On today's episode, I'd like to welcome Emily Harman. Emily? Thank you, Eric. Happy to be here. Thank you so much for coming on today. You know, what's interesting is that recently I've been trying to get people from the government to understand what a podcast is and how it works. Yeah, you start laughing, right? And I still have government documents and forms that require a fax number. But they don't see a podcast as media relations. Right, right. I know. When I worked for the government in my last job, I did a lot of Facebook lives. That was the first one to do that. I interviewed L.A. Branch, who was the head of contracts for the Navy. I interviewed the head acquisition person for the Navy, Secretary Gertz. We would just sit in my office and chat like we're chatting now on Facebook Live. And then people could answer questions. And those videos are on the Department of Navy Office of Small Business Programs' website. Still today. So people can go back and look at them, yeah. Wow, wow. And what made you do that? I just felt like we should start using technology as a way to reach these companies just because we're doing outreach in areas of big fleet concentration for the Department of the Navy, like San Diego, Norfolk. There could be a company in Minnesota or a company in New Mexico that can't always travel to those events. So why not just bring these guys on live? And people were hesitant at first, but then I got the head attorney for the Navy contracting the Navy acquisition to be on the podcast on the Facebook Live with us. So like look, if the head of contracts, the head of acquisition, and the head attorney are willing to go on Facebook Live and just have a conversation and they're not panicky about it, maybe more will do that. So I hope to see it spread. I don't know. That was a great idea. That was a great idea. Yeah, we've had several people agree to do it, but then they would sit back to legal and legal, shot it down. And so they were like yourself, right? They were willing, ready, and able, but then legal at the last moment said no. Can't happen. I don't get it. In order for contracting, government contracting, and acquisition to really work, you have to have a better mix of government industry communication and the government contracting officers and acquisition personnel need to understand industry and industry needs to understand the government. But I think especially the government needs to understand how their decisions drive industry behavior and impact the price of the contract, things like that. I think everybody, enough people do. I'm hoping that now with, I think, more and more the younger employees are going to go into the government, leave, go into industry, come back into the government. I don't think there's going to be a lot of, well, not everyone's going to do the career path I had, which was to stay in the Navy the whole time. I think people are going to be exiting and entering. That will help. Yeah, no, I definitely agree 100%. That would help because, like you said, the majority of the people that I see today that are retiring have had career lives in the government. And that was the trend at the time. But I could see that being different now, especially with, like I've already heard, like I said, I was in DC before the call last week. And I heard people complaining about Amazon coming in to the area. Oh, yeah. And so Amazon offering those high wage paying jobs. And then the federal agencies are going to have to compete for the workforce with Amazon. Right, definitely. It's going to be challenging. Yeah, and another thing that essentially what you brought up was I was at a podcast conference last week. And all of the major media outlets was there. Like everyone was getting into podcasting. Spotify was there. Google just launched their own podcast, as you know, Player. And these people had huge exhibits and booths. And they spent a lot of money. And they were vested Fox, MSNBC, ESPN. I mean, everyone saw this as the new media form, right? And put a stake in there. And so for the government to not understand that or not be aware of it is just behooves me. No, I think the government should, you know, when we say the government, it's a huge organization. But I think organizations within the government should have their own podcasts. And what a great way of interviewing people and getting the word out and not requiring contractors to travel or go to a conference or take time off of work. They can listen to it whenever they have time. Yes, yes, yes, yes, definitely. So with that said, why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself and your background? And so how do we get to this point of your expertise in the government? Where'd you start off at? Okay, well, when I was in high school, I was a basketball player, got recruited by the Naval Academy. So I went to the Naval Academy. I was in the sixth class of women to graduate. So that was in 1985, my class graduated. There was about 76, I think, women in the class. And then I went on to become a supply core officer in the Navy, which is kind of like the business end of the Navy. So I was on a ship, stationed on a ship where I was in charge of dispersing, paying people, doing travel claims. And then I was in charge of the ship store and the laundry and the barbershop. So I did things like that. Then I ended up moving into the contracting career field and became a contracting officer for the Navy as a lieutenant in the Navy. And then right after that, I got out. I got out of the Navy as a lieutenant and just so I did seven years active duty and then 13 in the reserves. So while I was in the reserves, I was also employed by the Navy as a civilian. So as a civilian, I did all different kinds of contracting. I did contracting for major weapons systems like airplanes and helicopters. I did contracting for services. And then in 2010, I moved into the office of small business programs at the Naval Air Systems Command. And I held that job for 10 years. And a lot of times in the government, people will tell you, you can't get promoted if you don't move around and have different jobs. But I focused on my children. I was a single parent most of that time. So I was focusing on raising my children. And once they got older and out of the house, I applied for senior executive position. And then that's when I became the director of the Department of the Navy's Office of Small Business Programs. So I was the senior advisor to the secretary of the Navy and across the Navy led all the small business professionals across the Navy and the Marine Corps. The Department of the Navy consists of the Navy and the Marine Corps. And I just retired from that position in May. And once I retired, May 31st, I retired. And June 1st, I published seven episodes of my podcast. It's called Onward. And it features authentic conversations with people that I know, like everyday people, not stars or something. Everyday people that have faced adversity and how they overcame it. And my goal with that podcast is to help people see how they can apply what they learn about in the podcast to their particular situation and face adversity and overcome it.  Okay, okay, okay. No, that was a great introduction. So going back to when you're a contracting officer, one of the things, I had a conversation with someone and it says a lot of small businesses, when they come and they talk to people at the Osterboos and the director of small business, they don't have a complete understanding of the role of a contracting specialist and a contracting officer. Can you talk a little bit about the role of a 1102 contract specialist? A contracting officer is the one that has to award the contract for the organization. And in order to award the contract, they have to make sure the terms and conditions are clear. They have to make sure the statement of work is clear. And they usually get this stuff, the terms and conditions and the statement of work. From the technical community. And sometimes the technical community, many times the technical community can deliver that information late. And it makes it very challenging on a contracting officer because they have a really heavy workload and they have tight, tight deadlines. So they're not the ones that come up with a requirement. And I think sometimes small businesses think that they should go and meet with the contracting officer and that's not necessarily the best person for them to meet with. Depends. If it's on a contract that they're working on now that's existing and they've got some challenges, they should meet with the contracting officer. But if they're trying to get business with that organization, I would say the contracting officer is not the person with whom they should meet. Okay, now what's a program office? Okay, so a program office, and I can just, to put it in context, I'll help explain it within the Department of the Navy. So, and I'll go to the Naval Air Systems Command which has several different program offices. And when I worked with one, it was the program office that was responsible for the fielding of the H60 helicopters. So they're responsible for getting the contracts awarded to get those helicopters off the production line. And they're also responsible for maintaining the helicopters once they're out in the fleet. So they're running the whole program and a contracting officer. And so they're running a program made of people that are engineers, logisticians.  And the contracting officer is part of that program team. Typically, the contracting officer is not supervised by the program manager. They're supervised by a contract's chain of command just because sometimes there can be a conflict of interest. Program manager really wants a contracting officer to bend the rules or do something. Ah, that makes sense. Right, right. Okay, no, that makes a lot of sense. Thank you for clearing it up because we hear people change all of these words and terms and we say, okay, the program office and then the contracting folks and we're not, it can be confusing sometimes. Right. And the program office typically has those technical people in the office that are responsible for determining what needs that program office has. They work with, for example, in the Navy, they work with the fleet. They work with the fleet helicopter squadrons. They work with people like that to understand what the threat is and what the needs are and figure out what needs to be bought. The contracting officers don't decide that. Right, they just basically facilitate the buying of that need. Correct, correct. Okay, so you said that you shouldn't be speaking to the contracting officers for new requirements. Who should they be speaking to? Well, I think that they should go to the small business professional for that command. Typically, every government organization has a small business professional and they should really try to get in to meet the technical personnel because it's their responsibility to do their market research, to figure out what kinds of companies are out there that can provide what I'm trying to buy and what kinds of companies are they? Are they small businesses? Are they large? They're supposed to be scanning the market. They're supposed to be scanning the market to determine if I want to put in my request for proposal, a delivery date of two days from the date of order, if that's realistic or not, they should be talking to different companies and understand what's typical for delivering a product like that. The contracting officer is not necessarily the one that is developing those requirements. So, talking to a contracting officer once the request for proposal is on the street is a good idea because then it's not the time to talk to the technical personnel. The RFP's on the street and if you have some questions on the terms and conditions, things like that, that's when you should talk. But if you're just marketing your company to that organization, it's my opinion that you shouldn't go talk to the contracting officer. Okay, okay, no, that makes a lot of sense. What's the difference between NAV-Air, NAV-C, and NAV-FAC? Okay, well, the department of the Navy has 10 different buying commands. You just named three of them. NAV-Air is the Naval Air Systems Command. And it gets confusing because NAV-Air buys all the airplanes for the Navy and the Marine Corps. It's Naval Aviation, which is Navy and Marine Corps. And when I used to work at NAV-Air, people would come and meet with me and they would want to be selling like paving the runways. Well, that would be NAV-FAC. That's the Naval Facilities Engineering Command because NAV-Air buys the airplanes, but they're not authorized to award construction contracts. So they're not authorized to award the contract for a runway paving or runway lights. And then the Naval-C Systems Command, that's the biggest command within the department of the Navy, that's for all the ships. Repairing, they have program offices that were responsible for ships, undersea warfare, submarines, that kind of stuff. And if you go to the Department of Navy Office of Small Business Programs website, you can see a little bit of information on each of those commands. And I highly recommend that small businesses do their homework before they go and meet with the commands. I'll give you an example of a company not doing their homework. Once they came to meet with me, and they said, well, this is when I was at Pax River, and they said, do you guys still do testing on this base? That's a big part of what is done at Pax River, testing the aircraft. You can find that out by looking up in the sky, and seeing your aircraft flying around, or by just doing your homework on the internet before you come. That kind of company is not, a company like that that's not prepared is not a company that you want in front of the technical program managers. They want you to understand their needs, and as best you can by having done your homework before you go in and see them. And when a company asks a question like that and gets in front of a technical person, it doesn't just mean that to that technical person, it doesn't just mean that that small business didn't do their homework. It can send a signal that all small businesses are like that. That's risky. That's a very powerful statement, right? Yeah, and you would know best, right? Because you were the ones advocating for small businesses. Right, and we really wanna help connect the small businesses with the program managers, but we did, but we weren't going to do it if the companies weren't prepared, because it's just bad news for not just that small business, but for every small business. Doing your networking, understanding the culture of that command, going to events in that area, like in Patuxent River, Maryland, for example, which is where Naval Air Systems Command headquarters is. There's tons of events, so networking and outreach events. So you can go and talk to other companies that do business with that command and learn the culture. For example, at Nav Air, you don't wanna walk in in shorts and a t-shirt and a wrinkled shirt. They wear suits there. At other commands, it might be different, but you want to understand your customer or the customer that you're going after. Wow, wow. And that would be the same for any command. Wherever you live, especially if it's by a base or by a government office, I'm sure that there's outreach events. You can check with the local chamber, go on the internet and figure it out. Okay, okay, okay, no, that's great. What about, and I see this, what about people that are outside of the DMV, the Beltway area? Should we be trying to come to that area to meet with, go to events and meet with small business directors? What do you think about that? I think it depends on what it is. First, the very first thing companies need to do is figure out which organizations within the government buy what they're selling. And I would recommend going to the PTAX, the Procurement Technical Assistance Centers to help with figuring that out. However, you can also go to the Federal Data Procurement System, FPDSNG, and anybody has access to that and you can go online and there's an easy search. So people can look and try to figure out, by NAICS code or product service code, is someone in the government even buying what I sell and which organization is it? And then I would recommend going where they are. For example, if you're looking to do business with the Department of Navy, know that they have two big small business outreach events, one in May, it's called Sierra Space and the other one in August in San Diego and that's called Gold Coast. So every government organization has specific outreach events like that. So as a small business, you can't go to all of them. It costs money. You've got to really target what you can go after. And I would look at the Department of Navy Office of Small Business Programs, Facebook site, because we have a lot of videos where I used to do Facebook lives. Hopefully we can get more organizations doing that and that saves time and effort for people in terms of not having to travel but being able to get the information that way.  Okay, okay, okay. And then, so when we go and meet with them, what should we bring? I would bring your capability statement. And here's a tip. If you're a company that does, let's just say program management, you also do IT, you also do logistics and you're meeting with a technical customer that's interested in IT, I would have that capability statement tailored for that customer. Why address program management and logistics to the customer if you're going after an IT opportunity? Some people don't do that, they don't take the time to tailor it.   What I care about is that you have a product or a service that can meet my needs. Then if you tell me you're a hub zone, that makes me think of different contracting authorities that I would have if I was a government employee to be able to get to you. But first, you have to make the government employee want to think about, want to think that they need to get to you.  So yeah, your hub zone, come on in and let me meet with you. No, they want to know that you can do the work. Of course, of course, that makes a lot of sense. But I tell you, so many people would come up to me and tell me their socioeconomic category and talk about goals. And we could be meeting all of our goals in the federal government. And small businesses could be failing. So if we're measuring ourselves, our success in the small business program just on whether or not we're meeting our goals, but not on if the mission's being met, then that's a problem. That's a problem, no, that's a huge problem. And that's the idea behind what we do here, right? With the podcast and with the channel, is we want to educate them. We want to prepare them.  You're not prepared. They should not have to tell you to get registered in SAM. They should not have to tell you how to fix your capability statement.  Uh-huh. For free is a good point. We're called your local PTAC. There's a lot of people out there that want to charge you for stuff that you can get for free. No, no, and we're, yeah, we're a big advocate of that. So, interesting. Now, when you were a contracting officer, how did you go from contracting officer to the director of office, small business programs for Naval Air Sea systems? Like, the Naval Air Systems Command? Yeah, for Naval Air Systems Command. Yeah. Basically, I was a GS-15 at the time and the head of contracts asked me to move to the small business office. And I actually, if I have, to be honest, I think that they were hoping that I would fly under the radar and not really advocate for small business. See that, and that's why I asked that question because I think it would take a special kind of person to want to do that role. Well, I didn't want it. It was not on my top 100 list of jobs that I wanted. I did not want the job. I was terrified. I'm an introvert. Public speaking, I was terrified of that. I just didn't want it. The small business program at the time did not have a good reputation. It was all about goals. No one really cared about small business. Just go to the large primes and get the job done. Things have really changed a lot and I did not fly under the radar. I really pushed small business but not in terms of meeting a goal but for finding the companies that could help meet our needs and the requirements of the program managers and help them meet cost schedule and performance and do a good job and maybe save some money from what those large primes did. So that's some advice I have to people is don't not take a job because you're scared or worried because it ended up being the best job I ever had. I loved that job and then I stayed in it for 10 years and then I got the job as the director for the Department of the Navy and that gave me the courage to speak. I love going and speaking at events. I have lots of things I can speak about. It gave me the courage to start my own podcast. It gave me the courage to talk to people, to do better job at networking. As an introvert, that wasn't my strong suit. So it was the best thing that ever happened to me, that job. Wow, that's great, that's a great story. Yeah, tell us a bunch of podcasts since you said you start the podcast. Tell us more about your podcast and why did you even start a podcast? Well, I've been divorced a few times. So I started blogging about divorce and then I thought to myself, I really don't want my, I'd like to start a podcast and I don't necessarily want it to be about divorce and I don't want it to be, if you go on the web, on the internet a lot of people are just complaining about divorce and I really don't want it to be a lot of whining. I want it to be how people move forward. So it's kind of trying to come up with names and just came up with the name Onward and the Onward podcast features authentic conversations with people about how they faced adversity and move forward and how they handled it. And there's a lot of themes coming. So on June 1st, I published seven episodes. I think I've got 22 published so far. I published one a week on Mondays and I've interviewed lots of different people and the main thing I want to do is interview people that are just everyday people like you and me, not somebody that someone could say, well, sure they overcame that. Look at all the resources and money they have. Now these are just everyday people and I really enjoy the podcast and learning about how people face challenges and overcame them. And I think that people who listen to it can, my goal is that they can apply what they're hearing about here in these inspirational stories to some challenges they're facing in life. Do you, does any of your time that you've worked in contracting as any of that fall along the lines of your podcast, is any of that helped you or shaped you, your thoughts and ideas for the podcast? Oh no. And the reason why I ask that is because and working with small businesses, you've done it for what, 12 years. I don't know if you've seen any success stories of small businesses that you've helped maybe overcome adversity or anything like that that you maybe inspired you to want to do that. No, it wasn't necessarily, it wasn't necessarily the small business piece of it that inspired me to do it. It was more just, I've always been a coach and a mentor to people and it was more that just the personal stories that people have. People who want to be on my podcast can reach out to me or they can go to my website EmilyHarmon.com and just click the be a guest button. And I really, I haven't turned anybody down. Sometimes I've had to talk to them about the twist that we need to put on the podcast because sometimes people do think that my podcast is about small business and they wanna be selling something and I have to tell them that my podcast is about overcoming adversity and if you wanna talk about how you, for example, how you overcame some adversity as a small business owner and then say by the way, here's my website and what I sell, that's fine. But I really wanna talk and I'll give you an example or some ideas of some of the people that I've interviewed. I've interviewed my son who's in recovery from alcoholism for two and a half years and he's doing really well. So we had a mother-son discussion about addiction and recovery. I've interviewed my daughter about anxiety. I've interviewed a classmate of mine who's an admiral who fell and heard his back 18 months ago and was told he'd never get out of his wheelchair and now he's walking with a walker and another guy who is a contracting officer actually at Naveir who was injured in a football accident when he was 15, he's now 40.  He's walking. And so I've interviewed people about suicide, depression, a teen mother, a woman who had twins when she was 16 and how she ended up even though she didn't finish high school, how she ended up graduating from college. I then interviewed immigrants. So it's just a whole bunch of different stories but the theme is the same. Get help. All these people say you gotta get help, keep that positive attitude. Just take a little step forward each day. So. Well, no thanks for sharing.  And it's interesting to come from such a distinguished role to having a podcast. I think that for me, I was intrigued by it. So I definitely wanted to at least get some of that and during the conversation, you know, everyone. I mean, I could have retired and gone to work for a company or made a lot of money or gone and been a consultant. And I am a consultant but the kinds of things I wanna help companies with are, you know, when they have a challenge with the government customer and they're not really sure how to approach it. I can be a coach kind of like that to them. I'm not gonna go and be one of those consultants that goes and introduces a company around to different senior people. I'm not going to do that. But helping companies figure out how to navigate things. You know, being a sounding board for them about how to approach tough situations. And I think that that kind of ties to my podcast, right? You know, other tough situations is something that I wanna do. And sometimes as a company owner, you're really alone and it's nice to have somebody that you can talk to that's been there, that can help you understand, you know, what might be going on behind the scenes or how the customer might be thinking. No, no, no, no. And again, there's value to that, right? I mean, I can tell you I know the situation now with someone that I met with that they were on a team with a large business. They put together the package as a team. They won the contract. And then the large business was acquired by another large business. And then they said that they didn't want to honor the contract anymore. And, you know, that kind of stuff. So I get that. I mean, there's definitely a need for someone advocating for this person saying, hey, you know, we came in this together. We went after the project together. Successfully awarded the project. And now they're failing to honor their part. And so I could see. Yeah, government contracting is not for the week of, you know, the week of heart. You've got to have persistence. You've got to just keep on going. So I'm kind of contemplating starting a mastermind of small business owners that, you know, where we can work through issues together on that. You know, more minds together rather than just one is helpful. And sometimes the issues are issues that one company faces is an issue that another company might face. And I know in a mastermind group may not want to share all the particulars or there's some things you might want to meet just one on one with me about, but I do think a mastermind group might help. So that's something I'm thinking of starting. Okay. We can talk about it after the call. Okay. Okay.  Something that you worked on with small business acquisition, apology and strategic initiatives. Can you give us some examples of what type of initiatives? Well, when I was in the, there's an issue with small business data and it's very challenging to like, I could tell you when I worked at this one at the Naval Air Systems Command, for example, there's several different buying commands under Nav Air. And I could tell you like, how much money the command in New Jersey spent with small business. And I could tell you how much money the command in Orlando spent with small business, but I couldn't tie it to a belly button. I couldn't tell you how much the program manager for H60 helicopters is spending with small business versus large. I couldn't tell you in engineering, are they using small businesses when they contract out? I couldn't have the data that way. And we ended up figuring out how to do that at Nav Air. And that really changed behavior because when you're saying, we could be using small business more, when you make the data transparent and visible, then it really makes people want to pay attention more to small business. Now that's a fine line I was walking because small business should really be about finding companies that are capable of doing the work and not just about goals, but you still gotta make the data visible. And I saw that in, for example, in human resources, we had goals to hire, the commands had goals to hire and a certain number of wounded lawyers or individuals with disabilities. And that was a law just like the service disabled veteran and small business goal is a law. And people were paying a lot more attention to that. And I think the reason they could get the people to pay more attention to that is because you could track the data by a belly button, the person that was doing it. So when we got the small business data that way, that really helped. So just making the data more visible and transparent to change behavior is something that I thought, that I did, not just me, but my team of people. And the other thing that we did within the Department of the Navy is we required every one of the 10 buying commands to have a small business strategy that is signed by the commander of that command, not signed by the small business professional or the contracts professional, signed by the commander because small business is the commander's responsibility, small business utilization and providing opportunities. And so right before I left, the year before I left the Navy small business job, I got permission to have those strategies made public. So they had to write them for two years. We went around and talked to them about how they could approve their strategies, things they could do differently. And then the last year we said they need to be published on a forward-facing website, which is again, helping with transparency. And I would tell industry, you should be able to know what the initiatives are of the command that you're going to market to for including small business and hold them accountable for it. Ask them about it. Make sure that the people have read that strategy and they know what's out there. So I think those are the two main things on that and starting to do those Facebook Live videos. Those are things that I'm really proud of. I heard you mentioned before you were trying to, you were talking about breaking up larger contracts into smaller pieces. Yes, we tried to do that. That's very challenging, but definitely that's something that we look at when we do our market research.  So let's just say that the wheels for the joint strike fighter or made the tires are made by a small business. Do we want to contract with a small business for that tire? We want to contract with Lockheed for the whole airplane. So there's different considerations that you have to make when breaking things out because we don't, I say we, I'm still acting like I'm in the government. I'm not, the government doesn't have enough contracting officers to break everything down. Really, as far as, for example, a small business professional or a small business would like to see. But we do look at that. We're not supposed to be bundling. And I think that's really tough now with category management. Now, people keep talking about category management. How do you describe category management? Well, it started out with the term strategic sourcing. Now it's category management. It's looking at the thing, the government is a huge buyer. So looking at what, and I think it's led by GSA, the General Services Administration, but looking at what the government is buying. We're buying program management services. We're buying desks, we're buying furniture. We're buying computers. Why is each organization negotiating contracts for those? Why don't we have one bigger contract? Maybe that has multiple companies under it, like GSA, Oasis or something like that. Okay. Some people would tell you that category management is good for small business. They would say that we're still meet, the government, even with category management is still meeting the small business goals. I would say yes. The government might be still meeting the small business goals, but you might be meeting those goals with fewer small businesses. So I think it's not just about meeting the goal, but it's about who has the opportunity to compete on those contracts. And if you're not aware of category management and you're not on that Oasis contract and the task order is being placed, then you're out of luck. So the government might be meeting the small business goals, but I think that there are fewer, I haven't looked at the data lately, but the number of small businesses getting government contracts is going down. I read that in the 809 panel's report, et cetera. So it said that the dollar mile is going up, but the number of companies is going down. Right. I did interview Dave Drapkin, the head of the Section 809 panel and Elliot Branch who was on that panel and those interviews are on, that interview is on the Navy website. They have a YouTube channel. So we interviewed him right when the reports came out. Yeah. So we'll make sure we link to that at the end of this show, but yeah. Okay. Let me know. Okay. You know, they recommended getting rid of small business set asides in certain areas. I don't think that's too popular with Congress. So I don't see that happening. No, I think it was rejected already. Yeah. Yeah. I think it was rejected. A lot of people stood it up against that. I remember receiving some of the letters to go to Congress or in regards to that as well. Interesting. I mean, maybe someone can make the argument that that is the best thing to do for efficiency or something, but the federal government isn't always efficient. It's not always about efficiency. It's also, we have socio and economic concerns as well. So there has to be a balance of everything. Right, right, right, right. Makes sense, makes sense. Now, you were part of SES. Can you tell us about SES and what that is for those who are kind of clueless? Well, the senior executive community is, I think it was established, I should know, like in the 1970s, but it's basically people that serve in senior leadership positions within the department of the Navy and work closely with political appointees. So for example, every time a new president comes in, there's a new secretary of the Navy and a new undersecretary of the Navy. My boss was the undersecretary of the Navy. So I was the consistency with respect to small business and I would work with the career civilians. I was a career civilian, not a political appointee. So we're like the consistency there. And so I was the equivalent of, if you know military ranks, I was the equivalent of a two-star flag officer, like a two-star admiral. There's different levels of senior executive. So that's what I was, senior leader. Senior leader. So SES helps provide that consistency during the transition times. Okay, no, we never thought about that. That was a great idea. Yeah, it's not just that, we're just basically the senior leaders within, within the department of the Navy or within the government. Okay. How do you believe we can increase participation now? Doing, I mean, I know that what you did at the Navy where you made things more transparent. Are there any other ideas that you have that maybe we're not necessarily implemented that you think that we can use to increase small business participation? I think that there needs to be more sharing good news stories. A lot of time when people, the government and industry talk about small business, it's all, it's a lot about meeting a goal. What really gets to people is a story. I did a training on that within at the DOD Small Business Conference. I think that's available online. I can try to find it, but the video is not that great. It's hard, they didn't, they did it on iPhone. It's kind of hard to watch, but basically we were talking about the importance of good news story. Stories resonate with people. You, if you're trying to sell something, you're selling a story. You're not, you're selling a story about your company or you're selling a good news story that can happen to this person if they try your product. Telling somebody that they're gonna meet some statutory goal isn't a story. It doesn't, yeah. So you gotta get to people's hearts if you wanna change behavior. And I think small businesses can do a better job of telling the story about how they're helping support in the military world, the warfighter. What is it that they're doing that's contributing to mission accomplishment? Okay, let's, you know, we have a platform here with government science. Let's assume that we could get that message out to the small business community. Who should they be telling that story to? And what format? It needs to go to the government. It needs to go to program managers.  I like that. I like that. By the way, I didn't set that up guys. I didn't set that up at all. I, you know, I'm just wondering because again, you know, when you do have a platform, there is a sense of responsibility. But at the same time, people do actually listen and, you know, take the advice that's given. So if we say give them very specific activities that they can do, I think people would do it. One of the things that I did hear you mention before was you said sometimes the story from the small business may be a good story, but I mean, I'd be the whole story. I think I heard you say that before on the podcast. Oh, you heard me say that before on the podcast. Yeah, I mean, I've had companies want me to publish their good news story or talk about it. But then if you go to the government, the government has a different take on that. So there's always two or three sides to a story. And if a small business was coming to me as the director of small business and wanted me to share their good news story with people, I would first go and, you know, make sure that the technical customer agreed that it was a good news story. Okay, okay. Yeah, and so I think when small businesses approach technical people, when they're talking about how what they can do is solve a customer's need, they need to, they could also explain how they've done it in the past and that customer's challenge and how they solve it. I like that, that's great, that's a great idea. I know we're running short on time. Have there been any books or resources that you've used throughout your career that's helped you? Oh wow, I could show you my whole bookcase. I can see yours. Yeah, I saw yours at the beginning before you moved over. Yeah, I love reading books. I learn a lot from reading books. I used to lead with a friend of mine, a book club called Read to Lead, and we would read a leadership book a month and discuss it and it was really fun. I think Good to Great is a good book. I just read, I like to read a lot of self-help books to figure out how to be more efficient. And lately I've just been listening to podcasts, like I like the Ultimate Entrepreneur with J.A. Abraham, I like Pat Flynn's podcast. So that's another way. Yeah, I try to when I work out, I try to be efficient. So if I'm listening to a podcast, I'm also working out. There's only so much time in a day, so. Yeah, okay, okay. You know, obviously you have the stage, you have a platform. What is something that you wanna tell small businesses that you think can really help them be better prepared, be ready to do business with the government? What's some final words you'd like to tell small businesses out there? Final words, it's a shame that I have to keep repeating it, and maybe I just have to keep repeating it because there's always new companies coming in all the time, and that's the thing I think is, sometimes I feel like I'm repeating it, but it's probably not falling on, it doesn't hit everyone's ears. So I feel like I'm repeating it, but to mainly do your homework, narrow down your niche, you can't go after the whole government. The whole government's huge. You've gotta pick the one or two customers that you wanna target and put your effort into that. Starting out as a subcontractor is a good idea. It's not a bad idea. It gets your foot in the door. You get your employees in with that customer. You get to get your feet wet and figure out how the government works. And it takes time. Things don't happen quickly within the government. Be patient. No, that's true. We know that from first hand experience. We know from first experience. Well, Emily, thank you so much. We appreciate your time and working through some of the technical issues that we had today. That's okay. We work through it. No, thank you, definitely. And this has been a great experience for me, sharing your story. And then at the same time, seeing you move on to the next chapter, there are a lot of people that are looking now and they've been inquiring with me about how to move on to the next chapter and it seems like you've found that way. So we thank you for coming out today. If you have people that want my help and how I did it, I mean, for six months or so, I was kind of doing two jobs, right? Because the day I retired to publish seven episodes, that's a lot of work. I was taking an online class. I was doing both jobs. I was trying to figure out how to edit a podcast, all the things that you've got to learn when you're first starting up. I really enjoy it. Right, right. No, no, no, no. No, it's a lot of fun. It's a labor of love. Thank you so much. I'm gonna go ahead and we'll talk soon, okay? Yep. And I'm really sorry about the technical issues.


Hi, I'm Catherine Hamilton. I'm the Policy Director for the Electricity Storage Association. It's an association that represents the entire energy storage industry. About 150 members, including venture-backed companies, totally integrated utilities, and large developers and multinational corporations. We really are the voice of the energy storage industry internationally. Electricity storage can include batteries of all types of technologies, and it can include flywheels, it can include compressed air, it can even include hydropower technologies that store com-tidro at night and release it during the day during peace. It's a variety of technologies. For agnostic on technology, we love any energy storage, electricity storage technology. We're just trying to move the market for all of these technologies and understand that they're going to be incredibly important as we move our grid into a much more disrupted, disaggregated and distributed system. Policy is critical to any of these new technologies. Federal policy determines what the markets are really going to be, whether it's regulatory policy, legislative, or even agency policy. It's going to affect how equity is brought into the industry. So we need to attract private investors. We need to attract private capital to the market so that we can move these technologies, scale them, make them commercial, which they are now, but we need to increase that. In order to increase that, you need to have really smart public policy that sets the rules for the markets, and that's what we focus on. The main thing about electricity storage is whereas previously, we had to use electricity the moment it was generated, we have now found a warehouse for electricity, and that is energy storage.


Daddy, do you know what I want for my birthday? What's that angel? I want to be able to walk. Poor Kendall's on the birthday cake. Pretty please let me walk someday. And a puff of smoke, her wish was made. I fought back my tears wondering what I would say. So better up, we played airplane. While our world rounds and round, I did my best to explain. They're made for daddy's disorder.  How can I give words, fingers crossed and diced? I felt my heart sink like a rock. And I hurt her weed and hope I'm never to be. I'm Ricky Tanksley. Christina was born with spina bifida. During her short life, she was never able to walk. But now there's new hope. The B-vitamin folic acid can prevent some serious birth effects if women take it before they get pregnant. So in memory of Christina, please take folic acid every day if there's a chance that you could become pregnant.


Just at the end of last year rapper French Montana treated himself to a new luxury mansion in the famed Hidden Hills neighborhood. He purchased the estate for $8.4 million off of NBA star Paul George and it's now French's second property in this area. He still owns his Los Angeles starter house if you want to call it that. A Tuscan style mansion he bought off of Selena Gomez in 2016. While French put it on the market for the first half of 2020 for $6.6 million, it's since been delisted. So we'll have to wait and see what happens with that. Today we'll take a look at the rapper's lavish homes including his new one in Hidden Hills. In these videos we don't reveal any addresses and even though I've done a house tour of my own place please do not show up at any private residences because it's not safe for anyone. Kareem Karbutch who's better known as French Montana is a Moroccan American rapper and founder of Coke Boys Records. While he released independent material for years, he signed into a joint record deal with Diddy's Bad Boy label and Rick Ross' Maybach music group back in 2012. Since his debut album, he's experienced considerable success in the music industry and continues to work on releasing hit songs and collapse. French's single from 2017, Unforgettable with Swae Lee, is by far his most popular to date and was also his first song as lead artist to reach the top 10 on the Billboard charts. That one was definitely a summer anthem. At the moment, French Montana's net worth is estimated to be $16 million or more which has no doubt earned him some impressive real estate. He's lived in lavish New Jersey mansion, stayed in Miami and now owns two properties in the posh Hidden Hills. It's safe to say the rapper has come a long way since his humble beginnings, moving to America from Morocco at the young age of 13 and then living in the Bronx. I wonder if French knew the life of luxury that would await him.  I noticed that 95% of you guys watching aren't subscribed so be sure to hit that subscribe button and ring that bell for all the best celebrity house tours and more. We post a new video daily. While we reported on rapper French Montana's homes in the past, he recently bought a brand new Hidden Hills mansion so it was time for an update. We'll be checking out this estate and more. On this channel we talk about celebrity houses but if you want to know about their other lavish purchases or the latest trends in their outfits, go subscribe to Famous Fashion. The most disturbing thing about these Lil Nas X Satan shoes, they reportedly contain one drop of human blood somewhere on the souls and not the metaphorical type. As always don't forget to follow me on Instagram to chat and now let's get into this video. Just a few months ago, French Montana snagged a gorgeous home in the exclusive Hidden Hills neighborhood which is about twice the size of his other residence located just down the road. The rapper and songwriter spent over $8.4 million on the abode and the seller was Los Angeles Clippers star Paul George who first listed the home back in June for almost $9.5 million. Although it looks like he sold the mansion at a discount, he still made a buck on the sale considering he purchased it for $7.4 million some years ago. Built back in 1989, French's new mansion spans nearly 16,000 square feet of space with seven beds and nine baths throughout. The great room alone is 4,000 square feet so yes, it's decidedly massive. This space boasts soaring ceilings, motorized skylights and full walls of glass that slide open to reveal the grounds. NBA star George likely didn't make many changes to the home during his 4 years living here since it doesn't look like it's changed all that much from the original design. The massive home resembles a modern mixed with old world Tuscan style estate but from the street view it looks pretty unique and widely shaped. French's new mansion sits on Ashley Ridge which is the most desirable pocket of hidden hills and other residents include Kris Jenner and Chloe Kardashian, Jeffree Star and Dodger's icon Vin Scully. Back inside that 4,000 square foot great room there are several other intimate seating areas one of which joins a large stone fireplace. In French's new kitchen there's a marble breakfast bar with room for six to dine and the full suite of designer appliances. Elsewhere he has access to a games room, additional den with fireplace, formal dining room and wood paneled study. If that's not enough the mansion offers more highlights including a home theater for cozy movie nights, a fitness center with steam shower as well as a wine cellar. Because what mansion doesn't have one of those? Moving upstairs Montana's new Titanic master suite is luxurious to say the least but the design is still a bit dated. The rapper is free to redecorate it any way he chooses and can easily make it more modern. There's a sitting room with wall to wall gray carpets, a two sided fireplace and an en suite with a skylight. Even the bathroom has its own lounge space. There are also two walking closets in dressing rooms and its own private patio. This terrace overlooks the multi-level backyard which is more like a resort when you factor in all of the amenities. Set on 1.44 acres of land French's private grounds include stone decks and outdoor kitchen with barbecue and entertainment patio with fireplace and a separate music and TV center. It'll be hard to get bored at this estate considering there's also a basketball court built in playground for the kids and a swimming pool and spa. Not to mention the entire property is landscape beautifully and is super private. It's surrounded by a dense collection of mature trees and palms and there are fruit trees out here as well. Let's not forget French though owns his Los Angeles starter house, a Tuscan style mansion in the same Hidden Hills neighborhood just down the street. The rapper purchased this place in 2016 off of Selena Gomez and it cost him 3.3 million dollars. He put it up on the market for the first half of 2020 starting with a 6.6 million dollar price tag which then lowered to 5.6 million dollars and then it was delisted altogether. Clearly he still owns it. This three acre compound is mansion worthy but not nearly as large as his new residence still spanning over 7,700 square feet in the main house with a detached studio style guest house on the property as well that has a kitchen and bathroom. Inside the main house there are five beds and six baths in the entire state is protected by a heavy-duty security system with motion detectors, two dozen cameras and panic buttons in every room. Talk about safety. Just inside the front door of the abode you'll find a stonewalled wine cave and a grandly sized double height living room leading out to a romantic courtyard. The all-white kitchen is also roomy and perfect to entertain or to just enjoy your favorite meals and this space opens to an informal dining area and a family room. The family room boasts a gorgeous white marble fireplace and a wall of glass that folds open to reveal the yard. Other noteworthy features of French's first Hidden Hills home include a cozy media lounge with palm patterned wallpapers, a movie theater, a gym, a state-of-the-art recording studio with disco lighting. Moving outside to the resort style grounds there are lush gardens everywhere you look and additions like a palm tree-framed open-air entertainment pavilion boasting a fireplace and a Viking outdoor kitchen.  Not to mention moving to the front of the estate there is a stately circular driveway complete with a topiary elephant. While the Moroccan born musician was seeking a return on this home and to make some money he has since taken the property off market. So now we've taken a look at two of French Montana's properties including his brand new upgrade mansion in Hidden Hills and the first one he bought down the road off of Selena Gomez. Looking at both of those mansions which was your favorite? Were they his style? Let's not forget the rapper also spends a lot of time in Miami. Last year he was holed up in a mansion there and shared a lot of it on Instagram being on the water with his buddies and enjoying the sun. However it could have just been a rental property. Either way the pad he was staying at was right on the water and boasted a grassy lawn and a private pool. Be sure to tell me down in the comments what features of French Montana's homes were your fave or even give them a rating. I personally like both of his Hidden Hills mansions but the new one has some impressive features like that massive great room. I really want to get to know you guys better so please subscribe to my personal channel and check out my latest video. Drop me a comment and we can continue the conversation there. So Elise's missing person case, one thing that was a huge deal was a viral video of her in the CISO hotel. One of the staff he goes up to check the water tanks on the route. Long story short, they find Elise's body in there. Thanks for tuning in, don't forget to follow me on Instagram and tell me who's house tours you want to see next on this channel. I'll see you guys all in the next video, bye.


Perfect. All right. So I am going to go ahead and hello, Dr. Shabazz. We're just calling to order now. I'm going to go ahead and call the May 2 meeting of the African Heritage Reparation Assembly to order at 3pm. Sue into chapter 20 of the Acts of 2021. This meeting will be conducted via remote means. Members of the public who wish to access the meeting may do so via Zoom or by telephone. No in-person attendance of members of the public will be permitted, but every effort will be made to ensure that the public can adequately access the proceedings in real time via technological means. And we have Alexis too. Excellent. Welcome. Yay. Nice to see you all. So we've got a we've got a good agenda here and we have a hard stop at four o'clock. We do have another meeting scheduled for next week. And that will be from three to 430. There was a conflict with some of our schedules today to go beyond four. And I don't know if you're leaving even a little sooner than four o'clock, but I'll keep the meeting going until four. So you can. Oh, you might be muted or I have no idea what happened. I'm going to have to do whatever. Okay. Well, I, I know that there's a mingling portion of that event that's going to be a half an hour. I've learned in the front end. So the programming doesn't start until about 430 for that. So just to give you that. Oh, do we lose her? Oh, okay. He's back. All right, so you're back. All right. So, so my problem is, is that I am under a concussion protocol. So my screen time has to be limited. Oh, what happened? You don't want to talk about that right now.  I think it's five. I think I'm up to five. Okay, you do what you need to do. Yeah. So with that in mind, let's review the agenda quickly and we'll, I do want to make an announcement in the front end in case you have to leave Dr. Shabazz or Dr. Rhodes because I want you to hear this announcement. But let's look at our agenda. So we're going to today we're going to have an update on the community survey. We're going to talk about an operating and administrative budget for our body. We're going to revisit the black African American census that we haven't actually had a chance to review since it's been presented to us. So having some discussion about how we might use that. And then we have earmarking cannabis funds. So that's going to be a conversation about FY 23 and what we want to do with respect to our asks of the town and specifically related to earmarking cannabis funds. So, and we have minutes to approve. So why don't we go ahead and quickly get the minutes out of the way. I'm going to move that we approve the March 3, March 14, March 21, March 28, April 4, and April 11 meeting minutes. Go Jennifer. Thank you. Is there a second second. Who is that roads. Okay. So I'll start with you, Hala. I was going to voice the unreadiness. Okay. Could we add with any necessary corrections because I haven't had time to read them off. I don't want to pass them if something like blatantly. So could we just say we'll pass them with any necessary corrections. Absolutely. Yes. And that is the case I say I, okay. So we will move then yeah we're moving to approve those minutes with any necessary amendments upon review by assembly members. So we have an I, we have Alexis. How do you vote. Yes. Okay, Dr. Shabazz. I see your hand is up to you're good. Yes. Okay. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. And Miller is a yes to so those pass. Good. I think I got you guys all moved around as I was going through the vote. So. So I did want to make a couple of announcements that are really exciting developments for the assembly and that we'll have an opportunity to talk about at a future meeting when it's actually on the agenda. The first is hang on, I'm just pulling up my notes here. Here we go. So I received an email from Mara keen about a week or two ago now. And Mara is on the Amherst community land trust board. And she wrote an email. I'm just going to actually read a little very quickly what she said. We have as one of our goals to increase home ownership among Amherst's African American residents, although we have helped five lovely families to purchase homes, none have been of African heritage. And so she went on to say she wonders how we might be in collaboration and how the Amherst community land trust may work with us to make that a reality. So we're going to bring Mara and page will do who are both on the board to our next meeting to have a deeper discussion about that but I just wanted to make that announcement today, cool. And then the other announcement, which is really exciting is the completion of Amherst students at Amherst college so essentially the Amherst college student Senate, which is a 33 member elected body comprised of eight senators from each class. They have formed a committee for reparations, and they reached out, and this is a very exciting news I had a meeting with them today. The person who reached out to me is actually the president of the whole AS, but is also on this reparations committee, and I had an excellent conversation with them, they have two primary goals. So, that body is, it basically collects the student activity fees, and then distributes them out into the Amherst college community, and they have what's called a rainy day fund. And they are able to make decisions about how those funds are used. And so they're, they have two primary goals, one of which is to make a donation to the town of Amherst's reparation fund from their rainy day fund, which is amazing. And then two is to work with us to achieve our goals. And there are lots of possibilities that we talked about canvassing, going door to door, educating, getting the community survey out, helping us with research. Ultimately, they want to work with us to be involved with the town's effort. And we're going to bring them back hopefully at our next meeting but maybe depending on how long they need to work out some details to a future meeting. Those are the two exciting announcements, partnerships, and folks are just really, you know, the words getting out in Amherst and beyond, and the support is really beginning to come in. So, I think that's really exciting. Dr. Chabaz, I do see that your hand is still up. I just want to check in with you. Okay. All right, great. So, let's start with the community survey, I have an update for you on that. I have been working, taking some of the input from you all and also looking at some models in to create a draft. And when I was in Washington DC for reparations conference a couple weeks or now, I guess a month or so ago, I met Luan Allen and Luan Allen is the director of policy and partnerships at the city of Providence Rhode Island and was integral in developing their survey, which was very successful from what I can tell they received close to 400 survey responses and they really developed a fantastic survey so Luan has agreed to one review our survey and two to come and speak with you all and with us about what they learned, what was helpful, what wasn't helpful, what would they have done differently if they were to do it over again and what they're still learning from the process. So, I've asked Luan to come back to our next meeting to have that discussion. And in the meantime, he'll have an opportunity to review and then give us feedback so as soon as I'm finished with the draft I'll put it into the packet, and then you'll have an opportunity as well and to weigh in and then of course we'll talk about it in the bigger meeting. Any questions about that before moving on from that? Not seeing any. All right. So, there are two items that before Irv has to leave, I really want to make sure we get to. And the first I think we'll go to is the conversation about earmarking cannabis funds. And this was something that I'm going to pass it to Dr. Shabazz to talk about just for a minute if you wouldn't mind. This came up in a budget forum that the Progressive Coalition of Amherst and Sunrise Amherst put together. It was an excellent forum. I was really happy to be in attendance and really appreciative to be there to observe and listen as a counselor too. But this came up as a point that the AHA that folks would like the AHA to discuss. This has already been something that we've discussed previously and in fact that we've directly asked the town of Amherst to do. So I'm going to go ahead and just open things up and maybe Dr. Shabazz would like to begin and just say a few words about that. Just a very few words because I think more words will come out in a statement that Sunrise, let me tell you the young people are incredible. They really, this is the upshot of beyond the work of the forum or what happened at the forum, although that was completely open and the statement is going to be drawn from conversations that came up at the forum that was held at Hazel's in downtown Amherst. But within it, their voice in particular, looking at our own work of what we sent in in November. They do their homework, they study these things, they follow it up. And so it that was a came out at the forum, but even beyond that they are talking about getting on the road getting knocking on doors going in the streets to get the word out and to say, you know how how are we going to move for for the reparative justice in Amherst they are there on it. So, yes, I think that's the general gist of it that it's in support of our own document that we submitted, we wrote worked on and finished up in October, and put in the hands of the council in November. They are asking, folks are asking, where is the movement on the council toward having an earmarking discussion per the work of the HR a. So that's, that's where we hope then, however, we as a body might want to respond or not I just hope that counselors will hear it when this statement comes out. And as they see the work these that folks are doing that maybe they'll they'll find a way to put it in their calendar, pretty some response to us. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Shabazz and just to give a little more framework to this. So, it seems like a long time ago that we made those initial requests, and then we sort of had a reset as a body and determine that we needed another year to work on this because we couldn't sort of catch the wave of the f y 23 and time we haven't done our educational or engagement work yet so we extended our time frame so that we would be part of a second budget cycle for f y 24. So that the f y 23 budget cycle and I was going to pull up the calendar here I did put it into the packet. It's really coming close to being completed so we know that last year they put $206,000 into the reparation fund to seed it, and they base that off of the cannabis dollar amount. So, potentially, we would be asking them to do that again for f y 23 with the knowledge that we're going to be making a much more significant ask for f y 24. When we've done all of our work and and and and educated the community engaged with the community and gone through the process that we're here to do. Yes, or please. I believe we are now in f 22, is that correct. Next year, starting June, starting July one is f y 23. The following year is f y 24. Yes, and it just gets confusing the way that I pull up this calendar it is. It's so confusing but hang on I'm going to do this real quick. It's just confusing, you know, because you what you need to do the way I remind myself that 23 and any the year change a year change comes in January. So that's just a year change. So, and the fiscal year always is one year ahead of that so that when January comes in, then we're on on a schedule so this year is fiscal. 22 next year is fiscal 23. In other words, the budget that they're working on right now is fiscal 23. Right, that's what I mean exactly. Okay. Hang on, let me just also pull this up quickly. I will share screen. Okay. Do you all see that. Yes, awesome. Okay. So I'm on the finance committee and so I can say for sure that we are moving through this budget now. Department by department and I encourage anybody who's interested to come to the meetings and it's going to it's a pretty heavy schedule for the month of May. So what we need to decide and I will tell you I've asked Lynn to place this discussion of whether the town council wants to commit its cannabis funds to Reparatory Justice on our at our next meeting on May 16, not tonight's but May 16. So, we have to, and I just did that as a placeholder if we're not ready. That's totally fine. But I did it so that if we want if we're ready on May 16 to bring that and to ask the town council to have that discussion. It's important to note that cannabis funds have not been earmarked for anything yet. They've just gone into the general budget and I now see that Dr Shabazz has a hand and then Dr Rose. Dr Shabazz, you're muted. I was, I'm having problems trying to pull up our recommendations, all of our recommendations from that that was delivered to the council on November, but I'm also wondering, did we ask that the free cash be whatever is certified be prioritized. I know there were other recommendations besides cannabis that was only one out of a number of other kinds of budget streams we every seem like we left no stone unturned so I'm wondering did we do we have other requests besides the discussion of earmarking that was out of our previous and how are we looking on those in terms of is that somewhere needs to be. Is there some horizon in which they might respond to some of those questions. I know we've put the reset button on the overall time frame of things, but if we at least can have some feedback that yes, we're those recommendations. To be honest, we've never heard back from our recommendations. We worked hard to get that in, you know, in November. I know one of the upshots was not so much an upshot of the recommendations to they were very much related to budget. We did ask that. I mean, there were a number of us that I don't know if if those have been thought through the ARPA the other kinds but I'm really if I find that document I'll just try to condense my points on that because I think that's really also what people are saying. Dr. Shabazz, do you not see it. I just put it up. Can you do people see it. This was what we this was the this was the chart of our original requests. So, to answer your question. My understanding is you're absolutely right we didn't receive a response to this. And so we could frame the town council discussion on May 16 to include a broader discussion about responding and just overall having counselors funding the reparation fund. My understanding was that we were going to make our sort of big ask with the next budget cycle and for this cycle, what we what are we going to ask, given that we've extended our timeframe, but if other folks have a different idea. We should definitely talk about that and herb I see your hand. You're correct about that the the other thing is is if and I'm not sure this in terms of cannabis money. If we were going to ask for that as an age or a airmark or whatever the question have is, is that is that something that the town manager would have to include in his budget. Not the town manager who would who would present that as a part of the budget. And the reason for that is as that at some point in May I can't remember when the town manager will present his budget. Now, and the reason that is important is that when the town manager for presents his budget. The budget cannot be changed in terms of going up, but it can be changed if it was looking to be lowered. So it's critical if we were going to do anything to look at that and say hey, we would like this cannabis money to be airmarked for age our a, and, and how do we go about doing that in an expeditious manner. Yes, exactly. And just so you know, Dr Rhodes my understanding, and so that everyone knows my understanding is that the council has not had that discussion yet about what, or how cannabis funds should be used. I'm sure you're right in that town manager Buckleman is the one that's coming up with the budget and presenting it to the council. But the conversation is a legislative based on my understanding conversation where the counselors have to really talk and discuss how they would like to see that money be spent. I will absolutely clarify that, but that's my understanding so this is where what you're saying or this budget's getting finalized at the end of the month. So if we don't get on that May 16 meeting to have this discussion and to present whatever arguments we want to present that we're going to be too late for this budget cycle to do that. One more thing for all of us to understand it. Fiscal 24 and fiscal 25 are going to be extremely tight years, especially the fiscal 25 24. I project all kind of budget fights happening in fiscal 25. So if we are going if we are going to position ourselves in such a way in terms of for a RA, it's going to have to be done very early in the budget process.  Yep. And I can say just from being on the finance committee, I can second that it is going to be there are a lot of demands, a lot of, and also, you know, yeah, we have a tight budget, and it's going to take some creativity. And I think on our part to and on the town's part. Dr. Shabazz. Yes, I'd like to make a third on that a third emergence on that point to say that rescue me if I'm wrong. This is really more a conversation of just us now. Um, when we made those recommendations, we made them yes, without thinking that we would then put forward a a change in our time horizon for our planning work. But in my mind, at least that changed environment for our planning work did not change the urgency of building the fund that we work so rapidly and so hard on weekly in September weekly in October to get this integral report, or statutory report I mean this was set up in our charter that we needed to report in. And so we took that urgency on. We made that report we made these that reflect the certification of free cash coming annually. We saw the whole flash up. The point is, I didn't think that our time horizon change for building the reparative justice fund, just because we changed our high, our time horizon for our planning work as a body. We changed our planning, our horizon, but that doesn't mean the town can't continue to do what it did out the gate, which was begin was moving that certified free cash into a stabilization fund. So we were, we were operating from, let's keep doing that. That doesn't change like okay we can put the pause on it. Now until your, your, your, your June 2023 report comes out, then we'll figure out if we, if we know, don't put the pause but not deal with those financial recommendations. Act on incorporate them in this year's budget and the next year's budget and 20, you know, begin to grapple with incorporating them, because when we spend it how we spend it, that may take another year 2023. That may take another year after 2023 to go into what you need the funds building. That's at least was my mindset. Thank you. Dr. Shabazz. Anyone else want to comment. Yeah, I think that absolutely I do not think that our work plan changed or paused the requests that we have made. What I do think however is in terms of our success factor will be much more successful. Once we've completed more of our work. So, I think we should ask for something this fiscal year and we should be very clear about it and if it's cannabis and if we're, if that's a discussion we want to have whatever discussion we want to have it's got to be on May 16. And so, that's really, I think the most important thing here and we will have another meeting before then, so we can sort of, we're not totally pressed. I would be curious what other members think I think our big ask will be most successful. Once we've done more of our work. And I think we should be asking for something this year as well in this year's budget. Yes, earth. You're muted or your point. If we are to have any earmark of that cannabis money for fiscal 23. We need to find out how we what do we need to do to move this forward before the town manager presents his budget. In other words, how can we get it into his budget. And I think, Michelle, you being on the finance committee, you can ask that of of the committee and or of Andy, in terms of how we go about doing that. Because I don't know whether that needs to then go through a whole discussion with the entire council, what the council's timeline will be with acting on that but anyway, that is an issue that we really need to get on now we want to have that cannabis money. Yeah, and that's why I, that's why I asked Linda put it on the May 16 town council meeting agenda because I think that what needs to happen is if it is the will of the council to earmark cannabis funds for cannabis, then the council needs to tell Paul that and it needs to express that to Paul. And that's how I think it will, if it's, if the earmark happens that's, I think, how that will happen. What I would like to do is bring that to my colleagues on the 16th, and at our next meeting really have a solid plan for what it is that we're asking how we're framing it. And then of course the council is going to have its own discussion but we really need to make the case to my counselor colleagues that earmarking cannabis for a territory justice makes sense and is is the place to put the money. And so, and then, and then, if it is the will of the council they will make that clear to town manager Backelman, and, and that's how I see it would be included. And even aside from that, like I said last year the 206,000 that they that they took out of the stabilization it was modeled on the cannabis money. So they were already thinking in that direction, just it the conversation hadn't happened by the council yet so they didn't make that decision final. And Dr. Shabazz please. Final thing just to be clear. I'm in no way do I think the sense of our discussion is that we're, I want to come at the idea of the success factor of our planning work and are hitting our benchmarks to June 2023. You know, there's a lot we got to do there's a lot we got to, you know, solicit from the community feedback there's a lot we didn't have to process in the way of certain certain kinds of frameworks about the eligibility question who is who is the preparatory justice design to impact what are the priority kinds of areas we're hearing from community feedback. I know we've got a lot of. There's a lot between now and June 2023, and a lot of benchmarks we need to be be ticking off to show, you know, to have a really plan backed by compelling evidence. I get that. But I'm really responding to the sense of the council's commitment, as I saw in their pudding, the free cash, like you say whether modeled on cannabis revenue or or or not. I just saw that that step looked as though they weren't waiting for the plan.  So if you're starting, why stop, why pause to see the success factor of the AHRA keep it coming, build it that incentivizes AHRA to do its work. And to do it hard and to do it fast to hit those benchmarks so that by 2023, as this fund has continued to rise. We've got a compelling plan to present to them for their own discussion. So I'm just saying that's the sense I read in the council's own actions. But if if they're, you know, in more of a pause mode now and more of, you know, let's let's let Paul do whatever he wants to do with the money and, you know, we're going to wait and have a deeper discussion about whether it's cannabis or whether it's next year's free cash or whatever it is. I get it. Take your time, you know, and we'll continue to do our work but if, but if I read it correctly, and the council wasn't waiting on a plan to begin to make this fund, then I say, as far as from the HR rate, keep at it folks, give the town manager, the directive that, hey man, keep as much, begin keep building this pot of money out of whatever we can spare. Relative to everything, because then that sets us up for the hard years. Dr. Rhodes is talking about in 2024 2025. If you don't start making the result to build these funds and prioritize these funds around repair to repair the justice work. Now, how hard much harder is it going to be to have those discussions getting into these tighter years. Thank you very much. Thank you, Dr. Shabazz. Yeah. Are there any other comments or questions on this just to sort of wrap wrap it up based on what I've heard so far. What I'd like to do is get together some really solid evidence that links cannabis, you know, the cannabis industry with reparative justice, and why those two are coupled and linked and make sense. Get that and potentially, and I'm not sure how successful will be but if I can identify somebody who can offer testimony on that. There are scholars and non scholars alike that are talking about this if you just do a quick Google search, you'll find a lot of great information about why this makes sense what other communities have done. If you look at what I put in the packet that came right from the cannabis, the CCC I think they're called they explicitly say that communities should be using cannabis tax revenue for racial justice initiatives. And so if anything is clear that is clear. And so what I would do proposed to do is to draft a memo to my colleagues on the council to perhaps get somebody who can come and offer testimony that understands this. And then to get that on the May 16 agenda for discussion, and it doesn't have to be limited to that, but it can be focused on that. And so I would bring that all back to you at our next meeting before that so we all actually will have two meetings before that happens so we'll have more time to discuss it. So if that seems like a fair plan and we can move on but if there are any other comments or questions this is, please raise your hand or chime in. All right, so the next thing that I'd like to discuss before Dr. Erv's time limit expires on his concussion is the operating budget and I'm going to share my screen again. So we've been talking over the last few weeks about having an operating budget that we can use to do our work. And let's see here, share screen. Okay, so I haven't put any numbers in here I simply broke down what I thought were the categories that we needed to look at and cover. And of course we can add or subtract from these categories but I really wanted to. We have $206,000 plus I think there may have been some contributions from community members into the gift fund. So I'll have to ask Paul to provide or Sean to provide what the latest is we also received our $500 from the Amherst Cultural Council but that's for a specific project so we need to decide how much we would like to set aside so we can keep things really clean and transparent for the community for our operating budget. And then we need to ask, I think, depending on how we want to do it, anything, sorry anything coming out of the fund needs I think a two thirds vote by the council, but I can I also need to talk to Paul about how to work. But before we do that, I think we just really need to get a sense of what we're thinking for our projected needs in each of these areas so I'm going to go ahead and open it up because my dog's barking anyway. So, so please raise your hand if if you want to speak to this. Dr. Shabazz I think I saw your hand. Actually, let me check even did you have your hand up first. Okay, why don't you go ahead and start. I guess I'm curious about where these categories came from. And, you know, what they mean, and if there's, if we're allocating money for these categories then it for me it doesn't make sense unless we know what they are. What they're for. Are there specific expenses that are already known for these categories. That's a great question. They're very rough. They came from me there. They came off of our plan. So our multi phase plan when I looked through it. So that we'll need money to do community engagement and education, as well as any professional services we may need. But like for instance, you said community engagement with that mean is that hiring someone to do workshops. Is that printing pamphlets is it, you know, is it because I'm saying that those would be, you know, if we hired someone to teach workshops that would be professional services and not community engagement, or for instance, or the same with community education or, you know, honorarium is kind of a professional services thing as well. So I guess I'm saying, you know, it would be nice to know what we're spending money on and how. Yeah, more specifically. Yeah, what I hear you saying is we really need to develop a budget that reflects the actual work that we're going to do. Yes, yes, yes, I agree. I think the purpose for trying to at least have some projected amount like even if it's a lump sum. Right now, the money that's in the fund is for reparation benefits or at least that's the way that people may view it so we had talked and I don't know if you were here for that meeting even but we had talked about setting aside some amount of money that can be transparent to the community that will not be used for reparation benefits but that will be used by our committee to do the work that we need to do. So it doesn't sort of get, you know, messy around that we wanted to kind of pull it out. So perhaps what we need to do is really one way to do it is to sort of try to take some estimates and put them in there and know that we're putting that aside and we're asking our town manager and our council that you know we want to put that aside those are not for benefits, those are for our work. Because right now we don't have any other money to do our work so when this stuff starts to you know when we need it, we're going to, and in fact there was a request a specific request that came from Dr Shabazz and hollow through the black assembly of Amherst mass that we haven't addressed yet, which I'm not sure again even if you were here for that meeting. So maybe we do need to go back to that. And I think did her pop off. I thought his hand was up but maybe did he leave, I can't see. Okay. So, any other comments or questions right now to add to this. Yes, Dr Shabazz. I just want to say I had some more questions to to Yvonne in respect to understanding how you drew the categories from the work plan. And I think that just means kind of when I think about the projected needs in those areas, I just sort of go back to that that trajectory that appeared at least in my mind. A while back that essentially what we're what we're looking for is a way to not only create the evidentiary empirical components of a plan of a of a document we're turning in in January 2023. And so there's certain work steps and there's certain professional services we might need in in crunching some numbers or in putting together the the planning document and its support base. So there's that piece, but then there's also the piece in terms of the development of what from some language we got out of our summit in Evanston of developing the connection with the black stakeholder community. Okay. And the black stakeholder community as it exists here to, at least to where what I've observed that there's some other components out there. I haven't heard from or gotten in touch with or know about, then I'm only speaking from what I know. But I know that emergent stakeholder group are trying to develop that stakeholder group is in a place of do we do this taxing ourselves to develop this community conversation within the African heritage community. We tax ourselves and come out of our money, whatever we have. Okay, or is there forthcoming a way of having a partnership with the town of Amherst that is putting aside funding. But that can't work, because Amherst doesn't roll that way and the home rule legislation, which is going to benefits not going to creating the community stakeholder group, which is a part of getting to benefits. Do we do we just do it on our own, or is there a way to have a partnership between the town of Amherst and members of the African heritage community, wherever and however, they may come together, hopefully in a unified in a kind of organized way. But as we saw in Evanston, there was dive there were divergent constituencies around the plan in Evanston out of the black community. I'm just saying. I just need to know, is there a basis of a partnership, because I do know some, some people in the African heritage community that are trying to get organized, do want to begin to help organize the kinds of, of conversations, the kinds of healing steps, the kinds of activities that can say within the African heritage community. Let's come together on this and share and express our thoughts. Take courage, be courageous, be willing to come forward and build with others who've gone through similar lived experiences to you, maybe some that are not similar. But can we come together and develop an array, a response to this reparative, this call for reparations. All right. And that so we're ready, you know, we can move forward, we can move forward on our own resources. If that's what it comes to, or we can find a way that some of the support and the energies that is happening within the larger town community town members, if there's some way to provide a way that we can partner to get this effort organized to get these opportunities out there. Now, that's just one idea. There's also the idea of mailers, there's the idea of, you know, that presumably we would draft some type of mail out the survey is one step in that, in that conversation in that path. Mailers to everybody mailers particularly to the African heritage community. Other forms of outreach efforts that we AHRA may want to directly personally help to direct and organize. Yes, great. But I always saw there being two, two parts of this support piece that that we were looking at on the screen, community engagement, community education. There were two parts of it. One is the part we as AHRA need to do to produce our report and that be a compelling report. But then secondly, or along with that, there is the work that we may be able to, we want, we may want to support within the African heritage community in some form of partnership or another. But that's that that's how I saw it and within it, I can certainly send notes, send in my thoughts on using the categories you came up with from out of our work plan. I'm Adam chair. So I can certainly begin to put in my thoughts on that under those relative to the workflow in those two areas I envision but somewhere we also need we do the feedback on how does the as the black stakeholder members of the stakeholder can organize. Is there any way to have a partnership and a connection with the town of Amherst and receive some funds army, or that does that only just happen with businesses and developers or you know, does it ever happen, or do we have to wait till the whole rule legislation before it can happen here I'm just saying I, I'm really at a loss, I don't know, but that's the two tracks in which I thought we would we could come up with projected needs on. I've said a lot, I'm sorry. Don't be sorry, Dr. Shabazz. Thank you, even I was just going to ask for some clarification. For each of those categories is this about like we can work on this and then we visited at the next meeting. That would be really wonderful. Yes. So that you know descriptions for each category would would give the answers and make it very transparent for anyone who might look at the budget to know that honoraria means, you know, guest speakers, or, you know, professional services means the graphic designer, or the, you know, whoever whoever it is so just to as much detail as we can get into the categories, and then I think we can start to assign dollar amounts, and the budget's $206,000, as you said. Yeah, I'll get us an exact number before our next meeting of what's in there I think it's more than a little more than that. But I'll make sure I get that and I think you are absolutely right if we could start to detail this a bit and if anyone has thoughts or wants to contribute to that. You can send it to myself and Jennifer and we'll add it into the now that it's been daylighted it's in our packet. We've talked about it we can add to it. And, and so yes, I will make sure that we continue this conversation in our next meeting and are there other committee budgets that are available to us I mean I'm sure everything is public record right so are there budgets that we can kind of look at as a sample. That's a great question and you know that's the other piece that I was going to mention is, I will have a conversation with Paul about how other committees get their work done and what sort of ways they budget. You need that we're a new initiative and so we have to do some things and that that maybe other committees have already figured out and aren't you know so I'll have a conversation with Paul I'll get us our exact number. And then if you all could send me some detailed information that you would want to have added into there. I don't think we need to spend like, you know, weeks and weeks on this and in fact I'd like us to just come to something pretty quickly but I do think that just so that we really transparent with our community about that and that we do have needs, and we do want to compensate, especially members of the African heritage community either here or even outside of our community who are contributing to this so. Dr Shabazz I wanted to also say that I don't think to me personally it would be a real shame to do this work, not in partnership in collaboration with the Black Assembly of Amherst, Massachusetts and to have that work happening with no support from us and separately from doesn't seem. For me I would very much prefer that we were able to be in collaboration and support. That's what we, you know, we're here to do that work and so let's let's let this process and we'll continue this discussion at our next meeting if that works for everyone. All right. Alexis did you or Hala did you want to add anything to that. Okay. All right, it's four o'clock and so I, I know that we have some members of the public so I'm going to. I do have to leave so we're going to have to push the the census off from the next meeting. We've already talked about most of the agenda items for next week as well as the announcements that I made earlier. So let me just do read the public comment statement. During the public comment period the chair will recognize members of the public when called on, please identify yourself by stating your full name, pronouns and residential address. Residents are welcome to express their views for up to three minutes at the discretion of the chair based upon the number of people who wish to speak. The AHRA will not engage in a dialogue or comment on a matter raised during public comment but we will be listening and taking notes. If you would like to make public comment, please raise your hand. We do have four members in our attending and it just want to take this moment to thank you to the four of you who are here. We really appreciate you being here and supporting our work and just really want to share that gratitude out. I see that we have a hand up. So I'm going to move ash part well into the room. Let's see here. Hi ash. I have to unmute myself greens. I just, I just want to say thank you so much to everybody for doing this work. I want to agree more with Dr. Shabazz that building up the principle of an endowment is absolutely key before you can actually move. You know, you don't want to be arguing every year on nickel and diming for the particular activity but you want to build up that endowment that that that body of funds that then can guide the work. That's the basis for the argument. And I thought that I commend you for looking at the research that links the cannabis funds to the need for black reparations. It makes a lot of sense and there's strong arguments for it. I also know that in other other ways that the legal women voters and other groups are looking to try to enhance the quality and the, and the focus of the consultations with the black community and, and basically other people color in this. The reparations are for African Americans but the larger discussion of justice and equity is a larger community and we're going to be working hard with that and. So just I want to commend this and I want to kind of be a whatever we can do to support this work we need to do it. And it's over way overdue so thank you. Thank you so much ash. All right. So, let's see if anyone else would like to make a public comment. Please raise your hand. And yes, we have Lauren Lauren I'm going to move you into the room. I think it looks like you're moving okay you were caught in space for a second. All right. Welcome Lauren. Can you. Oh, oh, sorry. Yes, sometimes I feel like I shouldn't necessarily be commenting because you know, I just, I'm not really sure, you know what the approach is right now for the, the assembly. I'm not sure if I should hold off when you guys have more community outreach but you know I feel like I always feel kind of mixed feelings of should I say something or not but I briefly just wanted to share my thoughts because it's you know it's helpful for me to stay connected and just to, you know, voice some things out loud and to others and I have been following some of the other reparations efforts in Sacramento, California, that have really been enlightening how they are, you know, moving through their work. And I just, you know, was interested in how it was brought up in one of their task force meetings that the term reparations is universal as well as slavery so it's really important for us in, you know, the town of Amherst and communities that exist within Amherst to really understand what the perspective and their approach that reparations will be taking in Amherst that can be like a faith community perspective a historical education perspective, a community enrichment and housing and education which, you know, Amherst is very abundant in as well as land stewardship. There could also be financial literacy perspective. And I just, you know, wanted to put a focus on financial literacy because in the context of slavery, I feel like the black community and its relationship to money is very different of their communities so, you know, this can be very daunting you know, talking about funds and talking about, you know, how you're allocating funds and it just we as when I say we I just mean, you know, those who are following this conversation and your work. We really want to see, you know, some results, some tangible actions. And so I just would just really appreciate, you know, the work that you guys are going to continue to do is that really, you know, specify, because it's more than one thing but really kind of help specify what your approach is and there's more than one community. There's, you know, the larger community but for, you know, African American and black residents who want to be involved in this work, it would really help if there was more specificity and hopefully, you know, that would continue to be revealed. And the last thing I just wanted to say is, you know, when thinking about the faith community perspective. There's the story of Joseph that I'm sure any are familiar with, and how he was actually, you know, sold into slavery. It's a story of him being sold into slavery by his brothers, and how the scripture say that it was done in a work of evil or was it was done for evil but God turned it into something good. And so I just hope that out of everything that comes out of this work is that, you know, African American and black people and all those other communities who are aligned and working to support reparations and reparative justice is that we can see ourselves in a new, like in a new perspective, because this really does affect generations after generations and it would just be, you know, wonderful if we did not pass on these, you know, burdens and, you know, old perspectives to, you know, the upcoming generation so that's all I had to say. Thank you. Thank you, Lauren. All right. If anybody else would like to make public comment let's see. Please raise your hand I'll just give it one more second here. All right. So, are there any member reports or anything that anyone in the membership would like to add before we adjourn the meeting. All right, well thank you. Great meeting. We'll see you all next week I'm adjourning at 410pm Jennifer. And we'll see you next week at three o'clock. Okay, thank you.