Peace meal in it. We took some arm twisting. It's got some long memories, man. Yeah. Double string. That's mine. This is the people's business. The makeup. She's out. She's out today. She's dialing in or no? No. I don't think she's dialing in. Mr. McDonald? He's coming. No, I mean, that's dialing in. At the funeral? Yeah. I didn't see him. We can try to get it. Check on ZTA. That's good. Yeah. OK. I see nothing too controversial. It's early yet. Huh? It's early yet. Madam, I see a few instances where we've got some protege dissipating in some contract. Yes, sir. Sam, that money going up interstate. Oh. The protege, is there a protege left? Mr. McDonald, is this what you're asking about? No, I just, one was specifically going less there as a protege and a couple of others. No, I don't have any issues with them. I'm just saying that. Did you see some of the money? Oh, did you want your hand to see the protege? OK. Yeah. I was getting to talk for a minute because I thought that would make you happy. I'm going to go down to Charleston and get me a one room, where I put it. Amazing. They can list me as a local. We get it worked. Less than five minutes. That's a way to start. That's a way to start. You got a free phone. Yeah, I know. I can't start with no phone. I'm going to be giving some thought to Daniel I was just talking about. Are we going to meet on election day? I'm not sure. I think it was during a subcommittee meeting. So I guess you're like, we ought to talk about it at that meeting. I'm sorry. Your colleagues in the subcommittee felt the need to carry on. It would be three. Within the subcommittee, it could meet that day. Well, we wouldn't need to bring more weeks in this room. People can't wait. People are safe. People can't wait. That would put you right. We got a quick for Christmas. Work session? Work session? No, I'm saying work session as well. I'd rather I'd be interested in hearing what's most pressing. I'm sure there's some things that are time sensitive. Can we get a sense of what it might be? Good to hear. When do we have to report from the planning committee? That's the rear. That might be the meeting, right? I don't know if that is the first or second meeting. I know that. I think it's the first meeting. The first meeting. Haven't they already sent it out? They've already sent it out. I think it's the first two. The first two. So we certainly want to meet to handle that. But I'd be more inclined to do the evening meeting in that work session as day three. I'd be more interested in the committee pushed out the work session so all of you can digest it and for a vote that evening. The direction. Let's try to battle it more. I didn't hear you last time you were speaking softly for a reason. Yeah. Yeah. That one is. Let's get a sense of it. Mr. Manager, you need to be doing work. Either way. That's an elections call. The right to the franchise. You can early vote. I will early vote. You lose one? That's a real five minutes. Yeah. I get it. I got somewhere in the drawer. on it? Yeah. Thank you. You're getting a lot of envelopes today. You have a keep going. How are you? Thank you. I don't think I can do it. Yeah, do more. I don't know where to start. He was waiting on you. No. Yeah. I think Missy wants to move for office from next to mine. I don't think she wants to be next to me. No. I thought she got used to it now. You're never there. We had a discussion several years ago. You're never there. That's the best office. But I am there. I made up for lost time. All right. Anyone got eyes on Mr. Davis? Yeah. She's here. She's here. How are you? I'm good. Thank you. Thank you very much. A couple of these are new ones. Because we're all talking about regional. You're doing things. You're doing things. Look at what I'm doing. Those are the ones that are coming up. Those are the ones that are coming up. Those are the ones that are coming up today. So maybe look at some of them on that list. I think one Daniel wanted to just report for you what it was. For what? Yeah. I've got two people on me for the housing authority. And then I got to find a planner. I'll take that one. Huh? Two. I thought we ended up with two. Some of them have been there for 30 years. Who's that? No, no, no. You're my CHJ? I love her. What do you mean you're going for the housing authority? I'm going to interview two people. Two ladies. One who's a retired attorney. You go to the report assumption? Where'd you go? That's what you had though, man. Don't see that this morning. The customer in Atlanta where they found on the luggage somebody brought a whole roasted pig. Pig head?  Yeah, it was wrapped up in a window. Alright, Madam Clerk could you please call the roll? I am here. Where is it? Here. That's a good word. Lord in the providence of your promises you've allowed us to gather around this table. To discuss matters of our city as we continue to expand its horizon. Such an ignited us with promises of raised love and sensitivity. We ask it in your name. Amen. Thank you. I'm doing well, Mr. Mayor and all of our gentlemen uncountable today. This happy causes day for me. I didn't know it was bosses day. I didn't know it was bosses day. Yeah, everybody's been really nice. We will get started with That's it. Oh, did all that treat? I'm sorry. Look, before the end of the day that was lots of Lisa's going to start walking stuff in. Thank everyone for working on our schedules as we paid our respects. Our first city council discussion item is a state health plan update. So we've been working hard to get ready to transition with all of our employees to the state health plan and you all have directed and we need to bring you an update as Campbell Benjamin, our chief of staff and human resources director to take you through some information and hopefully this will also serve as additional notification or talk about a little bit of disease so that staff members retirees and put it out there. We want to make sure everybody knows what to tell going to be a little bit busy over the next few months to get this done. So good afternoon. As Ms. Wilson has stated, we have been vigorously working on the transition. It's been interesting because there's a lot of things that have come up that we hadn't thought about and it's just transitioning into going into the state health plan because a lot of you have a lot of people are spouses that are on it we have retirees that are on it and it's going to affect people in different ways so we've been working really hard on that. But I wanted to start the stage with kind of a review of where we left off the last time. Of course you all know that nationally health care costs are skyrocketing all the time and going up and we are certainly not immune to that. So we were looking at some projected health care claims going up to $32 million. I think we're around $25 million is what we're projected at spending for this year actually and that $32 million was showing some growth over the next future years. And a huge op-ed liability. So in order to kind of put some restraints on that and figure out some other options we looked at the state health plan as an option for us to to consider going to. So that's again some overview of what we've already discussed prior. So as you guys know the state health plan the reason why we explore that option is it's certainly recruiting a retention tool in the sense that other agencies and other municipalities around the state are members of the state health plan which will make it easy for us to have candidates from those different jurisdictions and those different agencies come to work for us because they'll be able to maintain that same health care system. We certainly are looking for some savings at the city with going to the state health plan and so we definitely explored looking at that and seeing how much those costs would be fixed as opposed to those continuing claims that we had no idea what those claims would look like as the future moved on. So we certainly were looking at as you all remember not providing health care to some of our populations but now looking at this option it allows us to still provide health care to our active employees, their dependents, our 365 retirees, dependents and our post 65 retirees in their dependents. As you all know we will be locked in for four years because that's a part of the plan once you sign up and also you'll see that they have several different plans that are available standard savings, tricure supplement for retirees. In addition we will not be charged an experience rate for this coming year but after that we will be assessed that experience rate and so we'll have to look at that and I'll talk a little bit more about that when we get to the premium portion. I did want to mention that individual participants may see some changes in their experience because maybe the copays will be different, the cost shares will be different on some of the services they receive from the plan that we had previously. I did want to mention that just because you can't make everybody happy so somebody is going to have an experience that may be changing, maybe their prescription costs different on our plan and it will on a new plan. We're hoping we did a little comparison so that should be quite similar but there may be an occasional thing that's different for our individual retirees and employees so we want you to be aware of that. As you know the state health plan offers a lot of different coverages to active employees, retirees, survivors, and dependents. A lot of us know people who are on the state health plan and so they cover 500,000 lives and about 709 entities are underneath the state health plan. Be that school districts, state agencies, local subdivisions such as ourselves, municipalities and counties and special purpose districts. And since 1985 the general assembly has allowed local subdivisions such as ourselves to join the state health plan. So this is a list of the benefits that we have to provide once we go to the state health plan and you'll see there are three columns there the full-time employees, there's a list of those coverages we have to provide, the retirees and survivors and Cobra participants. So you'll see some additional insurances that have to be provided that we weren't providing previously.  We did provide that through colonial life it was an optional choice for people it'll still be optional but it'll be provided through the state health plan. They also have a dental, dental plus vision, basic life, basic long-term disability supplemental long-term disability money plus is similar to our flex spending account so that's going to be a similar benefit that we provide in the vision care discount program. So those are the things that we have to provide we can't pick and choose, we can't decide we want to do some and not others we have to provide that whole suite of benefit coverages. Do I have any questions about that? So you say we have to supply we have to offer. We have to offer. Right. You're not obligating everybody Absolutely. You're not obligated to take any of these but we have to offer them because it's part of their package. So another option but just one quick question you mentioned retirees and survivors that category it has to come as a package or can you just for the vision and dental? Yes, sir. You can pick this vision and dental but we have to offer all of those to our retirees as well but again it's optional you can decline all the coverages if you choose to do so or you can pick whichever ones that doesn't meet your medical needs. Is life insurance optional? Yes, sir. It's optional as well. Now, I will say thank you for mentioning that if you get the health insurance with state health plan you automatically get a $3,000 life insurance that comes along with it free of charge so that is offered but you can get some additional basic life insurance and there's a tier depending on your age and the level of coverage that you want, level of life insurance if you want. So those premiums are based on age and how much life insurance you want to take out for yourself or your dependent children. So the difference between optional life So the basic life is for the individual themselves. The dependent life insurance would be for a spouse and their dependent children. Certainly. So those are those options. So, as you all will remember back I didn't have that council meeting but you all approved us to go to the state health plan and we got our application approved by Peeba and so we are definitely moving in that direction from January 1st 2019. We have begun to send out emails and communication to our employees. We are in the process of sending out a mailer to our retirees that will have a booklet for them to review and it will also have a list of premiums and a welcome letter attached to it. So we're sending that out. Hopefully we're going to send that out at the end of this week or the first of next week so that's what we're trying to do. We will be having group enrollment sessions starting in November and those will be to enroll everybody to go live with the state health plan in January 1st of 2019. Those group enrolling meetings are extremely important. I'll talk about that in a second. So let's look at the premiums. Of course everybody wants to know how much it's going to cost us. So this is a list of the premiums for active employees and I broke them down in the last few periods. So this is what an active employee would be paying every pay period for insurance. Either standard savings or the tricare supplement and then you'll see the tiers for the employee employee spouse employee children and the full family. So those are the the the check the paycheck amounts that they'll pay. I put the monthly amounts when I put out my god look at these rates I was like no these are I didn't divide them by 26 pay periods so I've done that on this chart so you can see that. So those are the vision charges basic dental and dental plus and again the vision and the dental plus you can get the health insurance but not the vision or the dental if you choose. Anybody have any questions about that? So what these premiums are based on Peeba's premiums they set the premiums and we are required to pay whatever Peeba sets as the premiums for active employees every year. So these are the premiums that they've set for this year. As I understand it these are the same premiums they had last year this is so 2019 there will not be any increase in the premiums from what they had in 2018. So these are the same premiums but if in 2020 Peeba decides to increase the premiums we'll have to increase our premiums that we charge because Peeba sets the premiums for active.  Right. We are a member of the state health plan and it is now asking you had a choice last time. As far as the coverage is that what you're asking about? Well we offered multiple peers so we had three plan options based on the core and the buy-up and so they offer the standard plan and the savings plan. So you'd have to choose again between the standard plan and the savings plan. But if in one year you chose the savings plan and then the next year you want to go up to the standard you'd be able to change during the open enrollment period. Right. They have those standard plan or the savings plan or the two choices. Tricare is just it goes along for the military. Right.  Not many. I would say probably 20. We have very few people in tricare. Right. We don't supplement tricare now. So currently if they wanted to get our coverage they could not use tricare. That would be an option available to them. And they don't have to take out the tricare supplement if they don't want to. That'll be there. Just based off your you know, cursory look at the plan the standard or correlate to our current buy-up or I mean is there a correlation you can make between savings and standard versus our control? I would say that standard is kind of in between our our core and our buy-up. Because we have been lucky and we've been very generous so we've offered our buy-up plan. It was a little bit richer than the savings plan I mean than the standard plan but it's real close. It's very close to our buy-up plan. So most we're anticipating that most employees will go to the standard plan because that's most of our employees are in the buy-up plan now. So that's what our anticipation is. We're hoping that the savings plan that people that choose that plan are going to be those people who are very healthy people who are very good at saving their money because the deductible is quite high and so if people are attracted to that small premium then they got to know that with that comes some responsibility on their part that they have to save money and they have to be able to meet that deductible absolutely. So that is one of the things that we've emphasized to the people enrollment people is that when you give our educational presentations to our staff as you please go over that clearly so they really understand that. How does that $45 a month pay check? Well of course it depended on what they were cover safe had. So it's so dark over here I can't see. It's very comfortable. I know it's comfortable. So we were charging they were paying $132.50 a month for employee only buy up so y'all make me do some math yep $132.50 $132.50 times 12 divided by 26 you can do it $132.50 times 12 divided by 26 pay periods $132.50 What did you say? You wanted $132.50 times 12 which is $15.84 and divided by 26 $60.92 So they were paying $60.92 and now the closest to our plan would be $45 and 8 cents just to employee. Now of course you remember that we were looking at the possibility of keeping our plan and being self-insured we looked at changing our premiums for everybody. So our premiums for our active employees would have been higher next year if we had a state with a self-insured plan. So these are the employee premiums what's our actual premium cost by the switch? I mean at the end of the day the whole idea was to provide a plan that was sustainable but at the same time we had some the ability to protect ourselves Yeah that's really because you would have to pay all of it but I don't know that I have that with me you got it Missy? So what's the math and what does that do to our actual error? Where does our liability cap out on this? The state could turn around and have massive issues and we end up back to where we are What's our Well the beating part I'm not worried about that because they have a riot on their hand and they have a lot more employees than we do so we know that's not reality but just trying to understand how this part of the whole purpose of us going through a plan that was sustainable and one that was easy for a transition and then the third piece was capping our long term liability So the long term liability You like that number That number comes up a lot with you The problem that we're going to have is comparison one of the years we came from an operation that was about 25 and that number is about let's say 4.5% which is that same thing but the population there is no set this kind of rate this kind of rate is now between I think it's the 20 year end of the rate so there's volatility in that rate and that causes volatility every year even if you have that same experience it will change the liability in 30 years so what I anticipate is that in the next several years we're going to see that it's going up it's a universal relationship to our liability here it's actually going to help our liability and bring it down the example would be the beginning of the past year under that year we did our calculation through a calculation so the beginning of the past year and the end of the past year the beginning of the past year we did the calculation we had a little bit lower discount rate at that point because there was a slight increase in the discount rate based upon the 30 year number it actually improved our position going forward in any way it took place but that's actually going to have a positive effect at least in the next seven years but I'm getting around to saying we anticipate the liability that we've improved what our total cost is we'll spend the less firm with higher interest rates but the discount rate will increase so that's going to have an inverse effect and bring it down so we're anticipating how long y'all this still by the time the numbers are done that's going to be 30 should the economy crash in the next six months if they have to lower rates again that's going to have a negative effect so saying that though and I think this is very important and I'm like us to figure out the calculation because the one thing we've never done with our employees is actually show them the true value in the healthcare because we are supplementing families and dependents both in the retirement and inactive that's never been calculated and I had this discussion with an employee the other day and I think they finally realize wait a minute I've been calculating everything incorrectly because we do supplement a lot of people and I think that's something that with this plan we're able to maintain it looks like we'll somewhat levelize out our long term liability which I think then we've achieved partial of what we tried to get done without disrupting the whole process I thought we can you do it under 30 seconds that's such a large number I wanted to estimate 100 million what we were doing the estimated new liability 100 million right by 2047 that liability was a billion but that was a significant what was the any other question what is that ARC you know it was common so as I've changed the way the population that was the number that we were doing under the good calculation so that's one of the additional things we're trying to split we need to do that is that a good is that a good I'm listening that's some of the things because I don't have the same just not the same we have now recognized the liability we started at the end of the full pass we've got 100 million now on the balance we've got 55 million you're hearing the answer to that question we're going to move our cash depends on what he says technically yes it should so missy passed out a sheet because like you were saying councilman we recommend we always pay above what the employees people need to know we'd certainly try to communicate that to our employees we'll do that again but that list that she's giving you shows you the total premium the total amount that we have to pay people if you look at the employee only for the health it's $374.96 full family $9.29 and we're paying the employee based 281 out of that so it's still a $650 swing a month I think it's important people to understand where all our costs which is a reduction of what we had before that is correct and the other thing you do have to keep in mind also is that we would have to pay those claims on top of just providing that cover whatever those claim costs would be we would have to pay those costs as well so that it's a significant contribution so I think for us to be able to further a plan that's a quality plan sustainable number one which is very important and provide both those everybody who's in the system a plan is pretty significant what the actual health care costs is it's important that people know I thought we a lot of people don't we could certainly do that so those are the active employee premiums that we have again like I said before those are set by PIVA and so those are we have to charge our employees that cost because those are the costs that PIVA charges the retirees on the other hand we'll talk about those right now so retiree eligibility so this is an important slide important thing to think about PIVA determines retiree eligibility the city of Columbia won't be determining retirement eligibility it will base their determination on your years of service that you contributed to the state retirement system whether that be in the police officer retirement system or the regular state retirement system so they will be making those determinations if it's determined that you are eligible then the next question is going to be did you retire from the city with city health insurance benefits and if the answer is yes then you are potentially eligible for a subsidy if it's no then you'll be assessed the full unsubsidized rate and I'm going to talk about that a little bit further and if no then you won't be eligible for retiree health insurance because with us going to the state health plan we have to reach out to everybody who was ever employed with the city and we may be obligated to offer coverage to a lot of people that we haven't previously offered and so because of that and because of the potential to increase those costs associated with adding all those new people on the plan we looked at the options that I'm going to show you right now so as I said before I remember my people what they look at is if you left employment after serving after reaching service or disability retirement eligibility and you have to have at least five years of consecutive full-time employment with a covered entity and then you'll get you'll be eligible for the coverage now as you all know with us being a local subdivision we have the opportunity to charge premiums charge those retirees whatever premiums we want to charge them so because we're a local sub we're not bound by P but in any way for those premiums so we can offset those costs however we choose so number one if you're eligible if you've left employment you've retired had at least five years consecutive full-time permanent employment and you may be eligible if you left employment before reaching retirement eligibility if you have less than 20 years then you're not going to be eligible for PBA insurance so you wouldn't be eligible for PBA insurance and we wouldn't have to offer you anything if you did not work at least 20 years in a PBA covered entity if you work 20 or more years then you again depending on what this local sub us decides to charge that retiree we'd be able to charge that cost does everybody kind of understand the way that chart works which yes sir so the five year does apply to us so our employees have to serve five years with us so let's look at this a little bit more just to clarify I mean we had changed our retirement to right so it's actually reverting back to the less let me show you the next slide so if you look at the next slide so as a participating local subdivision the city is required to provide access to the insurance coverage but we also have the ability to determine premiums so the city will be subsidizing those retirees that were previously covered under the city's health insurance program so any current retirees we have on our retiree insurance we're going to subsidize those individuals let's look at this a little bit more it's possible for the city subsidy and we'll pay the subsidized premiums if they were a people retiree and they were covered under the city's health insurance as of 1231 2008 2018 so those are any current employees we have who are going to retire say at the end of the year they were on our coverage they had that five years like we mentioned before and they will be eligible for the subsidy then you look at those we've talked about Councilman Rickman those retirement insurance eligibility thresholds that we set so it doesn't change the 2009 right so individuals who were employed prior to the 630 2009 and had 20 years of service they'll be able to pay the subsidized amount and then individuals who were employed after 7.1.2009 they have to have that 25 current one is then they will be eligible for the subsidized premiums those retirees that weren't with us and they only work for the city for the last five years of state retirement and they did not meet those prior eligibility rules then they will not get that subsidized premium they'll have to pay the unsubsidized premium so we looked at that in terms of I don't want to say rewarding but those people who have been with us for their career then they get to be subsidized those people who we have to offer coverage to they work for us so they work for us for 20 years they left and went and worked for Department of Revenue for 3 years and because of their situation they're eligible for retirement then they would have to pay the unsubsidized so that's what we looked at so turn to the next page so you can actually see the premiums so if you look at the top you'll notice that those premiums with the subsidy for our pre 65 are the same premiums that our active employees are paying so I put monthly rates on here because that's that was a better comparison for this particular chart so those are the rates that our active employees are paying now if you're subsidized for pre 65 and if you look at the chart underneath that you'll see that those are the rates without the subsidy so for example an employee or a retiree with the subsidy would pay $97.68 for the standard plan for themselves if they were not receiving that subsidy from us they'd have to pay $500 and 38 cents a month for that cover so that's what those rates are looking like for the post 65 the Medicare supplements you'll see that it's $200 and 38 cents for a person with the subsidy without the subsidy it's the $500 and 38 cents so you'll see that there's quite a bit of difference between those rates what we're anticipating is that people who already have coverage will maintain the coverage that they have but if they want to have access to the coverage then those are the premiums that they'll be required to pay again premiums will be subject to change every year we'll be able to evaluate how this is working we'll be able to determine what our experience rate looks like because of course we're anticipating if we add new people onto the plan it might affect our experience rate in the future and as we said before that experience rate will take into effect after we're on the plan for a year so it's really the second year after we've been on the plan 24 months from now we'll know and it'll be based on the claims that our population has which brings up is there any incentive is there any programs for encouragement of getting your yearly physical health programs smokers what are all those details so they do they do have some wellness incentives wellness plans that they encourage employees to take advantage of and we'll be giving all our employees this little booklet and it's got those wellness programs outline and I'll get you guys one of these too because you'll be on the plan so you'll see what it looks like but they are encouraged to get their wellness checkups those are covered now where they weren't covered previously for people so those are covered now so that's one of the things that they've instituted for coming up in year 2019 that wasn't covered before they don't have the same type of plan that we had before where we would pay people for doing those things and our wellness incentive program it's not quite that aggressive generous but they do have some wellness incentives that are built in again with healthcare coaching is a big one and having those wellness visits so that's a part of the plan so from the healthcare coaching side I mean one of the things that we've seen historically in the city is employees not taking care of themselves and obviously we want to encourage their health for their longevity for as long as they're meant to be here but I want to make sure that there's something there or we need to figure out we need to have a red flag system because we need to encourage people to take care of themselves I think we've seen since we really pushed that over the last years it's somewhat got better but still not to where it needs to be but they have several preventative screening programs they offer for free flu vaccinations wellness checkups they have a suite of things that they offer and encourage employees to take advantage of and again some of it's a little more passive than some of the things we were doing but they still have ways to encourage them worksite screenings how will we get that message out so that all folks can take advantage of that so there'll be multiple ways which is a service you sign up for and it helps you track your wellness activities we will have the opportunity to do worksite screenings they'll have mailers and flyers and things that they send out an email blast so it'll be some of the similar ways that we've tried to communicate with employees from the past a discussion we will need to have in executive session is whether or not we're going to have an employee health center that's a big question we're being asked there's definitely some advantages to that I guess we need to understand how that would integrate honestly it would be a separate thing that we just are paying for for our employees it'll be a benefit that we offer it really doesn't integrate so we'll talk about that so does everybody kind of see how that works so again your eligibility will be determined by PIBA if you are a retiree that's eligible for insurance then you'll be able to possibly get the subsidy depending on your years of service with the city yes sir so we've got PIBA has run us a spreadsheet of all of those employees all those retirees is around 1,500 and so we're sending we're mailing them booklets and premium sheets and welcome letters and we're going to have some new group enrollment meetings we're going to have two that are specific to retirees on the 5th and on the 20th at Earlwood Park we're inviting retirees to those meetings because the benefits are a little bit different and they really want to separate the two groups so that they can make sure that they give good service to our retirees but we're reaching out we're communicating with them those those meetings will start November 1st and they'll last through the whole month of November we have we're working on a schedule right now for designated dates for individual departments so I'm getting that together now and we'll send that out hopefully I'll send that out on Monday I'm just getting back contacts with the departments again we'll send something out to the retirees a mailer telling them when the open enrollment dates are and telling them that they need to be there and the new group enrollment will be mandatory if you don't sign up you won't have coverage and it's really not that complicated we will have a lot less control over the plan than we did before but we're we're working with Peeba and so it'll be very important that everybody come everybody hears the educational sessions they're going to be two hour sessions so a majority of that time will be them explaining the benefits can we get a service to come in and help our employees no Peeba has to do our new group enrollment themselves just any additional education or information we can push out as well we've got these booklets that are going to every employee we've got booklets for retirees that are going in the mail to them we're sending out emails we're putting things on our intranet we're putting things on our employee online where employees see their paychecks and so we're doing a lot of things to push out this communication to everybody another thing about the enrollment meetings is it's going to be important that people bring all their documentation to those enrollment meetings so if you want to add a spouse or you want to add children you've got to have your marriage license you've got to have birth certificates you've got to have copies of those documents in order for Peeba to retain them they'll keep them they'll scan them and they'll have them associated with your file that's going to be really important and individuals with Medicare they'll have to bring their Medicare cards with them in order to enroll during the new group enrollments so I put this slide in here because I want everybody to see that because that's really important because if you don't, you can enroll yourself but you're not going to be able to enroll your dependents and then if you miss our timeframes you're going to be not able to enroll them until the next open enrollment it's going to be in October so everybody's got to be big boys and big girls and be responsible and do what they're supposed to do we're going to have to be the last department especially with our public works and those staff members we're going to be able to figure out ways to get them absolutely so we already have, for example, public works typically off on Wednesdays we're scheduling two Wednesdays and they're bringing their employees in to do their enrollments during those Wednesdays police and fire, we're working with their chiefs in order to have late sessions or early sessions to make sure they can get in there to do their enrollments and we've got several different locations identified to do those enrollments at so it's going to be really important the last thing I have on here is that like I mentioned before, the wellness incentive program where you got $75 for doing those wellness activities we're not going to be able to maintain that program because it's going to be too costly and frankly, as three of us in this room are doing it, most people aren't doing it anyway so it's not really worth the money that it costs to hire somebody to manage those funds for us so we're eliminating that program everybody's going to have to use that money by the end of the year it's going to zero out and it's going to be gone so we're making sure that people are aware of that so everybody who has that little white card and has done either a preventative checkup they've done the biometric screening they've answered the questionnaire online or they've got a health coach that they've reached out to for a chronic disease then they have $75 so everybody got to check their balance and use that money because it's just not cost effective to continue that program you might have questions about any of that but we will definitely make sure we have those full premiums like you said, Ms. Wilson either on something laminated or something we can provide to employees so they can see the full cost we're going to continue through this month and all of next month communicating making sure people are aware of what needs to happen we'll certainly have Erica will attach this presentation with them the minutes and we'll make sure it gets out to all of our employees as well questions? Good at the beginning of the meeting is going to be a list of employees and they want to add a few words but we have hired our board administrator Mr. John Stewart on day two I got my computer to print this morning or maybe you'll get your emails by tomorrow okay this is privileged to be back at city Columbia right out of college I worked at let me please department for two years so employee number was four digits I remember that but I've worked in all areas of criminal justice field and to make it full circle I'm back at city Columbia I'm already working with the stakeholders and the court system I have a meeting with Chief Holbrook tomorrow and we're going to look at systems and some areas are broken we're going to fix it we have a large backlog and that's one of the top priorities and we're going to look at technology please we have a lot of jobs I read federal grants and I foresee us federal grants that makes it a good story we're the most immediate list of employees thank you our next item is our director of opportunity to give an update on the commercial involvement loan fund good afternoon I think mine may be a happier topic right what we're going to discuss today are some proposed revisions that are needed with our commercial revolving loan code the revisions are necessary because of recent amendments that were made to our economic development administration EDA regulations in January of this year I have to redeem myself y'all check to me real quick don't say have boss today without the treat welcome right on time as most of you know the EDA commercial revolving loan fund the purpose of this fund is to provide our foster economic development and job creation in our community in the city of Columbia these funds are available it's one of three commercial revolving loan funds that our office actually administers the other two are our Columbia economic renaissance fund and our community development block grant funds the EDA funds the purpose of this fund is to provide gap financing and it does require bank participation we've actually administered this fund since 1987 so we've had these dollars for a very very long time as many of you may remember our funds were sequestered in 2012 but it was released in 2014 and as of 2015 between 2015 and 2018 we have made 10 loan applications have been approved and funded in the amount of $1,449,500 our current available balance is $348,870 thank you Tonya loves numbers and all of those are current investors currently they are active loans we are going to have an overview of all of our commercial revolving loan funds at a later date this year we will provide an update not only on EDA but also on our surf dollars as well as our community development block grant funds we want that to be a very comprehensive review this particular presentation is really to focus on the proposed changes that are needed within our code so that we can actually make the modifications to our EDA plan that's due to the Economic Development Administration as I stated the EDA regulation amendments were actually implemented in January of this year three significant changes that you're going to see as you look through the code revisions that I provided to you in the memo one of the main ones that you're going to see a lot of changes to the expanded list of public sources that can be used as the leverage when it comes to meeting our two to one leverage requirement prior to the amendment the only federal funds that could be used or public funds that could be used were SBA 504 funds or 7A funds with the change amendments that with the change regulations that were made this now includes any federal state or public funds we can use any types of public funds to meet that requirement that two to one leverage requirement which is really significant the next change that you'll see is the EDA RLF cash used to buy out the first position and in a loan must receive EDA approval before taking such action it no longer requires that we have an 18 month turnaround time it actually means that we just need a reasonable time approved by EDA to make that change so that's new so they're very very very big significant for the turnaround time it actually just depends on how much time EDA gives us before it was 18 months that was the requirement, it was 18 months but now it could be more then or less then it just depends on the circumstances regarding each request the other big change that was made is the implementation of the EDA RLF risk analysis system this is very very new and our initial rating all of the RLF recipients received an initial rating that was based on your last six months reporting period ending on March 31st 2018 I must say I was only here for three months when we did this report so I could not take full credit or really any credit for what we did I will say though in categories our assets, our management our capital, our liquidity our strategic results, our earnings our rating was A we received an A rating which is significant in the Atlanta region which covers Alabama, Florida, Georgia Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina South Carolina and Tennessee only 38% received the rating of A nationally only 26% received the rating of A we're on top but I must say I think a lot of this is due to my predecessor Ms. Herbert putting a lot of things in place within the office but also some of the internal controls that we did as a city being more accountable looking at ways to streamline making good loans and I think that has really accounted for our success here Chris we got a whole agenda you don't have to leave now this is good stuff I won't see this in the paper but this is something we should be very proud of because we received the A rating before we were required to report by annually but now because we have this rating we're only required to report annually so that's very very good and again I want to reiterate it's not just the OBO staff is wonderful our loan officers they've been great, our OBO staff is great they're here today they're really good and I think all of us collectively especially the Office of Finance we have to depend on them to help make sure our numbers are right our reports are done timely and Jeff with his team Jan and everyone has been very instrumental in making sure that happens but thanks Jeff for that yes sir sure do you remember a loan that does it does what we're looking at we're trying to look at that and our loan officer is working aggressively with some of those loan applicants that we see maybe about they're headed into that direction we're trying to approach them quicker to see if we can do some modifications to help them out to see where they are before they reach that period there are several level correct into default yes sir, yes sir and there's a lot of outreach that's done not only by us the OBO staff but also by our loan servicing agency that sends out notifications when they're late they're the ones that actually collect on our lines just say for any yes sir well first you get a letter 30 days when you're late 30 days and if it's not rectified by then our loan officer is also making calls at the same time we're visiting we're showing up there at your business if it's still operational let's hope it is to see what the problem is we're trying to develop that one-on-one relationship now that 30 day window we present every month to our commercial revolving loan fund committee so that they're aware of what loans are out there and where loans are late how far out are they how severe are their delinquency 60 days we're still doing the same aggressive we're more aggressively trying to reach and see what the problems are and if we can make any modifications with their loans to get them back on track 90 days and they're still not being responsive unfortunately we have had to seek legal action to make them to be even more so aggressive in trying to get repayment of our loans but I will say that since we've been here again our loan officer Brett Whiting he's not here today he's out of training he's really good at sitting down with the different applicants and with our loan recipients and trying to address it and if you see something happening we try to put some things in place to stop it and prevent it we're trying to prevent those defaults so there he is recovering after the default yes sir that's my point it's very valuable if a business with good income defaults on the loan what are the parameters we can set up correct I think his recovery your recovery too you don't want to cover your assets that's right you mean as far as when they default and the actual asset that was used as collateral for that loan yes we're going to go after some we are going to go after some property with our leadership's approval of course our experience has been announcement that we very much experienced partners we do and we really don't want to do that because they are a community active community partner and that's another provision that you're going to see here too that I already mentioned there's another way that we can actually buy out the first position on a loan that means it will give us a greater chance of recovering the money on that loan so that's another provision that has not been there in the past that's there now that's where those days the 18 month compared to a reasonable time frame is in place so it depends on the project or each loan but it is there there's other things other teeth that are there that gives us more of a chance to recover our money yes sir did I answer your question yes so there's some buildings out there that we may not necessarily want but we may look at and so this for instance apathetical say it's a a few don't go there a junkyard but we're looking at ways to we're looking at ways to actually if for instance or if for whatever reason we may have to sell that property or we may want to look at utilizing that property that the city as an asset to the city we're looking at doing environmental to see what type of cost is involved and if it's a viable option for us to keep is it a viable option for us to make that type of investment if we're gonna have to actually invest more money in order to sell it or to use it in the future how many loans do we have oh my goodness in total including ADA 50 50 and again we're gonna have a more comprehensive review for you at a later date but I really just want to touch base with the changes or the amendments regarding ADA and how those amendments will impact our CRL CRLF code and what changes need to be made but we will get that to you it'll be certainly good to have that that kind of view yes sir we know full fondness of the services my holding to is perhaps it's a recovery yes sir and can we do something to perhaps whether it's a modification I think the end run is if we need to secure like whatever collateral I think that's the last one but I'm glad that we you say that there are some there are and even my predecessor did the same thing I think sometimes we see things at the end where you do not see all the steps that staff may have taken in order to try to work with that person but we are trying to reach out and do even more communication and more hands-on and direct face-to-face meetings with our loan recipients so that they know we're here and we know that there's something going on we can prevent something from getting further into fault it's easier to do those modifications and save their assets before we proceed but we do have to be better we have to be good stewards of our resources and a lot of that goes into this rating that you received of an A was because we are we're holding our loan recipients accountable just as we are held accountable and that's what our funders want to see as well so I mentioned this because we did receive a rating our next financial report will be based on our fiscal year end so we just submitted our actual report September 30th for fiscal year ending June 30th and our next one will not be due until next year so looking at the actual proposed changes to our CRLF code and I have that in front of you you can actually look along if you would like I have the code I passed that out it probably has as part of your package this evening too but I just wanted to share some of this with you just to go through it specifically again section 8.28 it deals directly with what we did we added public to make sure that it includes all or any federal state or local resources when it comes to that 2-1 public-private match or leverage requirement section 8.29 section 8.2 section 9 we removed private to public private and added the word leverage and non-RLF and RLF in accordance with EDA regulations to include any federal state local sources of loans when combined with the EDA loan to meet the 2-1 leverage requirement again 8.3 0.3 the same thing remove private again to reflect the larger public resources that can be used as our leverage requirement 8.7.2 minor corrections made here just to correctly reference our community development block grant community economic renaissance fund and our EDA fund that's just a minor revision that was made now section 8.8 we removed assistant city manager with some changes that our leadership has undergone here in the structure this gives Ms. Wilson council a better and well more flexibility in making different appointments to the CRLF committee but it also gives Ms. Wilson a chance to look at what other staff or departments may need to be involved and know what loans are being made out of OBO so with this change we have more flexibility we added senior staff or administration members so it could be assistant city manager it could be a senior it could be a director a department head it could be just a staff person but it's someone that can contribute that knows about economic development that knows about other initiatives that are going on across the city and they could bring that to the table when we're looking at different loans again 8.10.3 just some minor corrections made here regarding the references to our different community revolving loan fund programs that we have 8.14 again removing the word private and replacing with other participating lenders so that we can look at other public sources of leverage that can be used to meet the 2-1 2-1 leverage requirement 8.15.1 the same thing so on 18 when you go back where you were at 18.1 which is much available for lending would you need to add something in there and let's just put a hypothetical out there that we fund a restaurant they end up failing we have to lean on the equipment we're taking the equipment back can we use that equipment then instead of selling it to replenish the loan to put somebody else in business it's this part of the loan and it's part of the collateral that we use is when you're replacing capital in here could you need to add a line we could adjust the ability to put an asset or assets we could do that I use here what we use was the specific language that was part of the regulation but we certainly can make that modification because I think no matter what the business is we're running on a hard asset it may be something that we can put out there to either enhance somebody's current business or help somebody else to jump start that would be good because I know there's some applicants that come in and they do have some challenges in getting off the ground have a need for equipment if it's a restaurant we have it we can make better use of it and if they've got capital to put in but yet they don't have to use that capital they can use that capital for working cash flow we have an asset that may help maybe work just look at that language it's just something that kind of popped in my head as I was reading through it great point thank you 8.18 .1 C and 4 we're looking at again this was what I mentioned earlier about buying out the first position and a loan to help us if it's an asset that we're trying to go after to have full control over that asset this is an option that we have and that's one of the changes we're in second position most of the time this speaks to the yes sir we are in second position most of the time but in the event that there's we're about to foreclose on it we can go after the first position to secure that asset so that we can recover as much as money this is new throws a hand grenade and leaves any other questions yeah so the other thing I was I think it's coming up on your next one your next slide will you say remove private commitment leverage do we not just want to keep commitment first leverage leverage is a word that they actually use that's in the regulation okay we could say leverage or commitment and or commitment I think they're one and the same but leverage is actually what was used in the amendment okay thank you you're welcome 8.18.5 again removing the word private language to reflect the additional public sources that can be the two to one leverage requirement and then we also added language in accordance with the EDA regulations this is not new but I went ahead and put it in here just so that's part of our code regulations that private investment shall not include a crude equity in a borrowed asset so that's it right now so what do you need us to do just adopt this is this on our the first reading is tonight so what about the couple things amendments we can do those amendments can we do that on the second reading yes sir we can do that and I just want you to keep in mind that these proposed changes in this code will be reflected in our five-year plan that's also due to EDA that's why we're working kind of working simultaneously at the same time to get this done and make sure this RLF midi is aware of what changes are needed so that when it's time once you approve this we have our second reading finalized then our plan that we finalize it any questions yes sir that's a question I assume the under types of loans under $10,000 is that what we consider which one are you looking at is that the page two the ordinance yeah that's what we would consider to be microloans yes sir how many how are we doing in that area right now I have not actually we have not done any since I've been in the position I think the closest that we've come and Tonya you're correct me if I'm wrong in recent years is probably one in the amount of $15,000 that we've done with any of our federal resources I think that was part of our SERF loan and it was for $15,200 so that was part of our SERF our Columbia economic renaissance fund we have a little more flexibility with those dollars than we do with our federal dollars so we don't have any applicant in that category not pending right now but we are looking at other ways to do some additional microloans not just we're trying to take it up to $50,000 so that we can help some businesses especially some of our protege secure different equipment that they need or make emergency purchases that they need so that they can go after additional contracts so that's something that we've talked about that we want to do in the future but not at this moment but they are available we do have loans that they can get for $50,000 right now in under these different umbrellas that we currently have in place but they're not necessarily considered microloans thank you thank you we will entertain a motion Mr. Mayor for executive session with the addition of one item that you all should have on your amendment page I like to make a motion to go into executive session for discussion of negotiations and to propose contractual arrangement pursuant to 78-2 the Flawy Health Center Law Richland sewer agreement towing contract Soda City the 1920 CDBG allocation Albin Glenn Attention Center and River Alliance discussion of matters related to proposed location or expansion of services to encourage location or expansion of businesses pursuant to 78-2 parking receipt of legal advice relating to appending, threatened or potential claim pursuant to SC code Tameka Price versus City Lynn Robertson versus City Clarence Campbell and Alice Campbell versus City receipt of legal advice of matters covered by Attorney Klein privilege pursuant to 78-2 the Flawy Health Center will beager in 라agh Island in the Luo City


Around the beginning of the 19th century, the world, especially Europe, started to change. Machines were used more, animals were used less, and people started migrating to cities. Different people had very different reactions to this, and a lot of different words started getting coined and thrown around to describe people's attitudes towards these changes, two of which would wind up sticking around for a very long time, socialism and communism. These two words were originally used more or less interchangeably to describe a lot of different people with vastly different ideas, like Robert Owens on Simone, Louis Blanc, Pierre Joseph, and plenty of others. All of these guys did focus on some common themes. They all talked about how the onset of the industrial revolution was making it possible for a few entrepreneurs to exploit their workers in order to make themselves very rich. And they all talked about how society needed to be radically reorganized in order to make things more fair. But after that, their agreement ended. Like, if not these rich business owners, who should own the factories, and how should they be managed? Should we even have property? How should goods be distributed? And by who? How should we motivate people to work? Each socialist and each communist from the time would have given you a very different answer. One of the many documents from this early period was the Communist Manifesto. It was written by Karl Marx, who you've probably heard of, and also Frederick Ingalls, who you might have? Maybe? I don't know. Anyway, according to them, a communist was someone who, among other things, wanted abolition of land as private property, free education, the requirement that everyone who can work does work, centralization of banks, communication, transportation, and everything else, I think? It's a little unclear. The way the document talks about things, it seems like they viewed communism as an extreme type of socialism, where socialists are just anyone who wants to help out the average worker, but communists are people who want to completely overturn the current social order. Now, this document became incredibly influential, but the terminology it uses with communist as a particularly radical subset of socialist didn't really catch on. The word communism fell out of favor, and people started describing themselves mostly by how much they agreed with Marx. So, instead of communism as a subset of socialism, we wound up with Marxism as a subset of socialism. Over the course of the 1800s, a lot of countries in Europe started getting a lot more democratic, and political parties started forming to compete in elections. A lot of these political parties were socialist, and they tended to be dominated by Marxists, especially the SDP in Germany. Here's the problem, though. A big part of Orthodox Marxism was the belief that the working class would have to revolt in a glorious violent revolution, because the ruling bourgeoisie would never willingly relinquish power. So, the fact that Marxists were actually winning some elections wound up kind of discrediting Marxism, in response, other more moderate forms of socialism started popping up, like Fabianism in the UK. The Fabian socialists believed that the average worker would benefit best by a slow, peaceful, gradual transition to a more equitable, state-directed economy, and they would become very influential in the early days of the British Labour Party. Meanwhile, in Russia, things were taking a different turn. The leader of the Russian Revolution, Vladimir Lenin, disagreed with Orthodox Marxists on some issues, but unlike the more moderate socialists scanning ground in Europe, he still believed that revolution was the only way forward. Lenin and his followers broke off from the Russian Socialist Party and named to themselves the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, which, as far as I can tell, was the beginning of a revival of the word communist. It seems like they were using it in much the same way Marx had, as a way to separate themselves from other, more moderate socialists. After they gained power, a split formed in socialists around the world. On one hand were those who wanted to follow the example of the Soviet Union, who began calling themselves communists. They frequently formed their own parties specifically to challenge other socialists, and sometimes they were really successful. On the other hand, there were other socialists. Some were hardcore Marxists and some were more moderate gradualists, but they all thought that the Soviet Union was a terrible example to follow. During World War II, there was an uneasy alliance between socialists, capitalists, and communists, as they all struggled against their common enemies. But when that was over and the Cold War started, socialists around Europe started becoming progressively more moderate. They started defining themselves as democratic socialists, people who, yes, wanted some government control over industry, but were committed to doing so by democratic means unlike the communists in the USSR. The Labour Party won the 1945 election in Britain on a socialist platform, and the UK didn't exactly turn into Russia. They created a national healthcare system and nationalized major utilities, and when they lost the elections to the Conservatives in 1951, they peacefully relinquished power. In Germany, the Marxist SDP had become one of Germany's most powerful political parties, but after losing a few elections in a row really badly, they basically completely rewrote their platform, giving up on Marxism and instead embracing a moderate form of socialism where government would protect the rights of workers while still allowing the existence of capitalism, what they called a social market economy. All across Europe, socialism stopped meaning complete overthrow of current capitalist institutions and started meaning more government influence over the economy than exists right now. Meanwhile, in the United States, things worked out a bit differently. We had our own socialist party for a while, and during the first few decades of the 20th century it even got a few congressmen elected. But socialism existed for us at the same time as progressivism, a much more moderate movement that wound up being very influential in the early days of the US's left wing, while the socialist party basically just kinda died out. Later, during the Cold War, the words socialist and communist both became permanently linked to our arch nemesis, the USSR, and ever since the two words have been treated basically like curse words in American politics. So today we've wound up in a bit of a weird semantic situation, where socialist might just mean vaguely left wing, or it might mean soviet freedom hating Russian, depending on exactly who you talk to. A confusing mess which I hope this video has made at least a little more clear.


Poor Mr. Baggins had never had much practice in climbing trees, but they hoisted him up into the lowest branches of an enormous oak that grew right out into the path, and up he had to go as best he could. He pushed his way through the tangled twigs with many a slap in the eye. He was greened and grime'd from the old bark of the greater boughs. More than once he slipped and caught himself just in time. And at last, after a dreadful struggle in a difficult place, where there seemed to be no convenient branches at all, he got near the top, all the time he was wondering whether there were spiders in the tree, and how he was going to get down again, except by falling. In the end he poked his head above the roof of leaves, and then he found spiders all right, but they were only small ones of ordinary size, and they were after the butterflies. Bilbo's eyes were nearly blinded by the light. He could hear the dwarves shouting up at him from far below, but he could not answer, only hold on and blink. The sun was shining brilliantly, and it was a long while before he could bear it. When he could, he saw all round him a sea of dark green ruffled here and there by the breeze, and there were everywhere hundreds of butterflies. I expect they were a kind of purple emperor, a butterfly that loves the tops of oak woods, but these were not purple at all.  He looked at the black emperors for a long time, and enjoyed the feel of the breeze in his hair and on his face, but at length the cries of the dwarves, who were now simply stamping with impatience down below, reminded him of his real business. It was no good. Gaze as much as he might.


Hello, I'm Debbie Ingram, the executive director of Vermont Interfaith Action. Welcome to our live at 525 show for this month. Our topic for today is our legislative priorities. Vermont Interfaith Action is a social justice organization. We're a federation of over 70 member and affiliated congregations throughout the state and we work together to try to affect systemic change around issues like housing and corrections reform and other other social justice issues. So I'm joined today by a guest who is a pastor here in Burlington. Her name is Alyssa Jonk and Alyssa, I'll let you say more about yourself. I pretty much covers it, right? I'm Alyssa Jonk. I'm the lead pastor at the First Congregational Church. We are right there at the Head of Cherry Street by the Ben & Jerry's. That's where we are and I've been on the board. I think this is year three of VIA. Yeah, terrific. Great. Glad to be here. Well, thanks for joining me. Yeah. So as I mentioned, we're talking about our legislative priorities and we actually had the opportunity to go to the state house in Montpelier on Tuesday. Yeah. And we were able to talk to legislators of key committees and and the legislators to represent our our folks about three things. So I'll just name them and then we'll we'll discuss each one of them in turn. First, I'd like to mention what we're calling second look legislation, which is about corrections reform. It would provide the opportunity for people who've been in prison for a very long time to go before a judge to ask to go to the parole board. So it's meant to really address people who are sentenced to life without parole. So we'll talk more about that in a minute. But then our other two issues are overdose prevention centers, which is addressing folks with substance use disorders and public drug use. And then a long standing issue of ours has been around creating more affordable housing and taking care of our unhoused neighbors in homelessness. So let's let's talk about the first two or the last two first. How about that? So since you are a pastor in downtown Burlington, you have seen firsthand some of what's currently going on in the downtown area. And so could you describe for us what you observe? Well, so when I was told that I was I was hired there, I said, Oh, it's a very urban, urban congregation. And I said, it's Burlington. And, you know, I'd served churches in downtown Boston. And it turns out that the issues that are really facing Burlington really are things that we used to associate with much larger cities. And I would say homelessness and addiction, those two have really taken over a lot of the social outreach work that we do as a congregation, because those folks are living on our porch a lot of the time. You know, we have a firm no camping policy. And there are so many folks that when we come in in the morning, they're always somebody there, you know, 15 to 20 people in the summer. And you get to know them. And it's heartbreaking, you get to know their stories, you get to know their kids, you get to know how many times they've been in and out of treatment, you get to know how many times they've been so close to being able to pull themselves out and just not making it.  Now they're just like a shell and they're by themselves. And you just watch the disease take and take and take and take despite the best efforts. And it's a lot. It's, you know, what we call a lot of moral injury in our congregation, right? We see these folks and there's only so much we can do, you know. And to face that day after day, it's really gotten the congregation energized actually about trying to figure out how to do some of these more sustainable solutions, you know. Yeah, I think heart-breaking is the word, isn't it? Well, our BIA offices are at the grounds of the first Unitarian Universalist Society in Berlin, just a few blocks away from your church. And the same sort of thing has happened. Folks wanting to sleep overnight on the porches and people gathering around during the day. And of course, as people of faith, we want to help and reach out and treat them with compassion. And yet, this is not a sustainable situation for them or for us. Right, right. You know, it's not unusual for me to come into work and to find blood on the steps, right? Somebody has an injury. The xylosing has really ripped into people's bodies. You know, we now stock in our janitor closet by the front door. We stock gauze and antiseptic and antibiotic ointment just because, you know, we serve as a station where people can get cleaned, right? Like cleaned up physically. We go out every couple hours to check on people to make sure that they are still breathing. It's a remarkable situation that I didn't really expect to see really in my lifetime, the sheer quantity of it. So, you know, we, the congregation has really just jumped into this wholeheartedly and been doing a lot of research over the past year about what are some of the solutions that can help move this from just being a, you know, let's treat this one by one, each person that we see to how can we change this situation. And that's one of the things that we've been really glad to be working with you on. Yes, yes. And we are very pleased at VA that we do have a lot of leaders, volunteers who are motivated around this. So, we joined a group called Decriminalized Vermont. VA has, and there are a variety of different policies that they recommend. There's the drug alliance. Yeah, I think we're seeing on screen now more information about Decriminalized Vermont. There's a website. There are a number of organizations that are members of this coalition. And there's a lot of really good information here about how to address this horrible illness and ramifications for our cities. So, one of the things that we particularly are trying to push this legislative session is a bill that would provide funding for overdose prevention centers. Right. And, you know, we had a conversation with some of your clergy colleagues and with the policy advisor for the Decriminalized Vermont Coalition, man named Greg Gardner. And, yeah, can you just tell folks a little bit about what we discussed? Right. So, you know, we, many of us have met with several folks and Greg was really great about kind of pulling all that research we'd done together and talking about what had already been done in Vermont. You know, talking about test strips to make sure that the drugs were as safe as they can be. You know, talking about other policy changes that had happened. But then thinking about, you know, the research around OPCs, overdose prevention centers. And he really walked us through some of that. And there's a fair amount of research right from other places that this is a great way of going. And all of us around that table are facing similar situations. Right. We are downtown. We have these open public spaces. And we are serving essentially as OPCs, right, for the uninitiated. You know, I know that there are a lot of things around them that are really contentious, right, that people are really worked up about. But the reality is, if we don't have a setting like that, then my office manager has to go out once an hour to check on people, right? Or, you know, the EMTs get 12 calls a day. So, there's a way in which this is already happening, but we're not getting there in time to save the lives. And I just really appreciated Greg's passion around that and the years of research that they put into that. Yeah, thank you. You know, that's so true that, and you had mentioned before, monitoring people to make sure they're still breathing. Yeah. So, these prevention centers provide a safe, clean place where people can be monitored. And, you know, I know a lot of people wonder, you know, well, why can't people just, you know, go into treatment and why don't they want to give up this kind of life? Well, first of all, it is a disease. It's a very, very strong, powerful, fatal disease. And so, it's not easy for people just to overnight decide they want to stop this kind of drug use. And though there is hope, and when they are ready to go into treatment, they will be, if they're at an OPC, they will be in a place where people can direct them to the kind of help that they need, and they really can start their journey of recovery. Right. I mean, one of the things that addiction research recently is beginning to show is that most of the things we thought about addiction are wrong. And it's really trying to replace relationships, right? It's a bonding. In fact, there are some folks who even think we should rename it as bonding or misbonding or something. And to be able to have a place where that attachment and those relationships can form to move into sustainable long-term treatment is so important, right?  They're not safe. There's a reason that they hang out at churches and in big open places, right? Because it's not safe. And the dangers are not necessarily from within their community, but from the external community too, right? People are, the vitriol is heartbreaking as a person of faith, but just as a moral person. The dehumanization is it's real, and that's actually the worst possible thing you can do for someone with addiction. It makes the disease worse. So to have a place where they can go and be recognized for their full humanity and to have a relationship building, that is what all of the research is showing is necessary to help folks. And an OPC and Overdose Prevention Center is just the best and most efficient way of doing it. It has the added benefit of saving lives. I don't have the most updated statistic, but I think in November, the Chittenden County number, we had like 53 or 54 ODs. That's a lot of people. That's a lot of, those are people. Somebody like sniffed their head when they were a baby, you know? Like somebody massaged their little toes. Those are people that we are letting die right now, right? And so I think from my community's perspective, we need to follow the research and we need to get it done. Absolutely, absolutely. And it is true that there's been a lot of work done recently on the effect of the stigma of society. And actually, we had a great presentation by Dr. Sarah Wakeman, who's the Senior Medical Director for Substance Use Disorder at Massachusetts General in Brigham. And she did a webinar that the Decriminalized Coalition sponsored. And one of the things that she said was that stigma is associated with worse mental and physical health outcomes for people who use drugs. And stigma is among the top reasons for why people don't access treatment. So yes, I mean, lots of evidence for this approach and lots of good information as you're seeing on this website. There's also another one on drug policy. The Drug Policy Alliance has some good information as well. Yeah. And just along that note, the stigma, one of the things that comes along with that is criminalization of this.  Research is so clear that is the worst possible thing you could do for these people. And you just watch people be so unkind to them. And it makes me worried not just about those folks there, but about the health of Burlington as a community, right? Because if we are able to treat our neighbors that way, something's really, really wrong. And so I think there's a lot of hopes from this OPC legislation. One of them is just returning some basic respect to these neighbors. And another of it is helping other people feel safer when they're downtown, right? So so much of that comes from a fear of response, right? There's something we don't know. We don't know what to do about it. So the easiest thing for us to do is push it aside. And I really do honestly think that's where a lot of that really extreme response come from. If we criminalize it, they go away, we don't have to look at it, right? So if we can do that in a way that helps the person and that puts it in a location where other folks know that their neighbors are safe, we're helping not just the business owners, not just the folks with addiction themselves, but we're helping ourselves know that we're being good people, right? Like that we're able to be in relationship because I think that's one of the issues. You walk by somebody and there's not, it feels like there's not anything you can do. And there is, it turns out. There's some real legislation that could do some of that change and I think that would be healthy for all of us. That's right, yes. There is such a thing as a need for spiritual wholeness to be able to be in relationship with others. And to have a community where that takes place. And I feel like COVID has actually worn away a little bit at that. And I think that's, as the addiction crisis has grown, we're letting that sort of separation seep into our neighborhood relationships. And some of this policy work is actually, I think, spiritual work for all of us. Absolutely, yes. And we are very happy to report that this bill is making progress in the state house. The house passed the bill. And so now it's gone on to the Senate. So if any of you are at home and need something to do, call up your senator and make sure that they support this OPC legislation. The number is actually age 72 of the bill. And then of course the challenge will also be the governor because his party has already suggested that this is not something that they want to support. But we are hopeful that we'll have good conversations about this. And we'll bring everybody together in consensus. Right. And that's one of the things that I appreciate about VA is that we're approaching this from a perspective where we're able to have those conversations. And I believe him to be a very good person and trying to do the best. And OPCs seem counter to all the things that we were taught about addiction. But the research in the last 60 years has really upended all of that, all of it. And so I have hope, I have faith that folks can be led to the research that does exist, that there are really sustainable long-term solutions to this. Yes, absolutely. Yes. And we have ample evidence, don't we, that what we've been doing doesn't work. Exactly, doesn't work at all. So we have the counter argument as well. So let's come together. We have both research and lived experience. That's right. So we are also, the way that the VA has actually been looking at what's going on in Burlington specifically, but in other places of the state as well, is that there's kind of a nexus between this public drug use and the lack of housing and shelter for folks and public safety and policing, which we also are doing on a more local level. But in terms of what we're doing at the state, then we've now discussed the OPC bill, but we do have a lot of things going on around housing. And we know that various committees in both the House and the Senate are looking at different kinds of bills and talking about different ways to do two things. We think it's really important to increase the number of housing units, permanently affordable housing units, and then also to step in an emergency and provide shelter for people who have lost their housing for whatever reason. So what was your impression of what was going on in the state house when you went the other day? I think that there's a real, people understand the need for both of these things. Nobody wants anybody sleeping out in the cold. And the reality is I came into work last week and there was somebody on the porch in that windstorm, that horrible windstorm. They were still out on the porch. So I think that it's hard when you don't see it. It's easy to choose one or the other or to pit them on a zero-sum game. Well, we can either do the affordable units or we can do the shelter. And I see legislators really wrestling with that. How do we use these funds? And I think that there are creative ways and I think they're digging into that to try and figure out how to make both possible, both and. And I left feeling very hopeful because they were really digging into the information provided to try and figure that out. It's just, it's hard right now to, some of our research that we've done with folks seems to suggest folks feel like they have to pick one or the other just from a monetary perspective. And you can't, right? You can't not house folks that are on the street with the economic situation that we're in. It's just, it's, it's cruel. And we were doing it, right? Like we were able to do it. And when those motels closed, I mean, Washington County and Chittenden will tell you that the situation changed immediately, right? So we need both. It's possible to do both. And I think that they're working hard to find ways to do that. What was your impression of, you know, the larger picture? I only had a few small meetings. I was so grateful that they were all willing to show up and meet with us. You know, they're very accessible. So if you do want to reach out, do it. You know, they will, they will respond and it will be fine. I know that that's a scary thought for many, but please. But I only spoke with like six or seven folks, you know, a handful. You know, what was your larger impression of how that was going through? Well, they are struggling, I think, with the, the lack now of federal funds. I mean, we had dependent on federal funds for a long time. And so that slow evolution of not having that anymore, and then figuring out how, yeah, how can we sustain the things that we were able to do during COVID because of the federal funds? But they, but I've seen some really great ideas and people struggling really working hard to, to try to come up with, you know, with good things. This one bill H719, you know, we were just taking a look at all the different components of it, which includes trying to make sure that we make things a little bit easier for developers, you know, favoring multi unit developments, making it possible to not have appeals get in the way of developments that have already gone through a lot of steps. You know, there's the whole ongoing discussion about Act 250 and how we can make changes to that still honor our emphasis on our beautiful environment and protecting that, but also not make it a nightmare for people to build things that we, you know, that we really need like, like housing. So, so there, you know, there, there are a lot of good ideas going on in the building. That was what that was my impression. That was my energy too, right? There's a lot of creative thinking around that. And I think, but there's a part for us in that too, right? As, as citizens, we want affordable housing, but we don't want it near us. You know what I mean? Like, we want development developments. We want upbuilding. We want infilling. We just don't want to do it in our lot. So I think that there really need, there's a, there's a legislative priority. And there's also again, for us to take home that we have to be supportive of those things if we want them to work. So, yes, we have to, yeah, we are the community. Right, we are the community. They're following. Yeah, yeah. And we have to rally around and say, you know, well, and again, you know, some of it's based, some of the maybe prejudice, if we can use that word against this kind of housing, is based on misconceptions and misinformation. When again, when you look at, you know, the evidence, you, you see that many housing developments that are more affordable for, for folks that lower income can be built at the same kind of standards that you see in the rest of a neighborhood. They have good design standards. I know a lot of our towns are working really hard to have regulations that make sure that, you know, all those things that we value like the setbacks and the open space and, you know, are also, also pertain to affordable housing. So, yeah, we can, you know, we can do this if we work together. And you know, I think the Act 250 thing, the first time I heard that being proposed, I was like, oh, and then it's true, like any piece of legislation, right, there are unintended consequences of pieces of it. And I think one of the things we're using, we're learning about this is that it's being used to block things for reasons that have nothing to do with the original intent of Act 250, right? They're not for environmental reasons. It's really a, it's a, it's often a nimby response. I mean, to put it quite frank. Yeah, yeah, we're all familiar with that. So there are really good reasons to be looking at this. And I think it's a really creative way of approaching this, not just from a money perspective, but also from a code change that can be really be helpful. Yes, yeah, absolutely, absolutely. And of course, we're not the only place that's experiencing this. I mean, I was on the phone to one of my friends in California just the other night and there are many, many states and a lot of urban areas are going through this, these same problems. So we've obviously, as a country, we've kind of dropped the ball. So we won't go into all of that, but here we can make some changes. And then I do want to just, again, just reiterate that we also are, I think it's very important to make sure that we have emergency shelter. That's the thing. We can't lose the sight of the people who are already outside. Right? Yes, we want to keep people from going outside. Absolutely essential. There are creative ways to make that happen. And once they're outside, friends, we have to take care of them. It's not okay. It's not okay. It really is not. And just saying, well, we can hand out tents or we can let people park their cars overnight in a parking lot. And those are actually some of the things that have been discussed. And I think people lose sight of the fact that many of these folks are kids. Right? We're not, we have an image in our head of who is homeless or who is housing insecure. And some of that is true, but some of it is kids. Can you imagine trying to get your kid ready for school from a parking lot? You know, like it's just, it's, we're better than that. Yeah, yes. And we are better than that, exactly. You can do it. Yeah, definitely, definitely. Yeah. So the last piece of legislation that we are focusing on is a bill that's not quite as well known, but it came to Vermont from a national organization called the Sentencing Project. And even though there has been a lot of, you know, publicity over the last maybe decade or so about people who are incarcerated, maybe they're given heavier sentences because of their, their race or because of some, you know, their income level. And, you know, this is something that people of faith, I think it's something that we, we are picking up on because this bill is called second look bill. And, you know, we, some of us have been talking about the fact that it's, it's great that Vermont does not have the death penalty and we think that is very important to be humane and to not have the state condone killing.  So we're glad that we have that in place, but, but if, when you begin to think about the idea of a life sentence without the possibility of parole, that also, I mean that, that doesn't speak well to our, to our sense of community or our society or our spiritual wholeness either. Or justice, right? Like there's so many things we're learning about how sentences are decided and handed out that haven't been what we would hope to be equitable, right, particularly in racial senses. So I think it's really important for us to be thinking about this. And it's also just, can you imagine how much change somebody goes through in their lifetime? I, you know, on a cellular level, we are not the same, right? As we were 20 years ago. So there's just a basic human decency to this. I know when I was in Boston, I worked with a prison ministry organization where BU had set up a program where people could go through college while they were incarcerated. I mean, and the difference that that opens up for someone, I mean, it's, it's life changing and to not honor that or provide the opportunity to honor that or evaluate whether that should be honored. You know, like that, that's just the basic evaluation is basic decency again. Yes, right, right, right. Definitely. And, you know, and all of our faith traditions speak to forgiveness and mercy. They talk about redemption the power of change that you're talking about. We are not our worst act. That's right, exactly. We are not our worst act. There would be no, there would be no spiritual life if we were all perfect, right? Like there wouldn't be, we'd already be spiritually attained beings.  It's often said, we'll put it that way. I'm not going to attribute and get it wrong. That the worst sin is thinking you don't have sin, right? I'm pretty sure it was King because I came across this quote in research for sermons on Sunday, but we all have that inside of us, right? And, and the worst thing is to think, well, I could never do that. So, you know, they must be different from me. Right. So we are compelled to go forward with an idea that the change is possible. Otherwise, what's the point? Yes, yes, absolutely. Absolutely.  And, and it does put, we also have to say though that we do respect the rights and the, and the trauma that has happened to people who've been victimized by crime or who, who are family members who've lost loved ones because of violent crime. And so we want to respect them very much. And this bill makes it, it puts up some guardrails. It doesn't make it an easy process. And it's certainly not automatic at all for somebody to be let out of prison after having committed a heinous crime. Right. It's not just a blessing like great, you're good, go. No, not at all, yes. It's just the idea that change is possible, right? That's right. And, and they have to go before a judge and then the judge has to rule whether they can even talk to the parole board. So, right. Yes. So, all right. So those are our three, our three bills, are our three issues really, overdose prevention centers, housing and homelessness, and this second look legislation. And I think we've done a good job of talking about how they, those all correspond to faith values and not, and certainly not just Christian values, but Muslim values. And community values, right? That's right. And yes, and yes, definitely. So please take a look at our website. If you want more information, we're always happy to have, you can be an individual and join VIA also. We do have congregational members, but we're always happy to have individuals join too. And we hope that you'll join us in this work. So thank you very much for watching. Thanks for being with me, Alyssa. Thanks for having me. And we'll see you next time. Thanks for the work.