So hi, Carol. We'll do just, yeah, welcome and go around of introductions real quick. And then we'll do agenda review right now on two minutes from our last meeting and the meeting before. And then public comments. We'll have a self education learning roundtable report back from city committees, and then creative discourse work plan update. So quick report back of what they've been and what they've what they've done and then update on their timeline. And then to dive into their survey and so I can put their draft survey link in the chat, and then make an outreach plan for the survey. And then check in on fundraising, check in on recruitment and check in on our strategic plan update before closing it out. So how does that all sound anything to add or shift around. Cool. Um, so hi. Yeah, hi Carol, my name is Shayna. I'm the committee. I'm a fun kid street. And I, or maybe let's do this with our learning round table too real quick. Um, yeah, if there's any, any info, any information to share. And I just got sent this like reparations document that I will put in the chat because I found it really useful. And now I'll pass it to Michael. And Michael Sherman. I'm a member of this committee and also member of the police review committee. And also a member of the community, community fund committee. And let's see nothing, nothing unusual or important to report on self education. And my, my self education tries to get away from some of what's going on in the committees in all the committee stuff. So it's entertainment and talent. Yeah, morning everyone I'm pin cone I work at Norwich University. And I just discover maybe you know, but I just discovered like micro aggressions. So I have been reading like some reports on it. And I was so surprised.  They're funny. I have heard a lot. So this is another thing I'm just reading now and I'm planning to teach my students to because most of the sentence are so common. Okay, people have good intention or doing it unconsciously. They are discriminated and sometimes racist so this is my one, you know, self education thing I'm just reading on my micro aggressions. I find it very interesting. Jeremy. You muted Jeremy. Yeah, good morning. So I'm Jeremy, three. Committee member, employee of the UVM health network. Yeah, in between winter and spring, currently also waiting. And I don't, I don't think I have any learning to share this week. That's me. I'm Cameron. Hi, I'm Cameron Niedermeyer. I'm the assistant city manager and staff support for this committee. I actually I think it's really interesting that Pell and brought up micro aggressions I just took a seminar that the local chat like the women's chapter of our women in leadership held about micro aggressions so there's a lot of work, at least within my sphere of women in leadership in government to learn about that and you're right I think half of the examples we're like oh yeah me too. Awesome. Oh yeah I've heard that too, and how we sort of perpetuate that right. Also took an excellent class, examining social and clinical equity in your emergency medical services delivery so is a really fascinating class. It's not something I could share, but it's not but their outcomes that will definitely come out of that. We haven't worked through them but it was a really interesting suggestion on how to track how to begin to track data in your EMS services that would help us understand a larger picture of systemic racial issues in healthcare. I don't think a lot of they discussed how services have been historically left out of racial equity conversations because you know the squeaky wheel gets the grease right and EMS is not normally a squeaky wheel. So, not a lot of time or effort has gone into the looking at EMS services and equity lens so a group came and talked to a bunch of managers about that topic and I think a lot of like really boots around examples of what we could do out of that. The first one being and again this requires a lot more work in discussion but a lot of the like Vermont State has a form that all the services have to fill out that says like demographic data about your patients, right, but it doesn't include race. And that's just an easy thing to track right so granted it's a big state form and so would work for some effort on our part to change but it's just part of a conversation we're beginning to have that really excited about. So I rambled about that for a little while sorry it's just I'm really excited about it so. Those are my learnings thank you. And Cameron, Lauren. Morning everyone. Lauren Hurl the city council rep in the committee. One thing that came across my desk that I thought I would share. I've never done it and I need to read about it more but there's a 21 day racial equity habit building challenge starting Monday that's run by food solutions of New England. I had gotten this from a partner at the Center for whole communities who said they've done it is interesting and it's racial equity in our food systems. So kind of a aspect I haven't spent that much time thinking about so in case anyone's interested, you know whether or not you do the challenge I think it looks like there's a bunch of resources and blog posts and stuff so just wanted to share that today. And welcome Carol Hello, you wouldn't mind introducing yourself and kind of why you joined us today. I'm the director of the Community Justice Center, and I'm very much interested in these topics because, you know, social and economic justice really impacts a lot of the folks that we see. And so what we're doing right now is we, one of our other community justice centers developed a study guide for the little book of race and restorative justice. So we're doing a six part series with our volunteers and we've opened it up to the volunteer some of the volunteers at the very justice center. So we're going to we're going to be examining that how how, you know, what we're doing is what we're doing equitable and are we, you know, perpetuating micro aggressions as well and, you know, our is our systems and our restorative justice system, really sensitive to those issues so that's what we are working on. I'm the justice center so we're we're taking a look at that and all of these resources I really am going to I want to bring all of these resources back to our volunteers. The staff and volunteers to keep exploring this because, like you said the micro aggressions we all do it and, you know, we're not even aware that we're that we're doing it and it's, it's super important as white people to make sure that we are taking the steps and we're doing the work and we're not putting it on people of color to, you know, tell us what to do. And so this, sorry, I just do have the resource that you are working on is that available publicly, or it's not no it's a study guide that was developed by the Brattleboro Justice Center and we're just going to follow along with that. And then we do have copies I ordered a dozen copies of the book. And once once those are all distributed for this, and this is starting on April 7 is the first night so it's six, six Wednesdays in a row. So if we have extra copies I'll make them available to anybody who wants to borrow a copy of it and read it. And then you know if there's enough interest in the community we could, we could do it again we'll see how it goes and, and either, you know, we could potentially offer it again to community members if that's something that we have in our wheelhouse. So yeah you guys are kind of doing it as like a, like a book club like study group to like read something together and then work through it together as a organization. Very cool. Yeah. Study guide really is just asking some self reflective questions, you know, about each of the chapters. So it's really, it's kind of a starting point for people who've been doing the work a lot already. It might not be that helpful but because it applies directly to what we're doing with restorative justice it's it's pretty important and you know, talking about the expansion of restorative practices in the schools and, you know, in the community in general. So it's a really good time to take a look at that and make sure that we're doing it right. Any other questions for Carol or move us into minutes review so Michael has shared to meeting minutes from March 3 and from March 17. So I'm going to take this a minute to just review those again real quick. Can I suggest something before going. Yeah, can we make it like a Google dog with this resources. We can do Google Doc. I'm looking at Cameron, I want you to be proud of me for saying no to Google Doc. But we can do this by like email, I think just kind of compile. You can use Google Docs to like store documents like that as long as they're just like resources that you guys are like, we can add stuff to during these meetings right so as long as they're being edited in live like time. If you want to share your links here we during our your introduction and sharing you could always like, I'll take those links and add it to a Google Doc, right. So editing is happening live you can use these things as repositories for documents that's not a problem. Okay, yeah, because I'm copying and pasting all the links, you know, like a word document but I don't if he as a committee if you want to go back and check right and if you want to do something about it in the future. It will be good to have some kind of resource file. Any amendments or any moves to adopt a minute. The minutes. Second. We're in second all in favor. Hi. Hi. Any opposed. Okay. Thank you guys.  Nice work, Michael. I get a lot of help from Cameron. Thank you. Report back some other committee. Can't it over to you, Michael. The police review committee is going to be having a public meeting on Monday, the fifth. At 430 to 630. There is a zoom link. Let's see, I've posted it as well. Various members of the committee have posted it on front porch forum. It's also on the front porch form calendar so you can get the zoom link there. And that. That will be probably our only scheduled public, big public meeting. We don't know what, what happens after June 30, whether the committee will be asked to continue, but we're working towards preparing a report. That will come out by June 30. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Various other outreach efforts for different constituencies. Jack McCullough, who's also on that committee and I. Are doing one. We're surveying the merchants and business owners and down to end mostly in the downtown business district, but we'll stretch it a little bit. And it's a very short. Survey. We went back and forth, and we did a lot of good samples. So we just. I've been Jack and I simply walking down around downtown. And we decided the one. The other restriction is where. Not only confining it mostly to the downtown area. But we will do some on River Street Memorial Drive, but also. Businesses on the first floor, basically, you know, at street level. Rather than just sort of, you know, going everywhere. So we have. For starters, we printed up 100 surveys and we're just walking around handing them out. In an envelope with a stamp on it. So to encourage people to just fill it out. No, no cost to them or just a little bit of time. And it'll be interesting because it was, it was sort of the last minute idea to add them. And we didn't do that. We did. We didn't do it. The merchants, but we thought it was important to know to get there. Specific. If you put as merchants on police relationships and what goes right, what goes wrong. Where they want to see change. Do you sense of the timeline for that report and stuff. Well, the deadline, we asked people to return the survey by April 10th. And then it's just a matter of sitting down and, you know, results. So I would say probably not before the end of April. But I'll get it back. I'll get back to you with anything that emerges out of this which is important. Or just circulate the summary. We haven't talked really about how we're going to be circulating resources that we've been collecting and we are doing surveys of other constituencies as well. I'm not sure what the plan is for how that's going to be distributed. I don't know. Lauren, do you know? No, I don't know the plan. I mean, so everybody, so different folks on the committee. So there's a sex worker survey I'm doing some outreach with. And thank you to Carol and her team for some people connecting with the restorative justice. But like I'm working with some survivors of domestic and sexual assault. And like, I think there are some folks we're reaching that have not been part of the process through. So, you know, at some point it might be worth just seeing obviously, like the questions are very interactions with the police focused. But whatever, whatever themes or, you know, issues that are raised, it could be worth, you know, reviewing that through this committee's lens as well, just to see if there's any learnings there. So yeah, my process, like everyone's gathering all of this information and we're going to be looking for what kind of stands out as like pressing issues that have come through that research, knowing that we've got a June 30th, at least initial deadline for a report and can't dig into every single police issue. So wanting to just focus on some as a starting point and then, you know, have recommendations for next steps. So I think that's the process is my understanding of kind of hone in on some of the things that really jumped out from the community input. And I know that another piece that we're going to be talking about today is the survey and I know that the creative discourse, there's been some conversations about, and I saw in there, I think maybe one police question, but that wanting to not do two community surveys like that, but to use the same survey to get a little bit of input on the police issues as well. So those are the highlights for that committee. Thank you. And I don't think to have it on my calendar of when the public meeting is, can you provide me so I can just put it on my calendar now? And because as you guys all know, I've been dropping things on my calendar. So it's this coming, coming, you mean drop it in the chat or that would be great. Yeah, because it's a public meeting, right? It's not just a mini mini. Yeah, okay. I may have to circulate that to you because I know. Yeah, that would be amazing. Well, thank you. Okay. And any other city committee report backs. Lauren, I just emailed you this morning about an email that I got. Let me pull it back up about the home concerns about the home energy labeling ordinance in relation to social and economic justice. And so I was one I have not been, you know, following it very closely, obviously, and was wondering if you could, if I could just put it on the spot and talk, have you talked about it for a few minutes? Sure. So this is an ordinance that city's been drafting up for a couple of years now. So essentially what it does, and I think there's a lot of misunderstanding, like looking at Peter's email. I really don't understand half the issues he's raising don't seem relevant to what this actually does. So I think there's a lot of misunderstanding of what it does. So essentially, it would say if somebody's selling a house, you have to disclose there's this like online form where you go in and it makes there's a lot of publicly available data about homes, like heating sources and other things. And it can based on the size of a house and some basic parameters, make an estimate of how much energy it costs to run that home. And then you can go in and adjust it yourself based on what you based on energy bills or other things, or you could just leave it as is if it's fine or if you don't care. And then you just have to certify that you've done this energy thing. So then that would be information that would be available to buyers. I think there's been a lot of focus on sellers, to me, this like for buyers to know what you're getting into with a potential home or to be able to look at homes and have a sense of energy costs. So basically, it's just like a gives an estimate of like what you might spend over the course of a year on energy to heat and operate your home. That's all it does. It's, I think there's some thought that it will like require people to make energy upgrades. It doesn't require anything like that. It does. There's other places who have done this and it does seem to inspire people to choose to make those kinds of investments, which is a good thing from a perspective of wanting efficient and, you know, more climate friendly homes in our community, but it doesn't require anything. And there's no data showing that it makes homes less saleable or I mean, the way homes move in Montpelier. I think it's a really hard stretch for people to say like homes are not going to move in the city based on information. So that's basically all it does is it requires that you provide this information about energy use of the home. And I'm happy to answer questions. I think it's been really confusing for people. I was just saying, I thought this passed like many months ago. So it passed. Well, there was a vote on a charter change allowing this kind of ordinance a couple years ago, and then the legislature approved this piece of it. And then so it's just been working on the language of what this actually looks like, how it'll be implemented, working to test this tool and all of that. So that's been a lot of work that folks have been doing to like to make sure that this information that would be provided is easy to access and you know, as accurate as possible. But do people have questions or thoughts or? It seems like one thought I'm having around, I did read some of the front porch form posts which did contain a lot of speculative concerns. It seems like a larger issue that's underlying this is with just the affordability of housing in general and Montpelier. And it is unaffordable for a lot of folks, especially I think, you know, middle lower income folks. And so I'm wondering, you know, if we look at our list of things that we want to be thinking about, is there something around, is there something more on affordable housing that we want to dig into with this focus on economic justice? Because it's only going to get worse, the things I'm reading kind of trends around the real estate market. So it seems like this issue of the disclosure seems symptomatic of a larger crisis that people are really feeling nervous about. Yeah, I wonder if it's worth having a conversation. So the city does have a housing task force. I wonder if it could be worth having a conversation with some folks on that and say, is there a component to it? You know, if the committee was interested, like is there work or research or any piece that we could be bringing to that conversation? There's definitely work happening. I don't know how much like this, the kind of issues we work on are part of it. I think they are, but there might be aspects that we could dig into or focus on. I could certainly try to set up some times for that. You all meet at very opposite times of day, so I think we'd need to like figure out a sort of compromise time for that. If you all sort of want to do that and talk to them, let me know and staff will make that happen for you. Because I'm wondering if we should wait until after we have the creative discourses report and to kind of see where this falls in their priorities. So if it is like, oh, we're going to go in and be like, all right, affordable housing is going to be our number one thing that we're going to work on. That's going to be, I think, a different conversation or lining us up for a different conversation than if it's important. But yeah, maybe that's a little too crass and, you know, brass taxi. So I'm not sure. Yeah, whenever y'all want to do it. Or we can schedule something. Excuse me, I'm a techno dummy. And I just copied the information about the meeting, but I don't know how to attach it. I mean, it doesn't seem to be attaching. What do I do after I've copied it? If you've copied it, you can just hit paste in the chat. Chat is the little at the bottom of your zoom screen. Chat button. Or you can email. I'm not going to take up any more time. I just, you know, feel like a dinosaur here, but it's okay. I can't find what you're talking about on my screen. No. I'll just email it to you. I'll just email it. Thank you. Sorry. Thanks for finding it. I didn't even try to find it. So thank you. Should we move into creative discourse work plan update? Cameron, can I call on you just doing kind of the report back of what they shared with us? Well, they walked through the survey. So I don't know if you want to pull that up, but they walked through that, shared a couple points of feedback from their meetings that they had. There were some interesting immediate actions that we could take. I mean, not immediate isn't like, I can finish it right now, but they certainly suggested something that came out of the LGBTQIA plus community group was safe space training for like members of city hall. How do you create a welcoming space? You got training and be welcoming space. So that is something that I'll bring up to staff and look into further. The survey was interesting. Shayna and I had some immediate feedback and they've made some changes. That was the majority of our conversation was going through the survey. So they're busy women. So a lot of very, very quick rapid fire meetings. So that's, I don't know, Shayna, did you have anything else to add to that? It was a wrap conversation. Just like the report back piece is, yeah, so they spoke with over 80 people, including 26 residents, including nine BIPOC and 14 LGBT plus, 12 community leaders, 24 city staff and 32 first responders. I think I brought up my concern that they're, they only talked with three folks in like the financially insecure housing insecure community and they were not super concerned about that. I think they said they got, they like had a very active folks that weren't like, that like shared a lot of feedback. So they didn't feel like we needed to do another round of that focus group or to like get more, you know, data points on that, which I thought was interesting. Wanted to share back the concerns I raised last time. And so where we're kind of at now in the process, right, is that we've, you know, finished up the, the focus groups and then the report will go out in late May. And so in between there, we've got this survey design and make an outreach plan. They want to get the like survey finalized by Friday and then get it out like for a couple of weeks really intensely. And, you know, we're kind of all hands on deck of like getting the survey out, getting a lot of responses. And then they won't just like take those responses, take this, take the notes from their focus group and like send them back to us. But instead of like drafting like interim report and then bringing that back out to the focus group participants for their review, like the people who did participate in the focus groups of being like, how does this look? What does this look like? You know, are we missing key points here? You know, we, I think we talked about this a long time ago, but I was just kind of reminding where we're at. And then bring that report findings to see Jack and to the city council for like, here's what we see the priorities being. And so that being done by late May. And so yeah, so there's not any questions about the like the focus group process or the timeline from here for this stage. Cool. All right. So I dropped the survey into the chat. And we've gotten one like typo change from Lauren by email. But yeah, if there's any other like type typos or bigger questions as well. And then Lauren, I thought there were two. So yeah, you'll have to like fill it out in order to to click through. So, you know, like to, to kind of go next. But what was this all of the questions that the police review committee needed here? Was there more? Yeah, just to kind of maybe start the conversation from what are the police review committee need? So I just see the one, what do you need from the police department or what do you wish they would do? What are some actions they could take to improve services? Was that from creative discourse? Did they write that? Yeah, this is all from them. But I thought you guys had worked together with the police review committee to come up with two questions that would be. Well, we came up with questions that were not this. So I don't know if creative discourse took that input and came up with this as a way to compile it or so. Yeah, I'm just wondering about like process for getting input from that group on this piece, because Monday is our next meeting, but it's just a public hearing. There's no committee discussion and not being able to discuss things. Was the timeline for the survey once it? Trying to get the survey finalized by Friday. They wanted our responses to it today. Will this be an online only survey? I think we'll talk about without reaching just because that's yeah, one of my big concerns or questions. Right, if we get paper surveys and clock them and then enter them into the online survey, things like that. How are they distributing paper surveys? Do we know that? Yeah, let's go to talk about outreach. So outreach is, that's our, we're in charge of outreach as the city committee. And so if we wanted to do paper surveys, I think, which I think we would want to do, I think that's up to us. I can print, we can distribute to some of the same places that Pelin and I flied at, you know, so, but we would then need to like get them back from folks and then be able to input them into the forms. So yeah, there's definitely some like logistical stuff to talk about there. Well, Michael had a good idea with this, the committee that they talked about earlier, stamps on envelopes and handing that out and it can certainly just come to my office, there's not a problem with that. And you guys have raised quite a bit of money to do this work. So, you know, there's funding available to buy like envelopes, etc. Just an idea. Because one of the questions that came up about the public meeting with, for the police review was, well, what about people who don't have computers who can't get access to them? So, Cameron made it possible, first of all, for us to have space at the city hall. But then we also decided, well, you know, we just maybe need to walk these things around. And people don't like filling out surveys much anyway. And they get frustrated and bored with them. So the idea was to make it as easy as possible. And I think we do have to be careful to get to people who don't have computers. Because you can't go to the library because the library is shut down. And that's the only place where there are public computers and stuff that I know of. So where would we want to distribute the paper surveys? Do we want to just like start a list here? And if you want to distribute them, I think we should use the public offices, not other places, people who come like post office, right? Or city building, instead of, you know, putting them in that, you know, home place or we did like other places, right? Bus stop and everything. I think they should be somewhere that everybody go to do their business or something. So then we will be sure that they will come back. I don't know, something like that. I think we should work with the public offices more than other places. Sorry. If I may, the problem with public offices is that they're all shut to the public at this point. City Hall is closed down. The library is closed down. You can't use the post office because it's a federal, it's a federal building, not a municipal building. We can certainly put them in a box outside. Like it's not insurmountable. The Senior Center has a portico that you can walk into, put one on the rec center, rely on partner agencies like Good Samaritan and another way. The transit center might be a good one. I mean, there are places that people can go into right now. Just got to be creative about putting them places, right? We can facilitate all of those locations. Okay. Good. We've got public offices, another way, post office, Good Samaritan, senior center portico, transit center, and also about like meal distribution spots like Bethany Church and places too. We put signs up there, but we've got a little bit more time here so we could actually reach out and make sure we're getting them at the right time. I agree with Michael though. We definitely have to take the post office off that list. That's not our building. I don't think they would let that happen. Okay. What about virtual distribution as well besides Front Forge Forum? How else can we get this out there? What are other lists and things? Seems like we could lean on our contacts from the outreach around the focus groups to get those to the groups that we already wanted to talk to. Focus group, participants, Front Forge Forum. I feel like I'm just like, Front Forge Forum, done. That's all that I... We'll share it on our social media. All of our departments can share that, no problem. Like Montpelier Live or Businesses Things? Yeah. Montpelier Live would probably do it. Yeah. Are there any other lists or as we know, like I know, I bet that Surge would probably share it. Standing Up for Racial Justice List. Are there like business association lists? Are there other neighborhood group? Is CAN liable network to share this through? Like sustainable Montpelier's lists? Yeah. And they've got like neighborhood leads and staff who had groups. So that's a great idea. What about like, I don't know, with the next time the bridge is coming out, can we try to pitch a little blurb in there with, I don't know if we have an easy enough bitly link or something that people could find it easily? Okay. So other next steps are to make the bitly link and then can someone turn the final survey into a paper survey on Friday or over the weekend to be able to print that. It's just kind of like, I think like formatting so that people can check the box. I can do that. If I get sent the editable version of it. Editable version. And then Cameron, can you do the printing and enveloping and stamping and stuff? Is that something that you can do? Yeah. It would depend on how many you want to do. I think I would recommend us go for like a drop-off box. Here's how to return it, like come back to this location and drop it off in this box, right? So that you keep your costs down because that'll be kind of expensive, but I will look into that. I won't make any purchases before I run it by y'all as a committee. Can we do that by email you think then though? How about I just run it by you, Shayna? I'll show you what money we have if everyone's okay with that. Okay. I got the bitly link, paper surveys, drop-off stuff. Do someone want to pitch it to the bridge to do some media? Michael? It's okay. Sure. I'll see what I can do with there. Outreach plan for now, I'm sure. This will be, you know, this is the focus for the next month, so more ideas will come up. One thought. I wonder about like all the shares of all the city committees, like if they all have their own networks, like I'm just thinking weird, I might like affordable housing and like the homelessness task force and some of the different, just sent it out like, hey, send this, you know, be great to get this up to whatever lists I've got. And can I ask, is it okay for me to share this with the chair of the Montpelier police review committee so we can figure out how to get input by Friday somehow? That would be great. Okay. I just want to share it if it wasn't ready. Cameron, I'm wondering if, can you be in charge of sending it to city committee chairs to have them distribute? Do you have like, is there a list of that? There is. I'll do that. Great. Michael will pitch the bridge. Jeremy will email Serge. I can do Montpelier live. Does someone want to, just want to reach out to the, you know, sustainable Montpelier and the cans and stuff? Jeremy, do you want to do that, too? Is that? Yes. And from which form post? Can we, you can only post like four times. And so do different folks want to post on different weeks? Can we like make that plan real quick? Like, you know, maybe one person can post two times next week and then we can kind of rotate, rotate from there. Does that make sense? Like, Pellan, do you want to post next week? Does that make sense? And Jeremy, you want to do the week after? Okay. And Michael, the week after that. I may be away. So I'm not sure what my schedule is right now. So I can't take that on. Yeah. I can do the week after that. And we'll take them in there. Great. And then for print and envelope distribution stuff, do we want to, um, maybe we can just like, if anyone is available, we can meet up at City Hall at, you know, 845 next Wednesday and do some distribution there or take some to be able to distribute. That's a little bit of a short turnaround, but is that what folks be interested in doing that? Sure. Sorry, it's not related with your question, but can we use public schools? I don't know, because I'm not American, right? Federal, you know, state, but I don't mean like locked down right now. Do you mean like email or no, the print one that students can take to their parents? I don't know, because it's public schools. There is more of a, it's just a brainstorming, you know, it's not just a statement or anything. I know they all have an, like an email newsletter that goes out every week. I could see them maybe putting it in that. I don't know about handing out everything. I'm not sure, but it's just, you know, just thinking. That I think goes out to every single parent. So that would be great. Thank you, Lauren. The mention of a newsletter, the Senior Center has a newsletter that goes out, like, I think it's a very weak, they get something. So that would be one place to just keep people informed about it. Great. Thank you, Michael. Great. I'm sure we'll have more ideas. Well, I just want to circle back to the edits and just, yeah, to see if there's any other, you know, structural edits or, you know, we're not asking about this or, yeah, if there's anything else that we can do. I'm just thinking about, like, Jeremy's question about housing or raising that as a big issue. Like, there's nothing in here that's like, what, what are your biggest challenges? Or, like, there's nothing that gets that. It's all, like, kind of how people interact with the city and, like, city services and city meetings and making meetings accessible. I don't know if there's, even if it was, like, an open-ended question of, like, or, I mean, I'm assuming that's, like, the angle that creative discourse, because this is a city committee really honed in on, but I don't know if there's a way to get that, like. I had the same question, Lauren. And I'm asking in something succinct way, just to get a sense of, like, the top concerns when it comes to equity in the city. I wouldn't know the right question to ask right now, but it might help triangulate with other work that's happening around, like, really, you know, top of mind issues that people are concerned about. I will send these to creative discourse and, yeah, looking forward to what the police review committee said, too. Great. I'll, I guess, I'll keep us moving along then to fundraising. Just didn't, I think we, you know, have kind of the numbers of, you know, we've got 26, I think it's, I did this math before. Yeah, 26 people to send the $50 checks to. I think that's all, like, moving. And so I don't know if we have any, anything else about kind of, like, numbers update. I think we got, like, another $100 into the PayPal, which I sent to, as a check to the city, and I think I cashed. And so, yeah, I didn't know, yeah, if there were any other big checks coming in, or if there's any other update on money. I did have a conversation with the person that I mentioned who said that there would be that person will send a contribution. And that person also belongs to a group that a small reading discussion group on on equity and social justice. And I think everyone on that group, according to my contact, is has subscribed to the newsletter. So that may be our, that may be our way of, you know, to getting our most effective fundraising at this point. I don't know. I can't think of any, any other way to do this easily, except, you know, going to be all people we know if we want to do that. But yeah, that's a whole level of commitment. And I don't see the newsletter for some reason, it doesn't I thought I subscribed, but it doesn't come to me. So there's only been like two posts of three or three maybe. Yeah. Yeah, there's it's not a well maybe automatically going to junk mail. I don't, I don't, you know, I don't check junk mail regularly, because there's so much of it pouring in that. Yeah. And, you know, sometimes those filtering systems do things you don't want them to do. But, but I think that that may be our best, our best way of asking people who are already showing some interest in what we're doing to help out. Yep. Cool. And Cameron, did you have enough to be there too? No, we got one more $100 check and we deposited it and I don't have an update on the number. I will have that by, because it won't have processed through. So it's the same as last time. We have an update to you guys next week. Cool.  Yeah, whatever that is. Okay, we definitely got that also those the the stipends are in our warrant system. So those should be going back to creative discourse super cool. Okay, and then for recruitment, I don't think there's any update. We'll just kind of keep chugging along, looking to see if there's any update. And then we had on the agenda last time strategic plan update and sorry, I inadvertently assigned Jeremy for this and Jeremy was like, what are you talking about? And so I think that was just in my head of what that was. But I'm just wanting to I think there was a question last meeting or the meeting before about how we should update our strategic plan. And so I can't attach that. But let me see if I can drop it in the chat here. Sorry, this is taking me a minute. Well, I guess what we're doing is that you know, does anyone have any? I guess I don't really know how to facilitate this because I don't really remember what our goals were. I feel like I'm I still feel like I'm like, should we still just be waiting until after we get the report back from creative discourses to update our strategic plan? Are there any kind of updates that we want to do before that? Is that a concern of like, do we want to be updating our like the aspects besides our project and policy components? And here we go. And to me, it seems like so the city is going to be doing the strategic planning now in the fall this year. And that will better sync up with the budget. So to me, it would be like having this in place, ideally before that process, so it could be informing that and be a piece of, you know, we've got to I forget the exact wording, but inclusive welcoming something piece of our strategic plan as a city. And so like this being able to fit into our format would be ideal for timing. And I guess just like process wise for us, like, is there any value to to me? Like it makes more sense to me to do it after we get the input from creative discourse.  Or how are we going to assess which projects to move forward with or like in that conversation valuable before we're just like digging right into the content that we get? Otherwise, I think doing it after we have that to inform it probably is fine. And then just figuring out a focus for the year and how that could feed into the city's strategic plan. Yeah, I think I agree, Lauren. It seems like in terms of kind of content areas to focus on, it's going to depend a lot on the creative discourse research. There are some other kind of tactics here that we could start thinking of in advance or acting on. So I'm looking at the public engagement bucket and the cross pollination bucket. So we're definitely doing public engagement with creative discourse. But we may want to think about kind of a long-term mechanism that helps us stay engaged with the public kind of as we continue on past just the initial creative discourse work. So is there a structure we want to put in place just to make sure we're kind of interacting with the public more regularly or getting feedback from them in some way? And then the second, the cross pollination, it looks like there's a lot of stuff there left to do. That's really just about how we interact with other city committees, how we're interacting with city council more regularly. Although I think some of us have been attending those city council meetings off and on. This develop a framework around which we can review policies. So I think there's some work there that still feels relevant and we could begin to work on. And then waiting for what comes back from creative discourse to kind of prioritize our issues that we want to take. Maybe as a starting point of just trying this on is that we could get the list of the committee chairs from Cameron and instead of just emailing them out, have it be more personalized touch from a number of the committee of doing that outreach and saying we'd love to come and talk to your committee about who we are and what we're working on right now and how we could work with your committee in the future and kind of like what Carol's doing in this meeting, just being like here's who we are, here's what we're doing. And let me sit in on this and see if we can support. It seems like it may be low hanging fruit next step and I don't know how do folks feel about that or other next steps here. Yeah, I think I like that. Just very quickly, I think we will want to be fairly clear about what we're doing when we go to these committee meetings and what the offering or the request is. So I think there's a little bit of thinking prior to just showing up that our presence there is kind of useful and kind of clear and not just like, hey, I'm hanging out. So that's the only thought I have on that. Sorry, Carol. Go ahead. That's okay. I was just going to tell you all I put a message in the chat too. I have to go, but thanks for letting me sit in. I'll see you the next time, hopefully. Do we want to think about that now? Like what are goals? Like do we want to do that as part of getting a survey out there? Or is this a bigger like how how yeah. Yeah, I feel like there's an immediate need. We want to make some connections to get the survey out. I think that could probably be taken care of through email communication. Yeah, I think this is more we want to be a service to other committees. This is how we can be that service. And this is what you should do or how we're going to continue to interact in order to facilitate that. So that that's where I think a little bit of design could happen. I feel like my brain feels like it's like six o'clock in the evening. And I'm trying to have this conversation, which is confusing, but I'm just like I'm like, I don't know what to I'm just like, okay, not thinking like creatively or like moving forward on this conversation at all. And so if other people do like if you want if ready to like have this conversation now, I would love to have it happen. But I'm just feeling like I'm not being particularly helpful here. Or I like don't know what questions to ask. Sorry Jeremy. No, I mean, maybe a question just to get conversation going right now, with an eye towards doing this and more structured or later is, I mean, what do people feel like we can offer to other city committees? That's within our capacity within our scope or mission. What do we want to do to support other city committees is the question. I mean, one thing that comes to mind. So just thinking of like the budget worksheet and process like even as a starting point, like I wonder if a connecting with various committees and I mean, I think there's like variations of that tool that are not just budget focused, but like project design or as they're setting their own priorities. So maybe this would be like over the course of the summer as like all of that speeding into the city's planning and budget planning for the year, like are each of the committees thinking about and equipped to or if there's things that they're struggling with thinking through that that we could be supportive of. But like, if nothing else like it's probably just something like most committees aren't what I don't know, but like I would imagine like they aren't necessarily in like a structured way thinking through equity implications of the, you know, conservation commission's priority or like I'm just like different ones are at different in different ways. So if there's some like more uniform way or just making sure everybody's thinking about it and knows that this group exists and has resources and So Cameron and Ken City set up a meeting for all the committee chairs, then they can share information together, then each chair can go back to your committee and just explain then we can come up with ideas to support each other. Is there anything possible? I have literally never been asked that and I see there's no reason to not. I mean we could totally do that 100%. That'd be a fun meeting actually, but I've literally in my career never been asked to do that. Love it. So that's a really cool. We can certainly use a lot of time. Say it again Jeremy. It's a really great idea and it saves a lot of time and effort to get folks together. I mean you wouldn't hit everybody probably, but so that's really awesome and I think Lauren to your point too it's you know part of that meeting is kind of helping folks start to apply the lens of equity through their work and I like what you said Lauren about a similar kind of tool or set up principles or whatever that could help them start to embed the equity perspective and how they're thinking about their issues. Do y'all want to put sort of on your agenda to start talking about like how you would want to facilitate that meeting? So I certainly wouldn't want to put it on the counter in like a couple weeks and then be like now you guys have to do that you know so maybe start having that on your agenda conversations about it because I mean we can certainly do that. I think that's really exciting to me. Yeah that sounds great to do next time. Great thank you guys. Okay so I think our plan is so next week on the 7th if we have every you know Cameron will email us if everything's still falling into place but if you can meet up in front of city hall to distribute the paper surveys to around town and then on the 14th meet back meet back here on zoom and we'll check in on survey outreach and make a plan for this for this meeting. Yeah cool. Yeah anything else? I'm just gonna do this on the calendar right now. Exciting.  You need to have more fun Cameron. The time for the city hall gathering is 8.45 is that what I heard you say?  That's why I proposed that. Okay that so it gives me a boot in the rear end to get the minutes out soon. Oh yeah no. All right well thank you all I think that's it anything else? Yeah there's anything else. Cool. Thank you. I know a lot of you folks live in Montpelier it's supposed to snow remember that the alternate side winter parking does not end until 1201 April 2nd so I don't want to get anybody last-minute tickets so make sure you're doing the right here about it. Who is the optimist who said April 2nd?  Let's just all pray the snow melts in like a day. It usually does. It will. That doesn't mean though there won't be another one. Oh my god. All right ever the optimist Michael thank you. Yes right well I have a rule of thumb that's that I followed ever since I've lived in cold climates that there's always at least three snowfalls from the time spring is supposed to start on the calendar until April until Easter whenever Easter is so it's a pretty good I'm doing pretty good on that record actually. All right thanks y'all. Thank you. Bye. Have a great day.


Artificial colors—harmful, harmless, or healthy. Now I know I tell people to eat the rainbow, bright colorful foods, but not that colorful. We now know artificial colors are harmful. 34 years ago, Chief of Pediatrics Ben Fine Gold published heresy, suggesting that artificial food colors could so damage a child's developing nervous system that could actually affect their behavior. Dow Chemical disagreed as did Coca-Cola and other players within the $200 billion food industry who were able to convince the medical establishment that this was ridiculous. But the truth can only be buried for so long, and last year, after the publication of this randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled food challenge in the most prestigious medical journal in the world, showing artificial colors increased impulsivity, inattentiveness, and hyperactivity among young children, there have now been repeated calls to better regulate or ban artificial colors altogether.


Trump's hold on the GOP is that he was the first to appeal only to emotion and not to reason. Yeah. Complete surrender to tribalism via motion for power, worship, Trump's fact and truth. Yes. Is this a postmodern view? Well, I don't know if it's postmodern because I think pre-postmodernism, this has been used effectively. It's been used effectively by authoritarians for generations. You know, this methodology, this way of seeing it, the way of manipulating people, the way of encouraging tribalism and getting people riled up around this kind of agenda is not new. You know, there's a certain intellectual strand of thought that is called postmodernism that takes these ideas and grounds them in a particular philosophy, pretty weak philosophy, pretty lame philosophy but a philosophy nonetheless. But this train of ideas has been around for a long time. Authoritarians have had it. Pragmatism has been around for a long time. Tribalism has been around for a long time. The use of tribalism via emotion has been around for a long time. So I don't think that this is postmodernism on the right because I don't think what motivates Trump is some postmodern ideology. I think what motivates Trump is pragmatism. Pragmatism adds it all out. Now, is there a difference between pure pragmatism and postmodernism in the view of truth? No, in the end there isn't. But pragmatism comes earlier philosophically than postmodernism. Pragmatism, William James and the other pragmatist philosophers were late 19th century, early 20th century philosophers. Whereas postmodernism is a phenomenon of the mid 20th century as an intellectual movement. So you can come to very similar conclusions based on very different philosophical ideas. And even though the conclusions about truth might be similar, the way they're applied and the way they're manifest is very different. But yes, what we're living today is an era in which significant portions of both the right and the left don't believe in truth, don't believe in reality, don't believe in principles. And where everything is mushy and flexible. And it's why in the end Trump cannot be successful. He lost. It's because he doesn't have principles. And imagine a true authoritarian cannot be a pure pragmatist. A pure authoritarian cannot be a pure pragmatist. Now pragmatism and being pragmatic are bad things. Being pragmatic is not a good thing. Being practical is good. The practical and the moral are what objectives stand behind. Being pragmatic is by definition a banding principle. That's what it means. And I know there's confusion when Americans talk about this. But what pragmatic means is a banding principle. And Trump was the ultimate pragmatist. And he acted pragmatically. I mean, that's what he is. And unfortunately, many businessmen are pragmatists because the only principles they've been taught are the principles of altruism, which they reject. And they associate principles with altruism. And therefore the only alternative they know is being pragmatic, which is abandoning principles. And unfortunately, many businessmen are pragmatic. Pragmatic and practical are not synonyms. It is a massive mistake intellectually, conceptually to treat those two as synonyms. And certainly, Anne Rand would be horrified by that idea. Anne Rand, whose concepts were important to her. Definitions, words were important. And pragmatic is a very different concept than practical. What we need today, what I call the new intellectual, would be any man or woman who is willing to think. Meaning, any man or woman who knows that man's life must be guided by reason, by the intellect, not by feelings, wishes, wins or mystic revelations. Any man or woman who values his life and who does not want to give in to today's cult of despair, cynicism and impotence and does not intend to give up the world to the dark ages and to the role of the collectivist brought. All right, before we go on, reminder, please like the show. We've got 163 live listeners right now. 30 likes. That should be at least 100. I figure at least 100 of you actually like the show.  But at least the people who are liking it, I want to see a thumbs up. There you go. Start liking it. I want to see that go to 100. All it takes is a click of a thing, whether you're looking at this. And you know the likes matter. It's not an issue of my ego. It's an issue of the algorithm. The more you like something, the more the algorithm likes it. So you know, if you don't like the show, give it a thumbs down. Let's see your actual views being reflected in the likes. But if you like it, don't just sit there, help get the show promoted. 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