I have undoubtedly shared a lot on this channel and I mean a lot but there are some things that I haven't shared with anybody. So when MTV and Trojan Condoms who I'm working with in collaboration for the Guide to series said hey you have anything to contribute to the condom conversation I knew it was time for me to share this piece of my story with you guys that not even my parents know my close friends don't know but now I want to make public so my mistake can be your life lesson. I feel nervous. I love the fact that I added the extra pressure of the extra pressure myself making this like public. Let me have this moment in peace. If I'm shouting it out what's the big deal? What is the big deal? Hey everybody I am Shan Booty Boudram and I am a clinical sexologist a youtuber an author a journalist and today I want to share a secret with you guys. I am a survivor of Chlamydia. I say survivor not because it is a life-threatening illness because it is not a life-threatening sexually transmitted infection but I am surviving the stigma and shame and I'm going to live on to tell this and not die of embarrassment which I kind of feel like doing right now but I want to share my story because there's oftentimes we think that there's not truth in the numbers and there definitely is. One in two people under the age of 26 will contract a sexually transmitted infection. That's a whole lot of people behind me. Hi. I'm just trying to say that for what you guys was doing. I'm talking about how I've had Chlamydia. Oh okay. Yeah this probably isn't the cameo video you want to be in. Yeah just walking the slab by the way. Yeah. I just told the stranger I had Chlamydia. Okay. All right we'll do it one more time and I've decided to share my story today because I want everyone to know that there's truth in the numbers that can often feel like they were just pulled out of a random hat. Chlamydia for example has 200,000 cases per year that are reported in the US but here's the scary part. 50% of women who are infected with Chlamydia show no symptoms at all. I am also part of this statistic. So now get out the tea time to tell Chambordy's story. I was in a committed relationship and about three or four months in I got onto birth control and we decided that we didn't need to use condoms anymore. Now this was an informed decision on my part we had both gotten tested we were healthy so everything seemed kosher and cool. Fast forward to a year into our relationship and my mom who works as a nurse said hey do you want to get a free health assessment at her job and I'm like yeah I'd like a free health assessment you know I'm not thinking anything could be wrong with me and so there's no conflict of interest in my heart so I go to the health assessment I'm chatting up with everybody I had a really dope smoked salmon sandwich I'll remember for the rest of my life and I got tested I got both a pap test and a blood test and then I went on about my business. About two weeks later I get a phone call from a blocked number it was the clinic sorry I know they're not laughing at me but it feels that way so I rolled the dice answered the phone and it turned out to be the health clinic and immediately my heart sank they informed me that I had tested positive for chlamydia now I had a thousand questions how could this be possible I just been tested I don't sleep around I'm in a monogamous relation and that's how I found out that my monogamous relationship was anything but and it turns out I'm not alone one in four people who think that they are in a monogamous relationship that's not really quite the truth which is why to this day no matter who I'm with what we're doing or how long we've been together I walk with one of these I carry a condom sometimes for a friend hell sometimes yeah I carry a condom for myself it's no one's business why I have it but everybody wins what I do because it just takes one takes one asshole in my case one bad experience one forgetful night but to combat all that it also just takes one condom that can potentially save your life so I want you guys to keep the condoms lose the assholes and have a better sex life that's what I call responsible as bringing a condom does not automatically mean that it's the right time to engage in sex the magic word is yes use a condom every time responsible as is that what it seemed like that's what it seemed like condom


At our own volition, we'll just volunteer ourselves to some of our largest filers. On these visits, we tend not to get too involved in hardware issues and installing equipment, but we do look at the attorney's computer settings and configurations, particularly if they're having connections or performance problems. Now, this is a new and growing customer service we're providing. And I must say it's been very well received by the bar. In fact, it's helped catapult our participation rate to well over 50% of the practicing bankruptcy bar in the area here. That's tremendous, Mark. Thanks so much. We have Gary Drake on the line now, and I know Gary that the Northern District of Georgia is very, very active in CMECF, one of those courts that jumped on the bandwagon. So early in the game. But I would like you to focus on something else, because I know that you've developed a bankruptcy-related program for probation and pretrial services officers. Explain a little bit about why you did that. We did create a PowerPoint presentation that we have presented to probation pretrial services in the Northern District of Georgia, and it is based directly on the bankruptcy basics public information series published by the administrative office. I was approached by one of the deputy chief probation officers about making this presentation because they were seeing in their work a growing number of defendants with a bankruptcy history, and they were uncertain of the bankruptcy process or even what the different chapters represented. The presentation was very well received by the probation pretrial officers there, and I suspect we'll be making this in the future as they bring additional officers on board. This is a presentation that will be appropriate for any other court, the unit, as well as any other government agency, and we'll be making that available to those people within our area here. And additionally, I did have the opportunity to make this same presentation to two high school banking and finance classes over the past year, a little bit beyond the reach of our normal customer in the bankruptcy court, but any education of the public is useful. I think it's exciting to hear about some of these programs, and that sounds like a wonderful program. We'd love to have a copy of your agenda, Gary. Let's turn our attention now to other assistance given, that is, to other groups, and let's start with debtor education. This is kind of a hot topic, especially with the possibility of bankruptcy reform legislation. I'm going to call on John Ceretto again to just take one minute, if you will, to explain your court's debtor assistance program. How does that work, John? Which ranges between 30 and 40% of our filings, depending on the year. So clearly, that's a number that can't be ignored or wished away. And with regards to what we've done in our court, we have a dual track approach, which is a directed public information outreach program and some pro bono programs that we have implemented with our local bar. Now, with regards to the information outreach, we're probably similar to other courts in that we provide bankruptcy education materials. And we also provide forms packages for both Chapter 7 and 13. We also, we provide both those in English and in Spanish. Now, of course, the objective is not to encourage filings, but to increase the likelihood that the courts will receive properly completed legal documents and save time. But a program that we're very proud with, that we've developed in conjunction with our local bar association, is a pro bono program which addresses reaffirmation agreements and 523 dischargeability actions. Basically, the program is quite simple, that the attorneys are required to provide in their notices a notice of legal representation availability to low income debtors who are pro se via the debtor assistance program. And here again, that's sponsored using our local public council, which is our local legal clinic. And essentially, for example, with regards to the reaffirmation agreements, the judges within a particular division, and we have five divisions and 21 judges, will schedule all the reaffirmation agreements for a single day. And then they'll rotate and a single judge will hear all those reaffirmation agreements. And prior to the hearing, we will have a volunteer attorney, which will come from the local bar and basically explain to the pro se debtor on these reaffirmation agreements what their rights are prior to walking into the hearing. Now, in this particular case, the attorneys do not represent the litigant, but they provide a lot of information, which makes the judge's job a lot easier with regards to these reaffirmation agreements. And we have a similar program, as I said, with regards to non-dischargeability. Now, one thing on these programs I think is very important is that they don't really happen by themselves. The judges really have to get behind it and work with the local bar and make it happen, even if the bar is very supportive, it really requires the judicial initiative there. John, thank you so much. I want to turn back to Mark Hatcher. And Mark, I believe you've developed a program with Washington Western, and do I understand that you have classes for debtors conducted right immediately after the 341 meeting? The judges here in this district believe debtor education is a legitimate function for the court and that debtor should be provided. Some financial planning tools to hopefully avoid bankruptcy in the future. Our court has taken what I'd describe as a gentle approach in this regard. We use education materials, including videos that have been developed by Visa, and we provide a room in the same building as the 341 meetings for debtors to simply come down after their 341 meeting and view the videos and take the materials if they choose to. The materials are free. They're surprisingly non-promotional as to Visa, and attendance at the classes is voluntary. We've actually had debtors express their appreciation for the information and actually had some lament that they wish they would have had that sort of information available to them years earlier. That's great, Mark. Let's move on to Pro-Safe Filers. Kathleen, I know in your court you have a number of efforts, including a handbook for Pro-Safe Filers, and so we'll talk a little bit about that. We do. Before I get into that, I would like to talk a little bit about, in order to help the staff understand the Pro-Safe Filer, we conducted some programs. We had a law professor come in and do a profile of a typical debtor, and I think everyone was a little surprised how close they really were to bankruptcy themselves and sort of gave it a personal perspective. We had an attorney come in to sort of explain the interview with his client and how he comes to the decision that he will file for bankruptcy for that so that they have an understanding of the people that they're dealing with when they do come into the counter. We have a court services coordinator right at the anti-counter to assist the Pro-Safe Filers through the initial filing. We'll not give legal advice, but we'll give procedural advice. We have handbooks for intake, just a little pamphlet to sort of explain what that is. We have, as is referred to before, the survival guide to the records room so that people know how to get information. The handbook is rather extensive, so the court service coordinator will direct them to the appropriate section of that. We hope to have that available on our website very shortly in a searchable format so it can be of use to people for free and it's got all the forms in it and it's got some simple explanations of the different chapters and how to file a motion, how to file an appeal. So it doesn't just deal with the Pro-Safe debtor, it deals with Pro-Safe creditors as well. And this is going on the web? Hopefully it will be on the web soon, yes. I believe we have Ken Gardner, clerk of court from Illinois Northern on our Push to Talk line, as well as Chief Judge Susan Sonderby and I want to thank the judge for being available now and I want to backtrack just a little bit before I ask Ken a question. Judge Sonderby, you have the Kmart case and how do you use the web to keep interested parties including the media and the rest of the public informed? How's that worked? It's to give the public as much access to as much information as possible. Of course that's going to save our court staff time and effort in responding to inquiries. So we set up a web page on our website and it includes a case management or a case procedures order, a bar date order, a proof of claim information and the case docket amongst other things. We also have links to the websites of debtor's counsel, the US trustee, the noticing agent for the case, information regarding things of that nature. We also include pertinent information such as the phone numbers, addresses, bar dates, next hearing date and location of it. I've had to conduct hearings in this case in the district court courtroom because of the magnitude of lawyers that come in. Couple things that we found very other helpful also were to have the attorney sign in and state their name and who they represented on a paper which is then as filed and is introduced into evidence as part of the court record. This has become 100 lawyers and it would take us and anyone hearing it, quite an expenditure of time to get all those appearances as part of the record. One of the other things that we do is we have links to the hearing agendas. Every omnivist hearing date that I have, the debtor about three days before the hearing sends me an agenda and it lists all of the items that have been noticed for that day with docket numbers as well as all of the responses, objections and some guidance as to what is expected on that day and that way we can gain information as to what is going to go ahead for oral arguments, what I'll take testimony on, what'll be continued, withdrawn or settled and so it's very helpful but a real key here is to put a docket number with everything that is listed on that agenda. One other thing I wanted to mention in the Kmart case was the volume of pages in the statement of affairs and schedules. There were some 14,000 pages. So we had debtor's counsel file in a CD-ROM format, all of that information. We merged it into our system. It was immediately accessible up on the webpage, on our website so that anybody could gain that information immediately. The press of course wanted copies of the CD-ROM and we had that available too because we burned different copies. It's a wonderful use of technology, not just the web but the use of CD-ROM to get that information out. Thank you again so much Judge Sonnery. Ken, if you'll comment just for a minute on the district's pro se assistance efforts. We've talked about this before and I understand the attorneys contribute time and expertise pro bono. How does that work? Bob, what we have done is we have created basically an attorney help desk which allows pro se filers to come in on Friday for three hours staffed by an attorney. We've given them clerk's office space as well as we give them a clerk's office employee to help with some of the administrative matters and basically the program allows the attorneys using a volunteer attorney from the Chicago Bar Association to come in and counsel these debtors with just information and things that happen. A lot of times the judges will refer in matters that get particularly legal in nature in the courtroom will refer the debtors to this program so they can come in and get some additional assistance. Thanks so much Ken. We now have Jody Troxler on the line and Jody is the chapter 13 standing trustee for the Middle District of North Carolina. Jody, tell us about this chapter 13's debtor's school in the Middle District. I understand that that has been in existence for about 30 years. That's correct. I'm one of three chapter 13 trustees in this district and we do have a formal 13 debtor's school that is held and the school goes over budgeting and credit issues as well as some bankruptcy information such as terminology to try to help the individuals understand what they'll be going through in the chapter 13. The school is held on the morning of 341. The 341s are for 13 through in the afternoon and there's a three hour class in the morning where the individuals attend the class. We have in the district, we have two budget counselors who work with the three trustees offices and they hold the classes throughout the district and we use as our core materials written materials and videos which are now available through the trustees education network which is commonly known as TIN which is an organization, a nonprofit organization that was developed a few years ago by chapter 13 trustees to try to provide a core curriculum in this area that and the materials were developed by chapter 13 trustees and this provides the source for, the TIN offers trustees who have either been in this business a long time with the debtor education or new trustees who are just getting into it with the materials and other education information that can help them. The budget counselors in addition to working with them, the 13 debtors in the schools also can offer one-on-one budgeting or meetings with debtors if they desire and the budget counselors also go out into the community voluntarily to participate in seminars and that type of thing, especially in the budgeting area and they're very popular with our college areas when they do special seminars in this area. Jodi, thank you very much and I know you forwarded the agenda to me in some of the parts of the program and we're gonna make sure that we put that on our court operations exchange for folks who might be interested. Judge Kenner, I know in Boston you have a pro se reaffirmation clinic. Talk a little bit about that. We do, it's initiated by the Boston Bar Association and as one of the speakers earlier noted, the judges have agreed in Boston to have all of the reaffirmation hearings for pro se debtors on the same day at about the same time so that it's convenient for the judges, it's convenient for the attorneys who are donating their time and expertise. And I know you use the web quite a bit to put information out as well. We do use the web a great deal much like you do in the Southern District. I think one aspect that we're finding very useful for prospective bidders at auctions and private sales is we post all of our notices of sale on the web so that a person who's interested in buying a house in Worcester can offer a bid. And hopefully we've expanded the universe of people who will bid in bankruptcy sales and thereby increase the price. We've emphasized a lot the use of website to provide valuable information to the public and I know that there are a number of districts that use the web to post their little messages, if you will, some newsletters and what have you. We did have Martha Labus and also David, I had wanted to talk to you, but we're gonna move to another subject in that area just to let you know that the website is in fact used to foreign newsletters to get the word out to people, both individual districts and also in partnerships with bar associations. But I wanna move to another subject now because when we looked at the various websites out there we noticed that just a few of them include information relating to unclaimed funds. And Louisiana Middle I think is a great example and we have Monica Minier on the line to explain that effort, Monica. Yes, Bob. We put our unclaimed funds on our website a couple of years ago, we decided that this would be another helpful tool for the public to have. We print out the unclaimed funds from Fences. We scan it in, make it a PDF and we put it on our website. It's not a searchable document but they can certainly view it and review it and they have claims finders and creditors both have appreciated that. They no longer have to come down to the court and pull the files, pull the records and look at them. Our financial administrator is not disrupted from her work either on the telephone or with claims finders coming into the office. So it's been helpful both to the court and to the public. Thanks so much, Monica. Let's open it up now for any push-to-talk participants that might wanna ask a question of our panel. Anybody out there? We mentioned, okay, well, if you wanna ask a question later by all means, we'll open it up one more time. We mentioned before the use of feedback from how important it is to get feedback from the courts, from the folks out there and let me ask the panel members how you use it. Kathleen. Well, certainly we actively solicit feedback on certain things that we put out on our website when we make presentations to various bar associations and law firms. We certainly solicit feedback from them. Sometimes we get unsolicited feedback. A lot we get unsolicited feedback. Most of it good, though, on the good side of it. But on the occasion that there is something that should be addressed, we will address it and we appreciate the constituents coming back to us and letting us know what we're doing right and, on the other hand, what we could improve. We don't necessarily do it wrong, but we might need a little improvement. David, Devin, what Kathleen is saying that it's too easy when you have an offhanded comment that appears in the suggestion box to discount it and you just really cannot do that. You have to take every input you get seriously, consider it, consider the source and review it and see if you really can contribute to improving your operation and improving your customer service. Rebecca. Well, this really is an important part of outreach because outreach is so hard to measure. So what we have done is we have written evaluation at every program. Every participant answers the questions that we pose. In fact, sometimes they have to exchange their evaluation to get their certificate. It's that important to us. And we identify trends and then we really do incorporate that feedback into our next year's program. We also do videotaped exit interviews and that, in that way, we get to see the attitudes change. We get to see what kind of an emotional impact the program had on the students. And then also with the courthouse coordinators. We touch base with them by phone during the planning process. We actually talked to them in the very beginning in designing the process, then during the process of planning and execution and then afterwards we do a debriefing and that's just hugely helpful to us. George, any comments about feedback mechanisms? I think courts always have to be listening to what the public is saying. I think we have to reach out and find ways to gather information in lots of different ways, whether it's over the counter or at the public counter, whether it's via the internet, whether it's talking to state court judges, for example, at bar association functions. I think we always have to be listening. That's great. It's been a great discussion. We did in fact receive one additional affax and it relates to the programs that you noted before, Rebecca. We're considering reaching out to students in the community. What age group should we target, first of all and what kinds of programs do you think capture students' interests and attention? Well, the national initiatives are geared for high school seniors because this is the age group where students are eligible to register to vote or they are registered to vote. And as you know, that's a way to get into the jury pool. So what we do is we present jury service as a rite of passage along with voting and the other privileges and responsibilities of adulthood. But we really don't limit ourselves to that. Our lesson plans are geared for ninth through twelfth graders. Our key audience really is teachers because we know if we reach one teacher, that teacher touches the lives of hundreds of thousands, I should say, maybe sometimes they touch generations of students and then also in addition to that, we, I've lost my train of thought. Oh, that's okay. That's okay. We have another fast. Oh, I wanted to say yes, here we are. Yes, but judges really should feel free to reach out to the age groups that they're comfortable with. If it's second graders, if it's fifth graders, when you have a rapport, please do that. And also outreach didn't start three years ago when I joined the federal court system. Many judges have a career's worth of experience and we certainly acknowledge and appreciate that. Related to that, Judge Kenner, here's a fax for you. Are there recommendations that you could give to approach a judge to help us champion these outreach programs? Maybe I shouldn't ask that. Good question. Good question. Can I take that under advisory? You're right. Judge, your other record, go. I think some judges are comfortable doing this. Other judges are comfortable doing different things. I like working with school-age kids. Some of my colleagues work with law students, work with the bars. We all find a niche that we're comfortable with. We've just about reached the end of this particular session and this broadcast. So one last question for our panel here. One liners, please. What's the bottom line in terms of developing an successful outreach program? Kathleen? First of all, I'll get a commitment from your staff. Make sure that they understand that the outreaching and customer service is part of the court's mission. And take every opportunity available to get word out there, either do it in person or do it electronically, but use every available avenue that you may have at your disposal. That's great. Kathleen? Actually, Rebecca? Oh, Rebecca, I'm sorry. That's just fine. I would say to start small. And to keep the theme in place, low investment, high impact. So you want to expend as few resources as you can, but think about how can I make the most of those resources? Public affairs and outreach really is a planned, systematic, cohesive kind of a program. So make sure that it works together to support your strategic plan. Make sure that it advances the outcomes that you really wanna see in your community. Great, David. More technology is better. People are becoming more accustomed to using the web so you can use that to get your message across. The better off you will be. You need to provide a mechanism for inputs to improve your operation. And you need to take those inputs seriously when a customer takes the time to provide them. Great, Judge Kenner, the final word. I guess I would say be flexible and keep listening. That about does it. I wanna thank our panelists for the second session. Judge Kenner, Kathleen Farrell, David Oliveira, and Rebecca Fanning, and also Regina Bivens and Sandy Poindexter, as well as our push to talkers and phone in participants. Before I come back with some final thoughts, here are a few points to remember about community outreach and education. Today we've taken a look at the public information and outreach activities and some of the challenges and practices proven to be effective for our panelists and push to talk participants. I hope you found this broadcast to be informative and directly related to what you do on the job. Let me remind you to please complete an evaluation that was part of your downloadable materials on the DCN. We appreciate your feedback. Also, we invite you to access the court operations exchange on the FJC homepage. There you'll find information that courts have posted and are sharing with colleagues throughout the federal court system. In addition, you can ask a question and be part of a discussion on specific court related topics. It's a great resource. I wanna thank again our panelists and all push to talk participants for being so willing to share their experiences in this important subject area. That's such a vital part of the learning process. And a special thanks to David Sellers and the staff of the administrative office, the public affairs office, for partnering with us in this effort. In closing, a lot of what we've discussed today deals with communicating effectively. In his work on leadership wisdom, Larry Liberty notes that communication is more than just speaking and being understood. It's about clarity of thinking, willingness to listen, and the desire to see what someone else sees exactly the way they see things. It rests upon generosity and courage as much as skill. Thank you again for joining us today. Keep an eye on the FJTN bulletin for other upcoming programs of interest to all court staff. And we'll see you on our next FJTN broadcast.


A lot of websites use web fonts, many fonts actually, to improve their visual appearance. When many fonts are in use, they can easily add up to a couple of hundred kilobytes, yet the control over font loading with CSS can feel a bit rigid. With a font loading API, you can take control over when and how fonts should be loaded. Instead of loading our font with a declaration in CSS, we can now load it programmatically. You can create instances of the font face type for each font that you want to use. You provide a name and a resource description, as it is common in CSS. Only when you call load, however, will the browser actually go ahead and fetch the font file and parse it. The promise returned by load will be resolved when the loading and parsing of the font is done. It is imported into the system as a font, but not yet associated with your document. To do that, you need to call add on document.fonts. From here on in, your font will be available under the name you provided to the constructor. These are the most basic and important bits of the font loading API. It seems fairly primitive, but they can be composed to develop complex loading strategies to make your experience much better. Yay, fonts! See you next time. So you know these two buttons to subscribe to the channel and to watch our latest video. We did some market research and it turns out, the longer you leave them on screen, the more people click it. And that means, happy surma. Click it, click it, click it, click it.


Hey guys this is Ryan from Mother Mother and I just want to give a shout out to the class of 2020 BC crazy year crazy year um I'm sorry you guys are deprived of your usual ceremony kind of a drag but um onwards and upwards into this crucial chapter of your young adulthood where um I'm sure you're all hoping to make impact and cut through the noise and be wildly successful at whatever it is you envision for yourselves and I think in order to do all that sometimes you have to be unconventional and a little bit crazy and see things through a different lens see things upside down backwards and inside out so in the spirit of that life approach I'm going to read to you a poem that I wrote when I was thinking about such things this is called you did it and I dedicate it to all of you put your eyes over your hands and count up to the sky put your face behind your secrets and let them finally see you put the war in a drawer and giggle like a flower throw your heart over your shoulder and march into love put the ending in the middle and go back to the final then start again put your left foot in the right then do the twist undone scream at the moon with your ears let go of something important then hold it while it weeps with gratitude light a candle you did it congrats guys take care


The Metropolitan Police have confirmed they will not be taking further action with regard allegations of sexual assault leveled at Prince Andrew. The investigation into Andrew, which was reopened in August, concerned claims made by Virginia Jafrey. She is currently lodging a civil case against the Prince in New York.  One of those assaults, according to Jafrey, was at the London home of Ghilane Maxwell. That's where, according to Jafrey, this photo was taken. Prince Andrew for his part denies all the allegations. Announcing their decision, the Metropolitan Police said the following. As a matter of procedure, Metropolitan Police Service officers reviewed a document released on August 2021 as part of a US civil action. This review has concluded and we are taking no further action. Ash, I presume Prince Andrew will take this as some sort of vindication. The Met Police have said we don't have enough evidence to investigate what might have happened within our jurisdiction. Do you think it would be too premature for him to breathe a sigh of relief, though? Realistically, the Metropolitan Police was never going to come to any other decision. It would be unprecedented to say that, look, we are actively investigating a senior royal for a sexual offence and for upholding what has been put in a civil claim outside of UK jurisdiction. It really would be unprecedented. The Metropolitan Police, you know, it's a political beast as well as part of the criminal justice system and maintains its own power and authority through proximity to other parts of the establishment and keeping them on side. So they were never going to do anything different. But this doesn't mean that Prince Andrew is in the clear by any stretch of the imagination. One, him and his lawyers still have until the 29th of October to respond to Virginia Gifrey's suit. Two, one of the things that they're banking on is that there will be something in the 2009 settlement between Gifrey and Epstein which would insulate Prince Andrew or could be interpreted to insulate him from any civil claim pertaining to Gifrey and Epstein. And even if, say, the civil claim is upheld, even if the kind of Hail Mary chance of hoping for a rescue by some detail that's in this Epstein Gifrey suit, they would then have to work out how they would either recover damages, you know, impose whatever penalty the court came up with in the US. And then still that's not the same thing as a criminal action. So I think that what is more meaningful here is the amount of negative publicity that this ongoing case is attracting according to a piece which came out in the Sunday times, other senior royals, most notably Prince Charles and Prince William consider Prince Andrew a liability. They don't think that his judgment is good. They seem as a net negative for the institution and resilience of the monarchy. It just so happens that Prince Andrew enjoys an awful lot of support from his mother, the Queen, who is said to be financially supporting him at this time and personally financing his defense against the claims brought by Virginia Gifrey. But the monarchy is headed for a crisis of legitimacy when the Queen does die.  We saw that with the Emily Maitlis Newsnight interview and increasing sections of the public attending against him because they find that the claims which are brought by Virginia Gifrey completely credible. I'm glad you brought up the role of the Queen in this because it links to the next clip I want to show, which involves, I think it all puts on show anyway, how how ridiculously we discuss this in Britain or how how ridiculously elites discuss this whole issue in Britain. This was Nick Ferrari on Question Time speaking last week in response to a question about whether Prince Andrew should go to the USA to face cross examination. This is how I'm going to sum it up. The Queen has been through the most trying period of her life. I would imagine not that long ago. She lost her consort of goodness knows how many decades. She's also got the issues of one of her grandsons living in California, which we are also going to park there. I just think it's a terrible shame that as this woman continues to serve in a way that I don't know we will ever see again in this country that she is blighted by problems such as this. So whether it takes him to go to New York to Washington to do a video link, whatever it takes to put this out of the way to let the Queen power on and do the job that I think she happens to do, particularly, well, I would urge him to do that. I sort of introduced that in terms of the ridiculous way that elites discuss this issue, which, by the way, is a serious allegation about sexual assault, right, of someone who has been allegedly trafficked. Really, really serious issue. And Nick Ferrari gives that speech, which I think completely belittles the issue, because he makes it all about how relaxed the Queen can be. The real victim here is the Queen, who, as Ash said, gave loads of support to Prince Andrew. She hasn't exactly showered herself in glory in this situation. But not only did he say something, to my mind, completely ridiculous, but the audience laughed it up. Everyone in that audience really clapped for Nick Ferrari there. And there were periods in that same episode. We actually showed them on Friday in relation to the Cut to Universal Credit, where there were lots of people who had quite progressive views in that audience. But still, they thought the real victim of all of this was the Queen. Ash, did you find that clip as depressing as I did? Yeah, absolutely depressing. And it's also these contortions to defend the Queen as a sovereign and be really invested in this kind of decades in the making myth, which has become layered and entwined with her. So she's not just the head of state. She's not just this constitutional figure, but there's something about her which is like the grandmother of a nation. So it's inviting us to feel this very familial sense of attachment to what is essentially a non-agingarian aristocrat and appealing to an experience of grief, which I'm sure was absolutely devastating just as it would be for anyone else. And I think in quite a cynical way, leveraging that, to draw attention away from the fact that, well, maybe if it turns out that Prince Andrew did all the things that Virginia Dufres is alleging that he did, that he committed a sex offence, that the victim in question was a victim of sex trafficking and 17 years old at the time, that maybe if he did do those things, they were done because of his role as a senior member of the royal family, the levels of impunity and power and access that grants him and not in spite of it. So it's a way, I think, of trying to tug on the heart strings and distract from the fact that maybe Prince Andrew's position as a royal wouldn't be incidental to what's been alleged to have happened, but would have been central to it.


update. Okay, folks, afternoon update from Larry Pesavento. This has been my longest break in 17 years, folks. I've been gone 10 days because of this laryngitis that I've had. It's cleared up pretty nicely. As long as I go slow, I think I'll make it through the show here the next couple of days and it'll get better day by day. Our guest day will be Stan Harley, the Harley Stock Market Letter today. Tomorrow we've got Norm Winsky. Norm has some usually great trading dates, so we want to pay close attention to that as does Stan. I posted a chart here today to talk about over the last five trading days here of the NASDAQ because we've had these tremendous moves, folks, and also in the S&P. My gosh, the S&P hitting, what was it, 50, 20 or something like that? There was some big number, much higher than I thought it was going to go to, but I'm surprised often, but never in doubt. As you can see here, we've got multiple swings up here. I don't have all of them drawn in because it's a little too busy, but around 17,800 and 80 is a big number. Today we just made another new high by just a hair, but that hair can grow very, very rapidly as we know. I believe very, very strongly that we are in a topping area. It might go another day. It might go another week. It might go another two weeks, but boy, when it turns, I have no fury like a market that is turned. That's the old market adage. Watching them very, very closely, great volatility, folks. This volatility that we're seeing is going to increase. That's what we like to see happening here with some of these markets. They've been pretty good, but now we're having something. I just heard an alert here that we just made the 78% retracement in the crude oil. That's going to be a real interesting one. Let's see if we can get up here so you folks can see it going on here. Get it up here and you'll see there's where we are. There's the 78% level up here at 38. We haven't quite got there yet. That number is a little bit higher yet, but sort of keep an eye on that one. That's a really nice ABCD for today. Small, small pattern, but that's what we like. ABCD is what I bring to the market. I've been pretty fortunate over the years to understand how it works. And boy, I don't understand all the time, but I do understand some of the time. So stay tuned. We got some great information and a great guess. Be right back.


Yes, welcome back. We heard a lot of interesting things about international aid environment and global change. Now we will ask ourselves, how do you achieve environmental goals in developing countries? What is the best way to go? What kind of prices and regulations would be needed and how can international aid play a role in that? We will start with Helle Munch Reveniboy. She is a researcher from the Danish Institute of International Studies. Very welcome. Thank you very much. I'm going to present some of the results from work that we have been doing at Danish Institute for International Studies. Oh, I didn't recognize that one. Together with Stockholm Environment Institute, Rasmus is sitting somewhere down here and we have focused our work on environmental governance, so old-fashioned environmental work that doesn't look particularly at climate change issues. The results of much of the work I have carried, so my arm is still shaking. I've carried a lot of reports from Copenhagen this morning and you're very, very welcome to take a copy with you as you leave this room. The context that I'm speaking to is a context where, as most of you would know, low-income countries also put a very low ecological footprint. Talking about data, we don't have very much consolidated environmental data, but the ecological footprint is one attempt to combine all environmental effects of human activity and give it a single measure. So we take this one to portray to you that low-income countries are not putting a very high, a very heavy footprint in those terms. And it's also common to portray, at least if we look back in history, that environmental issues are not something growing out of developing countries themselves, but rather something that has been imposed, some fear that it is due to competition issues and the rest, but imposed by high-income countries. However, we should not forget that there are environmental costs and many of those environmental costs, both of pollution but also of environmental degradation, are borne by developing countries. Here, a graph that I have borrowed from the World Bank, environmental costs in percent of GDP. And you would find on the high end of the list countries like China, but also a country like Ghana. So it's not so that environmental costs only come later as your economic development continues. The next slide that I'm going to show you is a slide from a march in Nicaragua in 2005. And it tells us something about the environmental costs. I've put it there. It's a dramatic slide. I've put it there to remind us that behind numbers like those we just saw, they're human faces, they're human lives and they're human bodies. And I think we should remember that as we talk on these issues. The next slide is more positive. It shows that, actually, if we look back in time, a lot of things have happened. There's a database collected of environmental legislation, environmental institution building, environmental decrees, environmental court decisions, called ECOLEX. And we have compiled the number of countries that have general environmental legislation. And what you see there is that out of the 103 developing countries in 1986, there were not very many that had environmental legislation. It gained pace after the publication of the Brundtland report in 1986. And then it really gained pace after 1992 with the real conference. This is not to say that environmental legislation is the only way you can perform environmental governance. There are many ways of doing that. But in recognition of new actors emerging in many of these developing economies, dealing with those new actors and also dealing with new substances, chemicals, dealing with new ways of using natural resources, it becomes increasingly important to have that formal or statutory framework for dealing with environmental issues, not least today. Development cooperation has contributed to the picture you just saw. This one is almost similar. It shows the number of aid activities given with a general environmental purpose from 1972, where there were not very many. Maybe they were there, but they were not labeled as such. But at least now we know more about what is inside and we have got this word environment into our development thinking. And you can also see that reflected here. Talking about the fragmentation that we talked about earlier, just looking at the number of aid activities in this general field of environmental regulation, there are more than 68 activities per year per country that they have to report to. So development cooperation has contributed to the picture that you just saw. But of course we can't jump to conclusions just by viewing that there's a correlation between the number of aid activities and the year where you have got your environmental legislation. In order to provide us a bit more detail on those issues, I would like to just give a few highlights from four country and thematic case studies that we've been undertaking, taken in Kenya, in Nicaragua, in Hiché and in Vietnam. And when we look at the aid activities behind these graphs here and see what was the content, how did that correspond to the general legislation, environmental legislation and how did it correspond also to the sector specific or thematic, thematically specific legislation. We can see that development cooperation has in actual fact contributed pre the legislation. So to develop the legislation, it has developed to create the institutions necessary to enforce the legislation and also to take that further into a more decentralized approach within the country. What we also see in these case studies is that we can see a number of challenges that we have ahead of us. So there's a firm ground now in terms of administrative and legal framework, but there's still a lot of challenges in bringing that to work the way it was intended to. One of the first challenges is that environment is a new policy field. Now that is both a challenge, you're challenged by your colleagues in the environment ministry or in the agricultural ministry, why are you now coming to take part of our issues to deal with? Why is development assistance going to you and not to us, et cetera? But it's also an opportunity. What people living in many of these countries see is that now we have a new infrastructure, now we have a new policy, new sets of instruments, and we can use those to bring up issues that we haven't been able to bring up with the traditional ministry of agriculture. That came out in the case study that we did in Kenya and it came out also in some of the research that we've been doing in Nicaragua. We have the legislative and administrative framework in place, but often the enforcement capacity is not existent, or it's very, very low. This is not rocket science. There's a limit to how much you can expect to do with just one or two technical professionals in the field of enforcing these environmental laws. There's a limit to how much you can expect them to do if they need to be accompanied by the police officer next door, but the police officer is not interested in going with them to do what they're supposed to do. In Nicaragua it seems like within a normal district there would be a maximum of five people who have any kind of professional education, not even academics, in all fields. In Denmark the academics in an average district would be at a number of more than 100 and usually 160. So there's a limit to how much you can do if you don't have the people on the ground to do what is needed. That is a challenge. Some of the environmental issues are never raised, they're never voiced, not by the governments when they're negotiating with donor agencies and not by the donor agencies when they're discussing environmental issues and how they can cooperate. One case in point is this picture that you probably don't see very well, but we did a study on uranium mining in Niger. Niger is one of the poorest countries on this planet. It's also a country that we often, what we hear about it is that there's a lot of deforestation, there's desertification, etc, etc. We don't hear that it's the fourth largest exporter of uranium. That issue is not brought into the discussions when development aid is negotiated even though the legislation is in place, but there's not any enforcement capacity to make it work and to do the testing and create the data that is needed to find out whether actually a large part of the population is affected and also a large part of the livestock is affected by uranium. It's a political economy that sometimes makes us blind. And then another point relates to the international environmental legislative conventions. It's increasingly important to think that development assistance and its relative importance is declining. It's the seventh part of what it was in relative terms to international finance now than what it was 20 years ago. And that trend is probably going to continue. If we want to have a platform that is legitimate where we can negotiate and discuss environmental issues that are not only relevant locally but also internationally, we need these conventions to create that legitimate and open space where countries can be put to respond to their actions, where people can make claims. If their national government is not willing to listen, they can take resort in international conventions. And the pesticide case from Nicaragua is a case in point where there is an international legislation but it's not strong enough, it's not precise enough, there's not enough data and there's sometimes also enough political will to make it include the issues that are really important to have included. We need to work to change that. So the recommendations from this very brief presentation is to support and to strengthen the enforcement capacity at the district level, at the local level, whatever is appropriate in the individual country, but also recognize that environment is not just something that takes place within the environmental ministry, it's something that requires integration horizontally with police officers, with lawyers, with researchers, with civil society activists and the rest of it. So we have to think of environmental issues and environmental governance moving it out from where it has been to where it actually belongs. And in continuation of that one of the ways that development cooperation in the future can contribute to make strong environmental governance in respect of all the laws and rights and principles is to strengthen that claim making capacity of citizens through support for the authorities that I just talked about and also through support for the civil society organizations. And then as a last bit, to really work to develop the international environmental conventions, it is a great victory that we have so many conventions. Many people will know that it takes a lot of effort to report to all of these conventions, but they're very important as this legitimate space. We need as an international society to make sure that what is thought of as a legal framework enabling us to handle these very complex issues is also maintained like that and is not undermined and becoming software guidelines because there are not enough targets and sufficiently clear targets and because we are not willing to provide the multilateral assistance to make it possible to actually have the monitoring that is needed to make them work. So these are the words from a district officer, environmental officer in a district in Nicaragua, where he says, without the international support, being asked whether this is an agenda imposed by development organizations, he says, without the international support, we would never have been able to address the environmental problems we have in my district. So I think we should continue that work and not let this guy work alone. Thank you.


Call the 21st meeting of the 2012-2013 Common Council meeting to order. Will Clerk please read the Court of the Day. Thank you. Before anything else, preparation is the key to success. Call the roll, please. 15 present. Court Ms. President, please join me in the Pledge of Allegiance. United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Motion for approval of the minutes, Alderman Hammond. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I move to approve the minutes of the previous council meeting. Second. It's been moved and seconded to approve the minutes of the previous council meeting. Is there any changes or additions? Do you know if Clerk will call the roll? Oh, he lost his clicker. Okay, thank you. Thank you. 15 ayes. Motion carries. Mayor's appointments to the attorney. He will... Honorable members of the council, hereby submit the following appointments for your confirmation. These are members of the Business Improvement District. Pamela Butler-Channel. Ryan Moeller. David Gass. Tom Brickley. Mike Van der Steen. Eileen Simons. William Holbrook. Larry Schaefer. David Hanneman. David Sanderson and Chad Pellecek. All terms being appointed tonight and expiring for the first two in December 31 of 2014. The next three, December 31, 2013. The next three, 2014. The next two, 2013. And Chad Pellecek, December 2014. Signed by the mayor. These are just putting us in line with the bid district's new bylaws. We'll have a lie over till the next meeting. Public forum. City clerk. None this evening. No one. Mayor's announcements. Moving on. Consent agenda 2-1 through 2-7, Alderman Hammond. Thank you. I move to accept and file all or always accept and adopt all our season, put all resolutions and ordinance upon the passage. Second. I move to accept and adopt all ROs, accept all and pass all committee reports and pass all resolutions and general ordinances. Is there any discussion? 2-1 through 2-7. Any discussion? Hearing none, clerk will call the roll. 15 ayes. Motion carries. Communications and petitions 3-1 will be referred to public protection and safety. Report of officers 4-1 through 4-13 will all be referred. Resolutions. I won by Alderman Racler to repeal resolution number 139-1112 of proving the combined dispatch services between the city and county, the city of Sheboygan and the county. Alderman Racler. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I move that the resolution be put upon its passage. I've been moved and seconded to have the resolution be put upon its passage. Is there any discussion? Hearing none, clerk will call the roll. 13 ayes. One no and one abstention. Motion carried. 5-2 a resolution by Alderman Donahue van Akken van der Wille, waiving the residence requirements in order to hire assistant deputy finance director. Alderman Donahue. Thank you, Mayor. I would move that the resolution be put upon its passage. I move and seconded that the resolution be put upon its passage. Under discussion. Alderman Cuff. Thank you, Mayor. I'm looking for commentary from Attorney Steve McQueen. Steve. The only comment I would have, I guess, is there's currently a resolution outstanding that all nonrepresented employees of the city need to reside in the city. There were people that were grandfathered in that lived outside the city prior to that resolution being put in place. But that applies to all the nonrepresented employees except the department heads. There's a separate general ordinance in place that requires department heads of the city to reside in the city as well. I guess, from a legality standpoint, the resolution here would be to carve out an exception of the current residency requirement for the assistant deputy finance director. I guess it's really a policy decision on the council department. Alderman Cuff. Any other questions? Does that answer your question? Alderman Bourne. Thank you, Mayor van Akken. I was wondering if we could open up the floor to our HR manager, Sandy Roerich, so she could cover the recruitment efforts for this position, what the salary range is, what the job requirements are, and if they have anybody pending that they want to hire for this position. Thank you. We don't need an actual motion to open the floor. Sandy. Good evening. Our recruitment efforts. Can you explain for the audience out there who you are and what your title here is? I'm the human resources manager for the city. I've been with the city for a little over a year now. I've been in Sheboygan for about eight years. I've had very good success in my previous position recruiting for different types of professional positions. This position is challenged. Our pay range is a bit low to recruit somebody who has the needs for this position. In other words, controller-like experience. A four-year degree is required plus specific experience dealing with budgets and financials of a large organization of our size. Our recruitment efforts included posting it in the paper, online with job service, the Wisconsin Net, and career builders. And within our scope of this advertisement campaign, residency has been an issue we've had quite a few people call and say, is residency required? If it is, I'm not submitting my application. We had 22 applicants of which we have a very small pool of actual qualified candidates, which is not sufficient in my opinion. Thanks, Mayor. Sandy, what's the salary range for this position? And the other thing, of course, we have a pretty good benefit package also for this position. And in the past, at least in the last four or five years, at least for department heads, we've had most of our department heads have come from outside the city of Sheboygan.  And yet for this position, there seems to be difficulty where in the last four or five years, we don't seem to have difficulty getting people to come in here in leadership or semi-leadership positions. One of the challenges is this is not a department head. We believe that this will be a successor to the department head. So we're looking for someone at that top level capabilities, and yet we can't offer the pay. In the general market that we have candidates coming from, their pay is maybe 90 to 100, and our salary range starts at 65. So 65 to 77 is our midpoint, and people aren't willing to leave their job for that. As far as the benefits, Sheboygan County, Sheboygan City, the benefit that we give here is certainly a very respectable package, but we compete with other private industries that offer better benefit packages. Alderman Vaughn, any other questions? Just one follow-up, and that right now, you don't have anybody that you want to hire. So we're doing away with the residency requirement, but we actually don't have it. You don't actually have a candidate right now. No, we don't. We want to increase our candidate pool by lifting this requirement. Any other questions for Sandy before we let Sandy go? Any questions for Sandy? Alderman Van Ackeren. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Sandy, at the meeting, we talked about the residency requirement as a whole a little bit, as well as specifically in this position. Can you just, I guess, elaborate on, first off, this position? How long have we been trying to fill this, and I guess a little bit of the timeline involved in the attempts to fill this position, as well as any other positions that residency has caused a problem or is potentially going to cause a problem throughout the city? And I guess, in your opinion, do you feel that having this residency restriction is beneficial to the city or harmful to our efforts? I guess all three of those and I'll just let you answer. I'll try to answer all of them. This position started with a recruitment effort for a senior accountant back in the fall. As we started moving forward in the process, we started asking our deputy director of finance what her retirement plans are, and we're able to narrow it down a little bit more further that we know that we need a more advanced candidate. So our recruitment efforts started to enhance themselves this basically in December and in January. So we've been trying, if you want to say, for six months specific to this title for about three months. What was number two? Other positions. Other positions. I definitely would feel that this would cause some issues within the non-represented pay groups in that some people have relocated, some people are still challenged with it, some have not applied because of it, and there would be some internal issues with people that have moved and are having some hardships with it. Specifically, one spouse is in another city, one spouse has a residency requirement where they live, and it's challenging. We have people that have left during my time here because their spouse could not move. We have other people who have children with special needs who can't just up and relocate them. So it's challenging and creating one position with it will have some hardships. There's no doubt. Your third one was? In your opinion, do you feel this is beneficial or detrimental to the city to continue with this? My opinion comes from I want to hire the best candidate. That's my professional goal, is always to get the best candidate for the job and the one that will stay, the one that fits both with us and that we feel does the job. So I do feel that this will enhance our opportunities to get more candidates. Any other questions for Sandy? Before we move on. I have a quick one. We talked via email stuff about some other locations and their residence requirements and just on a quick opinion like the majority of them have a city requirement or does it seem like they've really kind of established a larger area to enhance their pool? Residency came up about six months ago and was voted down in this council and I did do a poll question with other municipalities, both city and county and it sounds like about 67% do not have residency. Of that 42% have no residency whatsoever and 26% require the top administrator of the county or the city as well as the police chief and fire chief to stay in. So the majority do allow people to live wherever they're going to live. Any other questions of Sandy? Before we move on. Thank you. Alderman Lissard. Alderman Donahue. Thank you. This matter came up before salary and grievances and it is a difficult question and this council has in my short time here wrestled with issues relating to residency. In fact last September we tried to abolish the residency requirement pretty much in its entirety without success. Now bringing this forward not that much after the fact is because of some fairly extraordinary circumstances that exist right now with respect to this position and the retirement of Nancy Bus who is the deputy finance director, controller, treasurer, goddess of the earth. Nancy wears many hats and wears them all exceptionally well. The problem is as articulated by Sandy is we're having significant difficulty in recruiting a good candidate. The answer that Sandy gave tonight they were all good answers but the one that really impressed me the most is we're here to hire the best person and that really has to be our overarching concern. Are we hiring the best person? And we have from good authority from Sandy and from Jim Amodio that the pool of candidates is shallow with respect to candidates who either are willing to move into the city or who already live here. I'm going to suggest to you tonight that waiving the residency requirement in this particular instance is one exceptional but two is exceptionally necessary and strongly urge you to support the waiver of the residency requirement in this one situation for tonight. Why is it? I came to town back to town in 1981 and I don't think I got to City Hall to ask Nancy bus my first question until about 1983. When I asked Nancy all of these questions over the years I call up and I say Nancy do you remember back in March of 1992 and Nancy said well of course here was the issue here was the here was the resolution. What else can I tell you Nancy can you send me some the answer is in the mail. Nancy has institutional memory that in addition to her job qualifications is extremely important to the financial health and success of the city. Now this job description for the person that we're going to hire this is a job that Nancy is doing in addition to her own current job just because of the way the department has been reconfigured. There are 17 job duties thankfully I will not read them all but they are fairly compelling in terms of the breadth and depth of knowledge that is required. My personal favorite is prepare difficult financial and other reports for the city system and outside agencies is required. I don't know who prepares the non-difficult reports. Not so easy preparing information requested by the committee on finance salary and grievance and others as requested supervising and opening closing procedures of the financial system internal auditor of journal entries, financial statements, treasury cash flow, cash management. She is responsible for grant administration including file maintenance, pre-audit, inspection and final audit. It does go on. In addition right now Nancy is she is the city's investor so money that the city has to invest Nancy is doing. She opens and closes all of our tax incremental districts. She submits financial resolutions and ordinances and answers all questions from other city employees that need some history for their particular issue. This is a big job. We need somebody really qualified in this job but the second part is we need Nancy bus to train this person to be able to do this job. Nancy is not going to be able to transfer all of her history and all of her knowledge within the eight or ten month period of time that there might be, it might be longer, it might be shorter, but now is the time to start that transfer of information as well as training for what is really a difficult job. So we're having trouble hiring. We may have better luck if somebody who lives in Howard's Grove or Keele or Kohler or the town of Sheboygan who doesn't want to sell a house, relocate children, but would like to have this job and has that skill set and can work with Nancy over the next few months to transfer that, at least part of that basis of information. That's why I'm strongly urging you in this one single instance to waive the residency requirement. Now, Sandy points out that we have other residency issues. I believe that the salary and grievance committee I spoke with our chair and we are willing to really look into what the best practices are for residency requirements for municipalities and really determine whether or not we can live with our residency requirement, whether it should be modified, who it should apply to, that can go on down the road so that we can apply equity in these decisions across the board. But for now, I would suggest to you we have, crisis is probably a bit of a strong word, emergency is probably a bit of a strong word, but if we wait another month or another two months or another three months, those words will be good descriptors for the situation the city is going to find itself in. So I've talked a lot, but I feel real strongly about this one and I hope you'll support salary and grievances bringing this forward to you. Thanks. Alderman Hammond. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Diddle. I'd just like to echo a few comments. I too think this is, and I probably would use the word critical just because of the functions that this position entails. Even with an eight to ten month lead time, we are never going to get to the point where whoever takes over that position knows what Nancy knows. We just resign ourselves to that. The second portion of that is we do need to find the best talent. First off, there's not a lot of accountants out there. Believe it or not, there's actually a shortage in the industry of accountants. And there's even fewer accountants that have government accounting backgrounds. So we're going to try to find a controller level person that has some form of government accounting experience, have them come into a position. Now, if somebody lives in Minnesota or in Michigan, sure, they're going to move here because it's required, or not required, but it's practical. But if somebody lives in Howard's Grove or Keele or Kohler, as Alderman Donahue said, why would we make them move into the city when they're the best qualified? It just doesn't make any sense to me why we would do that. So I'm going to support this wholeheartedly. I think we need to get somebody into that position so that they can start training and learning. And hopefully by the time Nancy does finally retire, we will at least have 70 percent of the knowledge she has dumped into somebody going forward. So I would encourage everybody to support this. I get it. I understand why people like the residency requirement. It's just not practical in this situation. You have a small pool of talent when you're just trying to focus in Sheboygan. If we can expand that, you know, even 20 or 30 miles, I think we're going to find some great candidates. So I appreciate it. Thank you. Alderman Borden. Thank you, Mayor. One thing Sandy said about the salary is not really competitive. Has there been any thought of making the salary competitive so that we do get more qualified candidates? I guess I'd ask Sandy or Mr. Amode of that question. Jim, can you, Jim or Sandy? The position was advertised as an assistant deputy director. One way to change that would be to advertise as a deputy director, which would be the same position. We certainly wouldn't bring in anyone above the pay level of what we're paying Nancy. And that alone, Nancy is making somewhere in the 90,000 range. And that's a challenge to get somebody with that kind of experience that Mr. Hammond was talking about. Some might come for that, but it's a challenge. If I could just follow up. That person that you're going to hire is going to be coming into the job knowing that pretty soon they're going to be in that position. So within 8, 10 months a year, that person is going to be, if not up to the level Nancy is because of her seniority, is certainly going to get a bump once that person takes over that position. Is that being made clear to the candidates? They would have to, in some cases, take a pay decrease for then getting a pay increase in about a year. Any other questions all of them? Any other questions of Sandy while she's there? Clement Bellender. Thank you, Mayor. I like Alderman Hammond and Alderman Donahue. I'm going to support this for the reasons that have already been stated, but I'm curious to the Salary and Grievance Committee, and if you have thought about this, Sandy, too, you're going to set a precedent here if this should pass with an exception. You could theoretically argue the same thing over and over again with other opportunities or positions that come open, and we would have the same discussion. So I'm wondering if the thought through Salary and Grievance is to reconsider the residency requirement as a whole, because if we do make this exception of all the unintended consequences that are going to result as it relates to this with your personnel. If we pass this tonight, then we owe it to the employees who have expressed concern to me, to their department heads, to do a formal review, as Alderman Donahue has recommended. Any other questions? Thank you. Alderman Lewandowski. You can stay seated. Okay. Well, I'm not going to support this, and I basically have one reason for that, and a couple of weeks ago we came up with ideas for a job description for the mayor, and one of the things on the job description for the mayor was to promote Sheboygan as a good place to live and to work. And I don't see how we can tell the mayor he should promote the city as a good place to live when we as a group are saying the opposite and saying, well, this job is open, but you don't need to live here. We are not promoting Sheboygan as a good place to live then if we approve this. So I'm going to be voting against this. Thank you. Any other questions for Sandy? Thank you again, Sandy. Any other discussion? Seeing none, I'll clerk or call the roll. Can I vote as to waive? The I vote is to go along with the committee report recommendation to waive the it's a resolution to waive the residency to hire the assistant deputy. We're accepting the committee's report. That was fast. Seven ayes, eight noes. The motion fails. 5-2 by Alderman Donahue Van Aker and Van DeWille. I'm sorry. 5-3-5-8 to be referred. 6-1, a committee report from law licensing recommending taxi license driver number 59, taxi driver's license number 5902. Alderman Van DeWille. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Moves of the RC be accepted and adapted. It's been moved and seconded that the committee report be accepted to dock and under discussion on them in Van Aker. Is Amy Belikovich here this evening? She is not here. She was invited to appear before our committee two different occasions and she did not. So we had to deny her 5-0. Is there any discussion on the committee report? 6-1. Seeing none, the clerk will call the roll. 15 ayes. Motion carries. 6-2, committee report from law and licensing denying driver's license number 8927. Alderman Van DeWille. Moves of the RC be accepted and adapted. It's been moved and seconded that the RC be accepted and adapted under discussion on them in Van DeWille. Is Kendra Yudevich here this evening? She is here. The committee had heard from the assistant city attorney as to her record and in 2011 she had an OWI due to drugs. In 2011 she had a possession of THC. In 2011 possession of drug paraphernalia and in 2012 possession of THC and in 2012 also another possession of drug paraphernalia. The committee did a vote 5-0 to deny and she is still on probation. We just felt that at this time it was a bit too soon after her recent violations to give her a beverage apparel license. The operator is here. Would you like to address the council? Could you come up to the front please? Thank you. I have two letters of recommendation if you wouldn't mind. If you want to look at them in the region. I've been working at the same gas station for two years and it's my only form of income. I'm trying to get my HSDD and go to college. In order to do that I need a job to pay for it. I also have bills in rent. And I just, I need my job. Any questions of the applicant? Alderman Cough. Oh not of the applicant. Any questions of the applicant before we go on? Alderman Van Aker. If for some reason you wouldn't be granted your license would that affect your employment at the gas station? Yes it would. Okay so in other words you would lose your job there? Yes. Correct. Okay also the history that was given in 2011 there was three charges that were given in 2012. Were those all separate incidents? Or were they all stemming from two incidents together? Two incidents. So the three things in 2011 the OWI, the possession of THC and the paraphernalia was one combined incident. And then in 2012 the possession of paraphernalia as well as possession of THC again was one incident not separate. Thank you. Any other questions of the applicant? Where did you say you currently are employed? Well I used to work at the Clark station on north in 15. Good. Alderman. No not for the applicant. Okay any other questions for the applicant? Alderman Lussard. You said that you work for two years in this position. Yes. And why is it now how are you able to work there for two years and not have a beverage license and now if you don't have one you can't work there anymore. I had my beverage license. I came back to renew it and it ended up being that I got my probationary license and then I was given my letter that I wasn't able to get my permanent license renewed. You're the only one on site? Yes. There's no one to supervise you so you could keep your job? No. Okay thank you. Any other questions of the applicant? Alderman Raceler. Thank you. Your probation agent is aware that you're working at this location? Yes she is. And she doesn't have a problem with you working at the location with the liquor or the sale or anything? Have you had any problems at work with any problems with sales of alcohol or liquor? No. And just asking for a guesstimate of your sales and your job, how much of that actually deals with alcohol or liquor? 5%, 10%, 15% you know? With liquor I'd probably say anywhere from 20 to 30%. And you are working at the Clark Station now or you were? I was up until this all happened.  Yes I've already been guaranteed it. Okay. That was a Clark Station on 15th and north? Yes. Any other questions of the applicant? Thank you very much. Alderman Bourne. Thank you Mayor. Who are the letters of recommendation from? And my second question for the committee chairman is did you get a recommendation directly from the probation officer whether it was alright for her to work in this situation? City Clerk would you like it's just a paragraph each. Do you want me to read them? Who they're from? They're not very long. Okay. One of them is from a Chandra. Okay Kendra has been an employee at my store for over two years. She is a hard working individual who brings a good work ethic and a smile to work with her every day. She has never had an underage sale and has always been very kind and helpful to the customer. She's trustworthy and reliable to find another employee like her would be extremely hard. Please reconsider. The licensing committee's decision and allow her to renew her beverage operators license. Is she the manager of the store? No, is this the lady? The owner of the store. Okay. I would answer your one question. And then there's a Teresa Snow. I've known Kendra for several years. I know her to be hard working honest. I admire her integrity and kindness. She has never done anything that would harm another person and show as much thoughtfulness in her dealing with others. I have known her to go out of her way to help others. She deserves a chance to make a living. It seems to me she's just trying to get by, same as the rest of us. Kendra is a very good young person and deserves a chance to continue with her job. I'll answer your questions. Alderman Barn. Thank you. We have one for the committee chairman about the probation officer. We did not. And did you get a recommendation from the police department on this individual? No recommendation. Any other questions? Alderman Raceler. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. As in the past, I've been very liberal on most of these. And I guess I'm going to probably be again. I realize that this young lady's made a lot of mistakes. But she's on probation and that's actually going to be the best supervision that we have, better than what this committee or the council's going to do.  So I guess for that reason, I'm going to vote no. Any other, Alderman Kaff. I'm sorry it was on. Ms. Yudevich had a 2011 OWI with drugs, a 2011 possession of THC, a 2011 possession of drug paraphernalia, a 2012 possession of THC, and a 2012 possession of drug paraphernalia. The police department also recommended to deny. They did not give a recommendation for her license. So with the police recommendation and these things, I will, and the committee voted 5 to 0. I will move, I will vote 2 to 9. Any other discussion? Alderman Kaff. Thank you, Mayor. I too was at the committee meeting and we all voted against these. In the last two years that she's worked for this company, in the last two years she's gotten all these charges. We all thought about it, chatted about it and I will not support her getting her license. Any other discussion? Hearing none, the clerk will call the roll. A aye vote will be to support the community report to deny. Yes. Eight ayes, seven noes. Motion carries to deny the application. 6-3 from law licensing recommendation, recommending denying beverage license number 9829. Alderman Van Thank you. I move that the RC be accepted and adopted. Second. It's been moved and seconded that the RC be accepted and adopted. Is Kathleen Schrader here this evening? She's not here. Because of one of her convictions back in 2004, she is ineligible for us to even issue a license so we had to deny it. Any discussion? Hearing none, the clerk will call the roll. 15 ayes. Motion carried. 6-4 from law licensing recommendation to deny taxi cab driver license number 7760. Alderman Van DeWille. Thank you. I move that the RC be accepted and adopted. Second. It's been moved and seconded that the committee report be accepted and adopted. Is Brenda Valerio here this evening? She is present. Her convictions or violations in 2010 were the violation of traffic control in 2010 operating after suspension. Also in 2010 too fast for conditions. In 2011 operating after suspension and in 2012 speeding going 20 plus over the limit while she was driving a taxi cab. The committee voted 4-1 to deny. I see the applicant is here. Would you like to speak to the council please? I do respect the decision that was taken. There you go. I do respect the decision that was taken but I'm kind of sick. Up until that last speeding ticket that I got heading into Kohler prior to that even though I had even though I had a hard lesson to learn it cost me financially with the fines and everything. I was approved to for my cab driver license and after that last one it has it has cost me a lot to know that not only this is affecting my permit to drive cab but again I hope that within six months I can prove so I can come back and reapply for my driver license and I wish through with some other kind of system where you know and for a drug test or drinking I'll be more willing to do something like that I'm not a drinker I'm not drugs I never have been you know I wish that was a requirement for other cab drivers also. Any questions of the applicant? Alderman born. Ma'am do you have any other employment besides arriving cab? To be honest no when the last time I was approved I was working at Rockline extra hours and right now you're not you're not driving cab right now no I'm not thank you any other questions of the applicant? thank you very much thank you any discussion on the committee report? hearing none the clerk will call the roll 12 eyes 3 nose motion carries 6-5 long licensing recommending denying taxi driver license 97-91 Alderman Banda-William thank you I move that the RC be accepted and adopted second it's been moved and seconded that the committee report be accepted and adopted under discussion Alderman Banda-William is Angel Estevez here this evening he is here he recently was stopped for driving and driving an avicab without a license somebody from the company had borrowed it to him so he could use it to drive the vehicle wasn't licensed it was there was no proof of insurance and he was not supposed to be driving it so that was just one of the issues that we had there was also we had also denied him just on December 11th 2012 because of the he had speeding tickets in 2012 2009 and he also in 2006 had disorderly conduct seat belt violation and speeding the applicant would like to address the council please my name is Angel Estevez and I didn't try to purposely hide nothing that day my son was sick the cabs were really busy there was only two cab drivers that day so he told me the cab the cab guy who runs it they were here when he said it here too he borrowed me a cab and I thought I would be just like just borrowing a regular car I did not know you know because I don't know the laws about that I did not know that I couldn't drive it as a civilian to go get the medication and I looked at the place the place was good everything was good on the car so I just figured that you know I guess I could drive to go get the medication because he was tied up that's my son that was sick by the way hold on and you know I'm appreciative that he did that for me but I did not know the law I did not drive a cab that is still counted as driving a cab I had no fair money on me no nothing no ledgers hold on and you know the insurance was inside the car that's going to be proven and he just recently got the place back for that car it was like three days over 200 that's why the place were expired I was not speedy so I wasn't doing nothing wrong but I'm sorry sorry for that and the first time I was denied there was a mistake in the paperwork of my speeding tickets and I bought here a copy of my tickets that I had and found in Black County and there's only two tickets if you would like to look at them there's only two speeding tickets here give it to the clerk please do you need this back and there was only two speeding tickets it was just that they showed three there's the record right there it was only two speeding tickets one was I think in 06 and one was in 2012 that was last year and I wasn't trying to hide nothing but I did go get the copy this time so then they could see that it was correct of what I was saying and I really do need this job because I need to you know support my children and you know I'm not trying to live off the tax payers you know right now I'm on disability I get a job so I can keep my family fed and all that I'm very sorry I did not know the laws that you can't I thought just like you borrow me your car or something like that otherwise I wouldn't have been driving that tax at the time any questions for the applicant all of them are sorry what taxi company would you be working for Independent I won't work for Abicab I'll be working for Independent this time how would you the vehicle excuse me yes ma'am it was Abicab that bought me the cab and you had the lights for service on the taxi were lit when you were driving the taxi correct yeah there was no passenger it was lit but there's no switches in those to turn them on and off so that's why it stays lit automatically there's no cargo switch so that I was driving for Abicabs at the time and when what the reason you were pulled over is because the place were expired all the admissions on the plates the plates were good it was just admission it failed admissions by three days he thought he thought he had like ten more days they recently got all that fix but I think he knew more or less what was going to happen whatever I don't know but he was being nice to me letting me use the car to get the medicine but I think somebody should have told me that I still can drive a civilian if he knew the law so now we'll be working if I was to work for anybody would be independent cab while I look for another cab company that's more appropriate that we know what's going on thank you any other questions of the applicant any other questions thank you thank you very much thank you sir thank you guys for your time any discussion on the committee report hearing none clerk will call the roll 8 ayes 7 noes the committee board has accepted and adopted and denied 66 license recommending denying beverage operator license 9849 all of them in the van thank you I move the RC be accepted and adopted I move the secretary the committee report be accepted and adopted is my Prusa here this evening he is here his record of violations include a 1999 felony burglary a 2000 felony forgery and then in 2012 he had a sale to underage and a unlicensed bartender this incident happened at the 921 bar what had happened was the owner had left to go run to the store and he had that's when the absolute 21 came in and he was he got cited for that the committee first voted took a motion to approve the vote it failed 2 to 3 then the motion was made to deny the vote and it passed 3 to 2 see the applicant is here would you like to address the council Michael can you give me your last name I didn't hear it's Pruka PRU CHA Pruka I just again like I said at the committee meeting this one up for a vote about a week and a half ago it was an honest mistake I did make the mistake and I admit and accept the mistake that I made that night in serving the under 21 without the operators license it was a fill in situation for my owner to run to the store as they've had the new baby the reason why I'm going for the operators license now is to try to lend them a hand keep their payroll down a little bit just to strictly be kind of a fill in bartender for them I'm not going to shift over as a full-time bartender for them I've been with them near a year now as their cook back in the kitchen so I'm trying to utilize myself as kind of a fill in role for them when they need a little bit of a a break for an hour or so type thing it won't be in all night bartending or anything like that also along with that you know try to make the situation right went through the servers course and also went through some training with the owner as far as being able to detail the licenses making sure that I'm checking the licenses that type of thing as I hopefully move forward with helping them out with bartending over there Any questions of the applicant? Alderman Cotth Thank you mayor here's the thing Mark you mentioned it's an honest mistake but there were actually two mistakes that were made first mistake was well you've been there a year kind of no things so the owner left you with patrons that were already at the bar so that was the first mistake the second mistake is you let other people in serve them cocktails and they were underage correct so there were two honest mistakes there was two customers in the bar when Tony left the bar they were just finishing up their meals I didn't actually serve them any other drinks from that point they finished up their plates of food and I cashed them out took care of their tab that they had running the only one that I actually did serve was the minor on the under 21 thing where I did make that mistake Any other questions of the applicant? Thank you very much Thank you Any discussion on the committee recommendation? Committee's recommendation is to deny the claim clerk will call the role Six eyes, eight nose and one abstention Motion fails or motion carries to deny No Motion fails to deny and now we have to now we need a motion to approve I'm sorry Somebody's got to make a motion to approve It's been moved in Second Seconded to approve the license Any discussion? Call the roll to approve the license Just give me a second here Nine eyes, five nose one abstention Motion carries to approve the license Thank you Six seven Committee report from Law and License you need to recommend the denying beverage operators to approve the license number 6744 Alderman Vandewil Thank you Mr. Mayor I'm going to ask again that we refer this back to committee The applicant was here this evening There was quite a few mix up as far as dates when he was supposed to be at the meeting and he did assure me that next week Tuesday he will be at our committee meeting So the motion is to re-refer to committee? Yes It's been moved to refer the license back to the committee All those in favor signify by C&I? Aye Opposed? Motion carries Other matters? City Clerk 7.1 is an arrow by the City Clerk submitting various license applications for the period ending June 30, 2013 and June 30, 2014 That will be for the law and licensing 7.2 is an arrow by the City Clerk submitting communication from the State of Wisconsin Department of Corrections requesting a waiver from the Sex Offender Residency Restrictions on behalf of State Inmate Christopher Holmes in order for him to be placed in a TLP at either 930A Michigan Avenue or 1123 1125 North 14th Street depending on availability That will be sent to Public Protection and Safety 7.3 is an arrow by the City Clerk submitting communication from all their person Lewandowski stating concerns regarding the fact that the handicapped elevator lift on the north side of City Hall has been removed due to the lack of availability parts to repair the lift States it's dangerous to have to park on the street especially in the snow and ice in order to get the handicapped ramp located on the south side of City Hall That will be referred to Public Works On the agenda the notice of going into closed session is been canceled so we will look for a motion to adjourn Move second to adjourn All those in favor signify by saying aye Aye Clicker Clicker Clicker Clicker Clicker Clicker Bill Kevin You gotta paint it again Gotta hit it again, Bill Ah Thank you Fifteen eyes We're adjourned


Pillager there the top seed in section six two way opening up with long Prairie great eagle early on. Joshua Dawes finds Dylan Loftus near the sideline for the catch. He'll take it all the way in for the Husky score. Pillager is up first and a little defense later past highs finds his way in the arms of Luke Woldia for the INT. Huskies get the ball in Long Prairie's end of the field that'll set this up later. Dawes flips it to Loftus we've seen this. He'll find his way in the end zone once again. Pillager they roll in their opener 54-7 they'll play Morris area in the semi Saturday night. If you've enjoyed this segment of Lakeland news please consider making a tax deductible contribution to Lakeland Public Television.