Various departments of the Ministry of Health, Wellness, and Elderly Affairs were brought together for a five-day workshop on monitoring and evaluation and data analysis. This capacity development exercise was facilitated by CARFA with a focus on improving accountability and transparency as it pertains to the implementation of various projects and programs throughout the ministry. CARFA's monitoring and evaluation specialist, Patricia Smith Cummings, says the data collected will assist in better implementing programs, build capacity, health interventions and policy making. The CARFA specialist spoke on some of the expectations coming out of the exercise. Based on the modules that have been presented this week and the group work that the participants are doing, we expect, of course, to have increased knowledge as it relates to monitoring and evaluation. There's a component that's also really important and that is data appreciation. That is not a component that is always included, but it really helps individuals, regardless of where they sit, within the broader, I would say, Ministry of Health and the health programs, to be able to see exactly their contribution to the overall improvement of data, to the overall improvement of health information and strategic information. A wide range of participants from various departments within the ministry attended the workshop. Corporate planning's Heidi Kodra-Jaganath says she is looking forward to better grasping the concept of data collection. At the end of the five days, I'm looking to learn the principles of monitoring and evaluation, how we can integrate it to understand how programs run and so we could get our desired outcome. Project coordinator at the Ministry of Health, Jeanette Louie Euse, described the ongoing session as timely. The World Bank provided funding for us to implement two significant projects, the health system strengthening project and the OECS regional health project. Both of these projects are expected to make significant changes and improvements for the delivery of health care services. So I'm pursuing that workshop where we focus on monitoring and evaluation, where we really zoom on the impact and the outcomes of those projects. It's quite timely. Regional officer of health, Dr. Glensford Joseph, spoke highly of the sessions. This so far has been very, very exciting. While I would have had significant knowledge in the area of monitoring and evaluation, the team from Claffer would have brought a new dimension in the way they deliver the information so that persons from all levels can appreciate the concept of monitoring and evaluation and its importance in the delivery of the various programmatic areas within the Ministry of Health. The session included a hands-on aspect where participants were expected to identify new programs and also suggest improvements for others. And while Saint Lucia is the first country to benefit from the training program, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Dominica and Grenada will soon follow. Reporting for the Ministry of Health, Wellness and LLE Affairs, I'm Saint Justin.


Good morning. Can anybody hear me? So it's a real pleasure to be here with you. Thank you, David, and the rest of the conference organizers for inviting me. It's also, I'm excited to be back to back with Dr. Groom. Glad that I don't have to follow him. And it'll be interesting. I think that, I don't know what he's going to say, but I bet that he'll really begin with learning and work out from there. And I think that I'm going to start from kind of the 30,000 foot view of the system and work backwards toward learning. And maybe we'll meet in the middle, and maybe we won't. So it should be interesting. I do have ties to Mary Washington, actually. My high school girlfriend went to college at. It was Mary Washington College at the time. So 19 years ago, I used to drive up and down I-95 to go visit her. So I titled this presentation Access Is Not Enough, which has a double meaning. And I think it's a common refrain in the OER community that we know this. We know that access isn't enough. But it's also a lot of the work that drives our work at the foundation in post-secondary education. And it's true in the US, but I think it's also true around the world, that we know and we increasingly know that access is not enough to give people the chance to follow their dreams and access opportunity in this country. Access is not enough. So just a bit of a background on me, for those of you in the room who I don't know. So I spent the first two-thirds of my career in the private sector working in Fortune 500 management consulting, technology, and then about the last third in the nonprofit sector. And so I've always been focused on increased access to opportunity. And so my family, how many portal agents do we have in the room? So that's a Puerto Rican Appalachian, right? There aren't very many of us. So my great-grandfather got thrown out of Puerto Rico because he was a socialist agitator. And they put him in jail. And they said, you can either stay in jail or you can leave. And so he went to New York City and worked hard and made enough money to send his daughters to college. And he said, what's the exact opposite place? They lived about 125th Street in what's now Harlem. And they said, what's the safest place I can send them? The Hills of West Virginia. So he sent his daughters to West Virginia. And that's where my grandmother met my grandfather. And their child, they said, what's the best place that we can send our child? He went to West Virginia University. That was the best option they had. And then my parents in return created opportunities for me. And that's really the American dream. That's really the education. We love this sort of Horatio Alger, one generation rags the riches. But the reality is opportunity in this country is one that builds over generations. And so that's something that I've always been passionate and worked on. And then I also have enlightened self-interest. These are my three boys. Jackson's the oldest. Keegan in the middle and Jonah, who's one. So I've got some obligation to carry forth the work here. So here's what I hope to put a few points on today. One is really step back and look at the next decade, focusing on higher education in the US. But I think the trends in some form or fashion are true for K-12 in the US and are true for education internationally. Share a little bit about the work that we're doing, but not spend too much time. But I think you have some context for how, given these challenges and opportunities, how are we at the foundation trying to react to those, be supportive and helpful of folks in the field, including many in this room, and then end with sort of three challenges for the community. Things that I'd love to see OER do, and this community do in the next 12 to 24 months. Many of them, I think people have already been talking about over the last year, but I'd like to raise the challenge banner even higher. So four challenges for the next decade. So as we look at the set of opportunities and challenges here in the US, there's four in particular. One is this completion challenge. Access is not enough. It turns out that we've done a remarkable job helping more and more students go to higher education in this country. We've almost doubled the rate of participation in the last, I think, 30 or 40 years. Turns out we still have about 40% attainment rates of associate's degrees or higher in this country. You know what it was in 1980? 40%. You know what it was in 1990? 40%. You know what it was in 2000? 40%. You know what it was in 2010? 40%. So we used to be number one in the world in education and now, depending on what you look at, we're 10 or 16th. And at the same time, we've got jobs that are going unfilled. There's some estimates, there's three million skilled jobs that are unfilled in the US, even with high unemployment rates. And labor economists tell us that 63% of all jobs in the US will require some type of post-secondary education by 2018. So, and the real driver of much of this is the dirty secret of low completion rates. You know, just about half of students who go to college will get a credential in six years. And if you look at community college students, if you look at low-income students, students of color, you're really about 25 to 25% to a third.    Whoops, what happened to the 75% of students who were the high flyers and now they've come back to the community without a credential, oftentimes in debt, and sort of sending the signal, wow, these were the ones who were supposed to really make it out. So we also have a quality challenge. You know, the book, Academically Adrift, if folks have looked at that, it says something like half of students in college in the US don't make any measurable improvement in critical thinking skills in the first two years of their schooling. And it's always something like a third don't make any progress in four years. And so people are calling into question, wow, what are we really learning? Is this really valuable? And is it worth it, right? Peter Thiel is paying students $100,000 to drop out of college and saying, maybe that big investment of time and dollars isn't worth it. And so that leads to the funding challenge. You know, folks, educators in this room who work in the US know what's happening with state budgets. States are divesting in higher education. They've been doing it and they will continue to do it because there's a long-term competition in state budgets between healthcare and higher education. And healthcare is gonna win that battle because their costs are going up and they have an incentive to fund their Medicaid programs because they can pull down a matching dollar from the federal government. If you cut your tuition, I mean if you cut your funding of state systems and they raise tuition, well now your tuition is higher, you can pull down more federal dollars from the federal aid program. So there's an incentive between the states and the feds that encourages states to fund healthcare and to not fund higher education. And so you know how much higher education has gone up since the early 80s? 439%. Healthcare has only gone up 250%. Higher education tuition and fees have gone up almost twice the rate of healthcare. And I'd like to ask the question, how many students in the last decade funded their higher education on the backs of their home equity or that of their parents? It's gotta be a lot, right? I don't know, 10%, 20%? Well where do we know that home equity is? All right, that home equity's gone. And student loan debt is over a trillion dollars, is more than all credit card debt in this country and it's the only debt you can't get rid of in bankruptcy. All right, so states' ability to pay and families and students' ability to pay are reaching a breaking point. I know this is a rosy picture I'm painting. But these are, this is the reality of the next decade. And then lastly on the demographic challenge, you know the students that are coming to higher education, so we expand access, we have a challenge with developmental needs, we have students from all types of backgrounds and the reality is that the new normal is students who attend part time, work, haven't come right after high school. So the Department of Ed describes traditional students as those who attend right after high school are dependents on their parents, they attend full time. That's somewhere between 25 and 30% of higher education in this country. 70, 75% are non-traditional students. So those are some of the challenges that we look at is we say how do we extend opportunity, help more students get access to the opportunity structure in this country? What are we facing together at a sort of very systemic level? But let me bring it down to 30,000 feet and tell a quick story about Brianna. Brianna is a woman, one of our, the bottom of this page, all the pages got cut off, but Sarah Goldrick-Rabb is a researcher that we've worked with in Wisconsin. And she interviewed these students, they find out what's happening. What does the pathway to opportunity look like for young people today as they enter post-secondary education? So this is a woman who did pretty well in high school. She got an AP credit in chemistry. She was gonna get a two year associate's degree on the way to being a veterinarian. And the researchers asked her, today you're starting college, what's the probability you finish with a credential? She said 100%, 100%, I'm sure of it. I'm here on purpose, I know where I'm headed. She had some financial needs, she was a Pell student, she got some money, she got her parents to kick in and she had about $4,500 of unmet need. So here's what Brianna's schedule looked like. She had to live about an hour away from campus in order to have a cheap rent. And so she would drive about an hour to school, she had a 10 class in the morning, then she'd drive to her first job, drive back to school, 10 class, drive to her second job, get home about midnight, and she was to be so amped up from the day she'd take a muscle relaxant. And there's not much time for homework in here either, you might notice. So this is what happened to her. She'd fall asleep in her class, she would wake up in a puddle of drool and look at what happened at the end of her first term. DCD withdrawal, 0.075, she was asked to leave her program, she was dismissed from her program because she couldn't perform academically. And this is what she said. She said it was almost kind of like a relief because wow, this is over. This thing I was doing just wasn't sustainable. You went through all this stuff, all this work and I accomplished nothing. I failed, I was just crushed. I'm never gonna get anywhere and I pretty much have no hope for the future. One semester, she went from 100% sure to I have no hope for the future. So my question to this group is what can openness do for Brianna? And I don't know, but that's the big challenge, the other thing that I wanna put in the room is what can this community do for Brianna? And so I mentioned this, how's the world change? Is students are increasingly non-traditional and that's not the only change, but how ready are institutions to serve these students? And this is great research if you haven't seen it, the Illumina Foundation supported it called the Iron Triangle and they interviewed college presidents and they said, how are you addressing these challenges? How are you thinking about this work? And they said, you know what? And they didn't use these words, but they said that these three things are locked in an iron triangle, quality, access and costs. If you wanna prove one of those, I can, but the other two will suffer. You wanna prove quality? Great, I'll lower access. I know which students not to let in and I can drive quality up. Or you gotta pay me more money to do it. So what does this tell us? This tells us that the higher education system in this country is Pareto optimal. Do you remember what that term is? We're perfectly efficient. There's no more room for improvement. We're locked in an iron triangle. We've reached the apex of per, wait, that's not true? Right, so what it actually is telling us is this. This is, I stole this picture from Cable, is that we've actually tied the giant down. This is Gulliver and how the Liliputians tie Gulliver down is a thousand little strings. So we think of the policy, we think of the cultural challenges, we think of the ways that we've got people with different types of control and decentralization. And it's like, wow, we wanna do something radically different? How would we do that? We're Gulliver. And so the question is, how do we cut enough ropes that the giant can get up and actually serve more students better, more affordably? We need to make incremental improvements, but ultimately we need to be pushing the envelope in some really hard and provocative ways that make ourselves uncomfortable and make our constituents uncomfortable and make the status quo uncomfortable. But that's not gonna happen cutting one rope at a time. And so my first question was, what can openness do for Brianna? My second question is, how can openness free the giant? To help more students succeed, to do it more affordably, yeah, that's a challenge I put on the table today. So let me step back and say, how are we thinking about this? We sort of, this is our diagnosis of some of the challenge. So let me, this is the, I can't talk without at least one slide that's got eight point font in it. So this is probably the only one, but I won't commit to not giving you another one. So why do we focus on education in the US of the Gates Foundation? The reason is, education is the primary arbiter of opportunity still in this country. So if you could pick, if you're born poor in this country and you could pick one thing about the circumstances of your birth, what would it be? Would you pick, would you pick the color of your skin, the zip code of your birth, whether or not you're in a single parent or a two-parent household?  Your parent's education, that's what this eight point font slide shows. On the far left, 30% of the correlation between your economic standing and that of your parents is determined by education. It's twice the effect of race, three or four times the effect of the health of your parents, state of residence, whether or not you're in a female headed household, et cetera. So this is the primary reason that we focus on this work. But here's the challenge. Higher education is not equally distributed. All right, so here's another eight point font slide, sorry. If you look at this, this is from 1970 to about 2010. What's the probability that you will earn a bachelor's degree by age 24? And the top line is the top income quartile born in the top 25% of this country and the brownish line is the bottom income quartile. So it turns out that you have about almost an eight out of 10 chance of getting earned a bachelor's degree by age 24 if you're born in the top income quartile. You add associate's degrees, you add a few more years, that's pretty darn good. If you're born in the lowest income quartile, one eighth the chance. All right, so as we think about, gosh, we need to have a better educated populist and workforce in this country. They're not coming from the top income quartile. We're not squeezing a lot more credentials and learning and success out of that. It's just 10%. So we have to figure out as a country how we educate the populations we've traditionally had a hard time serving. Low income students and students of color. And that's the inequity that we focus on in the US. So Bill and Linda founded the foundation based on the principle that all lives have equal value and everyone should have the chance to live a healthy and productive life. So 80% of the foundation's work is international. Internationally, health, agricultural productivity, those are things that actually drive quality of life and access to opportunity. And in the US, it's education. And it's not to say that's the only thing that matters, but as far as a place that has high leverage where we wanna focus our limited resources, that's where we focus. And so we focus on graduating from high school, ready for college, and that's the work we've been doing for about the last 10 or 12 years. And about three years ago, we acknowledged that high school is not enough and that we need to do additional work helping students get credentials be one year, two year, four year degrees beyond high school. And so that's the work that we launched about three years ago. And so there's three things that we're doing in that strategy. One, how do we think about rewarding the success of colleges who can drive toward completion, credentials that matter, learning that is relevant for society and employers and not just access in our measurement systems, what data we're tracking, how do we fund our institutions, do we fund them on how many students are there on the second Tuesday of the semester or on the last Tuesday of the semester? And how do we fund our financial aid? If we fund financial aid, if you got paid financial aid every two weeks like a paycheck, would that create the way that students think about going to school? Turns out it's the early pilots, maybe it does. The second thing is how do we think about accelerating early momentum? How do we help students get off to a great start? We know if they start well with low developmental aid needs, got their FAFSA filled out, early credit accumulation, enrolled in a program of study, intensity of study, the number of credit hours they're taking, those are all associated with getting through to the finish line. And so in particular we focus on developmental aid and the transition between high school and college. And then this last area, and this is the part of the work that I lead is how do we use technology, innovation, learning science to personalize learning and accelerate student progression? And I'm happy to talk more about the work that we do there offline. But let me take us to three challenges, sorry, three challenges for the OER community and I'll wrap up in 10 to 15 minutes here and then maybe a few minutes for questions. Okay, so first a few accolades. I think that one of the reasons I wanted to come here and spend time with you all is I think in an incredibly short period of time this community has come together both from the social connections of community and of the practical infrastructure around the necessary regimes and all the licensing and all that kind of stuff, the frameworks to support OER, but also building that movement and momentum around the culture of sharing and increasing access to large stores of knowledge and information around the globe and increasingly building out that. So I think that's, my hat is off to the work of, in a decade is probably even on the outskirts of how long it's taken, so it's really been impressive. So here's our third question. What problem are you solving with your work at Openness? And I think everyone comes together around OER and Openness but I don't think we'd all have the same answer to that question. I think there's lots of, there's lots of important problems to be solving with Openness. And so I'm not gonna talk about them. I'm just gonna say, what about all those problems I laid out before? What about Brianna? Can we solve any of Brianna's problems with Openness? Or can we solve any of those challenges to the education system with Openness? And so I sort of call these the three OER bugaboos but the reality is these are the bugaboos of every new innovation in education. Particularly those that are driven by innovation, technology, new ways of doing things, new behavioral change that's hard in institutions. Can you drive quality and impact? Can you drive adoption, usage, and can you achieve sustainability? These are no OERs, bugaboos. I'm just being provocative. They're all of our bugaboos that are not any new innovation that we wanna drive but all three of these are frequently leveled against OER. Where's the quality? Everybody contributes but nobody uses.  We've heard these questions a lot. And so I've got three challenges that I think would help address those. One is this is, and I'm gonna, they're gonna go from sort of the small to the abstract. And maybe this evidence exists and if anyone in this room has it, come find me afterwards. But everybody says, look at the cost savings. 120 dollar textbooks. We give that to zero or 20 or $30. How can that not be good for students? It can't not be good for students, probably. But how do we translate that through to the things that the system is being incented on? Do students really complete the course more often? I don't know. Do they come back for the next semester? Do they enroll in an extra course? And do they ultimately continue on to complete the credentials that they came to get in the first place? It's intuitive to think that it should have that impact but I don't know that we know that much yet. And if we can't quantify the impact here, we can't get attention for this. These are the things that people are wrestling with at the sort of presidential and state system level or as they think about higher education. Can we drive those things? And so I think drawing those connections and quantifying it, because then they can start to do the return on investment. Great, that is worth it because of this. And I know that David's been doing some good work at this at the K-12 level, but I think we need more and I think we need to be able to quantify not the savings, but quantify the impact of those savings on student success. And so, and why does this matter? Because I think we have to connect that message to the hot button issues in higher education. So from the students at general public, affordability, that's good. I mean, there's an inherent connection. Wow, you can save a student a hundred bucks? Good, check. And this, you can't really read it, but this is from one of the Occupy Wall Street people who said, 20 years ago I paid for college, my job's outsourced, I'm a 48-year-old student, and when I graduate again, I will owe a whopping $100,000. I hope I get a job, right? That's not just affordability, but it's affordability tied to employability. So, are we doing anything in openness around employability? Is this question, is college worth it? Not really. And then on the higher institutions, we'd like to joke that these are the real three Rs of higher education, right? Resources, regulation, and reputation. Those are the things that drive change at the institutional level in many cases. And so, what is it about those things I've put up before around student retention, progression? Okay, that's tuition, right? Students come back next semester, they're paying tuition. Okay, now that's resources, you've got my attention. Or, okay, I'm getting a lot of pressure to demonstrate outcomes. You're gonna help more students succeed? Okay, that's regulation. Oh, this is innovative, this is student centric. Okay, that's reputation, that feels pretty good too. So, how do we connect the stories to these hot button issues? So, that's challenge number one. Challenge number two, I put around content development, which is not a new challenge. I know a lot of people are working hard on this, but really designing, not for sharing, but designing specifically for reuse. So, let me ask this provocative question, which is, are we solving the long tail before the short tail? So, look at all the resources. I mean, wow, I feel like we're hitting the long tail. But do we know what are the 10 or 20 or 100 or 1,000 resources that we need to serve the short tail? I don't think that we've been concentrated enough on solving the problems of the mass market with OER resources in a structured way. And there's a theme running through this talk, and I'll come back to you in a second, you know, we live in 2011, but we expect everything to be as mature as the 2011 web and the 2011 way of the world. And I'm not suggesting we go back in time, but we also have to remember how things evolved. How did the long tail evolve? It evolved because we first figured out this sort of mass market thing, and then we're allowing the long tail to evolve. Does this work need to go through that same kind of path, or can we do those things simultaneously, or can we start with, you know, we turn on the system and we're in the 2011 world that's actually taking a long time to web it on the web, et cetera. So, this is David's Reusability Paradox, and again, if my bottom line slides were cut off, you'd actually see I did credit them. But the pedagogical value is inversely related to the potential for reuse, right? So, so much of those thousands of resources are locally high pedagogical value. This is my resource in my classroom, and I'm willing to share it. But, you know, have we really designed for reuse? And so, we did this project with Rio Salado College, and we said, with all these resources, you have the great lecturers from MIT and Yale and Stanford, all these places, why haven't more people built courses around those, right? Why can't I get credit for Walter, Walter, Walter, Walter Lewin's Physics Lectures at MIT?  Why can't, why won't my local community college build a course around Walter Lewin's lectures, a facilitator? Doesn't this be obvious? And so, we said, let's try it. And it turns out it's really hard because of this paradox, right? And so, they picked Yale. They were already transcripted and the content mapped a little better, but, and they picked Physics and Psychology. And you know what they found? Was, you know, the, first of all, these 50-minute lectures are really hard to chunk up. You know, what are the learning outcomes? They're all blended together and it's hard to parse those out. But you know, it was really hard, is the faculty member said, you know, turn to page 24 in your textbook where chapter three begins. Okay, so one, you just locked me into a textbook. Two, you locked me into a textbook that came out in 2007 that's two versions out of date. Chapter three doesn't start on page 24 anymore. So now, I've got to figure out some way. I'm confusing my students. I've ignored page 24. I really want page 36 in this other textbook. It just doesn't work. And so, they ended up using Salcon videos much more than Yale videos because they were modularized, because they were tied to certain specific competencies. So, I don't know that Sal's necessarily designing for reuse, but, you know, are the Yale lectures and the Salcon videos on that same curve? Or, does Salcon have higher, further up to the right, higher potential for reuse and pedagogical value than Yale? I'd argue yes. So, how do we drive usage and reusability? You know, you guys are working on this stuff. I don't know exactly. But I would say a few things. One, how do we target specific use cases with high passion and high pain? Right, where people are really trying to solve a hard problem, there's commitment, and it's a big pain point. So, there are high enrollment, low completion rate courses, right? There are about 25 to 30 courses where dreams go to die in this country. Developmental math is at the top of the list. That's called the Bermuda Triangle. You go in, you never come out. If you're three levels deep in developmental ed, you've got a 4% chance of ever completing a credential.  Yeah, but placement can fail you. You know, how do we think about supporting adjunct faculty? How do we think about national membership organizations, the American Psychological Association? What's their commitment to some of these challenges? Second, you know, there's a lot of work on improving discoverability, the National Learning Registry, the LRMI work that Cable talked about yesterday. If folks went to that, I won't get involved there, but I think there's a lot of opportunities to drive work there. And how do we finance distribution channels beyond viral networks? If you build it, will they come? Right, for the most part, they won't. And I think that we're getting some penetration through viral networks, and the question is, what else is needed? Okay, so that brings me to the third challenge, which is titled integration, instrumentation, and distribution. So how do we take all these resources, all these things, and focus it? So let's try and solve all the problems out of the world at the same time. That's a really hard problem to solve. How do we take a slice of the world and see if we can't solve it? And so here's what we hear from, when we go around and talk to institutions, faculty, and also to students. You know, these aren't OER things. These are things about how they're doing their work. Right? We want easy access to high quality vetted content. Open and publisher. Like, I'm not caught up in one or the other. There's some people who, my campus, who talk about this, but I want quality content. I don't really care where it comes from. I want the ability to compare efficacy and usability across this content. Wait a second, that means we need interoperability. That means we need comparable metrics. Okay, that's gonna be tricky. I want both personalization and localization. Okay, that's good. You know, I'm trying to get the best content, but now I also want to personalize it. I want to see learning analytics and I want to see these dashboards and it's got to fit seamlessly into my existing technology. Piece of cake, right? So here's what I call my stupiphony, right? It's an epiphany that you feel like you should have had 10 years ago. And I don't know, people will disagree with me on this one, but. So on the left, we have Google's homepage. But this is like Google's homepage when they launched in 1998. So you'll see it says 25 million pages that they've indexed. They now indexed like a trillion, one trillion. So again, we think we live in a Google world. We think we can just type in a search term. Have you ever said help with polynomials in Google? You know what the least helpful thing to, if you need help with polynomials is to do, is to type that into Google. You get all kinds of stuff, right? It's not helpful to a learner. It's not, and it's only marginally helpful for an educator who needs to find some more resources to help with that learner. So there's one sort of crazy idea I have, which is that, you know, that assessment is really search. All right, diagnostic assessment is really search. So what if you said polynomials? Great, but let me ask you five questions. If I asked you those five questions, now I'll get you the right resources, support, tools. But polynomials, learning is a lot harder than webpage relevance, right? It's contextual, it's social, it's all these other things. So I would argue that we don't live in a Google world when it comes to our understanding of learning, learning experiences, and learning resources. We live in the other version of 1998, Yahoo. So everybody remember, well actually I was talking to somebody, I won't sell her out, but who didn't remember Yahoo 1998. But that was a taxonomy, right? You'd say cars, and you could choose from car repair, use car sales, new car sales. Okay, I want car repair. All right, I want body shops. All right, I want Japanese specialists, and then I want Joe's Japanese specialist auto body repair shop, right? We created a taxonomy to organize the work, and that helped us understand the relationships, and once we understood the relationships, then we could Googleify the world. And so I would argue or submit that right now we're trying to optimize for too many pieces in a multivariable equation, right? All these things vary. You need the student, the context, the content, the assessment, the learning outcomes, and then at some point you're able to certify that look, this person's really learned something. And so how do we move from that to this, which is the way that we think about personalized learning. I won't belabor it because it's kind of a little bit confusing, but it really begins with the learning objectives in the center. Doesn't start with content. Content's three steps down the road. Starts with the learning outcomes and those learning maps and the progressions of knowledge, competency skills, the very specific ones, and the meta competencies and the deeper learning outcomes. And once you have that, then you can think about what do I currently know or not know and the role of diagnostic assessments, a persistent student data record, and then content assessment, did I learn it, and do that work around the learning map. So here's an idea, and I love people's reactions to this. So one, could we focus? Could we select a narrow set of short tail content areas? Not solving all the problems. And maybe we'd say, not just in general, we wanna solve it for low income students or students that we know are dropping out that are trying to go to college that aren't succeeding. So now we actually have a narrow ban. That's actually maybe a solvable problem. We need to develop detailed learning maps. We need to curate high quality and interoperable learning modules. So not just content PDF things, but things that help enact learning that are aligned to those learning outcomes that are multiple attempts at the same type of learning outcomes so that students have choice, so that faculty have choice, so that there's alternatives. I'm struggling with this. I'm struggling with this. What are my alternatives? Oh, there's a con lecture I could also watch. Hey, there's an open study, study group that's forming on this. There's a tutor I can ask a question to. How do we think about the learning map as the spine and then build these other resources around it? How do we think about what the tool set is for curation, localization, and delivery? Wouldn't it be great if I was a faculty member and I could go to the intermediate algebra homepage and I could say, hey, here's a generic playlist that seems to work pretty well for most students most of the time. And if you wanna customize it, tell us a few more pieces of information about who you are, who your students are, or dig into the material you want as well. So how do we curate all that content, get the best of that content? So we address that quality question and align it to these learning maps. And then how do we have the type of assessment and analytics so that there's that immediate feedback to students and to faculty? So we do a lot of work with what we call learner relationship management, kind of the use of data through the student experience. And there's a project at Purdue called Signals. I don't know if folks are familiar with it. But all they did is they did a predictive model in their learning management system that said based on the behaviors we're seeing, your login patterns, your quiz scores, we can tell you radio or green if you're likely to pass this course. You know what they exposed that to the student and they exposed it to the faculty member. You know what they did? 50% improvement in pass rate in their introductory engineering courses. Their engineering and science courses that were washing at all these students, 50% improvement because they empower the students. They gave them visibility into the system. They gave them that feedback. You know, I did go to slip to yellow. I kind of took, I had a paper I was working on, I kind of took last week off. All right, I gotta buckle down. Or it's red. I gotta go see my faculty right now. Empowering that student with that data has made a big difference. And then, how do we think about distribution, right? As Cable likes to say, we are the market, right? So how do we get a handful of institutions that say look, we can try this. We have 50 to 100,000 students across X number of institutions. Let's aggregate the demand. Let's not all try to solve this individually. And importantly, how do we develop common, shared, sustainable distribution channels? Every OER project in this room is facing sort of two options of distribution, right? The viral network of OER and try to build and partner and connect off those. Or the traditional way to do distribution, which is you hire a sales force, right? We've got four 250 person sales forces from the major publishers, wandering around this country, making house calls. That's the value in publishing. When a publisher buys another publisher, what do they do with the books? They throw them out. What do they do with the customer list? They treat it like gold, right? The book, the content is just table stakes. But most of the value in publishing is in the distribution, right? And so until we think about how do we get a comparable distribution channel for OER content, we're left with the viral OER community. And everybody can't build one of these on their own. So can the OER community build one that kicks ass? I don't know. But I think that's a challenge, or are there interesting ways to solve that problem? So I am shutting up in less than one minute. So if we did all this, what would it mean, right? Would we address the quality question? Yeah, here's the best content. And it's tied to these learning outcomes and we can document it. And you as a faculty member can see, does this perform better than this? For my types of students, wouldn't that be great? Isn't that what they really want? It would solve this distribution and usage challenge. If you can aggregate the demand, start producing those learning analytics. And I think the system like this could actually generate revenue and provide sustainability. So those are the three challenges that I would leave. Evidence, content development, and the actual integration and distribution of OER content. So let me just thank you and leave you with this one quote, which I have hanging over my desk. And so folks who are familiar with this, the man in the arena, it's a quote from Teddy Roosevelt, who basically said, the people who are doing the work are the real heroes. And the people like myself who get to stand on the outside and trying to say provocative things on stage and are really just the critics. And it's you all who are doing the great work and it's we who are in service of you. And so thank you for that work and thank you for letting me share a little time this morning.


gh to find the illegal dumping that was occurring And of course the the burden of proof is on us to to to come to that evidence So, you know, we have to present all that Beyond a reasonable doubt and that poses a very high standard Officer observation does that mean an officer has to has to observe it no matter how good the other evidence is Not necessarily Of course, if there's other evidence that is significant that causes that rise to the level of proof beyond reasonable doubt Then absolutely we'll use that evidence But oftentimes it's difficult oftentimes we're not presented with that And some of the best cases would come Some of the most definitive cases would come from officer observation Where I physically have to see that person Identify that person and say yeah, I watched them commit x y and z offense And that's very rare So time out. So mr. Holt mr. Holt Can you just please address the punishments that are in the statute? We're talking theory and enforcement in the statute. What does the statute say is the punishment for this particular ordinance that we're about to vote on? So the punishment section hasn't Really been amended from the previous section. It's just the the length of time someone can have be parked on the public street So it's a civil punishment. It is not Boom, so there's no right. So I mean this conversation is completely irrelevant.  No, and it's not irrelevant. We stopped talking about whether people were going to be jailed a long time ago We're talking about whether people were going to be apprehended for this crime or find or whatever And that's not a good by point is it's not a criminal statute. No, it's not a criminal statute No one settled that a long time ago Right. So what I'm saying is that so I mean the conversations. I mean, it's basically if the vehicle is there It's a vehicle. It's a vehicle civil issue And apparently in the case of dumping it's a personal civil issue and the license plates aren't good enough and that's important All right. Let's keep keep going marsha, but you're you're you're well over 20 minutes, but keep going All right, dr. Waters All right real quick, uh, can we oh we it seems to be like we need to bifurcate a couple of issues What is what are we doing with abandoned vehicles? Whether they're rvs or not And then and then how does the ordinance treat rvs that are not abandoned in which people are living? So if I could sort that Jf, I heard you say that over the last uh, what 12 In 10 22 months There have been 91 vehicles Uh that were a band that had been towed Correct Now I heard in an earlier council meeting a council member a reference that the city should have no business towing vehicles If those if the city was not towing vehicles, what would the status of those 91 vehicles be tonight? well, uh, they would still be on the street as I suspect and uh, that's not including the other 4 000 that either got tagged or the officer responded on so those also might still be in that Same location if somebody had not Notified the vehicle owner that it needed to be moved So, um, I've heard that a vehicle that is not licensed is not necessarily abandoned and I and I understand that and I would agree with that um, but it's is it safe to assume that most Of abandoned vehicles are not Are not registered or not licensed. I mean just because it's not licensed Doesn't mean it's not abandoned. You could have an unlicensed abandoned vehicle And then if the city doesn't tow it, it's going to sit in front of somebody's house For how long? Until somebody tags it moves it on a lot of times the vehicle has You know broken down and they're not doing anything with it Occasionally it's a steel that hasn't been found yet. So Shannon I think had some answers to that. Well, and I all my point is Uh, I don't think we did agree. We talked we talked about abandoned vehicles But I don't I didn't I don't ever recall agreeing to taking that out of this ordinance. All right that section um So for my from my understanding is that if a vehicle is abandoned if a vehicle hasn't moved And and there's a complaint And it's sitting in front of somebody's house licensed or not If you can identify that vehicle attached to that home You might you're going to advise somebody or you know that They do have a complaint but that vehicle goes with that home. Is that correct? But that is not going to get towed That's correct. We would also probably notify the person that called in this complaint say that's your neighbor's vehicle So so now let me take that same concept and apply it to RVs In RV that's parked in some in front of somebody's home That belongs to that homeowner and they're loading or unloading They have 72 hours To do the unloading and loading and unloading no harm no foul, correct? 48 Right now they're supposed to be actively unloading and loading but they but they get those 72 hours They have a homeowner Can for for now if we pass this ordinance for 25 dollars Get a permit to have the RV of a family member or a friend In front of their home for a week and they can renew that for four weeks. So if they could for a month During a calendar year have the RV of a homeowner A homeowner of a family member or a friend in front of their home for up to up to a month With a 25 dollar a week permit. Is that correct? Correct I see a council member shaking their head.  We would contact a homeowner and say we've had a complaint about your RV and ask them to move it as soon as possible How how is that different than an RV that's there that's not owned by that homeowner? How do you differentiate or do you enforce because that's one of the complaints we've heard And and and this appointment and council members that we haven't raised this question How do you how do you enforce that ordinance differently? For the owner of the RV Who's parked For longer than 48 hours and with great given the current ordinance in front of the home of someone in town or you know, wherever it's parked Well under the ordinance Both persons have an obligation to move their RV Do you enforce it the same way with the homeowner as you would? The the the RV owner Who's not the homeowner in front who doesn't own the home in front of the which the RV is parked? Yes, right. We would have that conversation and say here's the ordinance Uh, you're not unloading or loading you would need to move your RV as soon as possible You'll be in violation at ordinance and let you have the permit So you don't differentiate you enforce it the same Whether it's owned by a homeowner and there's a complaint or it's it's not owned by the homeowner And it's simply parked in front of that homeowner's home correct All right, I'm gonna move from RVs to The kind of the related concern here about homelessness. Karen. Are you still available? Karen roney. Yes, I'm available. Yes, I am So earlier today, I got a I got an email from a resident Um, and I may we may have all received it Um Asking the question. How is what we're proposing to do anything other than harassing our homeless population? What's your response to that? It's viewed this is viewed by someone is harassing our homeless population Well, uh mayor and counsel what I would say is that this ordinance is really about getting Junked and abandoned vehicles RV vehicles off the street And not so they can't park in public public property. So it's really about where vehicles can be parked They cannot be a park in public property That's what this is about and So that's what this is about. I'll stop there Somebody's in an RV. I know I'm on the clock, but yeah, I've heard 20 minutes. I'm with my time's up Somebody is living in an RV who would like to be in permanent housing What will you do to help get them in the permanent housing? so So what we have indicated is that we would and we would do outreach this next couple of months Before this takes place if you passed it and we would work with that that individual or who individuals in that situation and we would work to Link them up and get them into into housing. And so that is what we would be doing So what if it's stable housing rather than sleeping in? And if somebody is in their RV and doesn't want you to help them get into stable housing We can't force anything. Yeah Um, but but that person would be notified or advised that they have a limited time To have that RV Parked and after january 1st that couldn't be parked on a public and certainly our interest would be working with individuals to Hopefully build a relationship and work toward a housing option So talk just a little bit then about your outreach effort Because because there was an assertion in an email exchange that well the city doesn't do any outreach It's just this is just a way to you know to keep moving homeless along um You talked about a homeless outreach team How much do we know about the population living in our v's today? by circumstance And by choice So what I would say how I would answer that is today We do have outreach efforts. We have hope has uh Andy Schwartz who does regular outreach. We have um our Individual that works for the bolder shelter for the homeless that does Coordinated entry diversion and also does outreach and we also have our some of our officers that do That do outreach and so that's our team now And so we would rally that team and that we would continue to do Outreach that that's happening today. You have a good idea of Who is in an RV? By by circumstance who would like to be in housing In in who's in an RV by by choice? It doesn't want To be in in in other kinds of housing. Is that fair right and we would continue to do that We've been continue to do that at outreach that we have and as I mentioned earlier. We do have a proposal For additional monies again. That's in the future. Maybe that we could then continue to Um actually enhance our outreach efforts So our our goal would be certainly to help people who are Living in their RVs and they're there by circumstance. They are looking for housing We would we we will be working with them to get them into um housing with our system Thanks. All right. I'll just listen now All right councilmember peck Thank you So my question right now is to jeff sadder um jeff You came to us Two years ago actually needing help with the fact that You don't have the resources To work with this homeless homeless popular. I'm sorry With the people living in there not abandoned not junk people living in their RVs Um, we don't have the resources for that and you came to us for help Um does this ordinance as it stands address that? I believe it does and I think shannon stadler and nathan would also agree But yes, it does help because it it's I think stops the duplication of chasing these These vehicles all over town multiple multiple times So now my next question is to karen and herald um So people who want to get out of their RVs because they do not want to live in them Are going to go into coordinated entry, which is perfect. That's what we asked for Um, but there's a queue for that. There's a queue for housing. There is a lot of demand for those vouchers My question is because I feel you you are saying correct me if I'm wrong not not you karen or herald But there are now 91. Did you say vehicles? Um People living in vehicles on our streets now. Did I hear that correctly? from somebody I think that was jeff talking about numbers that we have seen Okay, I don't know if that's today gotta clarify. I'm the one that threw the number out I heard jeff talk about 60 vehicles have been towed in 2019 correct and 31 have been towed this year about some which someone had complained And after having gone through all of the stuff they go through in terms of noticing Ultimately, it towed those 91 vehicles. My question really was about if we hadn't told them What would have happened to them? That was a question. Okay. So thank you councilman waters for clarifying that So so what I because I heard 91 at the beginning of this conversation in september We said the number was 60. So I thought oh my gosh We're exploding with people living in our v's so, um Karen again, my question to you is If people who want to transition to housing living in our v's It takes seven or eight months Maybe longer because of the queue Because this is kind of what happened with homelessness is that We we ended up with a coordinated entry Not on purpose But because of our expanding homelessness having a gap Of people and and this is what I do Do not want the city to have Is a gap of people living on our streets in their RVs without access to any utilities dumping stations or anything That was my proposal for the safe lot as a transition area So that we knew that if you didn't want to be in this safe lot You were not committed to being in a home And having a case worker halving has helped you find a job Everybody else who didn't want to take that on Could not be in our city living on the streets and That is what I wanted through this to address as we are Ending up with evacuees perhaps with climate migrants. We don't know it is a way To look ahead before we are just And that was the initial conversation. So I I heard Harold say that he is working With the county and Having more discussions on safe lots But all I but I don't hear you saying that Karen so Is our city all on the same board On board with the same plan or not Because this is um to me, this is the whole it's a whole package deal for me it isn't just Hyperbole that and and I I think it makes it really hard for our public safety department Anybody can they want to live in a house but not really want to not get on board with the program so If I can jump in real quick. So when I say I've talked to jana, I want to reiterate that Karen is talking to her counterpart and elli burto is engaged in this so we're all in that conversation And we're in the other conversation in will county um I think the thing that I'm going to bring ever, you know, when we talked about this. I think the motion was needed to be into Conversation needed to be in coordinated entry Correct needed to continue to be part of coordinated entry in terms of what we were doing And those were two big pieces. Um I remember when we brought joseph in on the first part of the conversation and when he talked about The people living in rvs and how a majority of them didn't want to be Um in a coordinated entry program that was changing a little bit based on what we were seeing so I think the challenge that we're facing as as a community It's a couple things um One the issue in the rvs that i'm hearing from jeff and um code enforcement is um A part of the conversation of The moving around in the chasing and then we get the calls from the neighborhoods and we continue To do that through the community. So that was the genesis of this right As we look at this And karen jump in with me. I think What we've heard from the council and I think what we're committed to Is is really the coordinated entry program and ensuring that if people want to Exit homelessness That we try to get them into the coordinated entry program Which ties to the additional revenue that karen's working on in terms of bridge housing in in those pieces And so that's a component of it I think the motion was also that if We could use the The fairgrounds and that obviously got complicated because the one thing we said If there's a fire becomes a problem. Well, sure enough It would have been a disaster had we had folks there during all of this um Was that they had to be in that coordinated entry program and so again it ties back into that So I think that's how we were trying to approach it um I think the challenge is and and this is the conversation now with the other individual In terms of expanding their park. They're still going to have to pay For a spot And I think that's partially at the crux of this too is that Right now There's no payment in that and I think You know the question we all have to think about is If we do something to create spots and our conversation with the individual was if we can work with them I think he even said he would look at Dedicating spots for long lines Will people pay to use those spots? Then that and that's a different question Karen did I miss anything? All right, I think I think everybody's spoken at least two times except for susie And erin do you two have anything to say on this matter? All right, erin. Okay. All right. So we've got a motion on the floor. So let's go ahead and vote um, the motion is passing basically the most than is three states It's item 9g approving on first reading ordinance 2020-57 a bill for an ordinance emitting chapter 11 I want me to go in on vehicles abandoned kept on public property or jumped or jumped public carrying the second reading scheduled for november 10th 2020 So we will have the chance to talk about this again All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye Opposed say nay Hey Hey All right, the motion carries four to three With myself councilmember waters councilmember redargo fairing and mayor pro to margaritas Four. All right. Thank you. That was a good discussion All right, let's move on to um General business I'm gonna move that we recessed the long want city council and convenes the board of directors the long want general improvement district number one second All right. It's been moved and seconded by councilmember martin All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed say nay All right, the motion carries we are now acting as the long want city and not no longer as the long want city council But as the board of directors the long want general improvement district number one resolution lgid 2020-05 a resolution Fixing and levying taxes on the real and personal property within the long want general improvement district number one for the year 2020 to pay budget expenses the district for the 2021 fiscal year This is the same question councilmember peck had before it is not increasing taxes. It is just fixing and levying them Do we have a motion? I will move resolution lgid 2020-05 All right Move by me seconded by councilmember christensen I'm seeing no further dialogue debate or questions all in favor Of resolution lgid 2020-05 say aye. Aye. Aye Opposed say nay All right the motion the resolution carries unanimously I'm going to move that we adjourn as the long want general improvement district number one board of directors and reconvene as the long want city council back All right, that's was I think that was councilmember peck, but I made the motion councilmember peck seconded All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye Opposed say nay All right, the that motion carries unanimously And then finally ordinance 2020-50, which is 12d by the way a bill for an ordinance amending title 10 chapter 10.24 Creating new section 097 the law means to code create a temporary prohibition on rental late fees due to covet 19 related hardship It was tabled after the introduction on october 13 2020 and it is now back And I believe that the issue was we wanted to hear about some unintended possible unintended consequences if there were any Who has a presentation?  I imagine that's you mr. That is me So thank you mayor and city council so the um So so basically yes, this was this item was tabled And there were a couple of uh things that the um that council wanted to see number one To get input From the from both property owners and tenants about the possible impacts of this particular proposed ordinance We did and we had a we issued a We basically had a survey the survey results are in your We included those in your packet in a powerpoint presentation and Don't plan to go over those unless you would like uh staff to go over those but um, but that information is in your packet The other two things that have happened since this particular ordinance was proposed ordinance was table Was one we did receive the results of the governor's task force Um, basically the special Eviction prevention task force so that report was uh issued and made available to the public in mid october and uh shortly thereafter the governor did issue an executive order which basically um prohibited uh late fees from property owners for Assessing late fees for late rental payments So that is now an executive order So what council was trying to do with this particular local ordinance Was uh is now an executive order issued by the governor that that uh prohibits late fees from being assessed through the end of December of 2020 so So anyhow, so basically I think council has uh several options, but it sounds like that the governor's order Based on the recommendation from the task force does accomplish what We understood that city council wanted to do with this local ordinance So it seemed like council could either decide to um not move far with this ordinance since the executive order Accomplishes that or you can provide other direction to staff as you wish Council member christensen Since I brought this forth, um, I suggest that we table this until um The governor's uh ban on late fees um expires and then reconsider whether Depending upon whether the what the circumstances are second I say into the two, but I said you can have The marcia. All right, so the motion was to table this issue until after the governor's executive order expires um including any renewal on his part council member christensen Then We can continue to table it Because uh, yeah, I'm comfortable with that. I also would like to point out something though. Um The initially the only people who are being interviewed were the landlords It was only because I requested that tenants be interviewed. So they were interviewed a week later and Only 50 out of probably 20 000 people in this town who are renters replied so I don't really think that's a particularly significant Survey, but anyway, but I do appreciate both of those. Um, I think they were good questions that were asked Thanks All right, it's been moved by councilman christensen seconded by councilman martin All in favor of tabling ordinance 2020-50 until the governor's uh executive order expires say I I Opposed say nay All right tabling ordinance 2020-50 the motion passes unanimously All right, let's go ahead and take a two to three minute break as we get ready for final call public invited to be heard And we'll be back. All right, is everybody back just like that. We are All right, thanks everybody All right, let's open it up Final call public invited to be heard. Is there anybody in the queue? Mayor we did not get anyone calling in at this time All right, we will close final call public invited to be heard and move on to bair and council comments anybody All right, council member be the logo fairing um, yeah, there were a couple of things I wanted to talk about and the first one I actually I Feel really bad about this one and I personally I want to make a personal apology to our staff and residents who um listened in last week to the um presentation And it was primarily directed towards our um staff and residents who are of the jewish community for a comment made by one of the presenters on the energy management metering architecture He had made a pretty offensive comment. It was a small comment and I was hoping I was the only one who heard it but After talking with herald earlier So there were other staff who were um Offended by that and you know, it was pretty jolting to me And it was offensive and so I regret that I didn't interject earlier. Yes. What what was the what was the comment or reference to um and What was it herald you want to chime in because I don't feel Yeah, and I don't feel comfortable it was um What was his name Dale? It was um, dr. Shockley from boulder Yeah, and I Say his name because I did not have a chance to talk with him personally But but that's that's fine. But it was yeah, I just wanted to make sure that we were clear on who it was and so he was talking it was about the uh information from germany and um one of the germans that he worked with Said um, you get so much information um, you could find um, how do I say this? someone of the jewish faith in a home um And in in hearing from our staff and her of jewish descent was really a reference to um, they felt the holocaust But he didn't I missed that one. He didn't he didn't use um jewish descent Um, he and and so that was that was what um It was pretty insensitive and hard and it was a very short comment um, I caught it I was jolted by it part of me was Maybe I was the only one who heard it And you know, and I regret that I regret that I didn't interject immediately to call things out Um to call the out these offensive comments as I hear them So, you know, I was just wondering And you know, we don't have to answer this now. This is you know, this is mayor and council comments It's not a discussion But in the future when we do hear these any kinds of insensitive or hurtful statements Um, what would be our procedure? Can we just interject immediately? You you immediately make a point of order Stop the presentation and uh You know, I I don't I don't recall exactly hearing it, you know, because uh, if that is true But it's wow, I heard you know, I didn't I didn't but then again as but I was kind of I mean all that AMI stuff I was just kind of like You know Zoning out to tell you the truth But yeah, immediately if if any one of us here's something that is insensitive or offensive It's just a point of mayor point of order. I will immediately stop the meeting and uh You know, we'll we'll clarify what they said, you know, because uh Yeah, I'm embarrassed if I didn't catch it. So yeah, I apologize as well You know, if that was said that that specifically that's terrible. So And it's not your fault. Apologize for counsel. It's it's all of us to apologize for counsel, especially as mayor No, no, I know but I mean it's it's it's we I mean that it's and it's not our place to necessarily apologize for comment It's just we should have said something If you hear it if you hear it speak up And uh, we'll we'll address it in a moment if we if we can and if you don't catch it in a moment Do what you're doing now bring it up the following week and go did I hear that right? Is that what? Yeah, that's not that's not cool. So and I think that's a And I think for counsel, I think it wasn't just you all that had that did we just hear it because that's what We were saying it's like What did we think and it was the conversation was already down the road and so It was uh, but um And it was hurtful and it was very insensitive and I don't think that's a reflection of who we are as a community either So that's why I felt the need to say something um, at least at this point And I hope it's not too late So This is the prime example of in Intent versus impact, you know our words have consequences And sometimes we might not we might say something and that's not our intention But the reality is The impact that it causes and the hurt that it causes Individuals in our community And so the other piece I wanted to bring up and you know, I wanted to really send out a thanks to carmen herald Rob Spenlo our chief chief Spenlo who was who were in on this meeting that we had with our latinx advocacy group and members of el comite board Just we're talking with You know, we talked about a myriad of issues around um, race relations community relations with Our public safety and it's kind of building those Breaking down those barriers and building bridges among the two Implicit bias and just even the upcoming election. There are there, you know, there are a lot of anxiety surrounding this issue Um, I think we came across we were able to discuss Some some deep issues and just came up. I I mean, I thought it was very productive. I don't know how everyone else felt but um in just having a path moving a path forward not just dealing short term but also long term in building bridges in within our community and strengthening Strengthening ties. So I really I just wanted to to thank to thank our city staff who were who were involved with this In their commitment to this work and continue to to build on it. So thanks All right councilmember we're gonna go with councilmember christensen and councilmember martin Thanks, suzie. First of all for um bringing that up. Um You know in the last well In the last decade, but especially the last three years Antisemitism and all sorts of hate groups and militias have gotten A lot of publicity and a lot of people have been killed and uh, you know, synagogues attacked and it's uh Unbelievable to see this rising up again and it's all kinds of groups. So it's important to point it out um so I wanted to bring some little good news Um, alfalfas is opening up brought 70 jobs to this town and they open up on friday, I think so, um Go visit and be happy. We've got a few more jobs here. Thanks All right councilmember martin Thank you, mayor bagley and with all due respect I feel um That is unseemly To have our mayor make statements about being bored with all this ami stuff It is a point of serious contention among the people of the city It is something that is extremely important To another constituency that we heard from tonight About achieving 100 percent renewable energy And it's something that our LPC staff is working extremely hard on and I think that we should consider it with the Uh seriousness that it deserves All right anybody else All right, guess I will respond as we discussed at lunch councilmember martin or marsha I'm not saying that I was bored with the topic. I'm not saying it's unnecessary I'm just saying that oftentimes this council gets bogged down in minutia That most of us do not understand And the thing is with ami that was a conversation that night that was primarily occurring between you and staff And so I missed the comment was my point of racial insensitivity. That was my only point I'm not saying that it's boring. We shouldn't address it I'm just saying that when this council gets fixated So remember is this council get fixated on when it happened again tonight when we were talking about I'm an issue an issue We all kind of just start Following a certain path and a lot of us just our eyes glaze over and so uh What I what boredom What and that's not boredom No, that's that's a lot of times that uh, we are like we are talking about topics that um What my my job is mayors to get us out of here by 11 and to make sure that we are conducting the people's business And and pauli you're shaking your head You know you shake your head a lot and so I appreciate your your your thoughts But my point is I just try to move us along and when one specific council member gets stuck I try to get us off the mark and people might not like it But they either either do what I say or else you continue to discuss and that's okay either way But I don't think I don't want to one particular council member Had some very important points to make that spoke directly to the concerns that were raised by the public That is whether a delay in Installing our AMI system would be a good thing Whether in fact the AMI system is dangerous or whether it was safe And I think that it was necessary to prove that By showing the public how well the different speakers could answer questions And and you'll notice that I did not say anything that night. I'm just saying that my eyes glazed over a little bit they were talking about high technology topics that I don't have a background in And uh was letting you do your thing and therefore I missed the racially insensitive topic was my point I didn't say it was boring. I didn't say it was unnecessary But I guess what I would like to say with my time tonight is just uh We have an election coming up on Tuesday night and I would encourage everybody to Be be calm I know there's a lot of anxiety There has been a lot of anxiety since the last election And regardless of what happens who wins? This is the united states of america. This is longmont, colorado And uh, if your person doesn't win guess what? We have we have been able to deal with this in 1776 and this election is will be the same So if your person doesn't win vocalize but be civil protest but be civil and Do do do whatever you're gonna do, but if your guy doesn't win Don't don't break and burn things. I guess that's that's my only request. I don't care what side you're on So, all right herald anything I'm no mayor. The only thing I wanted to say based on the item that councilman Councilmember hodogal faring brought up Um, we as staff david harm backer did reach out to the individual and and have a conversation regarding those comments So, um, we also approach it in that direction too. So and I think did it the very next day or the day after So I just wanted you to know that we also did that as well Well, thanks herald anything else no comments Eugene may No comments mayor. Oh, that's pretty good. All right. Can we have a motion to adjourn the meeting, please? I moved that we adjourn the meeting Second Councilmember christianson seconds it All in favor say aye aye Opposed say nay All right the motion carries unanimously Love you marsha. All right. Bye Then pretend to be interested I'll pretend I'll pretend


Good evening. First time. Be nice. Can you give me a second? So you know that Harry Potter was banned, right? Well, and it was banned for witchcraft and sorcery. And the thing about Harry Potter is that the witchcraft and sorcery is like the best part about it along with the friendship between the characters and everything else. Yeah, so I'm going to be reading from chapter 11 which is titled Quidditch. And since I don't have that much time, you will only hear part of it. But I wanted to read this part is because I like the game Quidditch. It's really interesting and I think that J.K. Rowling did a good job of creating a game like this about flying and scoring points like basketball. I think that's just great. All right, let me start. As they entered November, the weather turned very cold. The mountains around the school became icy gray and the lake like chilled steel. Every morning the ground was covered in frost, haggard who could be seen from the upstairs window defrosting broomsticks on the Quidditch field bundled up in a long mole skin overcoat, rabbit fur gloves and enormous beaver skin boots. The Quidditch season had begun. On Saturday, Harry would be playing in his first match after weeks of training, Gryffindor versus Slytherin. If Gryffindor won, they would move up into second place in the house championship. Hardly anyone seen Harry play but would had decided that as their secret weapon, Harry should be kept, well, secret. But the news that he was playing Seeker had leaked out somehow and Harry didn't know which was worse. People telling him he'd be brilliant or people telling him they'd be running around underneath him holding the mattress. It was really lucky that now that Harry had now Hermione as a friend. He didn't know how he'd have gotten through all his homework without her with all the last minute Quidditch practice, what it was making them do. She also had lent him Quidditch to the ages, which turned out to be a very interesting read. Harry learned that there were 700 ways of committing a Quidditch foul and that all of them had happened during a World Cup match in 1473. That Seekers were usually the smallest and fastest players and that most serious Quidditch accidents seemed to happen to them. That although people rarely died playing Quidditch, referees had been known to vanish and turn up months later in the Sahara Desert. Hermione had become a bit more relaxed about breaking rules since Harry and Rod had saved her from the mountain troll and she was much nicer for it. The day before Harry's first Quidditch match, the three of them were out in the freezing courtyard during break and she had conjured them up a bright blue fire that could be carried around in a jam jar. They were standing with their backs to it getting warm when Snape crossed the yard. Harry noticed at once that Snape was limping. Harry, Ron and Hermione moved closer together to block the fire from view. They were sure it wouldn't be allowed. Unfortunately, something about their guilty faces caught Snape's eye. He limped over. He didn't see the fire, but he seemed to be looking for a reason to tell them off anyway. What's that you've got there, Potter? It was Quidditch through the ages. Harry showed him. Library books are not to be taken outside the school, said Snape. Give it to me. Five points from Gryffindor. He's just made that rule up. Harry muttered angrily as Snape limped away. I wonder what's wrong with his leg. Don't know, but I hope it's really hurting him, said Ron bitterly. The Gryffindor common room was very noisy that evening. Harry, Ron and Hermione sat together next to a window. Hermione was checking Harry's and Ron's charms homework for them. She would never let them copy. How will you learn? But by asking her to read it through, they got the right answers anyway. Harry felt restless. He wanted Quidditch through the ages back. To take his mind off his nerves about tomorrow, why should he be afraid of Snape? Getting up, he told Ron and Hermione he was going to ask Snape if he could have it back. Better you than me, they said together, but Harry had an idea that Snape wouldn't refuse if there were other teachers listening. He made his way down to the staff room and knocked. There was no answer. He knocked again. Nothing. Perhaps Snape had left the book in there. It was worth a try.  And if you read Harry Potter, you would know what's happening next, but I'm not going to tell you, so you have to read. Yeah.


Warmer air and sea temperatures have permanently altered the climate between the tropics of cancer and Capricorn. Heat is the fuel that takes ordinary storms, storms we could normally master, a master in our sleep, and supercharges them into a devastating force. In the past, we would prepare for one heavy storm a year. Now thousands of storms form on a breeze in the mid-Atnantic and line up to pound us with maximum force and fury. Before this century, no other generation had seen more than one Category 5 hurricane in their lifetime. In this century, this has happened twice, and notably it has happened in the space of just two weeks. Dominicans are resilient people. We plan for emergencies and get back on our feet in good time. Let's build better and build stronger, update and upgrade for a more resilient Dominican. We plant trees lots and lots of trees. Trees keep the air healthy. We don't litter, we keep our environment clean. We can reduce emissions by driving less and walking more or save energy in the home by turning off appliances when not in use. I recycle, reduce and reuse. Update and upgrade what we know and what we do through information and innovation. Strong communities mean resilient neighborhoods. Strong communities mean stronger environmental projects. Next with your neighbors, network, know where to get information, know how to share information. Update, upgrade for a more resilient Dominican. Update and upgrade for a more resilient Dominican. Long before terms such as resilience and sustainable development were fashionable, we saw ourselves and we knew that we are a resilient people who for centuries have battled adversity of every kind, and we've always, always prevailed. Our very history has been one of struggle, but one of success.