rstanding how to project their information and so on so generating ad hoc reports and the such and of course there's inspection components in that concept as in the city okay so and there can be various roles there can be unlimited roles so you could define the roles by directors managers and elected officials of course you know the the actual city policy department and planning and so so you can sort of create roles and make the system sort of appear to them as in their role they need to to have those functions i'm going to give you some examples of where it's used and what they use it for and then i'm going to come back and actually show you a demo so we currently work with city los angeles we have for really 20 years over interest you went in place about 15 17 years ago and they use almost every kind of program these are just examples of what they do they have mandatory registration they have manual mandatory annual fee the registration levels are north of 95 percent i put 95 because they will say it's 98 percent but it's just because some years in the new property they're they're not there as the county just started that with us they will actually go live in 2021 and the they have about two million properties to register and so that's going to be a more or less the same same sort of scale as Los Angeles City is and again they also will have a mandatory registration program annual fee and of course right now we don't know the registration level we'll know next year city of Beverly also has it they have no annual fee but they do have manual mandatory registration and they primarily do registration registry and some stabilization work in the service management also they also have 95 percent registration level Mountain View is you know is has a registry so basically data collection they don't have mandatory requirement and they don't have any annual fee they were about six percent and registration level now they didn't didn't expect that it's been two years and they're in touch so coming up a little bit but they realize that without actually requiring somebody to do something so why would they register you know i hope with a benefit for them so now they're changing that and starting January 1 they will also be on a mandatory registration process which will actually hopefully definitely lift that Berkeley which is just that we are in contract conversations them they are they are the oldest registry in our rental stabilization program in probably the country if not Cambridge is probably older in mass but I think the oldest program in the country we've just begun working with them and they also have mandatory they also have annual fee and they're very high penalty for not paying any fee so basically they have very high level of compliance but the basic idea is that they've been aware they've got a very successful program over almost 40 years and and they're also and part of the reason they can do that is the amount of data that they have of the program Alameda also one of your neighbors they have almost all these things that are written there you know they just started this year and they are actually I didn't put a number there but they're actually right now at 95 percent and this is their first year and they also they began this you know it's not big in 2021 they they charged for a number and they actually collected more in fees this year than they ever did in the past it's all online so Alameda that shared 95 percent also and then Englewood will start next year again so what they're watching is that they're actually looking at each of the ordinance and saying what's working and what's not working what I was saying that and we are fairly well there's just a couple of example columns there are many other aspects of this program and you can sort of see over that tenant buyout sort of doesn't work or maybe this kind of data collection is it doesn't really matter so you can sort of watch that and we across a lot of different ones you know we have information that we can we can certainly share and of course Oakland is only uses the system for eviction management they also started last year they also have 95 percent of evictions now in the system not just for this year they go back eight years now so they have complete data for eviction for eight years now in the system so they can delete this and I'm going to show you some examples what I'm going to do is I'm going to switch over to my browser here and show you how how the system works and what typically is involved in getting the central data that we talk about and so this is the exam I'm going to use Alameda's you know sort of test system to to show you and of course I'm going to show you some other examples also so here in the case of Alameda then you see two different logins landlord and tenant so one of the key things in the development system was that it has to be super easy to use if it's very complicated then of course that'll be the first problem that people won't want to use it or they can't use it and then it becomes ineffective so user experience was critical and we've now been doing it for so many years and she found what sort of works and what doesn't work and then what people like and what people don't like you know so I'm going to log in first at the landlord our property owner and then I'm going to show you that how it looks from the other perspective of the other users here's an owner and they have to register when they register that anybody can register and then depending on your role you actually you know you can sort of and it can be both a property owner and a tenant it's not unusual at all so I'll show you tenants by going to tenant silencer later so this person is just okay there's something sorry about that so because it's a demo account this person owns a lot of properties in Alameda no this is not a real account so one of the things we want to do was to actually have the ability to manage multiple properties and it's not not at all uncommon for people to have multiple properties and then each property has this thing called property card and the way you add a property is very simple you come here and when you start first time there's nothing here and you can just say add property and then you do that it's just say okay well bring your part you know because all this can be changed to look like where we want to be so you have to go to your bills property bill and say okay what's my what's my uh a parcel number so that's on your property tax bill so you can just type in that property tax bill number or actually this is a parcel number and then you there's a pin now pin number is something that the city issues it can be issued or it can be actually included in the bill it's other can be some information in the bill that only they can have and so as long as you have a property bill you can get a pin number actually add the property so verify that's a real property so that is a corrected the address here so that is the address of the property and it goes back to the database and and verify that so we actually start these programs by pre-loading them with information from the county so we already have your county information for example most of those counties in the state we we have we have information for so we would actually on an annual basis working with your with your city uh be bringing in this data and also overlaying that for data that you already have and sometimes county has the right information in terms of units sometimes it's actually needs to be augmented by the information that comes and one of the first things that we found was that almost every city that i mentioned here and many others they just didn't know what rent they had i mean you think you got 15,000 but when you actually start you might find out it's 70,000 and or it could be it could be 40,000 and then that that estimate starts coming in and and people start sort of reporting things you suddenly find out your inventory is actually a little bit different and of course the number of units changes a lot over over for your time you know the city as old as yours definitely the unit counts would have would have shifted over the years since the original permits were issued so one of the things that happens is that that you start sort of getting that information so what i've done is i've gone and added that particular property and now it's it's also in one of many properties that i supposedly own here okay so the the idea here would be that once you get a property what do you do with it so what i do with it is that i can add units so i'll look i'll show you a property card and you'll show you what what actually happens with the property the other thing that's worth remembering is that also tracks for past properties you might have own so let's say i owned a property and i sold it well i might still have some litigation against it i might have some pending rents against it whatever the issue might be i don't lose the data that but i also shouldn't have any ability to change that data you know and i can pass it on to the new owner there is some information that's very useful for my own manage so you don't lose the information you actually can stay keep the past properties in the system okay so i'm going to pick one i'm going to start to see if i can pick the one that i just added okay i just added and it has according to the the system there are two units in it okay but i don't have any units in it added yet so it just says okay and it actually has already names for these units from some past information that the information i have had so literally all you do is you go there and you can change various things like it change the contact information i can add various types of contacts here i can say oh i'm going to add another one or i can basically you know create there's an owner type that it could there could be a you know property manager so this kind of information you can add and change and modify it and of course often properties might have multiple site addresses you might have a main street address and a side street address especially for multiple buildings so all of this stuff it manages really well so this thing has two units one is a lower unit and an upper unit so in a lower unit i can kind of go and say okay i'm gonna i'm gonna apply for an exemption because this is actually not a not for rental at all it's actually been say classified for exemption so i can do that so these all these processes you know have to be managed from here so right now there's no information and again each city does this a little bit differently so i can edit this property and say you know this is called the same address as the other one occupant type is a is a vacant is a manager so you can actually see that you can pretty much follow the process that let's say the rent subsidized tenant or it's an owner that's staying there it's vacant or whatever so i can say that it's owner staying there that's why i'm seeking exemption later on it's got two bedrooms that's there but watch that if i pick a different kind of tenant it'll ask for different information so based on what i'm selecting i'm collecting different data for that particular unit so let's say the data turns he started on a particular day let's just say it's number one and and i've got a base rent of fifteen hundred dollars and the current rate is also ten hundred dollars and i can say that in lasting pieces also number one okay what do you provide with it parking do you provide recycling you know and you put gas up that's allowed you may say i don't want to collect all this stuff and that's fine so every as i said every city every every customer of ours has a different form here but whatever you decide we can put in some cities say we don't want to collect the names of tenants you know others might say no we absolutely want to know so i'm going to put in my name and of course there are language preferences and all that you can offer now this is basically you know and why that is because if you have to say contact somebody then you can use that so i can add more information and so on i can add more tenants so essentially i can maintain this information on an ongoing basis once i do that i can start the process of registering this so registration is literally that simple you go through and you put in the information once most of the time the information only changes maybe once a year maybe every couple of years the property structure doesn't change for years and years all you're changing is one ten ten one ten ten one ten left you know and so really what starts happening in the back though is actually beginning to observe how the tendencies change in various parts of the city and that's what we're going to look at next the other things that you can do so this particular customer does a lot of things so for example now that i have this i can actually say i'm going to on the platform exemption still on a contact i can do a buyout of the event i can do a capital improvement on this particular and so i'm going to take this master market and do some capital improvement so i can make all the different requests to the city and communicate what i'm doing and all this is done digitally so there is not a lot of people going back and forth and the idea is that i can actually create this now if it was already rented i would actually do some other things i can also take the whole property and pre-city exemption in this case because that's one of the things that they allow the other thing you'll notice up there is a little card and what the card does is in this particular city for example they also charge some fees so i'm going to so the various fee for what is because this one has a lot of demo accounts we can go and pay pay pay for a particular fee right office so a lot of times you know this is very convenient and people just come and pay for here and so this is just a normal kind of a kind of an account that the people the property owners will have and they'll be able to to work for that okay so once i do this what happens is that i'm going to go back and look at some other properties already been registered so you'll see what happens in that case i'm going to open this other property that has one unit and in that you'll notice there is something called a case history below that so every annual cycle of rent registry creates a case and the case basically is just a name or what it says there's actually a record of what registration happened so all the information is right here you know what was done with the copy invoice and very documents and stuff that afterwards it's all kept here so over a period of time if i made any capital improvements if i did an eviction all of that's actually going to be recorded and and can be saved and that's very helpful as you plan so for example let's say that here's somebody who i would actually file a rent increase that's exceeding the AGA for that particular year i can do that let's say i want to submit a no-fault termination so you can do that but you have to tell me why you're doing it because that's now the state law so i can come here and say okay i'm doing this and i can create the whole process from here and the whole eviction process can be managed from here so let's say i want to make the eviction effective this is the day i'm going to apply is it in person what did you do well of course there can be all sorts of programs and particularly in alameda for example they have a location requirement so if you if you move somebody out you have to pay the relocation what's that depending on the you know equipment size and all that so all of these processes which are very difficult to manage very manually difficult to are all now digitally but manually and there are exciting ordinances and such so it's it's sort of very you know and it's controlled and and degree of the degree to which you want to use it totally depends on you know and you i can say i just want to this tree so i know all the data or it could be much more than that okay so that's of course from the site of the owner uh what is the tenancy so let's say i'm also a tenant in the same city so i'm going to flip over the tenant for most part you can just find partitions for some decisions that have been taken now that's alameda you might you can make it so that hey tenants can find out about a property before they move in you know a tenant can find out more about uh you know about the region where they're moving into what neighborhoods and such it can be tied to the other information that the planning and others might be putting out so you could actually look at this and say hey there's a unit exemption thing that that was that was putting for my unit so that's again because the demo data so you know some of this may be an appropriate for you know typically tenants won't do that so they would have some idea about about information like this so i'm a tenant and i'm in a place i'm paying $15,000 this is what i this is what the landlord has reported so some of these cities will say hey can you verify that's really the rent you know some cities say now i don't care as long as property not told me that that's good enough for me now i'm going to do is i'm going to log out and log in as from the city side a little bit and so let me do that so what does the city see and what does city do i'm logging in as say as a like a like a administrator of the program the first thing is of course i see my dashboard of what's going on in my program so of course this could be different for each program so you might have a program that's on affordable housing side of the rental there could be certain special category of rental program there could be also just in terms of capital improvements so here it tells me how many cases i have of each type and i can sort of dig deeper so 12 capital improvements that are pending that are you know 1060 unit that's in a part for exemption so i can directly see what my city looks like and you can say look i want at least this information to be visible to my later officials so they can also look at what's going on where they are what's going on we'll see in a second how and then of course there can be other types of reports and you can have extensive reporting capabilities that say okay show me all the ones that have bios you know what and you can say what what are the status how many bios are actually getting through how many are defaulting how many so all this information can be can be captured and you can create a fairly detailed sort of you know report on various types of aspects of your program you know whether it's registry whether it's stabilization whether it's rental inspection all of that can be captured here so and this is all the all the kind of all cases here i'll quickly go to let's say that or some other property here and you'll see that this is the same property that we registered but you'll see a lot more tags on the top the city is the same property than what the property owner might see because my role now is an administrator i can i can i'm going to take a number of photos during inspection that i might keep some notes on this particular one i might also have correspondence logs so i've spoken with the property owner i've spoken with the tenant so all those correspondence logs are also kept in the system i might also want to see it on a map to see what's going on with the property you know over time i said the data comes from google or some other place and of course the most importantly is something called a change log so from the day you start every every action that's taken by anybody whether it's by property owner or whether it's taken by by by the city is actually logged and this timeline really helps you to reconstruct what might have happened with the property over a long period of time and you can compare this data and see what each region has happened so this is one type of data which might do i'm going to in this time i'm going to switch over to a different one and show you how you can generate reports that are actually even more uh so this is actually oakland's uh data you know this is again not of their data but it's oakland's sort of setup so here's a database dashboard that's quite different so here what they're tracking is what are their trends and and and notices that they go out to or no fault evictions so they can say okay well looks like most of these are notice disease you know and then of course some of these are broken down by 90 day 30 day over where are they happening you know so they can have number of data sets and say looks like most of which zip code are most of the evictions happening they can also look at it on the map which i'll show you in a second and so they can track what exactly is happening in their environment based on the data sets that they have okay they can also do other data report but their data report is all tied to eviction that's the only program they're tracking again underneath there is a registry and every single property in oakland is actually in the system it's just they don't mandatory they really require anybody to register the property what they require is evictions have to be registered every eviction has to be reported just as i think that's an ordinance thing that coming up here's something that that l.a county is using this is there again to just sort of various various use cases that show you how how data is used by various constituencies so they use this data they also have an interactive which is going to go live very soon and on january 1 they'll start collecting information but they are tracking this is their preservation database the the long goal for l.a county is there were two and two or four million properties uh that that they're all together out of which how many are at risk in terms of projects how many are you know tax tax credit properties that are like that so i can just manage my tax credit program and see what is my current status of my tax credit based properties and how are they doing and where they are so this is a much more sophisticated use case of preservation database and they can watch on a map and say hey you know we don't have our transportation you know all of our properties are here so what do we do about that so again they're using this program for a very different use case this is subsidized housing so they want to see how their a long term subsidized housing risk structure is so they can watch the risk and say look we're going to lose 20% of our our properties because they are at risk so they can watch the risk levels for various types of properties and see what they need to be doing in a planning sense to enable that so that's that's another kind of use case that you see uh that's very it's also very effective it's not coming up because i think i've got everything on the same page okay so here they're watching these programs for uh what are under construction right now what are proposed what is coming when where they are and they can sort of meet bring in other planning data and decide if that's that's going to actually be effective or not given where the curve is where the county is laid out okay uh they can also look at the risk profiles for properties and see what's going to go and what's going to happen with various sort of properties over time so this is actually property by risk level uh you know where they where they are with city has most risk in the county and therefore they can sort of look at the budgeting and all that accordingly so it's coming up uh so these are all property at risk what are high level so and but these are diggable so they actually can be all so i can look at the very highs and click on them i'll get the list of all of the highest properties that can go through every single one of them and then kind of analyze that property and that's important because now what you're doing is you're researching this data and saying what can i do with it so now once again you'll see this property card that you saw before but that was in the rent context now you're looking at in the preservation area so someone like like sara's planning department could be looking at this and saying all right what are these different what position does it belong to or the tax credits on this program so they track all the over 140 different attributes on every project from here and of course how is this subsidized or not is it is there a ticket program or not and they can keep adding that over time so let's say something was not a affordable housing property but wasn't later on given some loan to to add some property or maybe convert some of the some of their property into a photo program and they got they can track all that from here there is and the last thing i want to show you in that context is the research tool so here's the research tool that's very let me log me out and just to find it here i'm going to do a property research so here i've got every single property in l.a county that's in the preservation database of the county the thousand thousand units in it and so i want to kind of research that so i apologize for the loading because i think we're running video and everything when we turn off the video a very affordable property in the l.a county that's available many many of them and let's say that i wanted to see which of the properties that are at risk and also are funded by l.a county and of course they don't have and they can apply this filters and as i do that these five properties are funded by them that also address so maybe they can take some action right away so then i can look at that and then go to go to one of those properties and see what's going on with that one and once i do that i can actually go to the same data card that we saw so some high-level information about bond hours here but i can actually go look at that property exactly like i was looking at the other so you can see that the core is the same it's everywhere it's the property card it's all the units and your information and so on but depending on the use case of the customer there are different use there are different use cases so clearly i mean if your primary you know sort of goal is to just compile this data and understand how they're into market evolving and what's happening in in your city you can do that county here is looking at affordable housing also on top of that and then and they're also looking at the RSO which is rent stabilization ordinance that they passed so they're all laying the data on top of that so this can really become a kind of a very powerful tool for managing housing over a very long period of time and also aggregate the information that's coming from various sources in the city from planning from from building building safety permits and so on actually see how really the policies can be shared based on the data that you think so i'll stop here and and see if you have any questions it was a little bit answered regarding the fees that i was wondering in other cities if you said it i didn't catch it what the fee was that they charge and i'm assuming that's to the property owner per parcel to cover the cost of the program because we're going to the typically that that amount depends on the volume of units you have most of the times the fee is based on number of units not number of parcels so if you have four you know it's per unit and it ranges from as little as $22 a year to $150 a year depending on what you have and so typically three to four dollars a month although we have to maybe ten dollars a month per unit you know it adds to the rent and that's determined so the first year most of these customers have gone and done their inventory kind of assessment how many do we really have do we really have 10,000 or do we have 15,000 because that can make a big difference and one and let's say and against that what is the cost of our program for cost of our program is it's requiring us to do say you know two staff members or three so what is the cost to run the program so based on that they would say this is a cost neutral program and generally the fee based on that and it ranges as I said from a very large program in Los Angeles it's really not not not not as high but you know in a smaller program that they a little bit higher but typically not much higher than I think $84 for example in Alameda which has which is five thousand per six thousand units which is very few so they have to spend the cost across more so I would sing back to your numbers a bit lower yeah thank you for the presentation I I'm a data person so I I love thinking about all of the the ways that this could be useful and and the you know the benefits of being able to aggregate data I am wondering and this is I'm not sure this is a question you can answer but given that you've worked with other jurisdictions I'm thinking you might have heard you know one of the concerns that we've heard from at least several property management company representatives and landlords is concerned about this being a really onerous process for data collection and so I'm just wondering if you know it doesn't seem that way to me based on what I'm seeing but again I don't have all the information I don't have you know I mean and we haven't even really begun to talk about what kind of information we want to collect the you know there's so many variables but how you know what has your experience been with staff from the jurisdictions that you work with talking about the you know the enrollment process with landlords in their jurisdiction if anything thank you for raising that question and actually I think generally property owners will say that it's so hard and so much burden on me and so on so forth but of course that has to be addressed and so as you saw I mean I was able to register a property within I think about for half a minute you know it doesn't really take very long it's actually easier than creating an account on twitter you know if you know so it's not that hard and the proof is not me saying that Alameda started this March April I think when they went live by June they had everybody on you know how hard can it be and we have elderly people who said look I really don't want to create an account there are other people who said I don't have access so what's what often cities have done they said okay you know I think 85 90 percent of the people are gonna really just go and register it's really not that difficult others are going to want some some assistance so they will provide that sort of helpless type of a situation and then there would have been we can also help out but actually registration process is quite straightforward I think what what David what people refer to is hey but you know I do eviction right now I didn't I can just do that you know but you know and I can just send the letter to three-day notice to the owner I'm done right I'm sorry the turn I'm done well this doesn't let you do that because you actually have to upload that but again I mean I think we're all used to taking a picture or something and uploading so I think that particular part of the I think objection is now less and less real as more people are just used to doing these things thank you and then one more question related to confidentiality and you know disclosure of public information information that we receive that may be private but because being a public agency then becomes public information so and that has been raised as a concern I'm just wondering how you navigate that with the other jurisdictions or what you know just kind of how that how that works so that's a great question so that that comes up every single time and as it should so there are really three parts to that one is we never store any financial information somebody pays actually goes to a otherwise platform is compliant we send it to the payment processor just like you take a parking ticket money you don't really store that so the financial information is never stored you know the second portion is property owners information so property owners information is actually publicly available everybody knows who owns this property so this is not you know so is unit information the third piece is the tenant information which actually is the most so this platform actually is encrypted platform we actually store everything encrypted from and it actually meets very high encryption standards it is you know it is sitting on amazon which also sort of further secures it and so we have and we've had 20 years of data of management this we've never had an issue like this so and every time we work with the city we go through fairly rigorous you know analysis of what the security standards are with county of Los Angeles they put it through almost a month worth of sort of what they call reputation testing and all these kinds of things so we go through a full analysis of the data security and then the last thing is that some city also take a decision to say I don't want to collect this information for certain information because I don't want to be liable for it for whatever reason you know and there are various levels of that I I think some city will say why do I need to know this information you know maybe this is not really relevant I just want to turn into one turn into others might say no I need to know the name how do I contact them to some third maybe I will take them a cinnamon turn into unless they choose to give me that information so there is all this sort of levels of security that that are fairly standard in the industry and we follow them to jump in here as well you know actually make a phone call like it's 1996 you know there are definitely advantages they are policy first and then make the text you know really and then building our policy picking up you know in terms of other you know there's like a 3-1-1 function that I think 3-D-I could offer public works and you know we're not really there yet in terms of some level we have residents at every income level make an educated guess right about how these units are functioning in our property in our um our housing demand at these different you know one piece that comes to mind for me a rental unit I mean I think they're really hearing different stories from different parties and you know the truth probably lies somewhere in the middle and this would at least get a part of the way there in terms of you know under some individual unit so our influence by how we might benefit from this information we did you have something you wanted to add yeah thank you um I appreciate those comments sir and thanks for the question mayor coming the one thing uh well sort of two related things that I would add um one um through IT's great work on my city of Santa Cruz dot com uh or the apps um we do now accept uh rental payments um online um so so that is an improvement I'll put a plug out there for those who have registered um and then um I just also wanted to note that um you know our our permit tracking system I will say that the residential rental inspection service um does not fit fit neatly within our current permit tracking system and as Sarah mentioned this um the system could offer some um improvements to how we do business there the the thing that I wanted to mention is that um that current system is actually um they're phasing out the service for that it's it's quite old and they've been trying to get us to upgrade for years and um there have been um some challenges that IT has had um some significant ones recently where our e-track it which we relied on heavily during the pandemic has had to get taken offline because of uh challenges and that seems to be happening more and we're getting less support from the vendor and so we are pursuing we're actively pursuing a new permit tracking system um and so you know some of the and so it's there are some uh benefits to having the the residential rental inspection service in the same uh system as say um the code compliance and even you know the current planning um so so there may be I just wanted to point out that there may be some opportunities for um some of the improvements that um that this system offers you know could also be obtained through another system the the larger permit tracking system upgrade that we are going to be pursuing and um that we're we're narrowing in on now in terms of uh how we want to uh and who we want to go with for that um so I just wanted to point that out because um you know the the real benefit that I see of this uh 3di is in relation to the um the data related to um rental housing you know I would not expect um that a permit tracking system has the same types of capabilities you know there's somewhat it's somewhat of a different animal the permit tracking system is um you know really uh functioning as something that is like carrying a building permit or a planning permit through the process and that's how it's designed 3di has kind of designed their system for um collection of and um the um analysis of rental data so um you know there could be some additional benefits related to the residential rental inspection but I also want to be clear that you know we may we may pursue a different path for that in and of itself and um the uh I would not see the vice versa necessarily uh happening I wouldn't see us using a new permit tracking system for the rental data I just I don't think that they're really made for that in most instances um so I just wanted to put that sort of balancing act out there for the council to understand Matthews then vice mayor Myers and then council member Watkins well obviously there's a huge range of what might be done with this in great depth and um um some of it as Lee just said um over could overlap considerably especially in newer um permit tracking system that the city might get into it it seems to be premature to me to go deeply with this proposal rather than kind of open up the RFPQ for a whole permit tracking um system revision um if that's the need and so it does seem like there are two different functions um I had uh I guess this is a technical question uh we were given a price for a set up and a maintenance and I guess that was based on the rough estimate of how many rental units there were in the city of Santa Cruz and then there was a a circle with four components and maybe it was three and one was the staff and the inputs of the staff had to put in if I'm recalling that um slide so I guess my question is for let's say initial set up fee and annual maintenance fee who's putting in all that data and that absolutely depends I would imagine on how much data we're expecting it's a whole permit tracking thing and the state burden on staff so it's not just fee and the maintenance fee it's all that stuff staff time putting in the data so it seemed to me that um there were a lot of questions to what are we getting for this and how much is it costing and it's the best way to get this information um I do have uh real concerns about the privacy issues of this I think I have very few support so it's no question um no secret um I have a good deal of uneasiness about um because the potential is so vast on this we might say we're going to start here and then it works into something that may not at all be um what council thought they were signing up for in the beginning and again no secret I do have a small rental property and I'm not going to be around the bush so I'm just going to lay that out there those those are my concerns they're probably shared by other people um I appreciate your question for the staff and the thoroughness of their um their response um I guess one housing stock that I think actually has quite an influence on our housing ecosystem is um ends up at the university and so I'm yeah I'm just I feel situation with regards to our housing situation um I I do think that um in terms of you know the policy fitting the product instead of the product helping us you know so I think that's another thing that we really probably need to think through but I appreciate the work of the sub committee and um very much appreciated the product review today um it does seem like the product is very very helpful in you know the management of of obviously if you're at your section where you are managing affordable units and you're you're sort of managing your own stock I can I could see potentially but you know we don't have a lot of that I don't know how much we would have moving forward but um I could um I could see sort of a potential in terms of maybe just an internal tool but um the broader application are not as clear um in terms of really assessing the community and the regional sort of market and the um ability to track all the various factors of that so I am thank you very much for the um for the presentation and really interesting product with lots of interesting uh applications so thank you thank you I I I sort of echo uh Vice Mayor Meyers comments in regards to the product and the interesting elements that you can use to kind of aggregate and disaggregate various data points and then applying it based on um sort of what the ultimate goal and outcome of the data we hope to have accomplished um I have a question though for the staff and you you mentioned that the original um proposal was and I apologize if I forgot but was to have sort of that internal database created um at a voluntary was that something that you would need to contract for or is that something that you felt internally within the city we have capacity to do and manage you're talking about um the first um if I can recall all the detail um when we brought that we could manage right we as staff we had never run a program like this we've never attempted to create a database um of this magnitude that would ultimately generate statistics um you know and sort of initially we were like well maybe it's just really simple and it's kind of like a google import into excel and we like quarterly pump out like five statistics when it's are we including you know as the subcommittee has sort of residential rental inspection service that serves about a leather every rental unit right it doesn't survey or you know room rentals if the owner's living on site because the idea there is that um that service is really focused on property maintenance so the assumption has been made by the city that the property owner lives there they are taking better care of their property if it's a mobile home it's subject to a different building code and it's not even subject to our local city code so we don't have really anything to enforce about those units so we don't track them and as part of that service the idea with you know collecting this information since it was more about you know the the market um is that we would want to capture those right so that's one piece room rentals is you know also included there so it's a bigger pool what pieces of information are we going to collect are we really just going to collect like yes it's rented this is the rent like if that's two pieces of information that's sort of like one scope of work if it's you know as currently we've sort of envisioned it through the subcommittee it's a lot of details about the property like how large is the unit how many bedrooms does the unit have what's included with the unit in terms of amenities like Rajeev demonstrated you know use provide parking and gas and you allow pets you know all of those things which affect rent so there's a lot of information that would be collected to give context to the rental amount then what we had initially proposed with like a voluntary pilot summer was you know we'll start with a pilot program and we're going to learn a lot because we don't know anything yet and we're going to learn how to do it we're going to learn what's not working we're going to learn like our limits you know as a I can dig that number up but I think that's that's ballpark if you want to if you want to wait until after public comment I can find that number for you didn't comment thing on this title I'm using the numbers that are once you've called Rajeev calling again hi this presentation I really like all the robustness around it and I like staff's idea that it applies to more than just sort of regulated traditionally regulated units because during this time with COVID and the sort of patchwork of state county and city protections against evictions and large rent increases I feel like we need tools like this to enforce those rules not like purely hypothetical of canvassing affordable housing throughout the city during this election season and I'm just hearing like really concerning things from tenants there were some tenants who are veterans living in low-income housing and they were asked like informally to pay increased rent to offset other COVID vacancies in their apartment complex and that just seems like nobody is sort of like watching that kind of thing I heard about some new management at affordable housing Casa de Del Rio which is on Blaine Street and then they're asking tenants to temporarily relocate during a pandemic so they can renovate units which they haven't done like 40 years and so these are just very concerning things that I don't know what they could lead to you know and I don't know how we're enforcing like the laws that we actually have on the books right now and so yeah I just would really like if we could sort of push this along particularly during COVID just to sort of have something in place to make sure that these new property managers and you know bigger landlords of more sort of slum lordy property are really just like following the laws as they are today and not sort of informally evicting people informally raising their rent which it seems like that may be happening thanks for those comments so the public would like to speak to us on this item now's the time to call in once you've called in please press star 9 on your phone to raise your hand and you will be given two minutes to speak I would just let you know 800 is the number of responses okay the number of projects that we're considering for the interim recovery plan the um I think housing with housing did come um I think we could talk this into the into that interim recovery plan but I'm not hearing a ton of support so I'm not quite sure but I think we could have another conversation possibly via the interim recovery plan process to see if we're narrowing this in for some use that we can identify through that process specifically I think during the COVID period so it's it to me it's a costly product and so I'm just trying to trying to understand sort of the the the piece in it but I personally I think that would probably be the only place right now to fit it in in terms of continuing the discussion so I'm happy to listen to uh to other members ideas or I can I'm happy to make a motion if need be okay council member Watkins and then council member Matthews um no I appreciate uh new mayor and and vice mayor mentioning the potential to kind of integrate it into our interim recovery approach as we do know that we have um very limited resources and are financially constrained as well as um thinking about the prioritization of the various uh trade-offs that were referenced at the beginning of the presentation so I do think it's part of that bigger conversation um and so those those are essentially my comments and and if vice mayor wants to make a motion or I see Martin Bernal is on here too as well if you want to speak to that yes I was just going to mention that the back to the uh interim recovery plan of formal approval on the 24th of the number so not the not Tuesday's council meeting but the one after that and then just by way of background the the three items that you uh adopted as the three priority areas were take actions to ensure short and long-term fiscal sustainability investing in downtown and other business sectors and improve and maintain infrastructure so again but this will all come back to you so you can review it maybe the planning director could comment on this but what I heard was that our um permit tracking existing permit tracking system was added towards the crash and burn situation pretty soon and that I mean you must be moving forward on that looking forward looking for RFP RFP whatever to um develop a new system for that so maybe you could speak to that that seems um more immediately urgent me sure so we um we did complete uh I believe it was last year a many RFP to get an understanding of the um the costs associated with the new permit tracking system and um we've since been engaging um the new owner of our current permit tracking system to understand what they can offer um in relation to um the an upgrade of their system and I'm sure Ken can speak way more eloquently than I can about the it challenges with uh that that you've had recently yeah just now we're approaching uh an eight to ten year old system and we've stumbled across some vulnerabilities especially with our public facing website that uh puts us at risk uh a lot of the uh current system is antiquated for the some of the most of the business processes that are taking place in our planning and public works division so we've been uh trying to get to a point where we could upgrade we've had some staff resources and some of the growing pains with the change in vendors of our current system uh we were we're realizing a level of stability now uh it's the most cost-effective path is to do this upgrade so we are uh we had a kind of a kickoff meeting with a consultation vendor that's going to help with some business process review but we're we're well in the mode of moving towards a new platform and it is absolutely a priority given the age of the system and the vulnerabilities uh that we're we're kind of encountering well um that kind of makes my point and I guess the thought would be are there aspects of the um the huge menu of opportunities that were presented today in in this program but are there aspects that you would want to incorporate into the into any revised permit tracking period without adding on another whole system and that would seem to be you have your most immediate needs and then some other questions that people have about tracking needs whatever but um that's what I would look to first is is getting our our core permit tracking functional and adding to that the things that we most want to know about our housing stock and I I also just have to say I completely agree with Sarah's comment enough there's so many just massive external forces on our housing market there are a whole lot of things that obviously we are not going to solve single-handedly services that we get to add in the and well that that my mind that would be the the first half and you get get the things up to speed that you need to put the speed that you absolutely know about and then if there are elements of the um housing stock is something that can be incorporated into any revision that might be the most cost effective way got you and so specifically around rental inspection that was a question that came up when when yeah when we did our conversation and I think the implementation that we're currently sitting on is poorly constructed and was customized into the application so they have they will be doing a business process review specifically of rental inspections and making some recommendations to see if there's a way to better construct it in a land use management software system yeah but to Sarah's point this would not satisfy necessarily a rental registry registry system right yeah but the inspection system we are looking we definitely would like to contain it in one system so that you know both IT staff and planning staff are not using you know disparate systems to to do to the same tasks motion that mid-year budget update we defer second meeting in january at the at the earliest and revisit the items then um so that would be my motion and i guess my follow-up comment is comment is without really understanding our budgetary issues um without you know prior to mid-year check-in I just think I think this is unfortunately a project that just needs to be sort of pushed back and uh reconsidered over time there's this motion I just also wanted to add that I just am concerned about moving forward with this at this time based on our discussions at the last meeting I think we put a lot of effort into making sure all of our arrows are flying in the same direction in our economic recovery period that's coming up and it's going to be difficult and while some things you know seem really important not every not every can't do everything everything can't be important so and I know um there's a slight cost and I think a lot there's a cost associated with this that I just wouldn't feel comfortable with at this time so that's why yeah I think I'll just let's just keep it easy let's defer mid-year budget would be maker and seconder uh include also um an update on the process of uh improving our IT permit tracking system yes I'm comfortable with that member golder with additional um the friendly amendment made by council member Matthews to defer the action on this item until after the mid-year budget update and also receive an update on it improving um if there's no further are there any further comments from council members at this time all the roll call votes thank you mayor council member buyers is absent based on which direction to go in I will say that I do for us to be tracking um moving forward town is going to be extremely critical over the next you know 10 years plus so 1 pm to 5 pm I want to say I know this is the issue that is personally very important to you and um I do appreciate you all the energy that you've put into this and I also appreciate that this meeting was able to incorporate the state legislation update these things are also wetted in together and that we did take time to look at the um progress on the housing blueprint I appreciate that this issue was made to be more inclusive so thank you construction that way no problem and thanks for the recommendations as well


The question is what it means to be wealthy or prosperous. The common answer you hear is in terms of money, in having it or having access to it. For the most part, prosperity is considered highly desirable, something worthy of the effort to attain. Those who are wealthy seem to have more options provided to them. They are accepted as being more attractive than others who have no wealth to offer. They are considered more influential than others. But what does it really mean to be wealthy? The answer is not an opportunities or influence, though these are obviously impacted by having wealth. The answer is in freedom. The answer is in having options in what you choose to do. The answer is in denying others the ability to direct your actions or tell you what you must do. When we are talking wealth and prosperity, the answer is in economic choices and opportunities that there are fewer things denied to you for lack of sufficient resources. There are choices for what a wealthy person can do that those who lack wealth cannot do. The concept of implementation is ownership. It is having a right to use and direct the use of our many types of property. If you own a car, you probably have a set of keys to give access and nobody is legally able to seize upon it and take it away from you without committing a public crime. The law protects ownership. Even our Constitution forbids public leaders to use their authority to interfere with citizen ownership. It takes a specific order, a warrant, to authorize any interference with a citizen's property. Ownership is that right to be secure in one's houses, papers, effects, with papers and effects addressing things of wealth. A citizen who is employed earns money or credit and that becomes his or her property. A citizen who invests in stocks and bonds has a paper that witnesses to his ownership in the investment. A citizen with cash owns that money and his or her ownership is protected by law. A citizen who has a bank account has ownership in the money that is held in a bank.  All these are wealth. They are inherent in the value of property that is owned and they are protected by law from others acting as owners. Even a person's reputation with other people is considered property as something that has value. It is protected in our law from slanders of other people. All these are wealth. They are value that is owned. They are property rights that have value under our laws and contribute to prosperity. Wealth is the accumulation of value and prosperity is sufficient accumulation to have reasonable levels of choices in how that wealth is used and expended. Wealth is having uncommitted value. Wealth is in having options in when and where the citizen decides to expend or invest that value. Prosperity is having such uncommitted wealth that the options are many. Wealth is how people get to store value so that it is available to them for their prosperity. Wealth is desired as economic freedom and prosperity is in the choices available for the use of wealth that the citizen has in various ownership. In another sense we can address government taxes where the citizen is legally protected from others who might take away their wealth. Government leadership has taken upon itself a right to seize upon wealth, challenging the prosperity of its own people. Prosperity is economic freedom and a loss of this freedom is what we the people must suffer from excessive taxation. Real property is so severely taxed that it is difficult to address in its own value. It is more like property leased from the government with taxes as rent. The U.S. and our various units of government have reinstated a form of feudalism. Prosperity is having economic choices and taxing personal ownership of income and ownership of personal property works to limit the choices available, limiting any excess that might be directed to satisfy the wants and needs of citizens. And here is the challenge. Seizing upon the property of the common people is a way for a sovereign ruler to secure his or her wealth. It is forbidden to American citizens to seize property of another citizen under pain of criminal prosecution. The people cannot legally authorize their government to do what U.S. citizens cannot do. They most certainly cannot authorize their government to take criminal actions in their name. We do not have a government that has sovereignty over citizens. We have a sovereign people who have granted authorities to those who govern. The people could not grant the right to seize upon the wealth of their neighbors. It is a power that is beyond constitutional government over a sovereign people. Amending the Constitution to grant authority to commit crimes against the people does not authorize leaders to criminal behavior in the exercise of their public offices. As noted before, the U.S. government has not limited itself to granted authorities, but has acted in sovereignty. In many ways, it has become the government that is like to the English government against which the American colonists rebelled and from which they won their freedom. One major driver for American Revolution was open-end taxation. Taxation in spite of having no voice in the government that laid the taxes. Do we have a voice in government in laying of taxes? The answer is that the question of acceptance by the people has not even been raised. If the people in one congressional district or state decide that some tax is unacceptable, then they are likely to be three votes against it in Congress of over 400 leaders who do not represent them. Where taxes are set by majority of leader votes, consent to the government is not even a matter of the issue. But then we also know that the government needs funds to operate and to represent the people in its operations. If property is the wealth of the nation, then it makes sense to tax it in order to give the benefits of government to the people. There is a great deal of nonsense in this, but there is also a basis for a better understanding of wealth and government operation. Our U.S. government only exists to establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote general welfare and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity. In specific, securing the blessings of liberty is freedom and prosperity, the very things that modern government assaults. There was an initial agreement on the funding of government and it delegated the power to tax for set purposes to pay for the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States. This was no blanket authority to fund whatever Congress might vote to fund, nor is the welfare of the United States different than the welfare of we the people. As a performance professional, I have a practical rule for eliminating much of our government's excess funding. There is no valid public purpose to authorize spending where the people do not receive the benefit from the expenditure. The people are the public and if the people do not receive the benefit then neither does the public. As far as our constitutional government is concerned, we the people are the nation. The Department of Education should only be funded for services that the people receive and value. If the people do not receive and value some educational service, then it has no public value. The Environmental Protection Agency should only be funded where it provides services to the public. Can you hear this scream? This is for the welfare of the nation and the answer is that if the people do not receive the value in what it does, then it has no public purpose. The environment is not a separate party in interest in our government. Organizations such as the Office of Personnel Management and the Department of Justice should be terminated as they provide nothing to the public. They perform internal government processes and should be administrative offices in the groups they exist to serve as those provide value to the public. Groups that give service to the public would have their funding limited to the services they provide where the people receive and value those services. Many would be reduced to providing the services that people are willing to accept for the cost of providing them and participation in the programs changed from regulatory mandates to voluntary participation. That is what freedom is all about. It is giving the choices to the people. That is what prosperity is all about. It is giving the economic choices to the people. So what are the chances that citizens can come together and change the way our representatives determine how to spend the money that is taken from us? Can we demand that they criminalize progressive income taxes? Can we demand that they only spend money in accord with the purposes of the Fourth and the preamble to our Constitution? Can we agree upon a citizen review panel to okay the expenditures that 500 elected leaders who do not represent any one of us decide that they will authorize? Are we really consenting to be taxed for services we do not receive? Whenever and wherever we the people come to agreement, we are the only party in interest and we speak to the whole nation. And finally, the wealth of the nation cannot be greater than the wealth of the people of the nation. But we the people own this nation even as we own its government. If we are being burdened with government that does not serve, then it is a blight on the nation even as it is an assault on the prosperity of we the people. Our challenge is not finding improvements. It is in finding those improvements upon which we can come to effective agreement. It is only as we find our voice as we the people that we get to direct our government to serve. If the great American experiment and self-government is to continue to the next step, it will happen because we come together to assure that it does.


Hi Nikolas, this is Urosz from one of our partners, EBV Electronic, and Urosz will talk about ST and what we are doing together here. Yeah, of course. Hi, hi, hi. Anyway, inside EBV Electronic I'm reading the segment called Smart Sensing Connectivity, and ST is one of our, let's say, top suppliers in this regards. You know, about ST, people keep on forgetting that this is one of the best broadliners of the market. People are aware of STM32s, sensors, but they are forgetting about the powering part, you know, eSIM, connectivity. And actually, when they are talking about amplifications, the complete bomb can be from ST.  In terms of ST, as I mentioned earlier, they are very well known about STM32, so this is the best product you can get on the market, and I'm quite sure that most of you are familiar with STM32.  On the other hand side, where I see a lot of activities from ST is maybe easy, you know. People are more and more requesting, you know, seamless connectivity, you know, where they are partnering with true connectivity providers, and you know, really, whenever you have an application, you can get all the products you need from ST. Nice. So, can you explain a little bit about EBV Electronic, the specializations you are able to do, everything that you like to work with? Yeah, so a few words about EBV Electronic. So EBV Electronic is the biggest semiconductor distributor in the Mayer region, and ST is one of our top partners, so what the distribution does is kind of interface between the supplier or manufacturer and the customers, you know, because most of the time, manufacturers cannot address wider database of customers, and this is where we are coming in and linking the customers with our suppliers. On top of that, we also have internally specialties which are focused on particular technologies or particular markets, and you know, together with these guys and our ST partner, we are able to address a complete market. Is there a challenge right now with the ship supply? What challenge are you talking about? I don't know any challenge about that. Yeah, of course, it's always like that, but okay, it's a bit particular in this case, because it really longed for much longer than expected, but this is where, what matters here is communication. You know, you cannot get everything at once, of course, even if you would like to have one million pieces tomorrow. Normally you need, I don't know, maybe a few thousands, and if you communicate properly to the distributor and to our ST, as our partner, normally, or usually, we are really able to bring you some goods. And AVnet? AVnet, yes. Yeah, so AVnet in Europe has a structure of speedboats, so we have multiple speedboats, first of all, to address wider customer database, and also to focus on the particular lines, so the specifics about the EBVs. We are very much focused on the number of partners we are working in, because you know, it's very important to maintain the relationship to the partner, and also to maintain the technology level expertise internally. You know, if you have really, I don't know, 100 lines, most of the time you don't even know who are the guys in the background. Can you explain a little bit more what's going on on the slideshow behind you? On the slideshow, what we have here, this year we decided, mainly because of Corona, to go pure digital, so we are having workstations, displaying use cases, and of course the products, which are enabling our customers making their applications and solutions. So we have slides rolling all the time, and whenever you need a request, you just ask for expert, and somebody is coming to help you out. What's there? So this is one of the slides which showcases Op-Ams, so this is a complete line of SD operation amplifiers, including all the voltage levels, and some of the roadnecks. And what kind of discussions do you have here at the Embedded World? To be honest, most of the time the customer was coming, how we can get some components. But on the other hand side, people are still designing, so this is where we are coming in. We are in discussion, what is the application, what are the pains, and we are not only talking about components, but we are trying really to provide a complete solution. And in these regards, we are not only limiting ourselves on the hardware and the components, but we are also trying to propose connectivity to the connectivity vendors and also cloud connectivity, like AWS or Microsoft Azure. Nice. Alright, so you're having a good show? Oh, yeah, of course. Luckily today is a bit less intense, but yesterday it was really intense. It was wall-to-wall from the morning. So yes, it's a really good show.  Yeah, actually I'm jumping in to replace my colleague, but I'm glad to be here, definitely. Thanks a lot. You're welcome.


Good morning, everyone. Welcome to this morning's session on prophetic ministry. Let's pray and begin. I would like to request one of us on the call to please lead in prayer. Kindly unmute and pray aloud. Jai Havani, Father, we come to the name of Jesus. We thank you for this day. We thank you for the class we are about to have. God, I give all my classmates and juniors, be with us and guide us as prophets and churches. I help us to open our mind and heart and listen to it, you know, just listen to it. Amen. Thank you. Thank you, Jeff. So we've been talking about activating the gift of prophecy and there are so many things that we can do to help you. Amen. Thank you. Thank you, Jeff. So we've been talking about activating the gift of prophecy and there are some key principles that we need to settle in our hearts before we flow in this gift. And that's what we were talking about. We talk about the gift of prophecy. Amen. Thank you. Thank you, Jeff. So we've been talking about activating the gift of prophecy and there are some key principles that we need to settle in our hearts before we flow in this gift. And that's what we were talking about. We talked about the fact that all can prophesy similar to the other gifts of the Holy Spirit. God releases all of them. But we saw how there is something relevant for a moment or a given circumstance. And that is when, you know, we say that, okay, this particular gift is operational now and some other gift. But here is the reality, the Holy Spirit, he is given to all of us. He comes with all the gifts and all of us can manifest all the nine gifts of the Spirit. And which is why prophecy is also something that each one of us can flow in. And we saw some essential things such as releasing the prophetic word in faith because without faith, we will not see the stirring up and the operation of the gifts of the Spirit. So the opposite of this is when I have unbelief in my heart or let's say I have no faith in my heart, what happens? I cannot move in the gifts of the Spirit. So how do we develop faith? We know that faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God. So it's when we input the word and let it work in our hearts that faith will be generated. So even as we study about prophetic ministry and the gift of prophecy, one thing which is taking place right now is faith is being built up. So that also is an encouragement for us to know that you and I will be able to flow better in the prophetic gift. So we must spend time in the word of God. Now moving on, spiritual gifts. Spiritual gifts, they are from the Lord. It's a gift from God. We cannot sort of make them happen on our own. That's a reality. But we also said that these gifts can be imparted and these gifts can be activated. So there is the origin of the gifts which is from God. But in our human pursuit, we can have the gifts activated and imparted to us. So that is something that we recognize and which is why training, developing, nurturing, the gift is relevant. It's not unbiblical. And of course, we can make our gifts stronger and cause it to be more effective or even take it to a level where it's very accurate and perfect as well. So this also helps us to work with the gift better. So now I'm going to some of the other key things that I had shared. We said that prophecy is impart. Nobody can read up another person completely because we are limited. We are human beings and we know that it's only God who is omniscient or God is all knowing. Now that God is all knowing, He chooses to reveal a portion of what He thinks is important. So even when we pray for someone, the revelation which we receive could be in line with what we have prayed or it could be something completely different. For example, somebody could come up to me and say, Pastor, can you please pray for my career? But as I'm praying for their career, maybe I don't receive any revelation from God about their career. Instead, I receive a revelation from God regarding their ministry. And so that might surprise the person who's praying and the person who's receiving because we were asking for something absolutely different. But we have to go with what God is choosing to reveal. And that's how it works. So it is about what God wants to reveal in those moments. And that is something we must understand. So we should get shocked and say, what is this? I wanted to know something else, but God is just not talking about a certain matter. Let's say someone's praying for their marriage and they're asking God, okay, God show me, reveal to me what would you, which way are you leading me? Maybe they don't receive any inputs in that matter. And God may want them to learn from the wisdom of His word alone. We don't know. So it depends. It really depends on what it is that God thinks is important to reveal to us. That we talked about the fact that all prophecy must be judged because prophecy is pure, the gift is pure, but the human vessel that releases the gift can sometimes make mistakes, errors, because we have our own biases, ideas and thoughts and that can rub off on the prophetic word that comes. So we must be careful about that. So we must let other people also evaluate and assess the prophetic word which is being spoken. We'll talk more about it later when we are talking about interpreting personal prophecy. Now moving ahead, we are saying that when a message is given, the way we deliver the message is in our own control. So sometimes there is this thought that when the Holy Spirit moves, He will force us to release the gifts the way He wants. So there are all these mindsets in Christian circles where physically they don't have any control or they are shaking and this and that. Well, it could happen initially when we are sensing the power of God, but then it's not like the Holy Spirit will override our will or our control. So scriptures do tell us, 1 Corinthians 14 verses 32 and 33, the essence there is the spirits of the prophets are subject to the prophets. Simply to say that God gives us the control on how we want to deliver a certain message and prophecy can flow with other gifts. We've already talked about the gift packs. We may actually be expecting just the prophetic word to be released, but we notice that the person needs healing. And so the gifts of healings can flow in those moments or the person may really need a miracle and the gifts of healing, gifts of miracle might be operational. So it really depends on how God wants to work and we should not try to compartmentalize the gifts and think that, okay, this is how it is supposed to be. You know, diagnose it and say, okay, this is this gift that is that gift as long as the person is getting blessed, you know, we are also happy with that. And I shared how it's important for us to give the listener an opportunity to assess the prophetic word by which we are saying they should be able to trust God for a confirmation or go to somebody else to make sure that what they are hearing from us is really from God. And so when we are giving them an opportunity to assess the prophetic word, if we avoid the terms that says the Lord, it will be very helpful, especially for younger believers so that they know that there is the freedom to actually get a confirmation for this prophecy. I don't have to act on it. Now moving to the next section here, preparation for releasing the prophecy. So the most important question that we ask in anything that we do, particularly in ministry is why am I doing what I am doing? So whenever we are able to answer that why with an appropriate, you know, appropriate, let's say intention or motivation, then it makes all that we are doing worthwhile. So here we ask the question, why am I learning about prophecy? Why am I learning about spiritual gifts? Why should I get better at spiritual gifts? So the answer to that question is in 1 Corinthians 14 and verse 12, Paul wrote to the believers, he said, you are zealous for spiritual gifts. Let it be for the edification of the church that you seek to excel. So there it is. What does he say? Zealous for the spiritual gifts is, yes, we are excited, we are interested, we want to grow in the practice of the spiritual gifts. But the reason why we want to do it is so that we can edify the church, edify is build up. So edify the church would simply mean build up the people because who makes up the church? People make up the church. We want to build them up spiritually. We want to build them up, you know, with regard to different things that may concern them. And which is why we are saying that we need to grow in the prophetic gift. So when our motive is pure that the intention is let God's people be blessed with these gifts. Let me be more accurate so that, you know, when I say a word, see, for example, I've heard prophecies in which people have even given out phone numbers. Okay, I remember once in our weekend school, one of the pastors who was ministering, he flows very, very smoothly in the prophetic gift. And he said something like, I know that there are, and here the exact number, so many people whose birthdays are on the 1st of January. He just said that, okay.  Like basically it's a group and what are the chances that he knows, and he was not related to any of us who knew our birthdays. But he actually said that and it was correct. There were those many people whose birthdays were on that day. I've heard people who even can say phone numbers and I've personally not heard, but I have seen testimonies where it is said that even bank account numbers, right? There are prophets who are so accurate, right? So apparently there's one particular prophet to get the attention of a very rich businessman. When he went to minister to that businessman, he started saying a number and he did not know what that number was. He just started saying, does this number make sense to you? And then he started saying some particular number and the businessman said, hey, stop, because that is my Swiss account number. So it's like God knows how to get people's attention. So the level of accuracy that we have in the prophetic can be incredible. But you see, even things like this, somewhere we can become very proud. We can feel that, okay, if I do all these things, then people will say, oh, so and so, look at Pastor Nancy, she's so good at prophesying. So the thing is, we can do the right thing, but we can have the wrong motivation. And that is the most critical thing where our motivation is right before the Lord. Because God can keep taking us to greater heights, but when our hearts are settled in the right place and we're thinking, hey, this is nothing to do, you know, to validate myself. But it's more for the benefit of the listener. That person is being blessed. That person is being made aware of the presence of God, the reality of God and how God loves them. So God, for that sake, please help me to be strong in the prophetic gift or any other gift. That is the right motivation. So we must make sure that we are zealous for the gifts. But our intention is the edification of the church. Okay, moving along. The next important thing here. When we minister, one thing that we must do while releasing a prophecy. And this is important for all forms of ministry. Keep our spirit separate from personal experiences. So what do we mean by that? We might have, let's say, a positive experience. And we would have seen a certain gift function in a certain way. For example, when I'm prophesying for somebody, I may notice that if I lay hands on them, then it flows better. Some small little things happen. And you notice it and then you're like, okay, fine, every time I'll do that. But here's the point. We cannot box God up. Even if it was a positive experience last time, maybe God wants to do it in a different way. Maybe he just wants you to call out something or write out a note and tell the person that this is what God is saying. So God is very creative. And whether it is a positive experience of the past or let's say a negative experience. Negative experience may mean, you know, suppose there is an example of a bad marriage. And in that marriage, both the husband and wife, they don't get along and there's a lot of hurt. There's a lot of accusation, everything. Now, if they don't receive healing from God for these matters, what happens when they are ministering? Not just in prophecies, but even sharing the word or encouraging someone. Somewhere those biases, there is a risk of those biases showing up where, you know, the lady might say, oh, don't trust men. They're like that. Or the man might say, don't trust women because they are like this. But where is that coming from? It's coming from a negative experience that the individual has had. And they have not found healing for it. And so these things are dangerous because our personal experience can sometimes bring a bias or it can hinder the true flow of the spirit. Because what's happening again, the gift is pure. The flow of the Holy Spirit is very real. But it is marred by negative emotions or hurts. That one is experiencing or let's say an experience which is maybe you may want to call it neutral like as a minister of God who has left their career. Maybe they were at the peak of their career and then they decided to quit their job to serve the Lord. Now, just because they did it and they're not separating their personal experience, right? Well, ministering to another person, if one is not careful, they might give the same advice to everybody. But then that's not how God works. Maybe quitting their job was their call. But for someone else that they are ministering to, God may be asking them to continue in their job and still serve him. So this is how personal experiences sometimes interfere. So this is like I usually do this and I'm praying for someone. I just take time to pray in the spirit a little bit. If there's an opportunity to do that, I just pray in the spirit, stir myself up. And then I just say, Lord, let me not think of anything. I try to calm my mind and then as the Lord gives pictures, words, something fresh that is coming into my mind. We'll see later on that generally the first things that appear, the first things that we pick up are from the Lord. And then we have to see how to deliver it in the right way. So these are all some things that you and I can practice while releasing the gift of prophecy. Or the best thing that happens is when you're not even thinking about it, you get a word from God. So I remember this happened. This was somewhere during COVID when COVID was ending and church services had started. So all our pastors would go and minister on the stage. So one particular Sunday, it was a common service. Our congregation had not yet started. So I had gone to Central Church and this was not even when I went on the stage and we started praying for prophetic words. Somewhere in the middle of the service, I got a prompting. Okay, somebody's right hand, right elbow. I don't remember exactly something like that. Right elbow, God is healing it. And then skin allergies, God is healing. Then I just shared that word and I was not even thinking that I should get a prophetic word. But as I was worshiping, listening to the sermon, it just came. But then I knew the moment the mind went to these thoughts, I was like, hey, that's the prophetic word. I have to release this. So I called out those healings. The very next week, I think there were testimonies that came in. In fact, one lady had made a video about how she earlier, she was not able to move her hand, but now she was able to move her hand. And also another person from another country had written and said, like I had for many months, I had these skin allergies. But the moment that word was called up, it started healing. Okay, so I was amazed. Frankly, everyone I think who gives the word will be amazed themselves because we are not the source. God is the source and he's giving us these words. Okay, so when we pick it up and try to separate our thinking from this, that is the best way to minister. And as I said, calm yourself down, come to a place of stillness and then you will be in a better position to receive. Or even nicer is when you're not thinking about a matter and God gives you a word because you're not biased when those incidents happen. Okay, let's go on. So there's quite a bit to talk about here. Separate your spirit from personal prejudices. Prejudices is, again, it's a bias where, you know, we might have our own mindset. Like, let's say we think that people who wear a certain kind of outfit are holy. Others are not, you know, or people who have a certain way of grooming. Let's say a young person comes to us with a mohawk and a lot of, you know, earrings, piercings and everything. We might look at him and think in our hearts be very judgmental and think, oh, what a sinner. You know, somewhere we have our own way of assessing people and judging them and saying this one's holy, that one's not holy. But that is our own personal prejudice. So we have to get rid of that. Now, God may, we may not know the person with all the piercings and weird-looking hairstyle and everything.  So this is how we think. And if we are not careful, we will give preference to the people we think are holy or we think are important or think about this. You know, some leaders come to the church, political leaders come or you may have some celebrities coming to the church or even a rich person comes to the church. And you have some, you know, people you know they are not well to do. When we are prophesying, we could have this tendency where we want to give a long prophetic word to the rich person or the political leader and not the poor person. But what does the Bible say? It says, don't show partiality. So these are all personal prejudices that one must be careful about. Now even this happens, sometimes as individuals, we carry a very critical or a judgmental spirit. If we don't deal with that, every prophecy that we release will be condemning for others.  But you see, sometimes some folks repeatedly it's only warnings, judgments, punishment, calamity. So that is somewhere indicative of a critical spirit that one is working with that critical spirit and so every prophecy is like that. Or, you know, sometimes people are perfectionists and they expect perfection from themselves and therefore they expect perfection from everyone else. And so, again, they are very critical of others. So we have to see as to how our spirit is. If it is not in a place that it has received healing from God, we too can be releasing judgmental prophecies or be very self-righteous, isn't it? Where we put others down, we hold others to very high standards, whereas our own lives are not, you know, proper before the Lord. So these are things to be careful about. Now, other things to note when we are prophesying. I told us that not always does God reveal. So there can be times when we pray and we don't hear anything. Now, that doesn't mean something is wrong with the person or something is wrong with us. It doesn't mean that. It may simply mean that God wants to speak another time. Okay? And so what do you do? Imagine, you know, somebody has called you to minister and they think, wow, so and so you are flowing beautifully in the prophetic gift, please come. You go there and they say, okay, give us a word and you pray for them. There is no word. It can be so embarrassing because you're like, oh, what will they think of me? But here's what the Word of God says. So that is a scripture portion here. Could somebody please read it Jeremiah 23 verses 16 and 28. It's in the notes. PDF is page number 126, but maybe your number is different. Jeremiah 23, 16 and 28. In Jeremiah chapter 23 verse 16, this is what the Lord Almighty says. Do not listen to what the prophets are prophesying to you. They fill you with false hopes. They speak visions from their own minds, not from the mouth of the Lord. Verse 28, let the prophet who has a dream tell his truth, but let the one who has my word speak it faithfully. What has straw to do with the great declares the Lord? Okay, thank you, Jeffina. So as we can see here, it's saying that when we say something which is not from God, what did God tell his people? Don't listen to those words of the prophets because they make you worthless. They speak a vision which is their own, from their own heart and not from the mouth of the Lord. So we have to be very careful. When we prophesy it has got, we have to test our own hearts and see, okay, is it from God or is it from me? So when I am convinced that this is from God, that's when I release it. Okay, now if I don't hear anything from God, see the next verse, verse 28, the prophet who has a dream, let him tell a dream and he who has my word, let him speak my word faithfully. What is the chaff to the beat says the Lord. So if there's a prophetic word, release it. If there's no prophetic word, we have the written word of God, we have the instruction of God's word, maybe we can just pray a blessing on the people and stop with that. That should be fine. So the test is not only to accurately prophesy. The test is to be right at the source. So if I'm not receiving anything from God, actually the bigger test is keeping silent. Can we be silent or do we feel the pressure? You know sometimes we feel pressure, isn't it, that people are expecting. I have to give a good word or what will they think? What will they think about me? Like this Sunday, I remember this Sunday it happened. Generally at the ministry time, we call out words, isn't it? So as the Lord puts, the Lord is healing people of back pain, the Lord is healing this and that. So I prayed and really I didn't get anything. And I thought, oh goodness, what am I going to do? Because towards the wrapping up of the service, I don't know what to call out. All I did was I just prayed a blessing on the people. I just said, okay, this is what the cross has done and you are blessed and this and that. I just prayed the word. That's fine. What if people think that, oh, look at this pastor, not spiritual enough? Well, it shouldn't bother us because we have to be faithful. If I heard from God, let me say it. If I did not hear from God, let me not manufacture anything. Okay, so that is the test. What is the problem? If we manufacture something, one is we are not honoring God. We are being disobedient. It is obviously sin because we are lying. It's not from God. Second is, you see what that passage said? These people who prophesy things from their own heart, they make you worthless. So we are hurting people. That is the danger. We have to be careful. Okay. Now moving ahead, it says when it comes to prophesying, build and maintain Godly character. So when we look at the word of God, the word says that new wine can be poured in new wine skin. Because if new wine is poured in old wine skin, it will burst. So what does God say? He's saying that God is ready to pour out his spirit, but for us to contain the work of God, for us to release the work of God, we need the wine skin called as character. If character is strong, okay? If character is filled with faith, established in God, grounded in integrity, then what happens? Then we are able to serve God appropriately. But if the character is not fit, then what happens? There are all these tendencies to manipulate and that's very, very dangerous. In fact, you know, Paul, when he talks to the Corinthian church, something so beautiful, you know, we see a church which is flowing in the gifts of the spirit. So what is our conclusion? This church is a spiritual church. It must be a mature church because God is giving them all the gifts of the spirit. But that's not true because Paul writes to these same Corinthians and says, you know, he rebukes them. He says you are carnal and he tells them stop behaving like ordinary men. So here is this contrast. You have the flow of the gifts, but you have carnal believers. Okay? And that's a bad combination. What does God want? He wants the gifts to be operational, but he is calling the believers to maturity. So that would be the best combination. Now, God does not withhold the gifts because we are still, you know, very young in the Lord. We are still growing in God. God is very gracious that way. He lavishes his gifts on all his children, but then the responsibility will follow us. And as much as we work on the effectiveness and the accuracy of the gift, we must also work on the character. So when I become grounded in the faith and develop, you know, perseverance, integrity, strong identity, what happens? I'm able to flow in the gifts better. And it will be a blessing to the people. Now, the next thing here, I'm just moving on with whatever is there in our notes. But if you have a question, then you can always stop me. Okay? Just unmute and ask. So here's the next thing. It says, do not base your identity in spiritual gifts. Now, even in the course Code of Honor, we would have studied this, that our identity is not our ministry. We are more than our ministry. Okay? We are children of God. We are loved by God. Now, you know, we are blessed. So many things that we learn of who we have become in Christ Jesus. That should be the most important thing. But when we make our identity, spiritual gifts, okay? And we want people to know that, oh, look at this brother. It's very good with prophecy. Look at this brother. He flows in healing. And if people don't recognize us for that, we get hurt. We say, oh, come on. They're not giving me the respect or they're not valuing me for the gifts that God has put on my life. Or for the anointing that God has given. There are people who completely base their identity on the ministry or the flow of spiritual gifts. But that is actually a sign of insecurity. And misplaced identity. Now, we will see later there is something known as prophetic teams. So when we work with others, there will be times when let's say we are very good at hearing from God and flowing in the gifts. But when we are working in a team, we may have to give the next person the chance to prophesy. Or we may have to give the microphone to another person. And here's what could happen. The microphone may never come back to you. But are you okay with that?  So this is all, for us, we may think, oh, why is pastor using an example like that? But this is the reality because within us, we go through these questions and struggles. But when we are grounded in Christ, you remember the time when Jesus commissioned people. He said, go cast out devils in Luke 10. I give you the authority to trample on serpents and scorpions and nothing by any means shall hurt you. They come back and they tell Jesus, we saw Satan fall like lightning. So what were they saying? They were saying, we saw the downfall of Satan. We saw the defeat of Satan. It was spectacular. But then Jesus says something like, don't rejoice that you saw all this. But rejoice that your name is written in the book of life. Was Jesus saying that ministry is not important, gifts of the spirit are not important? No, no, let's not interpret it like that because we know other portions of scripture give a lot of importance for ministry and gifts of the spirit. But he's making a deeper point and that point is about security, identity. Where he's saying, beyond all the things that you can do, rejoice that you are my children, you are with me. So that's how we flow better in the gifts of the spirit and know what the word of God says. So when we know the word of God, when it comes to interpreting of prophecy, we will be very, very accurate. Now, take for example, if there is a prophetic word, I remember I've heard somebody say this also. This was when I was in my professional career and I had a certain friend, she was from another country. And in their country, I think it was culturally okay to leave marriages and you can just move on to the next person, something like that. So I was talking to her and she said that another good friend of mine that God gave her a word that the person that she was with right now, that that's not the right person and that she has to go with somebody else. Okay, and she was already married. Okay, so when I heard this, I was so shocked. I said, how can you even say that? How can that even be a prophecy? Because the Bible talks about the covenant of marriage. So if you don't understand the Bible, then in the name of prophecy, people talk many things and it messes up lives of men and women. So I was immediately alerted because it's going against a fundamental principle, fundamental covenant in the word of God.  So this is why knowing the word is so critical. The foundation of God's word has to be very, very strong for the accurate practice of the release of the gift of prophecy. Another important thing is when we prophesy, we will see that God speaks through visions, pictures, symbols, parables. Now, when we get those symbols, we may not know what it means. For example, if I see a tree and I see a river and I see the tree is so green and has fruits, I can immediately connect it to someone. Oh yeah, it talks about the tree planted by the rivers of water who bears fruit in its season, whose leaves will not wither, whatever that person does will prosper. So God is talking about a godly person who prospers. You see, I'm able to interpret because the word is in me. But if the word is not in me, then even when it comes to identifying those symbols or interpretation, I'm not able to interpret it according to the word of God. So it's very, very important for us to be established in the doctrine of God's word and to also know how to interpret. We will study later. It's kind of a self-policing. So I'll get the word and then we'll see how the word comes into my senses. And then in my renewed mind, I have to go through this process of reasoning, analyzing, interpreting. And then I pull out, okay, this is what God is saying and then I choose to release it. So that's the whole process of prophecy. It's not just, okay, I heard something. I'm saying it. No, there will be this second step of analyzing the word. And to analyze the word, I cannot function with a carnal mind. I need a renewed mind and that is what will help me interpret with accuracy. Okay, so let's stop here. Let's take a break and we shall come back in 10 minutes. Yeah, God bless you all. Thank you.