Ann Arbor Human Right Commission 10/13/2021

001commissioner aiden silva here and i'm calling in from ann arbor council member elizabeth nelson hi here from ann arbor council member travis medina here in ann arbor commissioner diana cass you're muted you're muted here from plymouth okay commissioner pamela did here from ypsilanti commissioner judith gerber commissioner linda winkler howdy i hear from ann arbor commissioner dylan goss commissioner aisha gassi wedwin i saw her a minute ago and hold on and leslie steinbach cheer let's see a few more people coming in oh yeah we have we have dylap and aisha in the attendees side thank you carefully okay oh and kita so okay i see them i'm gonna let them in now okay i see these hands raised okay how's everyone okay commissioner keita cowan hi are you calling from or visiting our meeting from ann

002arbor michigan okay and good afternoon ashikazzi edwards where are you from hi here in ann arbor thank you and commissioner dilloptos where are you from this evening here in ann arbor okay you definitely have a quorum okay well then let us begin um is there any public comment no i don't have anyone here now how about the agenda is uh somebody want to make a motion to accept the agenda i move to accept the agenda as written i second discussion no discussion um all in favor agendas has passed minutes do we have a motion to accept the minutes from the october meeting uh from the september august meeting september emotion two motion two yes you didn't have a meeting in september you just had the retreat the retreat well that's what the minutes are no

003you have a subject we accepted didn't we accept the minutes at the august meeting not at the retreat is that the retreat oh so so we have to accept both of them i forgot about that do we have that to accept the august minutes okay second discussion all in favor aye aye accept the meeting uh that that is passed how about accepting the meeting minutes for the retreat a motion to accept the minutes for the september retreat second uh any discussion all in favor i retreat minutes are accepted okay in that case we will move on to reports for on outside work you notice that this kind of agenda has changed somewhat because of what we talked about in the retreat so we'll see how this goes but we talked about wanting reports from more

004from um things that happen in the council and things that are happening in ann arbor that may affect us that we're especially interested in so i would like to just ask elizabeth and travis council members nelson and medina if there's anything from the council that we ought to know about or that would affect us this you know particularly yeah i'm happy to jump in with kind of our two most substantial things that we're doing from a staffing perspective last night we um approved a a contract for our interim city administrator to begin work on october 18th uh that was unanimous and i think we're all really excited about that um and then we are also in the process of uh interviewing a finalist for the city attorney position um as well and so we have

005two pretty sizable staff uh positions that we're we're handling right now um that are that are pretty big um elizabeth i don't know if you have other things you want to add well we're actually investigating a complaint from the human resources director he has uh he sent us documentation all of council got documentation which i guess has been foyed by ryan stanton but it's probably going to be heavily redeacted um outlining charges of let me think hostile work environment retaliation blatant discrimination illegal directives and i may have missed one but um so council was sort of in the position of hrc in terms of receiving a complaint that um our hr director was sort of pleading with us to respond to um and i i i have not i've not heard except through the grapevine

006that our hr director actually ended up taking his own vacation because we chose not to put the city the acting city administrator on leave and he that was something that he had asked council to help facilitate so um at least he was able to protect himself so okay yes um certainly interesting and things that we'd be interested in um but it sounds like it is under city council um it's personnel issue so there's a lot of confidential confidentiality involved i assume there is an independent investigation underway yeah okay so thank you for letting us know [Music] leslie yep tam um wanted to ask a couple of questions for the city attorney position is that um was there an incumbent or incumbents who applied for the um senior position they were not internal candidates now okay

007and then how was this election made to narrow it to the finalist we we actually extended um invitations to two finalists to come interview with the city um one of them withdrew before um before those were made public and so we actually only interviewed one finalist and so we're going through that process now um the outcomes would be either we would um we would decide that this is the right fit for the organization and and move forward with with a potential hire or we could actually decide that this isn't the right fit for the organization and and potentially go back and reopen it um is my understanding but as of right now we're still kind of going through that that final interview process and she did interview in a public council meeting and so for

008folks who are interested that is something you can go back and watch and watch our interview as well so there were no internal candidates who expressed interest or they weren't considered um i'm not aware of any internal candidates i am i am not aware of any either although we are kind of in a we because of the nature of the position um we're actually not allowed to disclose the names of people who did apply and weren't selected to be finalists but i am also not aware of internal candidates who applied just interesting that yeah there are no internal candidates either who applied or are be considered um okay how do you pronounce the uh director's last name i think it's coward is it coward so sorry who's last name the hr director oh the old

009guardo what is it i'm getting some talk over so what what is the correct pronunciation not hearing it it it it is tom lehardo okay i asked because in our strategic planning we mentioned inviting him to come yeah and address us and yeah speak to us and and we did that for the chief of police so i just think we should be consistent and plus there are some things we may want to discuss excuse me i'm not going to use that word dialogue with him about so want to call him by his right name and i thought about it this time and decided i'd wait to invite him given the all the controversy about him i was interested in the pronunciation of the new interim city administrator i don't know how to pronounce his last

010name doheny you're honey and and i know that um so my understanding and i think this was me well maybe it wasn't me public but he what is actually happening with that position my understanding based on what you said travis is that they're going to extend to him and offer but isn't it is it like a temporary position or how is that working yeah it we decided to move forward with hiring an interim administrator and so it's uh the period ended up being it's an 11-month term with an extension for for it with a possibility for an extension for up to 15 months um and so it is in an interim position um and i think that you know i've also i've already heard members of council potentially express interest in in inviting him to

011apply for the long-term position obviously if um if things over the next year go well but i think that was kind of an intentional decision that was made just to hopefully bring in an outside perspective and also maybe allow somebody to kind of come in and you know often interims are brought in when you have an organization that has had some turmoil and um and it allows them to kind of take an outside look and maybe make some difficult decisions that somebody who internal or who is planning on keeping the job long term might not be able to make um whether or not that proves to be the case i think will be will be up to him um as to whether or not he thinks that there are big changes that need to be

012made and that he wouldn't want to apply again or something like that but um but we are starting with an interim position i do not believe there's anything in the contract that would preclude him from reapplying for the permanent position and and you're talking about the city administrator's position and the the complaint that just came through was for the director of human resources it was from the director against the acting city administrator the acting city administrator who prior to being acting was assistant so when mr mahoney comes when mr de honey comes in the person who has these multiple complaints filed against him will not be directly under counsel but will be directly under mr dahony and so this this investigation will be resolved and will the the person will have more recourse than simply

013pleading with city council because at that point we will have a city administrator who who is sort of the top of the pyramid with all staff underneath him so the council's direct reports are only the city attorney and the city administrator so the awkwardness of this particular situation is that the acting city administrator is filling a role that is technically only accountable to council and so that's why the hdr director came to council there wasn't another avenue and so to the extent that we acted or didn't act that yes so that was the challenge i wondered if um it seems as though usually when we hire somebody the city hire somebody who is in a you know main position like city administrator people get a chance to interview him and uh meet him are they

014having any is are there any plans for uh meet and greets at least for the city administrator and the um and then um i guess it's just a city administrator at this point i think that's probably all to be determined once once he gets here he's not actually in ann arbor yet um he'll be relocating from phoenix and um but yeah normally i think under normal circumstances you know when we when we hired the previous city administrator there was kind of more of that public opportunity even then there was a lot of discussion about how to facilitate that knowing that you know in some cases in the past those high-profile positions have had kind of in-person meet-and-greets where folks can come and mingle and be more informal and that's not something that could really be

015accomplished through zoom um and so so my guess is that um while we did not do that for this interim process um when we are looking to hire a permanent administrator that something more similar to that might happen again yeah and the same thing for the uh the replacement for uh city attorney um that that i don't believe so i mean i think there are you can certainly i think watch the the interview that happened if you have thoughts i think reach out but i don't believe that there are plans currently for like a a meet and greet or anything like that okay and then yeah [Music] okay so we move on to the next um report something do we need an update for facial recognition is anything that happening with that because that is

016a subcommittee we're interested in yeah absolutely uh so currently we are in the process of submitting our individual feedback to uh us uh to uh miss slay i'll say um and i i initially just set mine off as well because again there were some fundamental differences in terms of what we would like to see in a proposed ordinance i'm more than happy to pass along my thoughts to anybody individually as well um we can feel free to connect outside of this meeting um but yeah i am hopeful and travis can of course attest this as well that we see some serious movement in the coming weeks particularly as we've just submitted our feedback um as well at an individual level so they're thinking that there's going to be a product of this subcommittee which is

017a proposed ordinance is that where that that is the goal yeah um so we have seen we've seen a draft i think um committee members kind of expressed our commission members expressed their thoughts during the meeting um and then we actually i spoke with attorney slay today and she actually hadn't received any formal feedback from from folks and so um i sent out the reminder aidan i think is the first one to jump on that and and to start providing feedback and so um so she's kind of i think in order to make sure that she has the direction from the working group rather than trying to facilitate based on the comments that were made in the meeting and might be in different directions rather than having you know another round where we would have

018to go back to the drawing board i think she's hoping to get everyone's feedback consolidated when you're ready when you feel like you're done it would it make sense to to uh let us see it also is that input would get input for you i imagine that that would be the next step after the working group feels like it's complete because it's a joint working group between hrc and ikpak i imagine the full bodies of both will also probably review it and and recommend whether or not council should move forward good i should add a note as well i'm very eager for this group to see it um so i i this is a top priority for me and this is something that i very much hope to get to you as soon as possible

019thank you any other questions for this group let's talk about some of the projects that we're doing um sort of on in the background that people ought to know about the first one is trespass it's probably the oldest thing that's been on our plate um and this came about uh as a result of some complaints that we'd received from people who felt like they were trespassed um unfairly and that uh and as the more we looked at it the more we question whether this was respecting human rights of of people because it was um [Music] there weren't that many things in the in the law itself that constrained or guided police activity so we've been working on it a long time it came out especially of um an incident that happened in the blake transit

020center years ago and and we and we've made a lot of changes but this is the last piece we've been thinking about before we kind of hand it over to igpak which we thought was a you know now that it exists it's a maybe more logical place for it uh it's been hung up because the uh human rights commission really wanted to change a few things and there were some questions from it from people in it back about whether this was good whether the business community would be um as if whether the trespass would be as valuable for for them sorry about my phone but i can't mute if i'm talking um i can just get rid of it um but it is start we are starting out we're doing it we we've restarted it

021we've solved some of the problems and um we've been meeting with it talking the tool we've got some members here linda um pam judah and i and francis and mohammed and i'm afraid i don't think i remember the last do you look do you any anybody else remember who else is on this a couple of people from uh as well anyway huh jude is that her name and and bonnie phillips yeah okay i think you're right okay so i think that will happen i will we you will start hearing more about it and that it will be resolved and we'll have a meeting with the chief of police and resolve some of the practices policies and practices i think of the police department about it about this um anything out anybody else want to say

022anything about trespass religious i'm sorry i didn't i didn't want to forget to um remind the group or introduce the fact that um i heard it first from homeless teenagers at ozone house all about trespass and about them being just rousted you know if there are three or four of them just standing together on the sidewalk um the police will come up and just ask them to move on yeah and if they don't i don't think that you know the police don't act like they have a choice and their teenagers you know they probably don't feel like they have a choice right right but when they do and that's what happened with blake and why we're why we started exploring it when they do they can be banned easily from a place for a year

023um by the owner of the place or the director of the place without any you know any any charges any lawyer or anything and if they violate that they would get charged and would there would be some kind of legal process but the the charge of trespasses kind is is a way of can be a way of controlling people without too many diet without enough guidelines so that's why we're dealing with it another trespass ordinance uh or what we're well and with what we are proposing i believe at the time that it occurred the police were acting as agents of blake transit my understanding is that that contract has ended yes subsequently so to your point tita and maybe to the rest of the commission i guess the police could do it within their authority

024but do they really because the trespass information that as i understand it um has only the landlord or owner can can request a person be removed from the premises the police can't on their own i know i know that's why i that's why i was excited to hear that it was going [Music] yeah okay i just wanted to be sure that what i thought i understood was correct so a piece of this and i think it's inclusive is that we i know we talked about it it's educating the police um or doing some form of education once this is implemented or or it's the final in the final document um and and how it is to be um i don't know a word that describes it but how it is supposed to act or function

025should be just as um informative and the police educated as well as the general public because um unless there is something as i understand it that's either life-threatening or harmful to individuals you can't just arbitrarily uh go up to a group of people and say move or whatever and i'm hopeful that this ordinance will be just as informative to not only those who have engaged in that conduct but also who have been the recipients of it right i will um it's it's very it's very unfortunate it's very complicated but i'm going to um [Music] make the few changes that need to be made on the memo that was written by this subcommittee and approved by the subcommittee now they're proving some changes but not very many um but i'll send you all a copy so

026that you can see what the changes are and i think some of them won't make as much sense but some but most of them will how's that okay a lot of it had to do with the forms [Music] and some of the ways things were stated and uh i think also an appeals process which would probably have already implemented some of it or they they probably i don't even remember it's been a while but i will show you what we've got so you can ask questions and we can talk about it in the next meeting but that is the trespass thing it'll be nice when we're we finally make more headway on this religious head coverings linda want to talk about that headway yes a good segue um you know we haven't uh put out

027uh requests to find a mutual time to meet with the people who volunteered to work on it but i only got one reply and so we have not met yet um hopefully we will do so soon and have a discussion about whether we think this is something that makes sense to pursue it it's definitely more complicated than the crown stuff was it's not as simple as just adding it um so we just need to discuss it and then we can come back to you with with our consensus whatever it is and talk more about it that's okay okay anything else about that anti-asian hate town hall this was started it is now a little bit more more confusing because we've got a we now have a communication outreach group um as a result of the

028the strategic planning retreat which is aisha and diana and myself um but aisha why don't you start with it talking about where we are on this one i think the last um we met leslie we were thinking about whether or not this needs to be a targeted kind of outreach to different populations we wanted for example one that was exclusively for asian americans that we began to think about you know having a town hall that also talked to the black population about hate and discrimination the lgbt population the jewish population so at this point we've decided that this specific town hall will be part of a larger strategy where we eventually do have targeted town halls to various marginalized populations this one will just be targeting apis um i've reached out to some kind of

029prominent api activists at the local level and we're hoping to get some information from them otherwise you know i can always also bring in some people from the state level from the asian american state commission so i think next steps is really just leslie and i circling back and seeing who we have as panelists and also really like you know being uh being clear about what we want to get out of this you know i think it's a good opportunity for us just to kind of have a listening session and say this is who we are this is what our commitment is our charges that's how you file a complaint what are some issues related to human rights or discrimination that you experience in ann arbor um or what are your concerns about living here

030you know and have some conversations around that so this is right on target communications with a communication outreach questions for diana for hyphenation well i just i would know i there was a poll that came out yesterday that um it was an npr harvard and robert wood johnson foundation poll that showed among other things that 25 percent or one quarter of all asian americans fear violence whenever they go out out that's a significant chunk of fear uh going on in that community yeah that's important if you could forward that to me philip that would be great i will i'll afford it too to everybody thank you i mean it's it's buried in the report with a lot of other interesting data um i'll send a note and say which page it's on that'd be that'd

031be wonderful thank you any anything else about this all right so diana i'll circle out i'll circle back to you and leslie and we can talk about who we want to invite and then eventually what's the outreach strategy the promotional strategy i guess right um but i guess we're not there yet so right i'll let you know when i'm uh dylan and aiden uh you were involved as we started this and kept beca it kept mutating but are you still are you both still interested in this issue absolutely happy to help yes yes please include me good and i think this fits into our communication strategy because you know correct me if i'm wrong at our strategy session then i think you came up with the idea of we just need to showcase in a

032more public way who we are and what we do right i think we talked about like why don't we have commercials on cctv or you know or why don't at the start of our meetings we say by the way that hrc you know is charged to do x y and z if you ever have a complaint please go here to file one and then part of that outreach and communication strategy involve targeted town halls marginalized communities but [Music] so this is all part of a bigger kind of plan right which diana we can talk about you know maybe drafting up some language that can be right at the start of the next meeting hopefully okay sure yeah that would be good for that would be good for everybody for us we'll get more information for

033people who will be happy to be recognized and heard yeah i think i think too that we you know as we're talking about this um that it would be nice to have some sort of mechanism for people to reach out to us and contact us and we come to where they are and you know lots and lots of organizations meet in ann arbor um there are lots of community centers and community organizations and um you know i know that covet is still a very real thing um but we can zoom call in um we can show up wearing a mask whatever it might be um and maybe we you know have them reach out to denise or whatever but um you know that's something else i think that that we can can talk about um

034i i think about it in my you know in my daytime work that's what i do i go out and i talk to people about here are the services that i provide here here's what if you need this kind of help here's what we do and i i think we if we do that i think that may help us with things like the town halls yeah so if aiden and and dillop and you know i mean do you know what i'm saying like we're gonna find places where hey maybe this would be a really good place to do a town hall so yeah they kind of will more naturally occur right like we'll have populations maybe even reach out to us and say we saw your commercial we'd love for you to come talk to

035us um so yeah maybe we start there we can start planning the api town hall and then we start our larger communication strategy yeah and we don't have to wait for people to come to us you know i think we should sure reach out to people or lgbt here or you know jewish or whatever population we're focusing on and ask them yeah and say by the way i don't know if you've seen but this is who we are can we come talk to your yeah to your community and you know it may be that that could be pieces of that could come together in a ctn program somehow where there's there's something you know that we what we learn from ann arbor becomes something that we all share [Music] my mother would be very happy

036if i got to showcase my tap dancing skills that she paid for when i was very little in a closed you know like in a closed caption television kind of commercial for the human rights mission i'm just putting that out there you can tap dance if you want thank you so much okay we'll touch base and then we'll reach back out to everyone uh judah isn't here but um maybe you can talk up to this kita we talked about a compilation of complaint data and you and judah were going to work on it and i wanted to just touch base and find out if anything has happened with that no remember you didn't feel the material was ready to go so we never exchanged it what material whatever it is yeah i don't know i

037don't want anything on it so i'm not sure we're talking about the same thing this was this is quite a while ago i think uh we were wondering about the best way to sort of compile you know all the data from the old complaints and come up with a good system of of keeping it going on a spreadsheet and working with denise on that and judah was the one who raised it and i did give him he asked for the hard copies of all the old complaints which i dropped off at his house okay so i you know i don't know you didn't i haven't and you yeah jude and i haven't talked okay i didn't know that they had been handed off yeah i know i mean it's not that many it's it's just

038coming up with some sort of system that makes sense um they're also summarized in the annual report right every year right um anyway yeah so that's that's what it was and i i don't know that jude has done anything on it either but uh but it's on the agenda because we wanted to keep it keep it going you know yeah i'll send him an email okay and he may have ideas already in place that i don't know about so i'll do that okay okay um the next thing was the conversion therapy logistics and last time we met in august um we when we met in august we talked about the need to educate people about conversion therapy and figure out how they how violations would be presented and how to make that easier and somebody

039suggested that we talk to uh rick radcliffe who was a ratliff who is a uh used to be a human rights commissioner and is has a lot of experience with media and pr and education [Music] through those vehicles and he suggested that we get this get um lgbt students involved in convert in the conversion therapy but you know publicizing it understanding it how do we do that most effectively so diana was going to check with neutral zone to see how we might in involve them diana were you able to do anything about that so i did i reached out to um the neutral zone through their um their educator on their website and i did not hear back from them um i did not get a response back from them so if somebody else has

040the name of somebody else i should contact um i'd be happy to reach out to a different named person um the other thing that i did was i reached out to the partnerships program through the ann arbor public schools because that program partner it's basically what it is is it supports services through the ann arbor public schools and it's a variety of different things from transportation to housing to food to mental health and it's i don't i haven't talked to anybody yet they haven't responded back to me um but it's it's not necessarily in invasive but what i was hoping was that we might be able to be connected as a resource for students and families meaning we would become a link on the ann arbor public schools website so that they could click a

041link and they would be connected to the hrc website and it it doesn't even have to be limited to conversion therapy it could be just be a link to the human rights commission um i haven't given up on the neutral zone um yet necessarily because of course i think the goal is a good goal and that is let's talk to young people and um i don't even think that the goal has to be lgbt um young people i think it could be any young people because lots of young people talk to other young people and what we want to do is um spread the word so that when people young people are out there and they're hearing from their friends or their loved ones who might be experienced experiencing conversion therapy they have some resources

042um they know that the hrc is available and kind of what the process is so you know more to come like i said i've sent those two emails um and i'm you know i'm still thinking trying to figure out where else we could um kind of work as partners um and again it's it's it's more outreach it's more advertising it's more kind of getting the word out i'm sorry to interrupt you leslie the other thing that leslie and i did talk about um was kind of working working on and i and i am gonna do it is kind of working on getting um a little blurb a little um flyer something that you know i can post on the dominatory community center website or on facebook uh something to that effect that um you know

043would be that would be a link so that people could see it people could click on it again it doesn't it doesn't necessarily um we just we have to get the word out it doesn't necessarily have to be to to kids it has to be to everybody so um you know just lots of different ways to to do that that's sounds like you've made some progress at least you've thought more about it than i have and i think that's great thank you i i was wondering if uh if there's anything anybody in jim toy center that has a can i travis do you yeah i i just had a couple of things to maybe add and suggestions for for diana as well so we have um a a four person school or city schools committee

044um so council members grand and song and i believe trustees lazarus and gaynor um meet regularly to to talk about things that the cities and schools can work on together um that might be something worth having a conversation with them about to see if they can bring that up at that meeting um if if you're looking for kind of proactive ways for additional outreach um i know that that trustee jessica kelly also had a conversation with me a little over a year ago now probably about um some student orgs that had started up at ann arbor public schools um and so she may also be somebody who is connected to those groups on the school board um and so so she might be a resource as well um there are also like parents and allies

045groups on facebook there are local groups that um might be a place to to just advertise that this is something that's available i can connect you to a couple of those as well if you're not part of them already i i got invited into a couple of them during my time as president at the gym toy center and shortly after getting on to council and um they tend to be fairly active and folks seem to know who the right people are in different communities and and they talk to one another and so if they hear that somebody at their kids school is is having a tough time they try to be a support system and so they might be a good group to connect with um and then just just that neutral zone um i

046i missed who you said you reached out to did you say the name of the person you reached out to i did not it was the person who's kind of he it's a it's a gentleman who's listed as like their education coordinator on their website so my suggestion so i the person the people that i've worked most closely with over the years have both been laurie the director and then amy milligan who's their fundraiser but they also i believe have a riot youth coordinator or somebody that's their staff person and riot youth is like the lgbtq student group and so they may be the best person to connect with and i know that the youth are kind of lead that as well obviously they're they're an organization that that brings youth into kind of leadership

047roles but um the center had i don't know the the student leaders or the the youth leaders of riot youth anymore because obviously it's been a few years since we've engaged with them in person through the jim toy center but they used to at least have a coordinator and so if you can find the right youth coordinator on their website i think it's a woman i think she would be the right person to go with okay thank you gotcha thanks good of course anything else on this leslie yeah i i just had one question i think i think we may have talked about this but do we have any idea when a when a new ordinance is passed where the um the enforcing body is the police department um do we do we have any

048sense that the police are aware that this new ordinance has passed and is there any sort of training for people in the event that somebody does come to them with this complaint you know what that's a good one i don't have any sense that they know right do you think that somehow that would be i think i think they are certainly aware um i actually have a meeting with um the chief and two deputy chiefs later this week um and so i can ask them what what the process would be if they received a complaint on this okay great good thanks we may want to meet with them at some point and you know talk about how they might do it yeah and i think you know i think that um i can certainly ask

049that you know in the past um deputy chief metzer has been somebody who i have worked with quite a bit on lgbtq issues and she is of course the one who worked on and authored the transgender interactions policy and things like that and so um she might be a good resource thank you helpful from an enforcement standpoint wouldn't the um attorney's office be involved and since margaret is um she has access to our meetings um would that be something that either she would handle or delegate or are they waiting on the new senior um attorney i don't i don't know how that would work in in this case if it's a you know an actual enforcement case um it would probably get looped through attorney slay because she's the the prosecutor for the city um

050and and to answer your second question nothing is on hold waiting for the the current city attorney is still in his position for um for a while and and the staff the staff i think actually um would be able to to function if there were a break but um but no that that is not on hold for sure i think it would be wise for us to just look into those things um just because i know there are there are a lot of ordinances out there and they are not known by everybody and we care about these so we we want to educate i was i was surprised i'll tell you it's been a um it's been interesting to see how long it takes the word to get out for example for the fair chance

051housing ordinance and the uh source of income ordinance and how much promotion needs to be done to educate people so i assume that's the same the same thing is true for the conversion therapy any other any other comments about that let us then move on to complaints um we talked about summarizing complaints we want to keep lastly i think you skipped one i'm sorry to interrupt did you want to talk about the oh i'm sorry of course right now and that's an important one [Music] um there is a linda do you want to you want to talk well i mean on that i can just tell you that i i i've been um uh emailing um margaret radeba in the city attorney's office to make sure that the city went ahead and did what the

052ordinance requires it to do which is to send a letter to all registered landlords in the city of ann arbor notifying them of the existence of the new fair chance access to housing ordinance and they they hadn't done it as a late august and she she was she did then i think it's it's called something like housing and building services maybe department something like that they are in the process if they haven't already of composing and sending out a letter to all those people she did write me today saying she was she was waiting to hear back from them to see if the letter actually went out um but we're on it and hopefully it will um and we know from a lawsuit that's now been filed against the city by landlords that a lot

053of landlords are very aware of its existence yes and some are not we have gotten some questions about people where for people who have asked and been told no we don't allow it and do not at least do not admit that they know about this law so again we still have more work to do um and we also have some work helping the legal department compile their case supporting us and they're working very hard and we are glad because we really care about this ordinance um we were told by the way by um john riser and margaret about that the resolution that we wrote supporting this was very helpful to them and they use some of that in the in the case that they're going to present for the preliminary in jung what is it

054called linda preliminary yeah they're asking for a preliminary the landlords are asking for an injunction um to stop the law from being in effect until it can be thoroughly argued and decided it's being that the suit is being brought in federal court um and they make constitutional arguments about if anybody wants to see the complaint we have it happy to send it out i i would like to see it yeah okay i sent it to you but i can give it to you again i did send it to you okay it's just suspenseful no it's good thank you yeah and i can we send them the preliminary report when we get it or not you mean the answer that's filed yes i mean it's it's probably a matter of public record so i i assume

055so um if people want it i can we can check with john but yeah i think so sure but there is they are doing a lot of work and it looks like good work they're getting um some affidavits from people who have experienced housing in ann arbor and are returning maybe from incarceration or have a history that has prevented them from getting housing and we're doing some help but they're they're doing the big heavy lifting in the meantime it's still in effect and we're still telling everybody that that not renting to people any blanket uh we will not rent anybody with a criminal offense on the record is not legal complaints but that's all we talked about wanting to be able to say something about the complaints that we're handling without violating people's confidentiality so

056i have started to be to just try to give people an overview i mean we may want to handle this in different ways but this is one way so i'm going to give you a a brief summary of what is that what is on the you know on the table for us right now right now we're considering eight different cases they may not all end up being um being formal complaints but many of them are almost done and you know they're in various various phases of being done of the eight cases four of them involved housing either finding a place that will accept vouchers or or um allowing somebody with a criminal record to be possible may be you know be uh considered as a possible tenant or the people's treatment and in their housing

057so four of the eight involved housing three involve treatment in the workplace um right now everybody is talking about all those those cases have to do with treatment on the job uh one of them involved trespassing in a public accommodation five of them claim discrimination on the basis of race or ethnicity one is based on sexual orientation and one is based on source of income and one is based on criminal criminal history i think and i think we've got four people dealing with them right now um [Music] any kind any questions about these that i can answer i'd like to tell you some stories but i'm very worried about the confidentiality and we'll see what we can do but we'd like people to know the kinds of things we handle and the kinds of questions

058that people can bring to us that there are no other questions that is deals with the ongoing hrc work and the next thing we talk about is the annual report ready for that now then the ann arbor code that mandates the human rights commission asks that requires that what we do is send a report to city council every year on a couple different issues so we send a cop we as long as we're writing part of it we might as well write the whole thing and so every year we send a a report of a couple pages summarizing what we've done during the year um i send you all a copy i hope you've all read it um other are there any questions about what you've got as the annual report this is actually in

059two parts one part is the part that has just to do with the hrc the second part has to do with the contractor uh the con contractor of compliance and i'll talk about that separately but just the actual report right now includes this and it includes a summary of all the complaints we've received this year and this year when i say this year i mean uh 2020 it's really last year any comments changes thoughts on the annual report um any comments or thoughts or changes on the complaint summaries then can we have a um [Music] getting the word um somebody want to make a motion to approve i want to thank you leslie for putting this together i know it's a lot of work so i appreciate it thank you and then i would also

060like to move that we um accept and send to city council this annual report and the list of complaints that's attached to it okay i second second all in favor anybody posed we've got it now let's move on to do some follow-up on the strategic plan the planning process that we did i sent everybody a copy of my notes based on the flip charts that were written during the strategic planning meeting um and i hope you all went through them and starred anything that you wanted to talk about were there things you wanted to talk about things we wanted i mean some of these things are sort of half-faked ideas some of them are in place already and we're moving on what are the things that we think we still need to discuss on this

061i have a question sure remember i could not attend more than the greeting um there was an uh a section on trying to make sure we distribute the work more evenly yes i know i just want the hrc work more evenly and i just wonder what uh what your thoughts were what people and what was the tenor of that discussion did you read the notes yes and i don't want was to break us into smaller groups and assign uh randomly or in an order for the complaints yes right but but there was other work too obviously i know i just wondered if they're you know what i can always call and catch up with you at a different time no i mean other people can answer i we talked we did talk about people doing

062more things um and we talked about this group actually said that they could be assigned things they'd be willing to take assignments um i think i think a central tenet of where there was an opportunity of growth was that in the assignment process of complaints that currently right now as as it currently stands the same people are handling the process of complaints so we discussed ways in which we can distribute that a bit more evenly one of the thought processes was periods of assignments or groups of assignments in addition to that as well um so basically it was just discussing a way for us to all get our hands on complaints so that the same people aren't doing it each time that that was a main chunk of the thinking there oh okay all right

063what's their talk about training uh how we might get it yeah i'm sorry no no no go ahead no good now i know there what there wasn't talk about both training on the process and but also training on things that are difficult like housing which has you know people we're still learning a lot about housing and so anybody who's doing a new housing complaint has a lot to learn about what vouchers mean and you know all those kinds of things linda um i think the best way to learn is by doing it in partnership with people and we do have this ever-changing list of complaint handling procedures that anybody who's handling a complaint should really look at and follow and if they're doing it with somebody who's handled complaints before or they have questions there

064are so many other people that they can ask either on the commission or whatever who've done it but i was going to say and this is a good lead in so let's assume we do have a new complaint that comes in what do we want to do differently for the next complaint um do we want to just uh send a message to everybody saying we have a new complaint who wants to do it and then um you know fold that person in and move somebody out because we can only have four people consulting without messing with the you know the quorum open meetings act um so if some new person comes in someone should exit probably although that person it would have to be somebody who didn't have an ongoing case still it would have

065to be somebody who was done you know with whatever it was they were handling so are you suggesting that that until we um initiate everybody with complaint we have two season members and one new member on the team at least or or two and two or three and one for a little while and just slowly you know then when then one of the season people is done with whatever their complaints are on their plate they move out and you know another one that would be my suggestion i mean we don't get that many complaints that frequently at this point that i think we can try it slowly and see um so if one came in tomorrow i mean i don't know if all four i have one that's open but i think it will be

066closed within a week so you know i could i could move off um i don't know where everybody else is pam may have may be able to move off um whatever um and still be around for consulting on how you handle complaints generally without really deciding on any particular complaint no um i don't know how i'm happy to work on the next one yeah okay i i have one that i could use some help with um and that that's also a possibility i mean the other thing is we don't i mean i suppose we could have like three people consulting on one complaint three people consulting on another complaint and still be kosher in terms of the open meetings act but if we do what we've been doing which is whoever's doing complaints is consulting

067on all the complaints then it wouldn't work to have more than four people you know what i'm saying so yes maybe i'm making it too complicated but if somebody has some simple way of doing this please say so yeah yeah this is it's a hard one because the complaints that we receive are many of them are very are some of them are more com you know that we have some things that are common and the statistics make it sound like they're common these are very each one is very different from every other one almost and that um that means it's challenging but are the people who have not worked with complaints comfortable with suddenly coming into a complaint that's partially done and not just learning okay so maybe that's what we'll do start bringing people

068on one of the things we talked about at this at the strategy meeting leslie was you um as they come in designating us and saying you know reaching out and saying would you work on this report or this complaint right and everybody still thinks that's a good idea it is as long as that person is not operating solo nothing personal to anybody right we've got it we've got to operate at least in twos and right really three so we we can be in agreement on how to proceed on each of these right so you could probably assign three people to a complaint and those three people or two people could decide which one is going to do the heavy lifting and then consult with the other person you know okay yeah i get the sense

069i get the sense that linda is holding these very close to her heart and is very concerned about letting them go no i just want no my concern is that we do a good job with these leslie and i fought for years to make sure somebody to make sure there was a complaint process so that the non-discrimination ordinance could be enforced there was no process for 10 years there was no place to go if your via rights were violated so we finally in 2014 got the human rights commission on board it took us a while to get complaints you know complaint forms and city council was very concerned about having us do this yeah you know they they used to have a human rights department with paid staff that enforce the nondiscrimination ordinance when that

070went away there wasn't anybody doing it so since the city didn't want to recreate one of those we were the next best thing but somebody needed to do it and my my thing is i just want to make sure we have some quality control that we're doing it well um it's just it's just very important which is why i've been sort of you know maybe too compulsive about trying to get these procedures out there and make sure we're we i'm fine with editing them or whatever i just want people to i want it to be something so that when we're all gone and the next group is in there's a process everybody knows what it is and it works um because it's tricky for a group of volunteers to do something like this so we

071have to make sure absolutely yeah i i don't i don't disagree with you at all i i just think that you and leslie i think as the creators and the keep keepers of it you have very definitive thoughts and ideas about how it should be done and i don't disagree um and i think that there are a lot of um [Music] great areas to it um so why don't you come up with um a process or standard operating procedure we've had them for years i mean i've sent them to all of you um and and feedback is welcome um you know it's it's out there it's just a question of who's doing it and in what groups and consulting with margie on the legal issues which arise repeatedly where you know that we maybe aren't

072sure about um they exist and please look at them and any feedback any changes go for it i just want us to you know come up with a procedure that we all like and and then use it and it is a little it is a little bit concerning because there are there are probably some liability involved we are representing the city and we're helping people and we have to do we have to do it in a professional way but i think this group has no problem doing that but we do need to follow procedures actually linda and i especially me could follow procedures more closely and that would be good too so let's um i suspect we will have somebody at least one of you added on um before the next meeting because i think

073i will ask somebody to help me at least and um but i'm still not clear what the procedure is so i think i i so what is the procedure then you mean for bringing people on and off kind of thing or how we handle them once we get them like the actual you know yeah what is the procedure for bringing people on and off yeah i don't know okay i don't know right i was thinking since philip said that i was supposed to do it that i would just call somebody up and say we're doing this we've got this complaint are you interested in being part of it i think the easiest practice for us to do moving forward is just to do it in terms of quarters or seasons one quarter we have two

074seasoned human rights commission members and one not so seasoned the next one we just sort of rotate that makes most sense for everybody's schedules we don't have to shift back and forth um i i i just think that that could be a practice in theory it is but in practice some of these go on for many months so then i suppose you could hand them off with instructions to the next group about where we are um but that gets a little tricky if you've developed some kind of relationship with people but we can try it we can certainly try that and see you know yeah are would people like to be on at least know that they could be on for three months and then not worry about it for the rest of the year

075or three you'd be it'd have to be three months where you'd have to continue with anything you started i think but but but basically i get an idea of three months is that what you'd like if you could you could do it i'm not sure we can do it frankly but i should add that that's just an idea as well i do think it's the easiest one but there's again always room for improvements we can add on or take away from that yeah yeah yeah um one of our problems is that the people who've been on the team and know how to do it um can't we can't all say what we've done at least three months now we will leave it to the rest of you you know but aidan was saying you have

076one person who's done it and you have two new people or two yeah yeah you can try that let's try it as long as especially if there's just three then you can still have a fourth person out there who's maybe finishing up and um still consulting with the other three or something okay you just can't better than than are saying we have a position on a complaint that involves such and such which of you three people who are who haven't done anything before would be interested in being part of this and that's another way of doing it no one seemed to do you understand what i'm saying could you repeat that leslie i thought maybe that wasn't clear um for example i've i'm i'm on i've got something now that i think i'd like some

077help with i could conceivably write to the those of you who haven't been involved in complaining before and say this is what this complaint is about who of you would like to be a part of this i mean that's that's another way of instead of my saying i think aidan might be good for this one i i think perhaps as an intermediate step for us developing a plan to further get in other perhaps less seasoned people with handling complaints that might be a way to go to just shoot out those emails and whoever is interested hop on and then if it's been 24-48 hours re-prompt them and i'm sure it's one of us would hop on uh but i think in the meantime and following that we should definitely continue working on our practice okay

078i'm not sure i understand what you're saying not that i'm thinking about it are you so i'm essentially just saying immediately if you need guidance or assistance on something by all means please send out an email to the people who are less seasoned or have not taken any sort of case in this instance while we're doing that for future instances where there is a complaint we should also be creating a process of moving forward how is the process of who takes a case when um implement it okay in the meantime i will also yeah right ask a question absolutely okay uh no actually it's a statement i need to have some input into the period of time in which i'm gonna help conduct an investigation so for me the season idea makes sense because you

079know i will know to put that block of time aside i see okay um [Music] what if i ask the people who have not been involved in um in the complaints process what season they would be interested in i'd give them four seasons or three seasons something like that and they can specify and then i could call on the people and then we could bring them in that way would that make sense i i for me personally that would work but i don't know if everybody else is sold on this idea i think it's something that we should more extensively talk about i really do think that immediately for any guidance that you need please send out an email and feel welcome to do so for whoever is immediately available and we can plug them

080in that way and then we can more uh you know talk about the subject in a way that works for everybody i just thought it would be simpler since leslie knows everybody and their experience level for her to designate okay i i guess what i'll do is try a little bit of everything so i i hear what you're saying and i'll try to i'll try to make them you know to get the biggest um the things that you're talking about as much as i can how's that we trust yeah i'm i'm pretty flexible i can go with aiden's way i can go what whatever i like keita like keita i i guess i kind of like the idea of like knowing that for like three months like i'm focused but i'm okay with whatever i

081think and certainly if i call you now and you say look this is my busiest time of the year why don't you call me after september or after christmas i can do that yeah yeah i can do whatever you know and i also think that um i i feel like we support each other and i feel like you know if i have a question and i would just call you you know well i would text aiden but yeah i would call the rest of you and if you're busy watching netflix then i would just call you back after the show's over and then we would talk and we would figure it out so whatever whatever works and i agree with dillop that whatever you're gonna know who's on the complaint already and so you can

082use that knowledge to figure out who else is going to work as the trio so however you want to do it is fine okay i will send everybody a copy of the process the complaint process that linda passed out to you and make sure that you have it um but we'll talk about it too once you get on a you get an assignment so we'll try and make it as easy as possible for people to take it and run with it okay anything else about this um the stuff we came up with the strategic planning committee uh planning meeting that had to do with how we work together the 13 points that i described in our in the notes is there anything else you want to talk about no right well we have about a

083half hour would you like to start talking again about future projects and priorities i had a couple possibilities for people to think about or to look at when they were doing that if you remember we had a questionnaire a couple months ago and i sent you a copy of the telling of the different ideas that people came up with and what they wanted to do we also had in terms just of ideas of things that we might do if we had a project and we don't have to have a project and there are some projects and i think projects i'm thinking of things that are work you know like all the back works that i reported on earlier this would be more of the back work probably people would work in subgroups or they would

084work individually and come back to the group with pieces of the puzzle because these are bigger issues um but other issues other things we might consider focusing on have to do with the topics that we asked isis class to do we now have as you know um i think 20 reports is that right 10 reports probably no 20. two classes of five reports see five reports with two parts each about topics we said we were interested in and might want to be referred to you know one might want to refer to it so we've got some of the baseline work done that also we could think about in terms of what we wanted to do next um the crew study group that pam is a part of judah is a part of and i'm a

085part of i think that's all oh and aisha we're looking at returning um people who are formerly incarcerated or have been charged with crime and what we can do to help that might be that might be something that we would also be a bad piece of work that we do so there's lots of things that come up that become bigger than we thought and become projects but i thought perhaps we would want to come we would want to agree that there's something we really care about ourselves and we want we want to make sure we devote some time to it and that's what i was hoping we would come to in this part of the meeting and this strategic planning meeting although we didn't get that far you have any thoughts about that or you

086just want to end the meeting now we can do that too you went in the meeting now it's okay um i mean i do think that if we are serious about focusing on some of the city-related issues of that we talked about um making sure that you know things are copacetic in the city from a human rights non-discrimination point of view that will take some work um and some attention um the the other issues i mean you know we the housing work that that keita and leslie and i started working on and and i mean i'm interested still in taking part in the in that equity group that the planning department is trying to put together and include us in because i think we can have hopefully some real impact on city policies and the

087planning process um making sure that to the extent possible the new master plan you know undoes some of the old wrongs um that we started looking into so that's important to me um the the equity analysis i think will be uh will move uh the way the city uh looks at those issues forward right yes i mean we certainly need to be informed about that and i mean if you want i can contact the woman who contacted us as far as i know there was only one meeting right that we were involved in a planning committee yes commissioner right the equity committing committee of the planning department or something like that is that what it was something i i would like to attend the next meeting right yeah if there's been one i i don't

088know so let me let me look into that okay make sure that we're still included in anything that's happening okay i did tell them that we wanted to be included so but i don't think i heard from them it's been a long time i think yeah so things may come up how do what did you think about was it helpful to hear what was going on elsewhere for example in this meeting to have to have a agenda item about council and about one of the subcommittees we know we were interested in was that help was that part helpful and maybe we can include as as things come up we can include more ways of looking at how it's an awful lot of change going on a lot of people look focusing on change so maybe

089we should just wait and see but keep ourselves informed is that straight margaret bell okay i i want us to stay relevant and um involved where we're needed and just informed if we're not and and have people have the opportunity to join things and report to us so that we just keep informed stay informed that fair in that case would you like to make a motion to adjourn or are there any comments that you want i guess we have commissioner comments first people want to say something at the end of meetings lastly just uh um what are some action items that we may want to identify for our next meeting that we want to have a report back on i know the facial recognition i think is one of them you and i talked about

090for the contractor compliance report the annual why should we do that we should do that um i didn't even send that i can't we can't do that yet yeah and for those who may not know annually we re leslie and i have tasked ourselves with um working with colin i can't think of his last name right now he's the purchasing yeah for this city um and together we get a listing of all of the contractors who do business with the city um at one point pre-pandemic leslie and i took it upon ourselves to um visit a couple of the contractors just to see if they had the poster the ndo poster prominently displayed the i visited two places i think leslie did sadly neither of them had it prominently displayed earlier in this meeting at

091all yeah earlier in this meeting you had indicated there was some pushback from the city attorney that city attorney is uh retired and margaret read upon in a private conversation um expressed that she didn't have an objection to us visiting um the contractors so leslie and i have said we're going to visit some contractors and see if they have it displayed and include that because i work maybe not ironically but not surprising uh the purchasing manager who submits the report to the city with our input the report always states there's no violation well they haven't verified it so of course there's no violation just fyi it's true true okay and yeah you'll get that next month also that report any other commissioner comments statements questions honestly this thought just kind of occurred to me i

092was wondering if we shouldn't we as a commission shouldn't insert ourselves into um at least inviting or making our how do i say this nicely um offer our services for some of the personnel issues that we know are going on that the council is dealing with just as an independent body is why we in some respects have the independent police oversight commission that is now in place um you and i have talked and for the benefit of the others i'm privy to some information most of it public knowledge but i'm sure the council representatives are more um have more detailed information but um the city with certain positions the hr position the city administrator now we have the issue with um the acting city administrator sustaining a complaint from the newly hired hr director my

093thoughts i'm thinking out loud here are in um offering our services to assist um in those searches if you will it's a concern that i have had for some time with how the city tends to go about making selections of highly placed positions i had this same conversation with john fournier when the search firm identified three candidates to fill the police chief position and my concern has been expressed when in the crew meeting with these county prosecutor of how they go about recruiting to fill positions in the city um kind of like not so much an oversight but just input all of us bring something to the table and we present with certain expertise not saying that there's anything wrong or a miss but just offering our services saying you might want to run that

094by us just to see what we would come up with that might assist you in um making some decisions relative to these positions i've long been a native of ann arbor although i've moved away and lived in other cities and states but i think i know ann arbor pretty well and i've seen this council the the city itself literally two people up and spit them out the police chief position is one of them they've run through people like you know i won't even use an analogy a lot of people have held that position um they've done the same thing with the administrators those of us who've been on this commission we can probably count at least three or four that we know of who've held that position and now they have yet another one so

095i'm a little concerned with just how things are playing out i'm just saying offering our services to assist the city towards success and i'd like i'd like to do it even if no one else joins me i agree i agree i think that it's um it's very interesting i i also um when travis said that um that it was you know that there was an independent investigation i i thought to myself it's interesting that they would do an independent investigation when they have a human rights commission that investigates it they our job is to investigate human rights discrimination complaints that that's our job that's interesting yeah and historically what i've seen whenever they call for an independent investigation there usually is one person who is making that decision for that recommendation in this case i

096believe it's the current city attorney who made the recommendation to do the investigation when robert wilkerson the robin wilkerson situation came about not that i had anything against uh steve postema but he made the recommendation for the attorney that did the investigation my personal opinion is that that should have gone outside it should not have been anybody involved it's done but i'm just saying i have worked as many of you know for governmental agencies and it's no different than the police policing themselves you absolutely do not need anybody who is directly or even indirectly involved doing these investigations that paints it in my opinion and i'm speaking very strongly here because you have some connection and i'm not saying that there's anything amiss or improper i'm just saying that it has the appearance that it

097is not clean and so to avoid even that assumption or allegation or thought that you should have an independent person who from that has no connection to anyone making that decision does anybody have problems with are making an offer that people could take or leave or do what they want with i absolutely understand the inclination for us to make that offer i'm and i'm not opposed to that by any means i more so just want to hear from travis or elizabeth if they feel that they would be helpful or just generally their perspective on us offering our assistance also as just a note i'm even unsure of what it would look like us offering our assistance as somebody who's new on the human rights commission i'm unsure of what that process would even look like

098or entail so any perspective or insight is valued i can imagine a lot of different ways that would be [Music] not i just like to express appreciation for panelists point it's a real one and um i i'm trying to i appreciate aidan's point as well because i'm i'm trying in in how these situations are framed to us um quite frequently it is less about the perspective or the independence or it's framed as this is the expert opinion that will be followed and it will take the expertise of the like into pamela's words like the one person who's picking the investigator oh well it's the expertise required to pick that person who will do that you know that we're sort of in this hamster wheel of oh well we there's not space for that extra perspective

099because it must be expert and we have framed expertise in this way um yeah i i i can sort of predict or imagine how how that would be how an offer like this would be received and yeah it's tricky sort of smiling i think she kind of knows what i'm getting at it's like it would be true i think that there's also i mean i think to to that i think the question that diana raised i mean there there are also i mean particularly when we are dealing with issues of a personnel complaint um it is going to likely always be kind of that internal process and unless an independent investigator is hired like in this in this most recent case um it personnel complaints in particular they're just generally not going to include kind

100of an outside body and in some of that um and so so that that's kind of that process um i i think you can certainly you know make the offer i i don't know i agree with aidan i'm i'm not entirely sure what that would look like and so i think depending on what it is that you're hoping to provide assistance on and things like that i think there are certainly ways that we can do a better job of you know to to your point um about kind of the hiring process and things like that i think there are better ways for us to do public engagement around some of these bigger pieces and i think that that can include you know inviting commissioners and things like that to to these opportunities to um to

101meet folks and provide feedback as well i know that um during the last administrator search you know before i was on council i was asked to be on a community panel and that was kind of the replacement for that that formal meet and greet and i um i don't entirely know like how that group was selected in in its entirety right like i was one of you know 30 people or something like that and so so the the way to make sure that we're including you know different folks from commissions who might have relevant perspective and things like that um is definitely something that i think is advice worth worth providing um and i would say i i think you know [Music] um your your staff liaison and and attorney rad above who you work

102with often are probably folks that are good places to start to have those conversations and see what that might look like and and what that type of um offer might might be and i'm going to add on to my original comment as well by saying that i fundamentally agree with everything that you said pamela as well and so i do think that even if we are unfamiliar with the process and and to plus one to what travis said we should make that initial ask because i agree with you that i do think that fundamentally despite whatever you know legal framework is in place it is a responsibility of the human rights commission to be involved in some capacity now it's more so just identifying in what capacity we are allowed to be involved in um

103and so i think that is absolutely something that you should pursue pamela know that you have my full throat and support in that as well right put it on me no problem i wasn't suggesting that we take over the responsibility i was simply suggesting that we insert ourselves into the process we have enough to to do on our own but i'm just saying we should be included in that process and i'll give you an example when um and i've shared this i think with others when they were doing the search for the police we were presented with the feta complete this is it these are the ones that we're going to consider for this opportunity and i asked john fournier i think um howard was gone by this time howard lazarus the former administrator i

104said okay well what questions did you ask can i see the questions can i just see the questions and he said no i go what do you think i'm gonna do with them publish them i just want to know that you're even asking the right questions to get to where you say you want to be and i'm not doing it because i'm judging you i just want to see what you're doing having worked for governmental agencies and they they asked diana will know this we have questions that are validated and this is when i knew i was talking with the novice who didn't have a clue as to what i was talking about i asked him one question are the questions validated okay and and for anybody who's in governmental work and and knows that

105you know this these are universal questions that have been proven if you will to elicit certain responses that gets you to a certain point and of course his response was well yeah they're validated really anyway my point is i'm just saying as as as diana eloquently stated this is one of our responsibilities and we are responsible for holding the city accountable for being what they say they are an equal opportunity employer who does not discriminate on the basis of blah blah blah and all we're saying is let us look into that because as we all know the definition of sanity is insanity is doing the same thing over again and expecting a different result and that's what this city keeps getting and i'm concerned as a citizen where we're just constantly going through bodies in

106these positions and now we have some infighting going on and it doesn't bode well for our success as a city so i'm just saying i'd like to see us insert ourselves into that offer our assistance i'm not suggesting in any way that we take it over and ironically when council wants us to do something then they do dump it in our lap which is when they told us to manage the process for establishing epoch well if we're if we're astute and and competent enough to do that then surely we're competent and a student enough to do the same thing for these other issues and other positions and that's all that i have to say on this i don't want to prolong the meeting but you all have heard me i'm off my soap right now

107so we can move on oh wait i was about to jump on my soapbox oh no i'm just kidding um i was just i i guess what i was also going to add is that i agree with you and aiden but i would also just add that we were not appointed to the hrc with no experience we are we are very educated people with a lot of experience a lot of experience and diversity and inclusion and law and fact-finding and um so this isn't our first rodeo it isn't our first time looking at hr issues or um you know claims of discrimination and investigations so i guess that's kind of why i find it interesting um and i'm a little curious as to why we don't aren't in more involved and i i guess travis

108the thing the thing that i i find interesting or the thing that i found interesting about what you said was the word you used was they were going to do an independent investigation and when someone uses the word independent that to me means that they're going outside of their organization to hire somebody to come in and do an investigation that's my interpretation that's that means something different to me than an internal investigation which means they're getting somebody from within hr or within the city to do an investigation i think it's a waste of taxpayer dollars to go and spend money when you have an hrc of very well qualified very smart people who do this kind of thing all the time and if if that's really what they're doing if they're going to hire somebody

109to independently come in and pay them to investigate what the assistant hr person did i think well that's interesting when they have the human rights commission um if that's really indeed what they're doing if that's really what you meant an independent investigation which is different than an internal investigation the other the other thing is that the investigations that have been done have all been through the league through law of the legal investigations in human resources there are other kinds of investigations that is that are also important and sometimes more worthwhile than just the legal although of course you need to know that the process is legal and you need to know that no law has been broken and it has the other client other thing that the hrc brings to the city um is we

110don't work for the city right we don't get paid by the city i don't get paid by the city i'm a volunteer so can i say that the offer is on the table and certainly it can be used anyway but i think is that is that fair does anybody have a problem with that i don't know what it means we won't know what it means in case somebody says yes but [Music] i think you heard the argument [Music] okay anything else before we close um thank you very much we need a motion to adjourn i motion to adjourn second all in favor aye thank you folks have a good month see you next month i know good to see you all take care you too denise thank you thank you you