Public Safety Committee - Regular Meeting

Johnson, Jost, Kim, Naker, Prabatsky?

Here.

Yang? Chair Bowie? Here. Four present and three absent being Council Member Johnson, Council Member Ying, and Council President Naker who are excused. So, afternoon everyone.

I know we had a really robust org meeting earlier. So, what we have before us for the agenda is two items. So, we have a focus on chemical dependency, particularly examining innovative approaches to how our partners at Listening House and also Ramsey County Attorney's Office are taking action when it comes to our unsheltered populations. But we're going to start with the more dense part of our presentation from Ramsey County reviewing particularly the justice system process on a broader standpoint with a particular focus on the university corridor. And as County Attorney John Choi is coming up, I just want to emphasize that like often when we think about our government entities, we you know, we talk about them working in silos.

And I think here on the Public Safety Committee, top priority is making sure that we're highlighting all the ways we're working together to advance public safety. And with that, I'll hand it over to County Attorney John Choi. Thank you for being here.

Thank you Madam Chair and members of the City Council. It's real pleasure to be invited here to kind of briefly talk about a few things. So I have a PowerPoint, but I it's a kind of off topic than what you asked for, but I thought I'd bring it and there's useful information in there. But I think what I wanted to do is as we have this conversation, I wanted to just kinda have a conversation about the role of the prosecutor and kind of what actually happens. And you have a city attorney and I'm the county attorney, and I know that people that are listening or watching this might have those questions.

So, I just want to kind of level set about kind of what my role is as your chief prosecutor at Ramsey County, and how the process kind of works. Because I think there's a lot of things that people have emotional conclusions or how they have feelings about maybe what happens in the criminal justice system. But I want people to make sure that they're grounded in kind of like what is the reality. And so the first thing I wanted to show you is just basically, the prosecutor is not an investigative agency. We don't respond to complaints like if somebody says, somebody robbed my store or robbed me.

We're not the ones that go out there. That's the the function of typically the police. And we have a complaint based system. Typically, people will call 911, Police will respond. And if they believe some sort of crime has been committed, they have the authority to arrest somebody.

They can issue them a citation, you know, all of those things. Then if they believe that something should be presented to the prosecutor, right, that they wanna solve a crime or do something in response, they will send it to the city or the county prosecutor. And so the difference between the two is that in Minnesota, we have a system by which the city attorney in the metropolitan area and certain parts of the state have jurisdiction over those misdemeanor and gross misdemeanor crimes. And those are the crimes that are can be punishable up to less than a year. So gross misdemeanor is up to a year and then a misdemeanor can be up to ninety days.

Typically how we separate out that jurisdiction. So a lot of the livability issues, right, oftentimes are gonna be at the city level. I used to be the Saint Paul city attorney back in 2006 to 2010. So that was a big part of our focus to try to respond in a way that would be most effective. And sometimes we have to acknowledge that processing somebody through the system is not actually the most effective.

In fact, there's many studies that show that the most important thing is that actually doing the intervention not necessarily exacting the punishment or getting the conviction. In fact, in many instances, that will lead to further challenges for that individual to get back on their feet and do the things that we would want them to do because of the lingering impacts of convictions. So alternatives are a really important part of this. And so as a part of the charging function that the prosecutor has, whether you're at the city or at the county, we will divert a number of cases. So away from that traditional process because in many instances, that will actually deliver the better results.

So the city attorney has their program, the Ethos program. They also divert to Justice Point, and we do as well. And so at any one time, there are about 400 people in Ramsey County who are on that caseload. And they could be from city cases in Saint Paul, or Roseville, Maplewood, or it could be a felony case in which I have jurisdiction. And a felony case would be described as one that can be punishable.

And the legislature, you know, mandates all of this, but it's a year or more. Right? And so, when somebody then So if we believe that there are sufficient facts to proceed, right? That there's all the elements of the law have been met, there's sufficient facts, then we will proceed with a charging decision or a diversion type of decision. And then, in many instances, and this is where I think the public doesn't fully understand, the police will not necessarily arrest somebody in every instance.

In fact, sometimes they're gonna give them a citation. Sometimes they may present to us a case where they're out of custody. Right? But in certain instances, they will also utilize the resource at the jail and take them there, and then they will present their case to the prosecutor. And we have to make a decision within thirty six or forty eight hours about whether or not that person's gonna be charged.

A lot of people are gonna be not charged because there just simply isn't enough evidence. And I know that the public wouldn't want us to charge people with crime just we're angry with them. We have to have the right reasons. Right? So And then at the first appearance, when we When the person who's accused of that crime is When they find out whether or not they're gonna be charged, That's where the judge will inquire about the What do we do about the pretrial custody status?

Right? In this country, we have the presumption of innocence. So people have a right to have bail amount set so that they can post something for and be released. We also use the concept of conditional release in Minnesota. But oftentimes, what you're going to find, and this is where maybe some of the frustration is, is that for many of the offenses that aren't going to be like a presumptive prison sentence.

And I'm going to go back to this document here. They're probably not going to remain in custody just because of the fact that, like if you're at the misdemeanor level, at the gross misdemeanor level, at the felony level, it's a low level type of offense. And you're not And if you're convicted, you're not going to go to prison. Oftentimes, that that population is gonna be put on some sort of a conditional release. This is the sentencing guidelines, by the way.

And when we think about what happens in our community and what the appropriate response or sanction is, This is something that the state of Minnesota utilizes, and every prosecutor in the state will utilize this approach in terms of understanding, like, what is the appropriate sentence. So typically, what will matter, the two things are gonna be the criminal history of the individual and the severity of the charge. And as you can see in the gray boxes, you know, everything that's eight and above is presumptively prison. But under the seven, seven or under, the gray boxes represent what's recommended as a probation outcome. And to deviate from that, you have to find specific facts to do that.

And we're we're not going to do that unless there are sufficient facts to do that. So we could go downward or upward from the presumed sentence. So we all of we get about five thousand cases a year. And I'd say that we would charge anywhere between 55 to 65%. A lot of these cases are gonna take a long time to resolve in the criminal legal system.

Sometimes it'll take more than a year. So oftentimes, like for these cases that involve, and many of our cases involve mental health and addiction, sometimes the criminal legal system can be a place where you could do that proper intervention. And so this is where, council member Willie, you had asked about treatment courts. Court. And for the most part, they're pretty much at capacity.

And there's going to be some struggle in the future about how to best manage just like some of the tight budgets that we have about how much probation services can be involved in that work. But the treatment courts, they do an incredible job. It's so uplifting to be at a graduation where we have people graduating from that program. And even if you got referred to the court and you participated and you didn't graduate, and there might have been a negative outcome that happened, that population will still do better than the population that didn't have that. So drug addiction, mental health, those are tough things to recover from and oftentimes there's failure.

And our courts have done a good job of trying to make sure that we have the right population. And another thing too is that we don't it's not just a simple drug case nowadays that gets into treatment court. In fact, what we're trying to do is focus on the population that is high risk and high need. Those are the best practices that we would take chances on the most the tougher cases, not so much the easier ones. And so the the lower level cases, what we're trying to do is divert them. Sometimes we have no choice but to seek a conviction. But I've always have said that the criminal legal system is not the place to try to solve a mental health issue. But at the same time, we have

to

have responses. And so I'm just going to just quickly just go through some things that I think are important too. So I talked a little bit about this charging rate. So historically, going back, even back to when I started in 2011, where we've been somewhere between 5565% of charges. This is on the adult cases. You'll see that not every case gets charged. The blue line is what's charged and the orange red line is what gets referred to our office. We can't do anything about anything unless the police send us a case. And that's why it's really important for you to understand this particular thing. This is just an example of of data in 2023.

Our law enforcement clearance rate for robberies and the clearance rate is like whether we solve that crime. Right? And our clearance rate in in Ramsey County is 28%. But the national average is like 24%. So we're doing better. And then we've And that's our charge rate. But we're looking at these two things together, one of the things that I think just can be really important is that more of the things that really matter around violent crime, assaults, things like that. We want to have a higher law enforcement clearance rate and there should be a higher charging rate. And then as you can see among the and these are the youth cases. You also notice a big dip that happened during the pandemic.

Right? That's a national thing as well. We just have received less cases from law enforcement as a result of what happened during the pandemic. And I think that's a good thing. Think it's you know, we've had somewhat of a little bit of a bump here and there. But for the most part, it's been sustained. And then, as you can see, the cases that we prioritize, like filing cases, the things that really matter to the public, like motor vehicle theft, carjacking, you can see that the line between charge and referral, shrinks, right? And that's what it should be. So this is the type of data that I look at just every day. Aggravated robbery, another one you see there.

And then simple robbery cases, same type of trend where the referral and the charge is going to be closer together. Possession of weapon ineligible possession of weapons. And then of course, there's a lot to talk about the fifth degree drug cases. And this is where I think this conversation, you wanted to have that. So we, as you can see during the pandemic, we had kind of a drop in those cases.

We did have a pandemic policy that said that you know just given the limited scarce resources that we have and the fact that cases were not moving because we're not having jury trials during that time period, we enacted a policy that said that we would not prioritize the fifth degree drug cases as we had in the past and instead focus on the more violent cases. So therefore you see kind of that drop. But as you can see over the course of the pandemic, we've been working with police to charge some of these cases. And what we require is that they make the case that this is a really important case that we need to do something about. And again, sometimes when we bring people into the legal system, it is an opportunity to try to leverage that opportunity to have the individual uptake on the services that would be available.

So I think I'll stop there because there's a whole bunch of stuff about recent initiatives I want to talk a little bit about.

County Attorney Choi,

just a

quick question and there's also want to open it up to my colleagues who have any questions before you go forward. I just out of curiosity with the gap between how many cases been referred and how many cases been actually charged. Can you give us like scenarios and what case would you not decide to charge?

The biggest category is just gonna be it's not like a policy so to speak. It's just that we can't charge somebody with a crime if we don't have sufficient evidence and we don't believe that we could get a conviction. That's how we maintain the integrity of the justice system. Just because I feel like it or just because everybody wants this person convicted and punished. Despite all of that, we can't proceed unless there is a crime that occurred and that there's sufficient evidence to proceed.

So that gap that you see all these gaps that you see, right? That's those cases are they probably did not have the sufficient evidence. Now, you're talking about the fifth degree drug cases, there was a time during the pandemic where some of those were part of a policy. But now, for the most part, the exception has kinda overtaken the rule and we are past the pandemic period. So as you can see historically, I mean, our charging rate really overall hasn't really changed. And this doesn't go back to 2011, but you'll see it's a straight line. You. Does that answer your question?

Oh, yeah. Yeah.

I think sometimes people think that we can just because someone got arrested that we could just prosecute them. And the truth is that we can't. We need to actually have the evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt. And it would be unethical for a prosecutor to proceed in a case where they know that there's evidence that would exonerate the individual or there's other factors. And then there's a whole bunch of other things that come into play like mental health and whether or not the person is in whether that they're competent to understand the legal proceedings that are happening. And oftentimes, we've those cases sometimes those cases are going to have to be dismissed because we can't proceed because the person at this time right now doesn't understand the proceedings.

Councilmember Choks.

Thank you. Thank you, Chair Buoy. County Attorney Choi, I have a question about it's like you're talking about like making the decision whether you have the evidence to charge someone. Like is there an amount of time that you have to do that? And then is it challenging sometimes to I mean, you're having to figure out if you have evidence pretty quickly and with maybe if you have limitations on even the information you can gather. Could you talk about that?

Yeah. Sometimes it can be very challenging, especially on a Monday or after a three day weekend because there's a lot of people that are in custody. Until if you're in custody, what the Minnesota rules require are that you have to make a decision within forty eight hours. So they're arrested on a Friday, you've got to get to work right away at Monday morning to receive the information from the police and then put it into a charging docket. Otherwise, if we can't meet that deadline, the person gets released.

And sometimes from time to time that will happen. But obviously, we're gonna prioritize the most critical cases. Also a lot of cases come to us out of custody. So a lot of the cases that we're talking about, if it's a livability type of crime that it's a felony, like fifth degree drug possession. Sometimes that's going to come in with a person who's just maybe given a citation and they weren't taken to the to the jail. And so then there we're going to have a little bit more time. But oftentimes, if I look at so we have we have a way of, I guess, processing these cases and we have a group of attorneys. All they do is just charge cases or decline them. They make the appropriate call, right? And then it gets transferred to another division that does the trial work, right?

But if I were to look at a pile of cases on a prosecutor's desk, and the pile would represent the cases that the prosecutor has not gotten to yet, they would probably be the ones that are the lowest priority in our office, like drug possession, the property damage, things like that. Our priority and our focus will always be to take our scarce and limited resources and work on the homicide cases, assaults, the things that really matter to our community.

So

I wanted to just pause. Oh, no, actually we did pause. So I want to talk a little bit about the University Avenue Corridor cases that we started back in August 2024. As you know, we've had a lot of challenges with what's been happening along the corridor as well as along the in in in along the green line. And the Saint Paul Police Department and Metro Transit Police, city attorney, county attorney, and our safety and justice team at the county, as well as public health have been working on trying to find solutions.

And of course, the solution isn't just solely arresting people, but we need to do some sort of intervention, have community be a part of that, and use navigation services, credible messengers, and that type of approach. And so, we've also prioritized of you know, making sure that we're holding people accountable who are doing bad behavior on the light rail. And so, we created a case designation where police would flag a case that would be coming specifically from the university corridor. So on the light rail train or on a bus or at one of those stops, so that the prosecutor would know to maybe get a stay away order to, you know, have special care about this particular case. And so these are the cases that have come into my office.

So I don't have jurisdiction over the misdemeanor or the gross misdemeanor cases, but clearly our number one thing that came in under the university court order cases are fifth degree drug possession, some felony assaults, firearms possessions, maybe higher level drug possession and sale. And then we've got just the whole list, but it's just from like the number of the highest to the lowest. And then as you can see, there clearly an uptick this spring, this past spring. And we've had some uptick. So, this is kind of how the they'll deploy the police will deploy certain resources over a period of time and then it'll just be for a week or two.

And then we get those cases. And so those spikes are probably in relation to some details that Metro Transit or St. Paul Police have done. We did not get any cases it looks like in June, but suspect there'll be another spike that will go up once there's more activity that police will be doing and also working with public health, etcetera. And then these are just some of the outcomes.

I mean, we we started this in August 2024, but we've charged seventy five percent of those cases. And that means that the investigations are good or better than normal. And so far, we've been able to twenty nine percent of them have been resolved with a guilty plea, And it looks like we even had a jury trial. And it looks like maybe one or two might have been acquitted. So that's the university quarter. I know that's relevant to St. Paul and certainly a council member from the 4th Ward. That's an important issue.

Any questions at all? Yep. Mr. Murry Jones or Kobotsky.

Thanks, everybody. I yeah, County Attorney Choi, I just really appreciate you bringing this context to us. I think we at the city level frequently feel like we're downstream in terms of other government functions where things come to us and you're sort of the endpoint at which the issue comes. And it's clear there are some instances where that's the position you're into, but you also have to live in this space where you're sandwiched between, you know, state level guidelines, local law enforcement bringing things to you, and you sit in a really uniquely challenging spot. So I just appreciate fact that you've done such a good job navigating that challenging role for so long for us.

In particular, even when you talk about the cases, a certain number of incidents occur, a certain number are investigated, a certain number are closed, a certain number are charged. Just the nature of the flow of that work is helpful to put in context. And in particular in University Avenue, you know, it's not shocking to me to see such a strong percentage of those being drug related. As someone who rides a train and spends time along university, Councilman Bui and I both having huge tracks of that corridor. And I know our ONS team and our partners have said, you know, the fentanyl crisis compared to previous iterations of drug use and drug challenges is so intense that it really challenges the sort of model of care, the care based work that we're trying to do because it's just frankly might be at a point where it's breaking the opportunity to use those tools.

That's a really tough tension point for all of us to be in, but particularly you as you grapple with how to make those prosecution decisions, how to make those charging decisions. So just want to name that just because it's a tough spot for everyone to be in and you play a unique role in that. And I think it's probably sometimes underappreciated the role your office plays in our community for public safety work and you've been in the role so long. So really appreciate Chair Bui and the Public Safety Committee for giving this space to hear from you just because I do think even myself probably underappreciates at times the big large role that you and your office play. So appreciate being able to hear about.

Well, thank you for that. That's my brain. And also too, I really believe that the key to better public safety outcomes is actually true and deep collaboration between city, county, between elected officials. We were actually at our worst at crime prevention and response to public safety at the start of the pandemic. That's when I think everybody because of the frustrations and the scariness of what was happening of experiencing things that we had never experienced before, we all started blaming each other.

And we took I think an approach around leadership that actually took us backwards. But I feel like the efforts around convening and that's one of the things that I can do is convene people to get and bring them together and start focusing on the solutions instead of thinking about who's to blame for all of the bad things that are happening in our community. And so the violence reduction leadership group has been a great forum and table for our leaders to come together and just start having some conversations. And through that, we've had some really amazing results. One of the things that And I also have regular meetings with our police chiefs on a quarterly basis.

But we're at a place now where there's much more wisdom and maturity in the room. And we're focused more on just kind of doing the public's work of working together and not worrying so much about the credit or the blame, but instead really get to that place where we're acknowledging everybody's importance in the solution and trying to get people to do things that maybe we hadn't done before but do them differently. Know, the definition of insanity is to do the same thing over and over again and expect a different outcome. So I think in order for to us to meet the times that we have, we need to think about innovative solutions. And so, know, one of the great things that came around, you know, we had this huge bad conversation about blaming each other for the spike in youth crime.

And people said, oh, it's because the boys totem town closed. Oh, it's because, you know, the kids are not being held accountable. Right? And so we had a really tough moment. But we came together through this table and we all said that we don't want more jails or prisons for kids.

What we really want is just interventions that work. We want residential therapeutic treatment homes. And so through that, we were able to come together, coalesce, and actually get $10,000,000 from legislature. And hopefully this summer and fall, the county will be launching those homes for youth because one of the things the judge has told us is that we just don't have any options. What do we do with a young person who's committed something a serious crime, not murder but something like less than that.

What do we do? Well, the the options are very limited. It's kinda like send them to either Red Wing or some other secure facility in Greater Minnesota. And often times those places, some Red Wing isn't, but other places are often times full and there aren't any options. And the other option would be to have them on electronic home monitoring or send them out of state which is very very expensive.

And so we have been this is one of those things through tension and recognition that we need to you know, really serve the public and find solutions. This was this was one of them. We also are really proud of the work that especially our sheriff's department and people in my office, well as St. Paul Police Department have done to really reduce the number of motor vehicle thefts. We actually lead the nation in reductions in auto theft, as you can see from this graph.

We are number one in reductions two years in a row in '23. This is '23, but the 24 numbers said the same thing. And then the carjacking numbers too. We've got that number down to about 20 something last year and so I think we made some pretty good progress from where we were. And kudos to the work that's being done right now by the Saint Paul Police Department and Ramsey County around the non fatal shootings.

The clearance rate on that has dramatically improved and we should be relieved. There's a lot of good news. You should all be proud of the work that our law enforcement leaders are doing around you know, doing everything that they can to fight violent crime, to stop shooters from shooting each other, and the office of neighborhood safety and the work that they're doing. I think it's really making a difference and we'll be better if we continue to collaborate and and work on these solutions. And you know like I you know we have I got a picture of both Sheriff Fletcher.

These are really nice pictures that I found on the Internet. But I think the two of them are for me, you know I just value the partnership. Know Sheriff Fletcher and I have had some disagreements over the years but we put them aside. And we just started getting to work and Chief Henry I did not know very well before he came into the role but he's been a clear joy to work with. And we're focused on just trying to find solutions and get to kind of better outcomes.

And if anybody in the public and if you ever want to, you can there's two resources. We have a data dashboard. So if you want to know what kind of cases we're charging, like the number one case that gets charged from our office, what happens, or like who are the people that are being prosecuted. Right? You cut that by race, by gender, whatever you'd like to do.

We're doing a lot and today it's not about some of the work that we're doing around addressing racial disparity in our youth justice system, but there's a lot of good things that will be released later this summer. But there's a county attorney dashboard. There's also a DCA crime data explorer. And I think as city council members, in a very positive way, one of the most important questions that you can be asking your police department and asking in the context of how can we help you is where can we improve our clearance rates. And if you want to know what clearance rates are, you could go to the crime data explorer and you can find out.

But in Saint Paul, we're an outlier. We're actually one of the best when it comes to the violent crime stuff. Our homicide clearance rate has been around 90%, sometimes over, sometimes a little bit less. But when I tell people that around the country, they don't believe me. And so I have to repeat that.

But we have a police department that's really dedicated to solving those crimes and and building trust in our community. It matters if we can solve those crimes. But there's a whole bunch of other areas where just across the board, whether it's in Washington state or here, there are certain crimes that really matter to our public that don't get solved. And so I think as the elected officials, we could be looking at that data and asking our police how can we help you solve those crimes. Because if we can solve more crimes, that will enhance public trust because oftentimes victims, when something happens and we don't solve those crimes or we don't have the right response, that's when people stop reporting or they have faith in our in our justice system.

So it's about trying to find those solutions and again recognizing that we have to be smart and that it's not just a one size fits all that we just arrest and prosecute, but there's other things that we can do together.

Thank you. Well, thank you so much County Attorney John Choi for your presentation. If we have some follow ups, we definitely surely can send that to you. This definitely have been very informational. We see quite a few things that I'm going to keep in mind for future presentations, especially in August.

Going to invite the Ramsey County Sheriff's Office to talk about their Youth Intervention Vitality Fund. Also, thank you for highlighting our statistics particularly with the non fatal shooting unit. I know we're going to have the chief here soon to talk about that as well. But yeah, it's always a pleasure. I always appreciate your eagerness to educate the public and even the counsel about what is the role of a prosecutor and also what is the amazing partnerships that's taking place here.

I know last year we had a chance to hear from the county attorney's office or excuse me, city attorney's office particularly around the neighborhood courts and I know our pathways cross often in many cases. So, if further ado, we're going to just transition to our next agenda item where we have a listening house here, the Executive Director, Jammo. Okay, good. Molly Jammo.

Thank you.

Thank you so much. And Molly Jammo is here to speak about the Work Now program. So, same element particularly around the communities that we're serving, but also going to talk about the people that is served through the Work Now program. And we have just Molly just about like fifteen minutes, but I am very confident that you'll be able to have an exciting presentation within that time.

Thank you very much. I appreciate it and I'm really excited to be here. Yeah, fifteen minutes, I can talk for six hours, I can talk for five minutes. So, we'll do the fifteen. So, yeah, I'm Molly. I'm the executive director of Listening House. Listening House has been around for a long time, about forty one years. And it's essentially triage. We're a drop in center for people who it's no shirt, no shoes. Come in, we'll get your shirt and shoes.

Bathrooms, beds, those sorts of things. There's another step for people that we are seeing and that is that we are seeing a lot of people who don't have IDs, who don't have birth certificates, who they are finally they come up after nine months or something on waiting list for housing, and now they have to go do all those things. It's a system that's very disempowering, and not because it's intentionally so. It's just a large system that loses nuance. We all know that. And it's the best sort of that we have right now. People are bored and they want to do things. They want to work. They want to get going. And they have no opportunity to do so.

So what this program is, essentially we used ARPA dollars, it was one time funding. And we helped people attain that ID, that birth certificate. We ran a background check for them, not to screen out, but to actually give to them, and to go over it with them. Do you have anything open? Do you know what your charges are? When you go to that apartment building to sign that lease, do you know what they're going to say to you? When you go apply for that job, it'd be a lot better if you showed up and said, Hey, you're going to see this on my record. I can explain it. I've got references. We help people show up ready.

We also have learned, especially younger people, I sort of wish the attorney was still here, who don't know what's on their record. They end up fleeing to stay out of jail, and they have no idea what's on there. I had a young man who was 19 with a grand theft auto charge. He had never driven. He stole a boat to sleep in. It drifted. He shouldn't have stolen the boat, right? Things happen. But he had no idea he had that charge and clearly at 19, that's going get in your way. This program helps fill in a lot of those gaps.

In our shelters, in these triage centers, we have people who are in such dire need and desperation of mental health services, chemical addiction issues, and money isn't going to help at this point. I have seen people literally walk away from money. Even scratchers, right, that are winners and they walk away. Money isn't solving an issue for certain people that are experiencing homelessness right now. But for others, they it is.

Money is the issue. And a lot of facilities are designed for people who need both financial assistance, but also those services. We have other people who don't need us as much. They don't really need to tell me how they're doing and have a really good like, let's bond. They don't care. They don't need it. They need help moving forward. And we can help sort of thin out who is utilizing services if we can create a path out. A path to we're talking about $20 an hour, two shifts a week. This isn't going to help anybody get rich, buy a car, but it is enough to get out of homelessness.

It is enough to rent a room. It is enough to produce something for the family that you can then possibly stay in. It changes things. The folks that are doing this work, they don't really hang out at Listening House that much. Right? They're kind of sick of our food. They've got money. They can go get it. Also, if somebody who's on the crew comes to me and says, hey, can I get a bus pass? Say, Well, you got a job now. You got to make that last. Right? So when do you get paid? I know you get paid on Wednesday. Let's stretch it out.

We're saying no, because we have to put some We have to help people who need it so much. These folks are so capable, and they're ready, and they're excited, and they wanna be out there. Can you imagine the first interaction with the homeless or your most common interaction with the homeless is people working and picking up trash? We can make that. That is a thing. The university corridor we were just talking about, are you telling me that trash seems to come from the ground out? There is so much and this is beneficial. We've done it for a year and a half. It's working. We need funding.

Right? And I know this isn't a conversation about funding, but I do it's it's when we talk about investing in the right things, I dare you to say no to it. I haven't met somebody yet who says this doesn't work or it doesn't make sense. It absolutely makes sense, and we know how to do it. We have to figure out the ways to piece this together. I'll hold and answer questions if you have any.

Councilman Jones.

Thank you, Chair Bowie. Thank you, Molly, so much for sharing. I had a question about the like the pay. So $20 an hour, five hour shifts, two shifts per week, so that's $200 a week.

Yes, ma'am.

Is that like, do folks have to pay taxes on that money, and what kind of like I know it would vary per person, but we're talking about less than $200

We are, so we're contracted. We Right now we do contracted. It's not that's a whole other step to become a W2 you know, like an actual employee, which we actually want people to, because then all those things catch up. The child support payment comes up, all those but that takes the next step. So that would be in our next phase of programming. And so what it'll probably be is when you start, it'll probably be a trial, like your first three months or a certain amount of shifts, you'd be on contract and then become the

employee. Okay.

Yeah, absolutely. There's always another step. Yeah, thank you councilmember.

Joe or Joe, Matt Probosky.

People mix us up all the time. Thanks, Jeff.

I totally get it.

I really appreciate I'm well aware of this program, huge support of this program. I see your folks out there doing the work.

Thank you.

I mean, it's I think other than just all of the things you've said about it, the one thing I really want to call out is offering these resources and opportunities where these people already are is the reason things like this succeed. And the reason the design is successful is because you already know who these folks are. You a sense of who needs to be nudged into maybe even out of the program. Who's ready to ramp in? Who needs Like you are with these people every day.

And so I think this program would make sense anywhere. But the fact that it's housed with you is why it can be successful. So I just want to name you having the idea, you opening the program into place, finding that funding, and being here in other places advocating for it is a huge part of how we get people onto that track because those gaps are where we lose people. And so you creating that bridge point is just hugely important.

I appreciate that. Thank you very much. And I can say, I mean, oh, there's colleagues in the room. I don't even have to talk about them like they're not here. But I have spoken to colleagues at both Catholic Charities and Union Gospel Mission and they love this idea. Right? I mean, there we all have trash issues. We all have high volume issues. Man, this makes an impact, and it feels good. I mean, police and the sheriffs roll up on our crews and hand out Gatorade. That's never happened for 12 homeless men walking down the street. Unbelievable. DHS just hired us not hired us, they gave us sandwiches. This is why we need money. We can't do this for sandwiches.

They were trying us out, though. So the DHS building the state doesn't own those. It's a separate owner, right? You guys know this because you're the city council. But all those buildings over there, they had us pick all the weeds. So we had like 50 people out there yesterday in that heat picking weeds and it was kind of amazing. It was this group thing. We had a good time. Dak took a bunch of pictures. But that's starting to get buy in, right, from our neighbors. And then our neighbors are also seeing like people were nervous about this new house showing up, right? I get it, to a degree. But we want to give back. We want to be good neighbors. Let us do it. Right? We will pick up every bit of trash on this street. Just let us do it.

Molly, if there's any other questions I would like to comment to, I really like the approach and the philosophy behind it because there's like many different versions of like picking up trash programs, right? Whether it's like for like punishment or whether restitution, but this is actually investment. You're being paid to do it and also giving that on ramp into like sustainability and also there is that removing that stigma away around people who are wearing the vests and picking up the trash. I know particularly from my neighborhood seeing that we often see people who are doing that as like restitution for a crime. Right.

So, do like the distinguishment that you're offering. I would I do have a question particularly because I know I just want to just state clarity for anyone who's wondering. So, the city has invested $750,000 of ARPA funds. Is that the duration of like one year or when did that investment start?

We are literally in our last month. So that it's been eighteen months we made that last. So we we they gave us a small portion to begin with because who just gives somebody $750,000 but they gave us like 200, right? And they said, can you start? And we got it going and then we said, we have the rest? And they said, yes. So that's how that went. We used every dime and tried to put as much as humanly possible in pockets of the people working. I only have two coordinators that are paid, and we have about 170 participants.

Wow. Any other follow-up questions? If you want to proceed with the testimonies, I see some amazing faces here.

Excellent. Oh, you want me to Are read

you done?

I'm done. Okay. Okay.

Well, do you have a question?

Yeah. Sorry.

Not a question. Thank you, Chair Bowie. But I think just adding on to the compliments of this program, I think there are folks out there when I engage with folks that are out on the corners of streets hoping to have little humanity shut up on them. I asked, you know, where the resources are? Do know where the housing options are? Do you go downtown? Do you have access? And I will say for those conversations, albeit not as numerous that would be necessarily a statistically significant amount. I think meaningful in their humanity, listening house is the number one that I hear about a lot. They said, I love to go to listening house.

They're sort of maxed out right now. So, it's just to emphasize the need that you all and your participants need to be paid in more than just sandwiches. But the visibility of your program is very widespread and known within the community that you're reaching. So to councilmember Parvat seems to be a point, it's like meeting people where they're at. And I think the other element that I hear a lot about is that it's one of the few low barrier places that you can walk in and get services.

So when you say, no shirt, no shoes, you say, no problem. What size? And that is, I think, unfortunately for these times, a very radical notion. But we need to think about the way that we are hosting humanity in our services now more than ever. So just a very deep, deep gratitude to the work that you're doing.

And I would say, just in addition, I think your approach and your demeanor and the energy that you bring to this work is very infectious. I can see the way that this program has flourished under your leadership. And just based on our time together today, I have no doubt that you being at the helm of this organization is part of the reason why it's having So, such great please continue and let us know how we can support. I think this is as we think about, you know, the county presentation but you guys are up this is all upstream. You're trying to catch people before they're getting ticketed or getting charged for things just because we are entering very desperate times.

I just really appreciate this and I'm interested in continuing the conversation with Chair Louie around. We are entering the budget session and season for us. So thinking about how we start building a community for this public CDS through the Public Safety Committee. So thank you so much for being here

and sharing

everything that you're doing at Listinghouse.

Appreciate it. Thank you.

And also thank you so much. I just want to say when we first approached Molly to do a presentation, we were on the phone I think scheduled for maybe fifteen or thirty minutes and we were just bubbling with just so much positivity and up being

like

I'll take

as long as you give it.

And we were just very excited about this program. It's no secret that definitely I'm invested and I'm seeing this program continue. I think it has a great staple in our community bringing humanity, bringing opportunities and bringing dignity as Vice President Kim had eloquently mentioned. So, you again. We definitely will continue having our conversations. And if we don't have any other questions or comments, I think our business here today is done.