trying to think of how to say it
49:52 best but disproportionality and
49:54 discipline in schools is incredibly
49:56 important
49:58 however
50:01 i was wondering what the
50:03 disproportionality is in the way we
50:05 treat
50:06 youth of color in issaquah and whether
50:09 we track
50:10 it and i thought we should probably know
50:13 that before we start talking about the
50:15 school system
50:21 is it tracked
50:22 i have no idea
50:27 kelly i can say from my experience
50:29 um with the issaquah school district
50:33 there is some tracking in place when it
50:35 comes to students who are reprimanded
50:40 or i guess i shouldn't say reprimanded
50:42 but
50:43 have had issues where they've needed to
50:45 have
50:47 staff interventions
50:50 however i don't know how long they keep
50:52 those records or what they do with them
50:54 um but i've had to ask that
50:58 information be brought back up or we
50:59 refer back to previous instances um with
51:02 relation to my own children just to kind
51:05 of verify and and talk through what's
51:08 been happening um
51:10 so i don't know if that helps but
51:11 hopefully that does uh give some
51:14 information because for example park has
51:17 video recordings that they often keep
51:18 and they keep records of those for a
51:20 while so that may be helpful and knowing
51:23 um but i i've never known them to
51:24 actually share that information with
51:26 anyone other than parents
51:29 there is state tracking of
51:31 disproportionality and discipline i've
51:32 done a significant amount of work on it
51:34 actually what i would what i want to
51:36 know is does this does the issaquah
51:38 police department track
51:40 disproportionality
51:41 in the way they're working with youth in
51:43 our city
51:46 that is a really good question asking
51:50 that's a great question
51:52 before we go talk to the school district
51:53 we better know that
51:56 right so those are excellent again
51:58 excellent questions um definitely i'm
52:00 happy to circle back to see what kind of
52:03 information our police department tracks
52:06 and then try to look into that
52:08 so so again these are excellent
52:10 questions for us to dive deeper into
52:12 looking at what's available what type of
52:15 data is being tracked what do we know
52:17 and then that's also going to help us
52:19 once we know that along with the knees
52:21 then that helps us create some goals on
52:23 what we want to focus on right so i'm
52:26 happy to take that on and circle back
52:27 with the police department um also i
52:30 think as a city and as an equity board
52:33 to the city we are also going to have to
52:35 have longer conversations on what we can
52:38 and cannot do
52:39 related to the school district right we
52:42 just want to be very very careful we
52:44 want to what we can do is like we can be
52:46 influencers at the community level we
52:49 cannot go and tell the school district
52:51 what to do or what not to do so
52:54 definitely more conversations for us on
52:55 that end but definitely would love to
52:57 start with uh with finding some
52:59 information on what our police
53:00 department is tracking meanwhile related
53:03 to this we have a question from paul
53:05 wally
53:06 who asks what is the status of the sro
53:09 program
53:10 uh the school resource officer for those
53:12 of you might not be familiar this ties
53:15 into the school district and a couple of
53:16 comments made
53:18 um i'm not sure if your equity board
53:20 members i mean i think this was last
53:23 summer the discussion around the city
53:26 and the school resource
53:28 officer program we had some community
53:30 conversations the city
53:33 had put on hold that program
53:35 since then my understanding is that the
53:37 program had stopped
53:40 there was a lot of feedback received
53:42 that the sro program
53:44 was hurting youth of color and not
53:48 being helpful
53:50 so at least in the relationship with the
53:51 police department my understanding is
53:53 that the school resource officer program
53:56 was
53:58 stopped but that's also another aspect
54:00 where i would be happy to
54:02 circle back with the police department
54:04 to look and find out and come back and
54:06 report next month if that works for all
54:09 of you is that
54:10 good
54:13 okay
54:14 so i think that
54:16 i also wonder if
54:17 we may be able to invite both the police
54:20 department and shapa back and maybe we
54:22 can
54:23 coordinate some conversations that might
54:26 be helpful for all of us
54:28 and actually i'm so glad that you
54:29 mentioned this jay because i think these
54:31 ties we have the police department
54:33 scheduled for september for they're
54:35 going to be here for presentation so
54:37 that might be actually a great time to
54:39 have a lengthier conversation with them
54:42 at that time
54:43 what do you say
54:45 yes i think that's great um also i see
54:48 lorna had another comment and tony if
54:50 you don't mind i'd love to highlight
54:52 your comment as well if that's okay with
54:55 you
55:02 i think my comment was
55:04 can you hear me yes okay i think my
55:07 comment was mainly towards monica as she
55:09 was gathering your data i was very
55:11 curious about reports from businesses
55:15 and uh from neighborhoods
55:18 about um people on the street or
55:23 customers
55:24 and what kind of customers they're
55:26 calling in more frequently
55:30 like really look at bias
55:32 and the welcoming feeling towards people
55:35 um of different
55:37 uh heritage
55:39 ethnicities and how they are being
55:41 perceived by business owners
55:44 so one of the
55:45 things that i would love to see is the
55:47 ethnicity or just keeping track you know
55:50 is it a white business owner asian
55:51 business owner
55:53 hispanic business owner calling in and
55:55 reporting a
55:56 suspicious personal um activity
56:00 towards a a white person an asian person
56:02 a black person hispanic person like what
56:04 is the ethnicity of the two groups and
56:07 even if there was no criminal charges
56:09 filed just what that interaction was
56:12 because sometimes just that interaction
56:15 negative interaction even though it
56:16 didn't lead to something can leave a
56:19 perception towards a community member if
56:22 they felt that they had
56:24 untowards action committed towards them
56:27 by this business owner or in this
56:29 neighborhood
56:32 thank you lorna definitely will add that
56:33 to the list of questions so so
56:35 appreciating you
56:37 with that before let me move to next i
56:39 know there are a few other questions
56:40 perhaps just wanted to clarify are we
56:44 good with saying goodbye to robert and
56:47 i think his president started a great
56:50 list of other pieces
56:52 just wanted to
56:54 well i wanted to ask robert one more
56:56 question
56:57 if if he has the time
56:59 um robert when we look at your the
57:01 reports that you all have available do
57:03 they actually extrapolate the data
57:06 that's related to
57:07 the type of business owners we have and
57:10 um where they they can be found um
57:13 because i think for me as a transplant
57:15 it's a little harder for me to find
57:17 where our minority-owned businesses even
57:19 are
57:22 you don't and
57:24 washington state has very hard
57:26 restrictions on it
57:28 so i think the best
57:30 resource would probably be jen davis
57:32 hayes our economic development
57:33 coordinator she she has her pulse of the
57:36 business community so she could probably
57:37 help you out um we can't use our tax
57:39 date is confidential so we can't we
57:41 can't release it that's the problem
57:44 awesome thank you for answering that
57:46 question for me
57:50 so with that robert thank you so much
57:52 for your
57:53 presence here tonight
57:56 i so appreciate you yeah thanks
57:57 everybody thank you
57:59 have a good night thank you
58:02 great questions board members
58:05 it sounds like definitely september is
58:07 the month it's going to be a very rich
58:09 conversation with both economic
58:10 development and police department now i
58:13 wonder perhaps we should not even have
58:15 anything else on the agenda for that
58:16 night not to solve right
58:20 absolutely i think that's going to be a
58:22 very action-packed evening
58:24 right
58:26 all righty and before we move forward
58:28 did we have any other questions with
58:30 relation to
58:31 um our response to
58:34 public comments because yes i think and
58:37 thank you so much
58:38 um all board members for helping with
58:41 those questions because i think we all
58:42 kind of had a few questions on how we
58:44 should be responding or what we should
58:46 be saying following uh saba's great
58:49 statement so um we definitely want to
58:52 uh share how appreciative we are to both
58:54 saba and ted
58:56 uh for providing us with some public
58:58 comments
59:00 if there's nothing else on this topic
59:03 then we can go ahead and jump ahead to
59:06 oh i'm sorry go ahead monica
59:09 there are a couple of comments i think
59:10 pretty has a comment in the lisa
59:13 it's like i'm sorry you all i missed it
59:16 my apology um my computer is being weird
59:20 and not like autos rolling down so uh
59:23 please grab my attention if i'm missing
59:24 you um creepy are you ready
59:27 uh yes so it's related to public
59:30 comment but i think slightly broader and
59:33 um i i think this this topic has come up
59:35 before around
59:38 whether we have to structure our
59:40 meetings in
59:42 a certain format or whether we can
59:44 approve a different format because i do
59:47 think that
59:48 dialogue and discussion is stifled with
59:50 the current
59:53 rules we have to follow and so i would
59:56 love to explore and so it's a comment to
59:58 see how we could explore a different
1:00:01 meeting design
1:00:02 and what that would entail and so it's
1:00:04 it's more of a a bit of a proposal kind
1:00:06 of thinking about what to do so i just
1:00:08 wanted to put that out there and see
1:00:11 for exploration
1:00:13 maybe at another time
1:00:14 thank you
1:00:18 i think we can add it as an agenda item
1:00:21 perhaps even as early as next month if
1:00:23 you feel ready board members or if not
1:00:25 in a few months i do remember we started
1:00:28 when we launched the the board uh we we
1:00:31 said that at some point as you feel more
1:00:32 comfortable with and you have a better
1:00:35 understanding that perhaps it it might
1:00:37 be good to revise and look and so if
1:00:40 you're already as a board we can put it
1:00:42 on the agenda as early as next month or
1:00:44 again down the line in a few months uh
1:00:47 you just tell me and
1:00:49 we'll go from there
1:00:52 yes i think we've evolved a bit and i
1:00:55 agree with preethi it might be time for
1:00:57 us to look at revising
1:00:58 um our structure for our meetings um
1:01:03 i i think sometimes i get stuck in
1:01:05 following the the script
1:01:08 and uh
1:01:09 when um things like popular comments
1:01:12 come up that we often don't see uh
1:01:14 sometimes it's hard to figure out if
1:01:16 it's the appropriate time to go into
1:01:18 discussion or if we should move forward
1:01:20 and go with all our agenda items first
1:01:23 so um i i can agree with preethi that we
1:01:26 do need to
1:01:28 uh maybe look at revising our structure
1:01:30 a bit
1:01:34 and alyssa i think you still had a
1:01:36 comment as well are you ready
1:01:38 sure i i was just gonna say in addition
1:01:41 to that that's great comment but in
1:01:43 addition to that um
1:01:45 when we do have an action item just to
1:01:47 be mindful to if we're saying okay you
1:01:51 know we don't maybe we don't have an
1:01:52 answer to that now
1:01:54 today we're going to come back to you
1:01:57 just just to be mindful and make sure we
1:02:00 really do come back in a timely manner
1:02:02 you know with whatever feedback or you
1:02:06 if there's a question that's posed in
1:02:08 the the public comment not to just not
1:02:10 to lose it right not to lose track of of
1:02:13 providing an answer if there is a
1:02:14 question
1:02:15 and not not to say that i've noticed
1:02:17 this doing that just to make sure that
1:02:20 we don't
1:02:25 thank you so much
1:02:27 the other the other piece of that is
1:02:30 i know there i know that there had been
1:02:33 a plan to move back to in-person
1:02:36 meetings
1:02:37 and i'm not sure how when the if that is
1:02:40 actually happening or how that impacts
1:02:43 the options that are available for
1:02:45 public comments when that does happen um
1:02:48 i would just suggest that you hope that
1:02:51 the options that are available even when
1:02:53 we're no longer remote
1:02:55 are flexible because it's certainly more
1:02:59 difficult for someone to get there to be
1:03:01 in person to provide that comment and i
1:03:03 know monica you mentioned just a few
1:03:05 minutes ago
1:03:06 um that right now there are other
1:03:08 options i'm not sure what the options um
1:03:11 change to when we are no longer removed
1:03:17 such great
1:03:18 comments uh alisa yes i think the plan
1:03:21 is for the options to be very very
1:03:23 flexible moving forward for public
1:03:26 comment they will say
1:03:27 people can join in person they can join
1:03:30 online call in email and those options
1:03:33 should be and will be available for for
1:03:35 public
1:03:36 okay great sure that was great yeah
1:03:42 thank
1:03:42 you such great discussion did i miss
1:03:46 anyone
1:03:49 i don't think so
1:03:51 i think we got everybody um do we have
1:03:53 any final questions or comments
1:03:57 say before we move to the next um agenda
1:04:00 item i do have one request from all of
1:04:02 you board members if i may um
1:04:05 uh ray needs to leave early tonight and
1:04:08 we were gonna because looking at the
1:04:10 time i would like to propose that
1:04:13 instead of
1:04:14 moving to the next agenda item we skip
1:04:17 my agenda item uh to provide rey an
1:04:20 opportunity to report out on the work of
1:04:22 the community engagement committee and
1:04:24 then we can come back to the other
1:04:26 agenda item so if you don't mind just
1:04:28 like flipping switching those two items
1:04:32 i think that would be nice would love to
1:04:33 give ray time
1:04:37 does that work
1:04:38 absolutely i i give you a thumbs up is
1:04:41 everyone okay with that
1:04:45 alrighty ray if you are ready we are
1:04:48 excited to see your presentation
1:04:51 yeah thank you thank you everybody um
1:04:53 monica i was reviewing your slides and
1:04:55 they certainly tie in together so if i
1:04:57 happen to drop i think there's a solid
1:04:59 connection on what you are going to
1:05:00 share and what we
1:05:01 provide is an update regarding the
1:05:04 community engagement committee um do you
1:05:06 want to bring up my slides i was trying
1:05:08 to share my screen but i seem to have an
1:05:09 issue um i i can assign you the
1:05:12 presenter role if you prefer to share
1:05:14 your screen or i can share the screen
1:05:16 you just tell me what you prefer oh why
1:05:18 don't you go ahead and share that's fine
1:05:19 thank you
1:05:29 there we go
1:05:31 wonderful thank you
1:05:33 um let's backtrack a little bit so we
1:05:35 created this committee what is it three
1:05:37 months ago so um we're still one thing
1:05:40 to keep in mind as i go through these
1:05:42 slides one we're still kind of in our
1:05:44 foundational stages i think we've
1:05:46 received a lot of great feedback from
1:05:48 our committee members who are part of
1:05:50 this or our board members who are part
1:05:52 of this committee and then having them
1:05:54 some initial outreach so
1:05:56 the purpose of the committee is to focus
1:05:59 on increasing community engagement
1:06:01 specifically around the topic of equity
1:06:03 right that's if you think about this and
1:06:04 absorb it a little bit that's a daunting
1:06:07 task is to reach out to the community
1:06:09 help them understand what we're trying
1:06:11 to do here
1:06:12 as an equity board around community
1:06:14 engagement but they might have existing
1:06:16 ones also so it really requires
1:06:18 some thoughtful dialogue with those that
1:06:20 we connect with and those that we plan
1:06:22 to reach out to
1:06:24 the committee members and this has
1:06:26 changed a couple times but christina
1:06:28 myself kelly and megan who just joined
1:06:31 us this past month and monica as our
1:06:33 liaison uh to the work so um
1:06:36 there's no committee lead this is a
1:06:38 shared responsibility that we'll we
1:06:39 talked through as a committee to kind of
1:06:41 drive our discussions but i think that
1:06:43 also is in
1:06:44 maturity phase as we figure out how we
1:06:46 um how we
1:06:47 design who does what
1:06:49 for example take minutes and do some
1:06:51 follow-up work so keep that in mind and
1:06:53 if there's anybody that's interested in
1:06:55 joining this as we show these slides i
1:06:56 would love to hear from you um so you
1:06:58 let me know next slide please
1:07:02 okay so when we start started talking
1:07:04 about community outreach i think there
1:07:07 were some focus points that we shared
1:07:09 with the group um
1:07:11 and i'm gonna pause you as i go through
1:07:12 this and like your feedback so when you
1:07:14 say community how exactly are we doing
1:07:17 um let's
1:07:18 we thought about focusing on large
1:07:20 organizations that exist here in the
1:07:22 city of issaquah
1:07:24 that could be costco pcc market swedish
1:07:26 medical center those were the first
1:07:28 three that that came into mind
1:07:30 um organizations that might have an
1:07:33 existing
1:07:34 ddi strategy or a community level
1:07:37 strategy
1:07:38 that we can get educated on because
1:07:40 we're not the first to focus on equity
1:07:42 perhaps we can partner with an
1:07:44 organization that's that's safe here
1:07:48 and see what they're doing so again it's
1:07:49 just just talking to them and seeing
1:07:51 what's going on and seeing where we can
1:07:53 make introductions and make a connection
1:07:55 i think number two here is really key
1:07:57 it's not about focusing on large
1:07:59 organizations but small family
1:08:00 businesses they're key to our strategy
1:08:02 because they can be owned by
1:08:04 families who have an ethnic focus right
1:08:06 so i think it's hearing from those
1:08:08 places as well entities like schools um
1:08:12 lorna
1:08:13 uh megan is part of our group and we had
1:08:15 some takeaways from a
1:08:17 strategy around how we might connect our
1:08:19 work here with the high school so if
1:08:22 i'd love to maybe spend some time with
1:08:24 you to get your feedback once we check
1:08:26 in with megan and where she landed with
1:08:28 some of the follow-up that she had from
1:08:30 our last meeting
1:08:32 and let's not limit it to high school
1:08:34 right if there's other schools that
1:08:36 exist again maybe the small ones
1:08:38 that have students who come from a
1:08:40 diverse background let's invite them i
1:08:43 just hear from them let's use these
1:08:44 first few months as a means of
1:08:45 introducing us
1:08:48 share that we are still at the
1:08:49 foundational level
1:08:51 and see what they're doing
1:08:52 um as a small business entity and see
1:08:56 how we can hear from them and have that
1:08:57 dialogue
1:08:58 and spoke special focus groups you know
1:09:01 june was a tremendous month for us
1:09:03 getting connected like juneteenth the
1:09:05 lgbtqi
1:09:09 meeting that we had um but let's let's
1:09:11 keep focused on those that might exist
1:09:14 and see how we can partner with them so
1:09:15 as i share these few bullets um keep
1:09:18 those in mind that when we say community
1:09:20 outreach we have to think very broadly
1:09:22 we're connecting with
1:09:24 and i'm going to pause here and um
1:09:27 is there anything outside of these four
1:09:30 that stand out to this equity board that
1:09:32 we may have overlooked and again keep in
1:09:34 mind this is foundational but i would
1:09:36 really like to hear from the group is
1:09:37 there anything that stands out to you
1:09:38 that that we can consider and i i too
1:09:41 i'm hearing some background noise i
1:09:42 don't know if that's me i apologize
1:09:49 ray one of the i'm sorry
1:09:52 let me turn my video on
1:09:54 uh one of the things i was wondering
1:09:56 can we include service organizations
1:10:00 maybe churches like groups like kiwanis
1:10:02 rotary
1:10:04 um non-profits that are out there
1:10:10 the other groups group are one wondering
1:10:13 is there any kind of
1:10:14 hoa or community
1:10:18 group like i know that
1:10:21 we've talked about reaching out to hoas
1:10:24 but is there something the city does
1:10:26 with an hoa boar or something that we
1:10:29 say hey would you be interested in
1:10:31 having a conversation about this
1:10:36 real muted i can't tell you
1:10:48 can you hear me okay
1:10:50 yes sorry i was just teeing that up for
1:10:52 monica to see if there might be an
1:10:54 existing relationship the city has with
1:10:56 hoas i think that's a fantastic idea
1:10:58 lorna
1:10:59 yes there is actually our communications
1:11:01 department and so we are yet to schedule
1:11:04 them for a visit here with you all but
1:11:07 they also used to have pre-pandemic they
1:11:09 used to go from neighborhood to
1:11:11 neighborhood and engage with hoas so we
1:11:14 should definitely circle back with our
1:11:16 communications department and look for
1:11:18 opportunities to
1:11:20 coordinate with them and team up with
1:11:23 so i'll put a note here to reach out to
1:11:26 but i know there is an existing
1:11:28 relationship with atoas
1:11:31 that's good to know thank you
1:11:35 thank you
1:11:38 any other groups from that four and i um
1:11:41 the slides disappeared monica if you
1:11:43 want to re uh put them back on the
1:11:44 screen or else i'm not seeing them
1:11:47 yes i stopped sharing so you had you see
1:11:49 each other for conversation so i'm gonna
1:11:50 go back to sharing
1:11:52 and also just as a brief note i'm gonna
1:11:54 meet myself when i share my screen i
1:11:56 cannot see comments in the chat so if
1:11:58 anyone has something to tell me please
1:11:59 just tell me
1:12:06 one quick question ray when um do you
1:12:09 all like schedule meetings with these
1:12:10 organizations or do we just invite them
1:12:14 board meetings
1:12:16 um we have scheduled a few there's one
1:12:19 that we've made some good progress on
1:12:20 with just pcc markets but we have some
1:12:23 follow-up as a committee to
1:12:25 see if we can make some connections with
1:12:26 just contacts that we have at costco
1:12:29 i have a contact at swedish medical
1:12:31 center that i haven't heard
1:12:34 shannon kelly ray actually monica i
1:12:36 don't know if we discussed this but she
1:12:39 as you know swedish is part of
1:12:40 providence and she was part of that
1:12:42 group there so i might leverage her
1:12:44 as a connection to uh
1:12:45 the hospital and see if there's a
1:12:47 opportunity to collaborate there um
1:12:53 sure i hope that answered your question
1:12:54 any other it did thank you
1:12:58 this i think was really key because i
1:13:00 took a step back and this analysis that
1:13:02 was shared with our equity board back in
1:13:05 january
1:13:06 i i think helps us to
1:13:08 get a little bit of direction like what
1:13:10 comprises our community here in issaquah
1:13:14 based on the residents and the
1:13:15 demographics that we're sharing here so
1:13:18 we should take these in consideration
1:13:20 and we do our outreach maybe perhaps
1:13:22 prioritize based on these numbers that
1:13:24 we're seeing but certainly don't want to
1:13:25 limit it to them but if you want to do
1:13:27 some initial contacts maybe maybe
1:13:29 connecting with the
1:13:31 large asian community um the catholic
1:13:34 organizations that exist on the right
1:13:36 but we're not going to limit it there
1:13:37 but perhaps just as if we prioritize our
1:13:39 outreach maybe make these numbers
1:13:41 at least have them in our live site
1:13:43 right
1:13:46 i think alyssa has a question
1:13:48 please go ahead alyssa
1:13:50 sure just a comment um i just i just
1:13:53 think that's a great point right um i
1:13:55 think that a lot of times we tend to
1:13:57 default to
1:13:59 um focusing on
1:14:01 groups certain groups
1:14:03 and don't necessarily pay attention to
1:14:06 the makeup of our community
1:14:09 and so i just you know just want to make
1:14:11 sure that we do that um
1:14:13 you know
1:14:14 even in the way that the data is
1:14:16 presented we have you know
1:14:19 the the residents we and i think maybe
1:14:22 you have this in
1:14:24 and it's not maybe it's in numeric order
1:14:26 or alpha order i'm not quite sure but
1:14:29 you know we have a fairly large asian
1:14:32 population a fairly large hispanic
1:14:33 population
1:14:35 um and and those groups also need to be
1:14:38 you know
1:14:39 recognized when we when we do things and
1:14:41 the same thing you mentioned also about
1:14:42 on looking at the
1:14:45 um religious groups
1:14:48 absolutely i i if there's existing
1:14:51 groups or organizations that have a
1:14:52 focus on those
1:14:54 larger numbers here let's let's do some
1:14:56 outreach to them so i would love it if
1:14:59 know of any that exists in asian
1:15:02 groups or hispanic latino groups that we
1:15:04 might reach out to as a community
1:15:07 as a community engagement committee um
1:15:10 please let me know
1:15:12 happy to talk to him
1:15:17 shea question i'm sorry yes i'm sorry i
1:15:19 had one more question because i know
1:15:21 that the asian population is made up of
1:15:23 a vast uh amount of groups
1:15:27 um did have we extrapolated any of that
1:15:29 data to determine which groups make up
1:15:32 that particular portion of our
1:15:35 i love that question because as an asian
1:15:37 myself what exactly does that 23.15
1:15:41 um break down to is it
1:15:43 japanese-american
1:15:44 chinese-american filipino-american um i
1:15:47 i think i don't know monica if that
1:15:48 breakdown has happened but whoever did
1:15:50 this if they have that next level i'd
1:15:52 love to have that information too that's
1:15:54 a great call out
1:15:56 yes thank you board members i believe
1:15:58 that yes we looked into that and we have
1:16:00 that data we can share it and follow up
1:16:04 that great great
1:16:08 thank you and pretty i saw you were next
1:16:10 followed by alyssa
1:16:12 yeah thank you so i guess i don't know
1:16:14 this is a question or a comment but you
1:16:16 know when i was looking at that asian
1:16:18 number
1:16:18 um the one one thing that struck me is
1:16:22 so there's there's organizations like
1:16:24 non-profits um
1:16:27 as well as religious you know
1:16:28 institutions that
1:16:32 asians you know largely would uh may um
1:16:36 they use
1:16:37 and but at the same time i don't
1:16:40 necessarily think those organizations
1:16:41 are based in issaquah but um they
1:16:45 they might be based in bellevue or
1:16:48 further north for example i'm thinking
1:16:49 of like hindu temples and things like
1:16:51 that so but the their service area would
1:16:54 also include folks who residents of
1:16:56 issaquah so
1:16:58 you know i think there's this service
1:17:00 area approach as well as like where you
1:17:03 know where the residents are to think
1:17:04 about so i would
1:17:06 i don't so i don't think the
1:17:07 organization needs to be based in
1:17:09 issaquah but it would the organization
1:17:11 may serve issaquah residents for example
1:17:14 so just wanted to make put that out
1:17:16 there
1:17:17 great call out great call out thank you
1:17:25 ready yeah go ahead
1:17:27 sure um one other piece of data that
1:17:29 might be interesting to add here
1:17:32 would be um socioeconomic
1:17:36 and the reason i call that out is i
1:17:38 think the needs of the community vary
1:17:40 greatly based on the socioeconomic
1:17:42 position of the groups we're talking
1:17:43 about
1:17:47 also a great call out thank you alyssa
1:17:53 and did we have anyone else
1:17:58 all right in the interest of time you
1:18:00 want to make sure that you have time to
1:18:02 get through the rest of the presentation
1:18:05 i i think i just had one more slide
1:18:07 after this that i wanted to share so
1:18:16 monica can you advance to that last
1:18:17 slide looks like slide number five
1:18:30 monica are you able to click to slide
1:18:31 number five just there's just one more
1:18:33 after this one that you're just
1:18:34 apologize ray i did i'm wondering if i
1:18:38 have some technical difficulties can you
1:18:40 see it on your screen
1:18:42 no oh here we go thank you perfect now
1:18:45 we can
1:18:46 thank you i think i have a delay in my
1:18:48 uh i apologize about that go for it
1:18:51 oh no problem so
1:18:53 again members foundational some strategy
1:18:55 considerations
1:18:57 i think this is key too right the top
1:19:00 let's not reinvent the wheel if there's
1:19:02 an existing relationship
1:19:04 that exists with issaquah the city of
1:19:06 visakwa partnerships
1:19:08 um let's also incorporate those uh we
1:19:11 can leverage that so monica as part of
1:19:13 the follow-up from our committee was to
1:19:17 excuse me who those organizations are
1:19:18 who might have an established
1:19:20 relationship with the city let's have a
1:19:21 discussion with them so i think that was
1:19:23 really key and that's one of the
1:19:24 takeaways that we have in preparation
1:19:26 for our next meeting is who are those
1:19:28 businesses that have that partnership
1:19:31 number the second one here is also very
1:19:34 important create new partnerships taking
1:19:36 into consideration
1:19:38 the demographic data from the city of
1:19:40 issaquah but i think from the previous
1:19:42 discussion breaking those down just
1:19:44 another layer and understanding like
1:19:46 pretty was saying they might not be
1:19:47 established here they just might have a
1:19:48 large population here so the established
1:19:51 whether it be the administrative group
1:19:53 that they they are um
1:19:55 uh report to or part of might exist
1:19:58 somewhere else
1:19:59 and then i shared this is a great
1:20:01 reference tool we talked about the
1:20:03 opportunity to connect with the
1:20:04 community based on what events happen
1:20:07 monthly we this is a great calendar that
1:20:10 we discussed for example stepping back
1:20:11 into june there was a focus on
1:20:13 juneteenth it was focused on lgbtqi so
1:20:16 that might give us some trajectory on
1:20:18 what we're trying to do as a community
1:20:19 engagement it might give us some some
1:20:21 ways by which we
1:20:23 outreach
1:20:26 organizations
1:20:27 based on what's happening on that
1:20:29 calendar
1:20:33 and a question from shay
1:20:36 see yes um when we are looking at um the
1:20:40 organizations we partner with um
1:20:43 to your point we want to make sure that
1:20:44 we foster those relationships with
1:20:45 existing community
1:20:48 engaged or
1:20:50 engagement that's already happening
1:20:52 however how are we vetting what
1:20:55 organizations we want to engage with
1:20:59 so for example and the first thing i
1:21:00 think about is is target they boast
1:21:02 their interest in equity and inclusion
1:21:10 i guess
1:21:11 i'm trying to figure out if there's
1:21:13 placement where i can actually assist or
1:21:16 help with that um
1:21:18 say for example if i do have a
1:21:20 contact at target and i can say hey
1:21:22 we're wanting to engage with you all a
1:21:24 little bit more um what process would i
1:21:27 need to take in order to support
1:21:30 if you have a contact
1:21:32 start with that and and i'm sure um it's
1:21:35 there they'll get you up the chain of
1:21:37 command
1:21:38 i have no doubt target being one of
1:21:39 those large organizations has an equity
1:21:41 strategy of some sort i'm interest we'll
1:21:44 make the introductions and see what
1:21:45 we're trying to do here if they have
1:21:46 specific strategies that exist we want
1:21:49 to be educated on them
1:21:51 um i think one of the things that we
1:21:52 talked about from our committee was
1:21:54 having them as guest speakers and saying
1:21:55 what are you doing as your organization
1:21:57 and can we share some data that's unique
1:21:59 to our city and how we might align
1:22:02 this is not just to usher but to
1:22:04 everybody here if there's an existing
1:22:05 relationship that we you have with a
1:22:07 business or an organization large or
1:22:09 small
1:22:10 make the introduction or if you want to
1:22:12 send it to me and we'll take it on as a
1:22:15 committee to do the outreach but i i
1:22:17 think we're again very foundational so
1:22:20 great question
1:22:22 thank you so much for that right
1:22:25 and monica if you're ready i think
1:22:27 you're the next person with a comment
1:22:30 thank you so much equity board members
1:22:32 um manche um
1:22:34 and i still want to commend
1:22:36 you ray and the rest of the community uh
1:22:40 engagement committee members as you
1:22:42 mentioned ray this feels daunting right
1:22:45 because it's just so much the more the
1:22:47 more you you start looking there's just
1:22:49 so much so many different aspects to
1:22:52 community engagement
1:22:54 i see this as being in multiple phases
1:22:57 right i think we are still at the very
1:22:59 beginning we are trying to
1:23:01 um now look and really look at what our
1:23:04 community looks like who is out there in
1:23:07 the community we are doing like very
1:23:10 meet and greet introductory uh
1:23:12 outreach right
1:23:14 as we start developing a more long-term
1:23:17 plan and as we continue with our
1:23:18 assessments and kind of like
1:23:20 prioritizing which equity items we are
1:23:22 going to tackle first i see a value in
1:23:26 also um intentionally outreaching to
1:23:29 certain segments of the population so
1:23:31 for example earlier you're talking about
1:23:33 you know our city demographics and how
1:23:36 let's say we have a large representation
1:23:39 of the asian community members but maybe
1:23:41 perhaps looking we have a very small
1:23:43 representation only two percent of that
1:23:46 being african-american black right while
1:23:48 i see the the value in outreaching to of
1:23:52 course all of our uh community members
1:23:55 there's gonna be a time when i want this
1:23:57 and it's gonna be great for us if we can
1:23:58 team up to outreach to some of the
1:24:01 community members who are not
1:24:02 represented and have those conversations
1:24:05 on why and what can we do as a community
1:24:08 to increase that population right and i
1:24:10 think i'm talking because this even came
1:24:12 up at the juneteen event right as a goal
1:24:15 lorna mentioned it so much how can we
1:24:17 increase our 2.2
1:24:20 population of of uh african-americans
1:24:22 how can we increase that more so
1:24:26 needless to say without going too much
1:24:28 in into
1:24:31 the rabbit hole here i think it's i
1:24:34 think i want to
1:24:36 for all of us to acknowledge that this
1:24:38 is daunting it is a lot of community
1:24:40 engagement we have multiple city
1:24:42 departments who are engaged we have an
1:24:44 economic development engages with
1:24:45 businesses we have a community
1:24:47 department who's engaging with uh um
1:24:52 hoas right and so we as a small equity
1:24:55 board we cannot
1:24:57 do it all so i want us to also partner
1:25:00 with those departments at the city
1:25:02 leverage the resources and also you know
1:25:05 as definitely continues because it's
1:25:07 important for us to let the community
1:25:09 know that we exist
1:25:11 and also like definitely invite everyone
1:25:13 learn as much as we can but also know
1:25:15 that perhaps we are going to focus once
1:25:18 once we prioritize let's say let's
1:25:20 create our priorities for 2023 then we
1:25:23 can have a more focused outreach based
1:25:25 on what our priorities are going to be
1:25:28 so i think at least that's how i see it
1:25:30 i would be curious to hear your thoughts
1:25:32 and what what do you think of that
1:25:37 no i think prioritization is key and and
1:25:39 i think the daunting task everybody
1:25:41 understands here that it's a daunting
1:25:43 task so it's building the relationships
1:25:45 that exists already and breaking it down
1:25:47 if we're going to create a strategy
1:25:48 around this monika i think we have to um
1:25:51 what i have in those slides it seems
1:25:53 very large we have to dissect that a
1:25:54 little bit which we started to do here
1:25:57 and leverage the relationships that
1:25:58 exist otherwise just going out there
1:26:00 without without some sort of strategy in
1:26:02 mind is is not a good idea
1:26:05 um i wanted to also because we have i'm
1:26:07 not the only committee member
1:26:10 here um kelly christina
1:26:12 um i know you're new new to the
1:26:14 committee but since from our last
1:26:16 meeting was there anything that you
1:26:17 wanted to share with the group based on
1:26:19 where we landed last and i know we have
1:26:20 another meeting to get on the calendar
1:26:28 i have a comment that's a little outside
1:26:30 of that and that is
1:26:32 i'm not exactly clear i think it was
1:26:34 shea and tony who and monica who worked
1:26:37 on the juneteenth and i think it was ray
1:26:39 and monica who worked on the pride event
1:26:42 they were both professional
1:26:44 interesting
1:26:45 good audience good questions good
1:26:48 interaction really well done i wanted to
1:26:51 make sure you heard that because it was
1:26:53 a lot of work to do it
1:26:55 i brought some conservative friends to
1:26:57 some of them and so
1:27:00 it did its job we had great
1:27:02 conversations thank you that's nice to
1:27:07 thank you so much kelly
1:27:15 tony if you if you're ready to ask your
1:27:18 question
1:27:19 yeah actually kelly you mentioned that
1:27:21 you invited some of your conservative
1:27:22 friends we'd love to know what did they
1:27:24 think and what were their thoughts and
1:27:26 did you kind of follow up with them
1:27:28 you know yeah
1:27:30 that was our goal we were going to go
1:27:31 out to dinner after the juneteenth then
1:27:33 we did
1:27:35 um they were well
1:27:38 the keynote
1:27:40 delbert is phenomenal let me just say
1:27:42 that that was like the perfect choice
1:27:45 and the idea i almost jumped in to tell
1:27:47 him this but i didn't want to interrupt
1:27:48 his flow but
1:27:51 the senior center is sitting on the
1:27:53 property where the kkk demonstrated
1:27:57 historically that they're literally
1:27:59 sitting on the property so when he
1:28:01 brought that issue up
1:28:03 in the and that that's
1:28:05 you know i interpreted it as the
1:28:08 potential reason why there's 2.2 people
1:28:10 who are black in issachar right is
1:28:14 was mind-blowing for them
1:28:17 it was mind-blowing and then his
1:28:19 progression on our belief systems he
1:28:22 opens with a progression
1:28:24 about like where's egypt and
1:28:27 you know why you know
1:28:28 what is the middle east and he's like
1:28:30 making you think about your beliefs
1:28:33 and that
1:28:34 shook them now they were ready to be
1:28:36 shook and i knew that right because they
1:28:39 taught we talk
1:28:40 right they don't completely buy it but
1:28:43 they just need more and so
1:28:46 it was very fun for me
1:28:50 and them they learn stuff and that's
1:28:51 what matters and the pride event i
1:28:53 didn't bring anybody to and i really
1:28:55 should have but i learned stuff that i
1:28:57 did not know and that was really useful
1:29:00 for me and i've repeated it at least 10
1:29:02 times to people who don't know either
1:29:04 particularly that there was a student
1:29:06 who's trans in issaquah who left
1:29:09 issachar because he was not
1:29:12 she was not treated correctly and
1:29:15 i did not know and i'm just telling this
1:29:16 so that everybody knows this i did not
1:29:18 know that
1:29:21 when you're a trans youth they don't do
1:29:24 hormones until you're older they just do
1:29:27 blockers
1:29:28 that is key right now
1:29:31 right
1:29:32 and so
1:29:33 i just couldn't say more about how
1:29:38 both against were
1:29:41 you i'm so proud to be working with such
1:29:44 talented people who can pull those
1:29:46 things off
1:29:48 thank you thank you
1:29:55 i have to give a lot of credit to monica
1:29:57 she really pulls things together
1:29:59 so well
1:30:00 it helps us get to where we need to be
1:30:04 even on the fly she is able to just get
1:30:07 things done and i appreciate her so much
1:30:10 because she really
1:30:12 helps keep us grounded and focused and
1:30:14 not worried about the small things
1:30:18 so i i wholeheartedly appreciate that
1:30:20 comment kelly i think that um
1:30:23 you know it it really just kind of
1:30:24 reaffirms the work that we're doing and
1:30:27 um again i just want to recognize monica
1:30:30 for all the hard work she puts in to
1:30:31 make these events happen
1:30:34 we're here
1:30:35 oh shay humble thanks yet i don't feel i
1:30:38 deserve them you all worked so so very
1:30:41 hard we are just here to support and do
1:30:43 the work i know
1:30:45 even for the pride event
1:30:47 magnificent job say tony everyone and
1:30:50 our friends at the baha'i
1:30:53 of issaquah i think everyone worked
1:30:55 equally and and really really hard so
1:30:59 thank you humble thanks but yeah i can't
1:31:03 take credit for for all that hard work
1:31:05 that everyone it takes a whole team and
1:31:07 you all know it takes a lot of time and
1:31:09 effort and energy to put the events but
1:31:13 definitely um
1:31:14 very very successful so
1:31:18 very proud of our city for sure our
1:31:21 equity board so
1:31:26 thank you thank you all
1:31:28 all right and um ray i'm sorry oh oh
1:31:32 alyssa i'm sorry
1:31:34 if you're ready please and then i see
1:31:36 you okay
1:31:38 really quick i just wanted to say
1:31:40 kudos to kelly for
1:31:43 inviting your friends um
1:31:45 and and also to your friends for not
1:31:48 only coming but having an open mind
1:31:50 enough to listen to something that
1:31:51 wasn't necessarily
1:31:53 their opinion going in so thank you for
1:31:56 doing that
1:32:02 it's the work
1:32:04 right that is the work
1:32:06 one to one
1:32:10 i'm sorry are you ready
1:32:20 i'm sorry i was just saying shout out to
1:32:22 monica marisol in the baha'i community
1:32:24 for organizing that event because they
1:32:26 really helped the welcoming portion and
1:32:29 organization and so forth thank you all
1:32:32 yes i was
1:32:35 sorry god no i was just gonna say ted
1:32:38 and sabo were so very great to work with
1:32:43 uh definitely i i
1:32:46 agree with all the sediments that we've
1:32:47 had tonight about some of the events
1:32:50 that have occurred in the last
1:32:52 month and i think along with that
1:32:56 we definitely need to thank um
1:33:00 lorna and lucrecia the other equity
1:33:02 board members who uh got on the stage
1:33:06 with tony and kelly as well
1:33:10 at the juneteen event
1:33:12 to to lead that very meaningful
1:33:14 community conversation
1:33:17 um and putting your hearts out there
1:33:20 that is not easy to do um and also tony
1:33:24 just cannot say thanks enough for just
1:33:28 being flexible and nimble and jumping in
1:33:31 last minute and
1:33:32 you know
1:33:34 running the event so again that's why
1:33:36 those are those are the big big big uh
1:33:41 sacrifices and because those are
1:33:43 sacrifices when you put your heart out
1:33:48 for the community and so
1:33:51 yeah for those big big things for sure
1:33:55 um i know ray had to to leave early
1:33:57 today good evening to you ray
1:34:01 and so since i still have i just if with
1:34:04 your permission i would definitely love
1:34:05 to uh thank um
1:34:08 the rest of the human services team
1:34:10 uh it again it takes a team there's a
1:34:12 lot of work behind the team and the the
1:34:15 scene that that needs to happen
1:34:17 and they were there from setting up to
1:34:19 breaking down to
1:34:20 anything that needed to be done very
1:34:22 very appreciative of
1:34:24 of the team and their multitasking
1:34:27 whether they do homeless outreach or put
1:34:29 out events
1:34:30 or anything that's needed they are there
1:34:34 so i'm very very much appreciating them
1:34:38 in the morning they might be doing
1:34:39 community court in the evening they're
1:34:41 doing an event and so it's nice to have
1:34:45 that team so thank you to all of you
1:34:52 alrighty if we don't have any more
1:34:54 questions or comments um i think we can
1:34:57 jump back to our next agenda item um is
1:35:00 everyone ready for monica to present on
1:35:03 the community equity assessment
1:35:07 alrighty monica you have the floor
1:35:10 thank you very much say and you know
1:35:12 ironically we had talked about the
1:35:14 events i think the events were in the
1:35:16 staff report so i love how today we just
1:35:19 went all around the agenda
1:35:21 you know as long as we are like tackling
1:35:23 all the all the things on the agenda we
1:35:26 are there but uh i i had to chuckle a
1:35:28 little bit that was a kid for us to do
1:35:30 that so but we can right
1:35:37 equity board members with your
1:35:38 permission
1:35:40 i thought i would provide an update as
1:35:43 kind of like as probably keeping a
1:35:45 little bit of conversation on kind of
1:35:47 like where we are in the work that we
1:35:48 were assigned on the assessment
1:35:51 the equity assessment and i think it
1:35:53 kind of like ties into
1:35:55 everything that we've been talking
1:35:57 tonight and i was sharing with ray
1:35:59 earlier that i think it's actually
1:36:01 better that he went first because a lot
1:36:03 of what we're gonna do really has to
1:36:05 align
1:36:06 uh and i would love to find alignment
1:36:08 with the work of the equity
1:36:12 with the community engagement committee
1:36:16 [Music]
1:36:17 remember we had talked last month and we
1:36:21 started tackling i think a little bit
1:36:25 directly the the equity assessment um
1:36:30 task that's really gonna take us i think
1:36:34 for most of the remainder of the year as
1:36:37 i envision it and i think at the end of
1:36:40 this year this
1:36:42 equity assessment will also help us
1:36:45 inform our work plan for next year
1:36:49 and so
1:36:51 just a lot of this is a little bit of
1:36:52 review
1:36:54 uh like where we started and what's the
1:36:55 background and this wanted to touch base
1:36:58 with you a little bit on kind of like
1:36:59 the assessment process
1:37:01 uh and discuss a little bit on where we
1:37:04 are what are still the next steps
1:37:07 um and then would love to have a
1:37:08 conversation with you on what are some
1:37:11 other ways to engage the community on
1:37:12 this specific
1:37:14 uh process
1:37:16 i want to get your feedback on whether
1:37:17 or not should we even consider a survey
1:37:20 in addition to the outreach that we are
1:37:22 doing with the community
1:37:24 uh engagement committee
1:37:26 and um
1:37:29 otherwise with with my outreach as well
1:37:32 and then get your feedback on some of
1:37:34 the research
1:37:39 just a brief overview we didn't touch
1:37:42 too much on this
1:37:44 but um a couple of years ago when the
1:37:47 city started a more intentional effort
1:37:50 on equity
1:37:52 with this they divided
1:37:55 knowing how
1:37:56 overwhelming the task can be just to
1:37:59 address equity at the city
1:38:01 at that time
1:38:02 we divided the roles into two sections
1:38:05 internal to the city
1:38:07 and then that was assigned to our hr
1:38:09 department leading being the lead in in
1:38:12 the internal equity
1:38:14 initiatives and then the community
1:38:16 facing equity initiatives and those were
1:38:19 assigned to
1:38:21 the human services
1:38:24 at that time human services was just me
1:38:26 and myself and i uh but now we have an
1:38:29 actual division on that so
1:38:32 um with the human resources department
1:38:34 you met we have a
1:38:36 city's equity consultant right now
1:38:38 channel kelly ray you met her she's
1:38:41 actually leading that effort and we are
1:38:44 going to coordinate with her and
1:38:45 collaborate we are going to have her
1:38:47 back here in the next few months uh as
1:38:50 she is doing more advancement and
1:38:52 creating meeting individually with some
1:38:54 city staff as you saw she's conducting
1:38:57 some trainings with boards and
1:38:58 commissions she's doing some surveys on
1:39:01 her end so uh we are going to coordinate
1:39:03 with her on our end as we are getting to
1:39:07 learn more about the community
1:39:11 initiatives in terms of equity in in our
1:39:13 community but also learning more about
1:39:16 the city and the different departments
1:39:18 so we are in this kind of like um
1:39:22 informing and educational
1:39:24 gathering information and assessing
1:39:27 uh what's available right that that
1:39:29 resource mapping we had talked about
1:39:33 um so in terms of a process i think what
1:39:41 what we put us as initial
1:39:45 process was that we are gonna start
1:39:47 definitely this this has to be a
1:39:50 heavily community engagement process a
1:39:52 heavily uh
1:39:54 community-led process so we do want to
1:39:57 reach out and and you heard from ray
1:40:00 on the efforts that we are doing with
1:40:01 the committee and um
1:40:04 more on that for sure uh we want to
1:40:07 start conducting research on how to go
1:40:10 about the assessment
1:40:12 what type of information in addition to
1:40:14 community engagement that we should look
1:40:16 uh what consists of an equity assessment
1:40:19 for the city
1:40:21 from the equity engagement and the
1:40:23 research we hope then to identify the
1:40:26 needs uh in our community and also
1:40:29 internally to the city and once we have
1:40:31 those needs then we can prioritize
1:40:35 what needs and what um
1:40:38 items and initiatives we are going to
1:40:40 tackle first in in 2023 so that's gonna
1:40:44 basically inform our work plan for next
1:40:46 year right uh so again starting with the
1:40:48 community engagement learning
1:40:51 what's uh what's in our city
1:40:53 specifically looking at what
1:40:55 data is available in the city and
1:40:57 outside identifying the needs and then
1:41:00 prioritize those action steps
1:41:03 so in terms of the community engagement
1:41:05 process i think this is a visual you saw
1:41:07 this also last time
1:41:10 we are starting with
1:41:12 with mapping out those resources
1:41:15 uh we are learning on one end the city
1:41:18 departments what each department is
1:41:20 doing how they are working their role in
1:41:22 the city how they may or may not tackle
1:41:24 equity we are going to go externally in
1:41:27 the community to hear from the different
1:41:29 groups
1:41:30 um we are gonna collaborate with the
1:41:32 equity consultant
1:41:34 um and then also just residents
1:41:37 individual residents um
1:41:40 as well
1:41:43 you heard this before um we definitely
1:41:46 want to have that at the forefront of
1:41:48 what we do we never want to do it for
1:41:50 the community we want to always whatever
1:41:52 we do do it with the community um so we
1:41:55 talked a little bit again about this
1:41:57 tonight this is just a brief overview
1:42:00 it's kind of like putting it as a visual
1:42:02 that we want
1:42:04 to different ways in which we can engage
1:42:06 right we want to participate in the
1:42:08 community
1:42:09 not just invite others to us but go out
1:42:12 in the community but we also want to do
1:42:14 outreach you heard ray talk about the
1:42:16 outreach to businesses the non-profits
1:42:19 residents
1:42:20 uh we perhaps want to participate in
1:42:22 events um this was brought up at one of
1:42:25 our community engagement
1:42:27 committees
1:42:28 let's go to the farmers market let's go
1:42:30 to concerts let's go to different events
1:42:33 that are happening to
1:42:35 engage there as well
1:42:37 again the work that the community
1:42:39 engagement committee is doing and then
1:42:41 also invitations to the the board here
1:42:45 we are hearing from city departments but
1:42:48 we also want to hear from other
1:42:49 communities as well
1:42:52 so certainly just different ways for us
1:42:54 to gather that information
1:42:57 um and then um before i go there i you
1:43:01 we talked again about the june tint
1:43:03 event and other events that that we
1:43:04 conducted um
1:43:06 but we also
1:43:08 i started kind of like a running list of
1:43:12 different needs and different
1:43:16 suggestions that came out of different
1:43:19 engagement opportunities that we had
1:43:21 whether that was one-on-one discussions
1:43:24 with smaller groups or individual
1:43:26 residents that we had a chance to engage
1:43:28 with or from the most recent events
1:43:31 that we
1:43:33 hosted
1:43:34 these are some preliminary information
1:43:37 and and some suggestions
1:43:39 uh that perhaps we can consider
1:43:43 gender wage gaps um as as an initiative
1:43:47 that we can tackle um addressing
1:43:50 unconscious bias and discrimination in
1:43:52 customer service
1:43:54 specifically for african-american black
1:43:56 residents
1:44:09 community members and residents
1:44:11 this was brought up in one of the public
1:44:13 comments you may remember early on
1:44:16 right after this board was launched but
1:44:19 also of course it came up
1:44:20 in our most recent event
1:44:23 um how can we
1:44:24 address uh disproportionate inequities
1:44:27 for the latinx residents this i'm gonna
1:44:30 talk a little bit in a few minutes as
1:44:31 well but this was evident in
1:44:34 in our human services strategic plan on
1:44:38 and there's a lot of information about
1:44:40 our latinx community members
1:44:45 and again just how can we address
1:44:47 diversity inclusion in all levels of
1:44:49 government including boards and
1:44:51 commissions and elected
1:44:53 officers
1:44:54 and offices
1:44:56 so again this is not um this is just a
1:45:00 list of uh different
1:45:03 um needs that came up already
1:45:06 um i expect then by the end of the year
1:45:09 this this list is going to be much much
1:45:11 longer based on the engagement that we
1:45:13 are doing and so i envisioned that um
1:45:17 at the end of
1:45:18 this year then we will
1:45:20 have um a great conversation and we are
1:45:23 gonna try to
1:45:26 use certain criteria to
1:45:28 prioritize some of the initiatives for
1:45:31 us to
1:45:32 to tackle and perhaps some of them we
1:45:33 can even tackle this year
1:45:36 depending on timing
1:45:40 so with that in terms of where we are
1:45:43 and a lot of work that still need to
1:45:46 happen for us to to really inform
1:45:49 ourselves and gather information
1:45:52 uh if you remember last time we had the
1:45:54 office of sustainability
1:45:57 and we heard a little bit about from our
1:46:00 engineers about the ada
1:46:04 plans the city is doing today you heard
1:46:07 from the finance department
1:46:09 next month uh we have the executive
1:46:12 department our city
1:46:14 administrator will be here to present
1:46:17 uh we are also
1:46:18 hoping to hear from the isoquake in the
1:46:20 equity group
1:46:22 um we engage with pcc market as ray
1:46:25 mentioned and
1:46:27 we are going to continue to connect with
1:46:30 in september we hope to hear from the
1:46:32 economic development department and the
1:46:34 police department we are reaching out to
1:46:36 see if the school district equity team
1:46:38 and the student equity team is going to
1:46:41 be available either in september or
1:46:43 october to come here for a visit
1:46:46 uh and then in october we have as a
1:46:48 tentative hopefully
1:46:50 a conversation with the city's equity
1:46:52 consultant
1:46:54 right to breed is scheduled for october
1:46:56 also for a presentation
1:46:58 and for opportunities to collaborate
1:47:00 with them as well as other community
1:47:03 equity groups
1:47:06 so a few uh months ahead very busy
1:47:11 months um and while we are going to
1:47:14 continue to engage with these groups
1:47:16 again we are going to dive deeper into
1:47:18 conducting research on what other cities
1:47:20 are doing what are their jurisdictions
1:47:22 what other examples we want to share
1:47:24 with you examples of
1:47:26 good equity assessments that were
1:47:29 conducted
1:47:31 and so
1:47:33 probably it feels a little bit daunting
1:47:36 already because it feels like a lot
1:47:38 um but i think it's also exciting and
1:47:41 very important for us to to gather all
1:47:43 of that information
1:47:46 and so with that i would like to pause
1:47:48 and and have a brief discussion with you
1:47:51 uh on other ways to engage with the
1:47:53 kimchi i know that you already touch
1:47:54 base with ray a little bit on that so we
1:47:57 don't need to go in much detail i don't
1:47:58 want to repeat that
1:48:00 uh because we want to coordinate with
1:48:03 with the committee
1:48:04 but one thing in particular that i was
1:48:06 hoping to discuss with you is whether or
1:48:09 not you consider it might be appropriate
1:48:11 to in addition to the outreach that we
1:48:13 do should we also consider a survey just
1:48:16 to hear from from residents who might
1:48:18 not be connected to an agency or
1:48:19 organization
1:48:21 and then if if there are any research
1:48:23 details in particular that you would be
1:48:26 interested in as i mentioned we are
1:48:28 definitely going to look into
1:48:30 what other
1:48:31 jurisdictions are doing i want to look
1:48:33 into some data demographics would like
1:48:36 to look into some good examples of
1:48:39 assessments but what else should we
1:48:41 consider
1:48:43 and i'm gonna pause because i talked at
1:48:45 you for like 10 minutes here
1:48:46 continuously
1:49:04 um you're either thinking very deep or i
1:49:07 just i was just so clear that
1:49:09 [Laughter]
1:49:11 or so
1:49:12 confusing
1:49:14 pretty's ready i think she's gonna lead
1:49:16 us off here
1:49:19 i'll just start off by saying i love
1:49:21 this stuff i absolutely love this stuff
1:49:24 and so um
1:49:27 i would love to help support this work
1:49:29 in whatever way i can um
1:49:31 what what i've been thinking about is
1:49:34 you know community engagement is so
1:49:36 important i think it's also like we've
1:49:39 talked about relationships so i think
1:49:41 it's not just like a one-way thing it's
1:49:43 developing relationships feedback
1:49:46 folks tell us you know what's important
1:49:48 to them they hear back from us what
1:49:50 we're doing about it and so just kind of
1:49:52 having that
1:49:54 i also think community engagement and
1:49:56 what we're hearing in events and
1:49:58 meetings that's
1:50:00 qualitative data
1:50:02 and i think that
1:50:05 there's also i
1:50:07 i would think an important role for
1:50:09 survey data if it's done well to um
1:50:13 to work like that mixed methods approach
1:50:16 around like
1:50:17 qualitative information as well as like
1:50:22 a full sampling of our diverse community
1:50:25 and understanding what our different
1:50:26 communities are telling us and so
1:50:29 um i do think that's an important
1:50:31 balance to it i think that uh community
1:50:34 organizations are um have their ears to
1:50:39 the ground in terms of understanding the
1:50:41 pulse of our different groups and so um
1:50:45 i mean i think this is really important
1:50:47 and i think having these different
1:50:48 approaches will help us kind of uh from
1:50:52 form a well-rounded perspective of what
1:50:55 community needs are by various groups so
1:50:59 i'm just excited by this approach so
1:51:00 thanks for sharing it monica
1:51:05 thank you so much pretty and with your
1:51:07 permission would love to follow up with
1:51:08 you as is if we if the board considers
1:51:11 and we move forward with a survey would
1:51:13 love to follow up with you and
1:51:14 and get some you know input from you for
1:51:24 it's funny that's exactly what i was
1:51:25 thinking about too
1:51:27 fast when i saw the survey i keep on
1:51:29 thinking of all the surveys that
1:51:31 um i've
1:51:32 done with my work and there's sometimes
1:51:36 just the people who are interested
1:51:38 respond and i know in the city's
1:51:41 emails i'm not sure how many people who
1:51:43 really impacted
1:51:44 uh communities who need the most support
1:51:46 would actually respond i mean honestly
1:51:49 monica this is very embarrassing but i
1:51:51 only found out that the city sends
1:51:53 emails about a year and a half ago
1:51:55 and so you know how do we gather data
1:51:58 the everyday people the new people who
1:52:01 are in our community
1:52:02 the people who maybe not speak english
1:52:04 for example and so just as pretty was
1:52:07 mentioning i think
1:52:08 i'm hoping that we can use some of our
1:52:10 next few events
1:52:11 to do in-person surveys
1:52:14 also combining kelly's comments about
1:52:17 it's that personal one-on-one
1:52:19 conversation that gathered information
1:52:22 i don't know how we go about doing it if
1:52:24 we have some volunteers at some of our
1:52:27 events have conversations or if we have
1:52:30 conversations with some of the community
1:52:31 members and gather data because i think
1:52:34 that would help
1:52:35 generate the most amount of data
1:52:37 especially from
1:52:38 a wider group of people
1:52:40 to get some input and voices because we
1:52:43 need you know everyone's viewpoints
1:52:45 different religions different political
1:52:48 backgrounds different ethnicities all of
1:52:50 that and so i think i love the idea of
1:52:53 survey but at the same time i always get
1:52:55 really
1:52:56 worried because i've seen
1:52:58 the survey not really be indicative of
1:53:02 what the community is thinking because
1:53:04 who's actually responding to the survey
1:53:07 so i'd love to
1:53:08 i love that idea i just
1:53:11 combining kelly's comments also in the
1:53:14 one-on-one conversation and building
1:53:16 relationships and monica you had also
1:53:18 mentioned one of the ways you got this
1:53:19 group to come together or work with
1:53:21 different groups is developing that
1:53:23 relationship
1:53:24 to begin with
1:53:26 with each person
1:53:29 thank you
1:53:35 thank you very much lorna and yes that's
1:53:37 why i think it's like um
1:53:39 it's it sounds to me more i hear you all
1:53:42 it it does
1:53:44 it's i i feel like we need to try
1:53:47 different ways to make sure that we get
1:53:50 to as
1:53:51 many community members as we can right
1:53:54 so absolutely there's just no
1:53:57 it's so invaluable to have those
1:53:59 one-on-one conversations and to have
1:54:01 those meaningful outreach events and
1:54:04 perhaps there's also something that that
1:54:06 we can learn from some quantitative data
1:54:09 not that we again we want to
1:54:10 intentionally not to
1:54:16 have one way more than the other uh but
1:54:19 i think combined they can give us a
1:54:21 broader and deeper perspective
1:54:28 thank you
1:54:36 are you still thinking or do you have a
1:54:38 comment suggestion or question
1:54:44 i was actually just typing something uh
1:54:45 so thank you for asking i appreciate
1:54:47 that um
1:54:49 yeah i was actually um still deep
1:54:51 thinking about everything and i i like
1:54:52 where we're going and i like the the
1:54:55 nature of you know the community
1:54:56 engagement and this it really is going
1:54:58 to take those one-on-one relationships
1:55:00 but i think also that we can do some
1:55:03 things that are
1:55:04 passively
1:55:06 beneficial what i mean by passively
1:55:08 beneficial at like issaquah events such
1:55:10 as like salmon days if we actually had
1:55:12 maybe an equity board table or equity
1:55:15 board tent
1:55:17 we're engaging in the community in a
1:55:19 passive nature uh or you know where they
1:55:22 even be passing out flyers passing you
1:55:24 know having a chance to sit down and i
1:55:27 don't know enjoy a smoothie with a
1:55:30 with a community member at salmon days
1:55:32 or something like that i think as we
1:55:35 get more
1:55:37 i don't know get more more of a
1:55:39 strategic focus on what we're going to
1:55:40 be doing i think you know
1:55:42 passively as well as
1:55:45 i don't want to call it aggressively but
1:55:47 really just getting out there to the
1:55:49 community in a passive and um and an end
1:55:52 in an intentional way
1:55:58 that's great thank you thanks so much
1:56:04 christina do you have a comment
1:56:24 so try to identify what kind of
1:56:26 activities they can be involved
1:56:30 then decide how we can
1:56:33 um try to connect
1:56:36 thank you
1:56:37 that's a great idea to definitely think
1:56:39 of the different ages of the populations
1:56:41 when we do that outreach yeah that's a
1:56:43 great great suggestion thank you
1:56:47 uh shay
1:56:49 yes and i was actually thinking about
1:56:51 the farmers market um specifically
1:56:53 because i know that
1:56:55 the pickering burn events
1:56:57 tend to be well attended um
1:57:01 so to tony's point i think it might be
1:57:04 helpful if we had like a table or
1:57:06 something set up
1:57:07 um to where we can share some of the
1:57:10 things that we are working on how the
1:57:12 community can get involved the resources
1:57:15 that they may not know that they have
1:57:20 and and much like everyone else i'm kind
1:57:23 of thinking about the best ways to get
1:57:24 the information
1:57:26 into people's hands without um
1:57:29 without the
1:57:30 [Music]
1:57:31 i guess you would say fatigues of
1:57:34 surveys and the fatigues of meetings and
1:57:37 and things like that and how we can um
1:57:39 reach everyone most effectively um
1:57:43 as i'm sure you all know i'm a huge
1:57:45 proponent for
1:57:47 community forum sites like next door and
1:57:50 and things like that where we can reach
1:57:52 people in different ways um
1:57:55 i i love the idea i'm just trying to
1:57:58 think of the best way to get the most
1:58:01 responses so we have a complete picture
1:58:04 um and and we have some very valid data
1:58:07 versus some skewed data from preaching
1:58:10 to the choir
1:58:12 i guess you would say
1:58:15 well and thank you for bringing that up
1:58:17 say you know when we talk about equity
1:58:20 though
1:58:21 i think
1:58:22 that having skewed data i think that's
1:58:25 okay because for me it's when we talk
1:58:28 about true equity it's not that we need
1:58:30 to say okay the majority leads or we
1:58:33 need to have a majority right we need to
1:58:35 dive deeper and look at what are the
1:58:38 disproportionalities and who are the
1:58:39 people who are most impacted so perhaps
1:58:42 we are not necessarily
1:58:45 interested in having a majority right
1:58:48 it's it's having
1:58:49 those who are impacted the most and
1:58:52 those are the ones that we need to hear
1:58:55 because if we hear from a larger
1:58:57 majority and everybody says oh no
1:58:59 everything's fine then we might just
1:59:01 have that might be as cute data to say
1:59:03 oh no everything's fine
1:59:06 right and with that i want to share i
1:59:08 remember when i first joined um
1:59:11 equity training
1:59:13 somebody said you know everybody was
1:59:16 trying to say okay so what are the needs
1:59:17 what are the challenges that you have in
1:59:20 in your organization or in your
1:59:22 community and i remember that somebody
1:59:24 else and
1:59:28 raised their hands and mentioned well in
1:59:30 our organization we don't really have
1:59:32 any problems because we we don't you
1:59:36 know we don't have people who are
1:59:38 impacted we don't have people who are
1:59:40 poor we don't
1:59:41 so we really don't have a problem
1:59:43 everything's fine
1:59:44 and so
1:59:46 uh i think that's like right it just
1:59:48 reminds me that we want to i'm totally
1:59:51 okay with having skilled data and not
1:59:53 having the majority right
1:59:56 yeah yes and great point and i think i
1:59:59 was more so meaning that we get like the
2:00:01 cleanest data so that we can get the
2:00:03 needs addressed um
2:00:06 which to your point is is very difficult
2:00:08 because for um when you're coming from a
2:00:12 place of privilege and you're not really
2:00:14 sure that those things are impacting you
2:00:16 in some way that's where
2:00:18 uh we lose a lot of that data um
2:00:22 that that could be necessary so um i
2:00:24 almost wonder
2:00:26 how we get to
2:00:28 i guess for lack of a better term those
2:00:30 marginalized groups who may not be
2:00:32 represented in in the larger groups
2:00:37 and those are the things the key things
2:00:39 for us to be mindful of and be
2:00:41 intentional about reaching out to either
2:00:43 as focus groups or surveys
2:00:45 uh in personal meetings right so okay
2:00:49 now great conversation great suggestions
2:00:52 definitely we'll will continue to work
2:00:54 outside of the monthly meetings here on
2:00:56 gathering some data if you have other
2:00:58 ideas for also research or you have uh
2:01:01 perhaps um
2:01:03 um resources for us please reach out and
2:01:06 then i'll with your permission we'll
2:01:08 just keep on updating and adding
2:01:11 to to where we are each month does that
2:01:13 sound like a good plan
2:01:16 absolutely i think it's a great one
2:01:18 yes thank
2:01:20 you know
2:01:22 i saw he commented um about the human
2:01:25 rights commission
2:01:28 and monica do you have some feedback on
2:01:32 no i think that's a great idea for us to
2:01:33 also look into
2:01:36 collaborating with the human rights
2:01:37 commission at the state level for sure
2:01:39 so now great suggestion
2:01:41 thank you
2:01:48 alrighty did anyone else have any
2:01:50 questions comments concerns they wanted
2:01:52 to add to
2:01:54 our topic here
2:02:06 all right if there's nothing else i
2:02:07 guess we will move to our next agenda
2:02:09 topic
2:02:11 um and it looks like monica is going to
2:02:13 do that to you because we have our staff
2:02:14 report
2:02:15 um and any other business or
2:02:17 announcements that uh we might have
2:02:21 yes and board members i realize it's a
2:02:23 few minutes after eight o'clock so uh
2:02:26 thank you so much for your flexibility i
2:02:28 think we actually addressed some of the
2:02:30 things on the staff report
2:02:33 so i want to just be a brief again i
2:02:35 wanted to start with a huge huge thanks
2:02:38 to all of you for your participation in
2:02:41 the many multiple events in june
2:02:44 in addition to juneteen and pride month
2:02:46 which we discussed already that i also
2:02:48 want to thank those of you who
2:02:50 participated in the meeting with the
2:02:52 japanese delegation
2:02:54 uh i know um
2:02:57 there was also i want to uh thank pretty
2:02:59 for representing our board at the
2:03:02 council meeting on june 21st when the
2:03:05 equity framework uh was presented
2:03:08 so really a lot a lot of
2:03:11 great things happening uh in june some
2:03:14 of you participated in the training in
2:03:16 the deconstruct deconstructing our bias
2:03:19 training with chan and kelly ray some of
2:03:22 you are also i know scheduled for
2:03:25 for the upcoming
2:03:27 events one of them was postponed to
2:03:29 october
2:03:31 so a lot happened and i also wanted i
2:03:34 know there was interest from the equity
2:03:36 board in learning more about human
2:03:37 services so i'm gonna try to insert some
2:03:41 information each month and perhaps as
2:03:43 time permits we can also have a a larger
2:03:46 presentation at some point
2:03:49 since we are part of the human services
2:03:52 division we now have a division and i
2:03:55 want to tell you board members that this
2:03:57 is a very very new division it was just
2:03:59 created this past year if you want to
2:04:02 imagine just a little bit over a year
2:04:04 ago human services was just really me
2:04:06 and myself and i
2:04:07 uh we since then we have a team of how
2:04:10 many are we now killing one two three
2:04:13 four or five five of us four
2:04:17 i'm trying to count so caitlyn is here
2:04:19 with us tonight she will continue to be
2:04:21 with us here
2:04:22 she's our newest staff member she's been
2:04:24 with the city for a little bit
2:04:26 over a month she's our behavioral health
2:04:29 coordinator who does uh work with our
2:04:32 behavioral health program and the
2:04:33 homeless outreach uh with amir the two
2:04:36 of them provide a seven-day coverage to
2:04:38 the city so those are two staff members
2:04:41 that work both with our police
2:04:42 department for behavioral health and
2:04:44 with our homeless outreach with our
2:04:46 homeless program
2:04:49 we also have marisol visa
2:04:52 she's working with our community court
2:04:54 so she's working with our team at the
2:04:56 municipal court
2:04:58 um and that's also a brand new program
2:05:00 that was just started in august of last
2:05:02 year and then last but not least for
2:05:05 sure you might have met already hannah
2:05:07 roberts she's our human services
2:05:08 coordinator and she's working with our
2:05:11 non-profit partners she also she and i
2:05:13 worked on on work on creating the human
2:05:16 services strategic plan this past year
2:05:19 that was just a few months ago uh
2:05:21 adopted and um
2:05:23 uh by city council so a lot a lot of
2:05:26 work is being done in our small division
2:05:30 and so
2:05:32 i'll try to keep you updated with other
2:05:34 council meetings that uh that are
2:05:36 happening uh some more recently on the
2:05:38 june 22nd right the day after equity
2:05:41 framework debate
2:05:44 we um
2:05:46 one of the things that i would like to
2:05:47 highlight in terms of human services uh
2:05:50 we had discussed with city council the
2:05:52 option of creating an emergency housing
2:05:54 program for people who are homeless in
2:05:56 issaquah that is going to happen in
2:05:58 collaboration with and partnership with
2:06:00 motel 6 so we are creating a pilot
2:06:03 program for one year
2:06:06 for uh to use some of the rooms at motel
2:06:09 6 as emergency housing program for folks
2:06:12 who are homeless so
2:06:14 a lot of great work is happening and
2:06:16 just yes please feel free to reach out
2:06:19 uh if you have any questions in
2:06:21 particular but you have in your agenda
2:06:23 packet a link
2:06:24 to the human services strategic plan um
2:06:27 if you have find yourself having time
2:06:30 please read some of the information
2:06:32 there there's a lot of information that
2:06:34 we gathered last year during our
2:06:36 outreach and that's equity
2:06:39 oriented so we really try to have an
2:06:41 intentional
2:06:42 equity focus um
2:06:44 in the strategic plan so we called out
2:06:47 quite a bit of information on the
2:06:49 demographic information and some of the
2:06:51 disproportionalities that we learned
2:06:53 during our outreach so
2:06:56 so that's that and last but not least um
2:07:00 we talked a little bit about the
2:07:01 deconstructing our bias training if you
2:07:03 didn't have a chance to sign up yet for
2:07:05 one session please do so
2:07:07 uh but more so speaking of you know we
2:07:09 talked about the different initiatives
2:07:11 for different departments our hr
2:07:13 department the human resources
2:07:15 department is also intentionally trying
2:07:18 to gather data on our diversity not only
2:07:23 our employees but also our boards and
2:07:26 commissions
2:07:28 again the city is trying to
2:07:29 intentionally reach out to the community
2:07:31 to make sure that we increase our
2:07:34 diversity and boards and commissions and
2:07:36 with that we also hope to have
2:07:38 intentional conversations on increasing
2:07:40 diversity at elected positions as well
2:07:43 so definitely we as a board we will have
2:07:47 more role into this uh but if you feel
2:07:50 comfortable sharing your information of
2:07:51 course it's always
2:07:53 voluntary like please reach out to
2:07:56 candy lorenzo our hr analyst who's
2:07:59 gathering that informational feel free
2:08:01 to reach out to me
2:08:03 uh if you have any questions about that
2:08:07 oh board numbers i think that concludes
2:08:09 my updates uh please
2:08:11 tell me if you have any questions or
2:08:13 comments or if i missed anything
2:08:21 no monica i think you got everything
2:08:24 did anyone else have any comments
2:08:26 questions concerns
2:08:32 all righty we've had a very robust
2:08:34 meeting so i want to thank you all for
2:08:36 joining us tonight um if there is
2:08:38 nothing else then we will adjourn until
2:08:41 our next meeting on august 3rd 2022.
2:08:45 thank you very much everyone thank you
2:08:46 all thanks have a good night
2:08:49 have a good night everyone
2:08:51 thank you
2:08:54 lorna we'll miss you next month