City Council - workshop

All right, welcome To the City Council work session meeting we're in City Council chambers 389 Spruce Street second floor Morgantown, West Virginia 26505 this Tuesday July 28th at 7 p.m. This meeting will be broadcast live via YouTube at the City of Morgantown YouTube site. I'm gonna call this meeting to order. First on the agenda is unfinished business. We have a staff summary of public feedback associated with enhanced amenities.

Thank you, Deputy Mayor. So included in your packet was a summary of the items that were covered during Council's initial workshop meeting and then the public workshop really focused on a couple different areas. One topic was focused around arts and culture and really then another section was focused around ballpark and the library system and then just general public amenities, restroom benches, swing, shade, a number of items there. And so gathered feedback and the details of that are included in your packet, but really just wanted to provide this information to council if there was any policy or priorities that you wanted staff to focus on moving forward. Happy to provide more detail, but I figured keep it brief.

Thank you. Council follow-up on discussion prioritization associated with enhanced amenities?

Public restrooms. That's the priority I would like to see staff focusing on. That's something that several of us have been talking about for a number of years, particularly restroom facilities that we already have, such as the amphitheater that is Only open daytime hours, not even evening hours. I'm not saying we necessarily have to keep things open 24 hours a day, though that's not out of the question. But I certainly think extended daytime hours in year-round is important. People are going to use the restroom somewhere, and if we don't give them a facility, then that's when we get complaints about where they are forced.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

I would like to just see more water stations. That's my dream.

Refillable. Water stations.

Yeah. Yeah. More benches. More. Yeah. Yeah. public infrastructure for, I mean, I think that all falls under the same umbrella, right, is we'd like for people to have public infrastructure that they can access in our public spaces that makes them feel welcome in the space. I mean, that's really the overall goal, right?

I will add Bo Park is currently working with some of our work down near Stanley spot dog park. There will be a bench and a water fountain trail side. Not, I mean, there will be things, but in the dog park, but even outside of the fence, now there will be a water station next to a bench. They're kind of in between the dog park and the green pedestrian bridge. So happy that they were able to get that moved and working on it this week.

I think it's also important to mention that those types of amenities drive growth. People spend more time in our public spaces adjacent to our downtown. I don't have access to water. I'm going to have to go home. If I don't have access to a bathroom, I'm going to have to go home. Adds more time to the commute. And well, I didn't have time. So might as well grab lunch at home instead of at the Blue Moose or something. So the more that we encourage people to stay in those places for longer, they'll be using the businesses that are surrounded by it much more often. People feel safer.

I think the reality is right now we're having some of the hottest summers. I don't know how many times I've personally put out water bottles just to keep people from fainting at the park. And we have a water fountain available there. So just being able to have up-to-date water for people, especially in the summertime.

Yeah, they're only going to get hotter too. Yeah.

Hotter with short bursts of water in large quantities.

And public feedback seemed to align with the priorities that we're highlighting here. So I think that's what the people were asking for, too. Is there anything else that stood out to anyone?

I mean, I'm always interested in how we can help to support and expand our library services. Just being realistic, having more publicly available restrooms will help alleviate some of the pressure. I was going to say burden. That wasn't the right word. A lot of the pressure that's experienced by the library and their staff right now. But in addition to that, there's a lot of cool things that a lot of cool libraries are doing. And you know, the current facility doesn't necessarily allow for that. So I know you've mentioned in the past, looking at trying to put together a subcommittee for looking at some fundraising opportunities to explore a new building that would have some additional space for additional amenities. And I'm always interested in supporting the library parks and libraries. That's what makes people want to live where they live.

no doubt that the library was a big, big thing for me as well as culture and arts. And we did take an action to form a subcommittee. If, if we Emily, if we could follow up on that, just, I know, I know it's being worked on, but just to bring that back up to the top of the list of things to do would be appreciated.

Absolutely.

Something that was mentioned in here as the top concept that people liked was playgrounds after dark. I'm not clear on what that is.

This was a concept that was presented in the public portion. So really just spaces that people can gather after dark. And we have our Director of Development Services here who's a little bit more familiar with these in other cities. And if you want to hear a little bit more about the concept and what was presented at the public portion, I'm sure he would be more than happy to speak on this.

CHAIRMAN BRYANT ROWE.

Would you mind, Ricky?

So some of the concepts that were presented are presented by or developed by some private companies and they're usually like some temporary art installations where there are some movable objects associated with the art installation and it's meant to engage families to get people to stay after hours to your point earlier to stay a little bit later than you normally would so they can engage in that type of activity other than leaving you know going home at five or six o'clock so yeah. Okay.

So this isn't really like like Jack Roberts Playground, it would be kind of a standalone installation kind of?

Correct.

It's like an art installation with light, is that?

Yeah. Think of it, the one concept that was presented on the display board was actually small building blocks that children could use and then stack them up around the area that they're located in, but they light up. So they give another reason to utilize that space for families a longer period of time.

So is this like a single event sort of thing, or would it be like, addition to?

I've seen them as permanent installations but usually they're more temporary right because it's almost sometimes a pilot project to see if the space would warrant further investment into that being around full-time.

Like when we did movies in the park sort of thing?

Yeah you could think of it that way. Sometimes you'll see in some parks that do programming, I'm thinking one in particular that was in Cincinnati, Ohio, they have a lot of outdoor play places that require staff to go in and put the materials out for the children to use and then put them away. So that's another staffing component. And this would probably be the same thing too. There'd be a staffing component behind these type of installations.

It'd be cool to see something like that on the trail downtown through Deckers Creek. Because I know it gets dark, very dark, throughout that section. If you had something that was more like an art installation, not just lights here. That'd be neat to see.

Yeah, I've always thought it'd be cool to have sculptures kind of along the creek of, you know, various habitat that's native.

Yeah. And if they had like a lighting component too, like double duty.

For sure. Yeah, I could do double duty, right.

Like a glow run. Thank you, Director.

Thank you. Anything else?

Yeah, I think I might have mentioned it last time, but similar to the arcade space that's in Huntington that I've seen before, I saw there was an interest from community feedback for that. I'd love to, if we could, if the opportunity ever came up for us to help sponsor that, like in a downtown... building where you have just like, you know, because the one in Huntington, it's like tons of small vendors that you kind of walk through in the middle of what used to be an arcade, right? Like the old school sense of arcade, not like a video game arcade, but you know, the 1920s arcades where you walk through and there's shops everywhere on the side. And I think it's like directly across from Pullman and there's like,

A bunch of businesses. You mentioned in our session last time about kind of an indoor market. Yeah.

Because people are, there's tons of vendors like that that exist nowadays that operate out of their home, do all kinds of stuff. I think Christine makes goat's milk. Goat milk lotion, yeah. So she could sell it out there.

That was something that was a big topic of conversation yesterday. I attended the Main Street Morgantown Economic Vitality Committee, and that was one of the things that folks at that meeting kept bringing up was kind of an indoor market type thing. And I had just come from Philadelphia with Reading Terminal, and yeah, super cool. I'm sure that's a much larger scale than we can – stand up here, but something to get us started would be great.

Okay. Thank you. All right. Thank you. All right. Moving on to the public portion which shall be subject to rules established by council and adopted by resolution. Do we have anyone signed up?

You have all staff here. And Laura.

I was going to say, Laura, do you want to say something? All right.

Staff and community partners.

All right. All right. Thank you. I'll open the public session. I'll close the public session. Thank you, Counselor. All right, new business, social services coordination. First up is a council discussion on key topics for, well, actually I want to move things out of order, if that's okay, so that Executive Director Jones can get her presentation out of the way and get back on the road. She's got a long, long commute home. So if it pleases council, I'd like to offer the opportunity to provide the Mile and Push Car Health Right update first.

Sounds great.

Thank you.

I'm smiling at this update. Because we finally have resolution. Ah.

That's some good news to share.

Thank you. We are officially moved. Thank you. The first and second one, they're already collated. Thank you.

So I'll give you a brief update before we talk about the post-move analysis. We moved in April, officially April 13th was day one. There was a day two, a day three, and unbeknownst to us, a day four. Moving a medical clinic is controlled chaos. And I think that we did the best possible job we could do and have everyone back up and running in a two-week span of time. And technically, behavioral health started in a week. medical care was ready the next week. So we're really happy that the move has taken place and we are getting to know our new facility slowly, but so far I think everyone has made a pretty good adjustment. If you look at the post move analysis, we were really concerned that our patient population would decrease And, of course, it did in April. We were closed for two weeks. And prior to that, we were also slowing down our caseload so that we could pack. But as you can see, steadily, both May and June were consistently higher. And we had an unprecedented number of 39 new patients in the month of June. Unprecedented for the summertime. We've had 50 or more new patients, but not recently. So this is really looking good. Our patient volume has increased. Our medication visits increased. Our community engagement actually, our community engagement specialists never stopped working. They packed and continued to work with their individual clients. So their numbers stayed pretty steady. And in April we filled 400 prescriptions.

many of which we had filled in March.

In preparation for the move, we filled them and gave extra weeks so that people would not be out of meds while we were moving. And we're back up to 626 prescriptions in June. Overall, the trend is looking really good. We do have some concerns about people who need bus tickets and we have gotten a small donation to help us purchase bus tickets and I know that Hazel's House has also applied for a grant and received some funding for that as well. There is some confusion about whether people who are no longer allowed to go to Hazel's House for whatever reason whether they can come to Health Right. And absolutely, they can. So if you hear anyone who says something like, well, I'm not allowed up at Hazel, so I can't go to Health Right, that's not true. We continue to provide medical care and mental health care.

I don't think there's a long list of folks who have been .

There aren't. But some of them are the people that need our services the most. And so I'm like, I know of a handful that have had repeated issues, but I didn't think there was, no, I wouldn't say you could probably count on one or two hands, but, um, we don't want people to have that impression that, you know, if they've had trouble up there that they can't come to see us. Um, so. Things are looking good. Since we have been there, we have been able to hire a second nurse practitioner. And we also have a new volunteer physician, which means that we are preparing for the potential in 2027 that West Virginia will see a $4.15 billion Medicaid fund decline based on the big, beautiful bill. All of those things are supposed to take place in 2027. And over that period of time, West Virginia is expected to lose 102,000 people on Medicaid by 2034. So that's a vast number of people that will not have insurance and will need a place to go. So we are gearing up for that. um in preparation and we're already seeing people that are losing medicaid for other reasons so um we're we're keeping an eye on that and we've already had bonnie's bus up to visit us as well as the lucas bus and the lucas bus if you're not familiar uh does screenings for it's very particular you have to be a certain age you have to smoke for a certain period of time And they can detect early, early signs of lung cancer. So that was really a good thing for us. And all of our clients showed up, which is wonderful. We've also provided some outreach hep C screenings. The partnership with Hazel's House and the folks up there is only going to increase over time. stabilizing. I haven't gotten everything out of boxes in my office yet. But I think in six to nine months we'll be doing really well. The only place that we've seen a drop in numbers that's concerning to me is harm reduction. And those numbers have gone down from a high in February of 2025 121 encounters in February of 25 to 66 encounters in June.

How many was that, 66?

66 in June, yeah. We did get seven people into treatment during this past quarter, which is amazing. That is not something we do often, and part of it has to do with our harm reduction guy. He's got lived experience. He has been coming downtown and trying to do outreach. And now we can supply him with bus tickets to come down with as well because that's, I think, a big issue for some of those folks. But we really are concerned that we don't want to see an HIV or Hep C outbreak. We already have Hep C, so we need to make sure The only bad news is that the federal government has decided that they're not willing, most likely, to put a lot of money toward harm reduction in the future. So we have that to be concerned about. They've already stopped allowing us to purchase fentanyl test strips and xylosine test strips, which is really something essential that our folks need. And the fact that the federal government's not happy with harm reduction means that our West Virginia legislature who is always teetering on ending harm reduction may have the fuel they need to make that happen and we will do everything in our power to try to persuade them not to do that, but we've been doing this for 11 years and without any significant problems and I'm worried about the future of that program. Our new licensed behavioral health center is up and running. We got an unexpected visit from OFLAC today, the Office of Health Facilities and Licensure. They are about a month and a half early for our very first evaluation. So it's been a little stressful. They showed up Monday morning at 830. And they will be there until tomorrow afternoon. So we've been pulling documents and jumping and all that to get everything to them. But I think we're going to be OK. And next time they come, we'll be even more prepared.

Do you think they're just so efficient that they're so ahead of schedule? Or do you think that there was a reported incident?

No, they would tell us if there was a reported incident. No, we haven't been a licensed behavioral health center long enough to have a report. But it is required that they come. We have a six-month provisional license. So they have to come within six months. They just happen to be ready at the end of July. They're probably here for another organization's evaluation. And they just piggybacked us onto that because we're fairly small right now compared to some of the bigger behavioral health centers. As I said before, the facility that we're in is functioning well. We're learning about all the little bells and whistles and things that we need to do that no one told us. But the only problem we have is the road directly in front of our building. And I know this is probably the last thing you want to hear about because I know there are a lot of people associated with Hazel's House that would really like to see the city take over that road. Our portion of the road is in horrible shape. The upper portion of the road is really fine. From what I understand, some of the things that were done in the past to kind of correct some of the problems have actually made the problem worse. And our very first estimate is for $17,500 to correct the problem, and that includes completely redoing the drainage. That's the main issue on that end of the road. I was told that the city was not interested in taking in roads that were apparently an orphan road. No one will accept this road. The city wasn't interested in taking in roads that were not in good condition If there was a way that we could fund this to get the road fixed, would that make it more attractive for the city to add this road to their list since we've been annexed in but our orphan road has not?

Yeah, it's a private drive. I've certainly had this conversation because of my position on the board up at H3. it's a private drive that only served those private facilities and the city manager and I have talked about it several times. And we're like, if you bring it up to city standard, if you get the drainage and the paving done, that's a more attractive conversation to have. But with our current paving budget and the, all of the streets that are with, that are terrible condition that are already ours. I think that it's been a tough sell up to this point, but I certainly think that if it were brought up to brought up to city standard, then we can add it into the system and get it in the rotation. Sorry.

Okay. So here's what I would need then. Um, I would need someone from the city to approve the plan in advance. so that we don't do all of this and then it's, oh, it's not up to code. It's not up to the way the city wants it. So if there's a way that can happen.

Emily, do you think that's something you and Jamie could talk about having like Damien or someone take a look at maybe? Yeah.

We've had those set up previously where generally if they meet certain standards and council is willing to take those in, we would just have the agreement where if you meet these standards to bring the road up and council is OK with accepting the road in, then we would take those in.

Okay. Yeah.

But we have those set standards of what that road should be designed.

Okay. That's what we need access to so that I their their estimate says that they are working up to DOH code.

If you have your engineers or whoever's designing this reach out to us, we can give them all the specs they need. Okay. Okay, great.

All right. Well, it's kind of hard to write a grant for a road that you don't own.

Yeah.

That nobody owns. So we're going to do the best we can to try to get something done. But I will be in touch with you, Emily. We're waiting on a second estimate.

Yeah, it's harder to write a grant if you don't know what the target is.

Yeah. Otherwise, are there any questions about what's going on, how we're doing?

When you were going over your like total patient numbers for April, May, June, um, how you kind of give us the harm reduction numbers for last spring versus this spring. How do the total patient numbers from like this June compared to last June? Are you about the same?

So about the same total open cases, but fewer people actually coming in.

Okay.

Yeah, I think we're at 503.

Is that by an order of magnitude less or like how much less?

It's not a whole lot. I think it was 560 last year. All right. So it's not a huge drop, but it's like 10%. Those are open cases that people, you know, could come in, but may or may not be.

Does that include your harm reduction visits or those are separate from your harm reduction visits?

That includes our harm reduction business, yeah. I just gave you unduplicated patients, or harm reduction patients.

Total patients.

Yeah, harm reduction patients.

How do you see Medicaid work requirements affecting you?

Maybe I shouldn't have brought it up. I have two opinions. I think it will take a long time for DHHR to be able to handle the massive load of people. We have, what, 397,000 Medicaid patients in the state. And DHHR is understaffed and underpaid. So that's one of my concerns, that people will wait because of the paperwork backup. And they say they're trying to prepare, but they've got a year to come up with this. The other thing is that I know that many of our patients are going to have difficulty finding a job and or finding volunteer hours. There's only so much. the volunteer hours that people can do. And they have to be able to get there, and they have to be able to potentially read and write and do whatever. So I am very worried about that. And I'm worried in general about people just keeping up with the paperwork. Every six months, they have to re-enroll. And so I feel like we're going to need another social worker at some point to help keep our folks just in Medicaid.

Yeah. Do you feel like there's other organizations that can help you with outreach on that? Do you feel like that's going to be a pain point, like people even knowing that they're going to be dropped?

If it does anything like... Non-winding. the time that they automatically enrolled people and nobody understood the paperwork that came. And I have seen people read their Medicaid paperwork that comes in the mail and their interpretation of what it says is that I'm not eligible anymore. And they tear up their card. And then we have to go through the process of re-getting them. It's so confusing how the information comes out. Like they'll send an adult an SSI paperwork that says that you're not eligible for children's SSI. Well, they don't understand why they would apply for children's SSI. So they think I got denied. But they didn't.

It's almost like they purposely make it confusing.

May I ask what's the max hours for volunteering for Medicaid? Is there like you said about?

I think it's 10 hours a week.

OK. Is what they're required to do.

It's a total of 40.

40 hours a month?

40 hours a month, I think. That's what they have to do. Or 80. Well, maybe it's 80. I know you have to work 80 hours a month.

You can't just volunteer, you have to work. You can do both. You can volunteer, yeah. OK, I'm sorry. Just because I'm running through the thought process scenario in my head. So you can either volunteer or work, or you have to work and you can also volunteer.

No, you can do either one. It depends on what you're able to do. Or you could do training. You could go to some kind of training.

So with the volunteer hours, Eventually, that doesn't count? Is that what you had said? Or no matter what, it works, continues to work?

No, volunteer hours will count.

No matter what?

Yes.

Okay.

But, yeah, our community would have to find a huge number of volunteer hours.

Wow.

It's 80 hours a month. For work, for volunteer, whatever you're doing, it has to be 80 hours.

That's a lot.

Yeah.

And you're talking about 100,000 people across the state.

We already have people that have to do this for SNAP that are volunteering at our food pantry so they can get SNAP.

And the other thing is that in smaller communities, where are they going to get that volunteer time?

Well, there's some places they don't have anywhere to volunteer at. I think something the city could do to help is make sure that we're broadcasting volunteer opportunities.

That's why I was asking for clarification, because I feel there's an opportunity.

And maybe do education at that time about here's how many you need to hit.

Yeah, I would say that the...

Ambassador program could be potential volunteers for some people. Cleaning up the streets. Painting rail trail fences. Painting rail trail fences, absolutely.

Sorting books at the library.

Seriously. I mean, any time you can think of something that could be done, that would be great.

Transportation is one of the biggest barriers, I think, in our community for that. So I mean, I think the city allowing that opportunity would be helpful given our locations. But yeah, in terms of the SNAP stuff for the people that we serve at Scott's Run, that's transportation out to a place to volunteer. And a bunch of people I'm talking to, they're reapplying for the month. I'm completely cut off except for my kids, you know.

Yeah.

Because they don't know.

The number of SNAP beneficiaries we're supposed to lose is 137,000. Yeah. In the state of West Virginia.

It's happening, for sure. Yeah.

Which is like a tenth of our population. Yeah, it's a huge number.

Yeah.

Any other questions or concerns?

Anything else for Director Jones?

Most importantly, you are all invited, all city council members, anybody, all of you, to our open house on August 6th. We're having a ribbon cutting. Matt will be there with us, and we're excited.

Do you have a time?

Four to six. Oh, okay. And the ribbon cutting will be at 530, so if you want to be there for that. But any time between 4 and 6 would be great.

My apologies. Several of us will be in Charleston at a conference that week.

Oh.

So we will try to talk amongst ourselves and see if those of us who aren't attending may be able to join you.

Well, you guys don't need a special invitation. If you want to come any time and see the facility and see what we're doing, just give us a call. Let us know. Fantastic.

I guess another question Laura is just in general how's the space working out for you? Is it nice? Is it a good experience?

How's the parking? It is. When you see the clinic you will be really surprised. It is beautiful and we like the way it's laid out. We've only had one complaint from a client who doesn't like the fact that there are no windows in the waiting room. And we've also had someone else who's been really, really upset that they can't walk to our facility anymore, which I totally understand. But, yeah, the behavioral health floor is really nice. Everything seems to have fallen into place. We haven't hung anything on the walls yet except in the clinic area. So, like I said, six to nine months and it will look more like home. But we're very happy with it. That's good to hear.

I certainly appreciated and enjoyed talking to your folks at the H3 open house last week. They were fully engaged with the folks that were coming through. And I actually wanted to mention, like, I was very happy. I know you said that there's a lot of room for increased, um, partnerships, but one day I was up at H3 for other meetings. And, um, some of your folks were in the lobby there meeting with some clients. I don't know if that was the day that was.

That might be the hepatitis.

It could have been, but they were, they were tabling in the lobby there. And we talked as the H3 board about your parking situations and that some of the health rights staff was utilizing H3 parking because there's just not quite enough down there.

There's not enough to also have patient parking and we don't want our patients to walk down the hill.

I just want to, as an H3 board, we were talking about how we could improve access to our parking lot for you all, whether we could put in a trailer stairs or, or something like that to help increase that partnership. So.

Well, I appreciate that. We actually have the possibility of purchase of the half acre of the space down below us where the big storage units are. And we are working on trying to figure out how we could do that. so that we could all park down below and not have to utilize H3 parking lot. But I appreciate that. If that falls through, we would like to work on that with you guys. Let us know. Yeah. All right. Thank you, Laura. Thank you very much.

You too. Safe travels. All right.

With your inspection.

Yeah, no doubt. Yeah. All right. Next on the agenda is council discussion on key topics for exploration related to social services coordination.

Thank you. So again, after hearing from Health Right, we just wanted to have an opportunity for council to discuss how we can continue to strengthen coordination among many of the organizations that provide critical services here in Morgantown. Over the past several years, we've made progress through initiatives such as the Access Program, which provides on average about 2,000 bus passes a month, primarily through the library and the police department. Pathways to Help program which provides residents and businesses with a centralized resource for highlighting those resources. We also have a dedicated social worker who is here with us tonight if you have any questions to kind of help bridge the gap between residents in crisis and first responders and getting them connected to services. You know, as we know, no one organization can handle all the challenges alone, but through coordination and collaboration, we feel that we've made, again, meaningful progress to help those in our community. But wanted to kind of open up the opportunity for Council to see how we can continue to improve that coordination in providing, you know, services working with agencies in the community. With that, I'll turn it over to Council to

First of all, I guess, Kelly, Chief Powell, I give you the opportunity to, you want to, anything you want to share with us? You're the boots on the ground.

So she kind of really explained what I was kind of, it was a little bit vague, what, you all wanted to hear, but it's basically about collaboration with the social services. So what I did is I just kind of from the past six months, just to clarify, I highlighted who I primarily seem to work with the most and kind of give an example exactly of how that was in process. And I kind of subdivided them into categories. First of all, we'll just go with mental health. So I regularly work with Valley Crisis Unit. They have a 24-hour crisis team up at Valley. Typically, it's usually involving calls with someone who might be chronically mentally ill or someone who is in acute crisis. So we usually will discuss whether or not it warrants filing a mental hygiene, which is usually something that is only necessary if you feel the individual is a danger to themselves or others. So since January of 2026, 13 of those have been filed. All of them were granted with the exception of one. And That particular one, I believe after that, after I believe two weeks later, a relative filed it and that person was hospitalized. So sometimes when that occurs, I end up having contact with family members and they kind of, I'll kind of bridge that gap between, oh, they're hospitalized, where are they, what's going on, that kind of thing. That's happened on a few occasions, especially if It's involving a welfare check, somebody's calling from out of state and they have a family member here and they're worried about them. So that's something that recently occurred. We did have a unique scenario of an individual who suffered a pretty serious crisis here and was from another state. We really didn't know anything about this person and I just knew the city from where she was from and ended up contacting their police agency and contacted the relative of the family member and was able to coordinate with them where she was at in the hospital and also tracking down who had her cell phone and her vehicle. It was a very kind of a unique kind of scenario. I also have regular contact with the local ACT program. So if you're not familiar with ACT, it stands for Assertive Community Treatment Program. So Valley has one, Chestnut Ridge has one. In order to get into an ACT program, you have to meet certain criteria. Some of the individuals that I work with, if it's just like a chronic issue, I might end up filing the application. I've done that in the past. That pretty much takes care of the mental health part of it. SUD services. So I think all of you are aware that we have a peer specialist that works with us, Alan Young from West Virginia Sober Living. I can't say enough wonderful things about this person. He's been working with us since I started with the police department. So if we encounter someone who's about to be arrested or for whatever reason the police have contact with that person and they want treatment, Alan generally I mean, it's almost like he's on call. And if he can't be there, he definitely organizes somebody who can. So he provides an intake. He provides transportation options. A lot of times what we'll do is we'll leave and Alan will come. So we're not hovering while he's talking. But he has been... an extremely valuable asset. So just recently I ended up, when it was very hot, up at the Red Door there was an individual who had relapse and I ended up calling EMS and Alan was able to kind of coordinate with the peers. There's peers also at both of the hospitals to kind of get that person into treatment even though they went to the hospital. I've been able to establish relationships with some of the social workers. There's one at Ruby, especially, that I told him. I said, you're going to be sorry. He gave me his number. So he's like the one that I... Because Ruby, it's hard to get a hold of anybody directly. He's been a tremendous help. We did have an instance recently where the fire department had an... had an issue with someone who was in a living condition. It was an elderly person that was pretty deplorable. And they were very concerned she was going to be returning back to the home. And I was able to kind of call the social worker and explain to her how bad the conditions of the house that she was living in were at, she was unaware. She kind of thought it was just a relatively minor thing and it was pretty substantial. So that's something that has worked out. Obviously Hazel's house, I'm regularly in contact with Lauren's Wish. With Grace Shelter, sometimes Grace Shelter will call me to assist with some mental health calls. Yesterday we were able to transfer, I mean it was great, they had a female bed and we were able to transfer somebody up there, one of the officers after I left. I also work with someone from West Virginia Community Action and the VA. He does housing for the VA, so if I ever encounter someone who's without housing and they happen to be a veteran, that's a valuable resource. We also kind of coordinate him and I will coordinate when he wants to meet with a veteran and then I kind of remind the veteran, you have a meeting with this particular individual and we kind of try to tag team and do that. We also, he's provided me, he'll provide me with information if someone perhaps might And this does happen. People get evicted and somebody who might have some mental health issues who's a veteran. And then I can at least pass on that information if somebody comes into contact with them. And that's something that actually just happened recently. I have referred several individuals to a local church here who has provided It's one of their ministries, transportation to quite a few states. I don't know if you want me to mention the church. I don't know. If you know who it is, I just never know whether I should do that or not. But that person has been extremely helpful. I tend to get a lot of calls because my number, the way Google has it, I get all these random phone calls. People that don't necessarily want to talk directly to law enforcement, they don't know whether it's a law enforcement call. Most recently, it was a woman who called about her brother, she was in another state, and she didn't know that she could do a welfare check. A lot of people don't even know that that's a thing. Unfortunately, I mean, he had passed away, but it was just an example how people will call and they just don't know that that's something that you can call 911 for. I do distribute bus passes. I think you all know that. I generally will go up to the Red Door at least once a week. dispatch also distributes them trying to think and then I load a lot of this information into the database the only thing I could basically say is While my position is primarily to connect people with services and resources, sometimes they're not always willing or ready to accept them. That's just the reality of severe mental health, longstanding substance abuse, it's kind of like chipping away kind of thing. What I do do is I, I've established a relationship with a lot of individuals, and I kind of monitor them. You get to know their moods. You get to know whether they're doing poorly. And generally, they will tell me now. They might not have told me before, but it's gotten to the point where they'll be a little bit more open. But the West Virginia peers have been a huge help in that regard in terms of we kind of can tag team a lot of times with that kind of stuff. Any questions?

Questions? Great to hear. Thank you.

How often would you say you see street outreach from other partner agencies around? Like are they here frequently or?

I would say the West Virginia Sober Living is fairly constant. I know Alan and I went out alone. yesterday to someplace outside of West Run but generally I ran into two individuals at the Red Door today and and sometimes they'll tag along with us if we're doing outreach it's not always Alan sometimes it might be another another member but

Do you see anyone from the balance of state, like the coalition and homelessness?

Yeah. Oh yes. Yes. So Ireland, um, there is a new, yes. So she's relatively new and I've been blowing up her, her, her. In fact, um, she referred somebody to me today who she kind of encountered, but that's been a big help now that they finally have an outreach person in Mon County because they kind of, that kind of fell off and that was a big thing, but she's, I will send her, we've had some kind of hard to place people and it helps. I can send her pictures and descriptions, tell her where that person generally frequents and she's been and I've seen her up at the Red Door.

Yeah.

It seems like, to me, it just seems like you've got a huge, huge workload. And I don't know, when I look around, it seems like we need more capacity for outreach. And I'm not saying it has to come from the city, but just generally in the community, like outreach and casework. Right, because I know, I think the coalition's down to two case workers that are working on the housing backlog. And even if we have people that are eligible, willing, and places, I mean, it's hard to get them placed. It's hard to make the connections and keep the connections. It takes a lot of work, to your point, right? Yeah, yeah.

Well, and also I think, The longer I'm in the position, I'm able to look at calls. I can also look at calls like in Westover. So I can kind of trace where people might be. I'm also called from relatives who are looking for people that they know I have contact with. So if they haven't heard from this particular individual, they'll call me because then I can look. What other people can't do, I can look and see if they've had contact with the police. And then I can say, well, so-and-so was out with this particular person. And sometimes that just is enough. But we're just navigating like city court versus magistrate court and that kind of thing. And that is another thing that Alan and I will do. We'll go to city court sometimes. We'll go down to magister court sometimes and sit on. But you have to be in the right place at the right time if you're out here doing something or whatever.

But yeah, there's plenty of work.

And there isn't, unfortunately, the mental health has been the thing that I've really kind of seen an increase in. pretty severe mental health issues. And some of them are very difficult to treat, especially if someone doesn't necessarily recognize what's going on with themselves. So that's been kind of a challenge.

Thanks, and I appreciate what you do.

Oh, no problem. Real quick, I'm sorry. Yeah, it's fine.

Well, you talked about the data, and you talked about the challenges. Do you have any big wins? that you would want to share that maybe don't come up organically?

So sometimes people disappear and you don't know where they went and I will find out later that they've gone into treatment. So we've had a couple people I call like long timers kind of since I've been working here and then they'll just kind of disappear and you don't know where they go and then you find out that they've been in treatment. That's always a really exciting time for me but I think providing when the family members call and they're trying to find them, because it's a very transient community sometimes, and sometimes I might know where they are and then they know that they can call me. There's one person who has my cell phone and she's been blowing it off, and she's very appreciative of that, that I'm the person that can tell her, well, you know, and then If I haven't seen this particular person, I'll let the officers know and they'll send me a picture if they run into him and say, this is where he's at. And then I can tell her and then she feels better. I mean, that's a big thing.

You know, if it's your relative, your, your family member, it's a huge, it's a huge thing is, is, you know, someone who's had a relative in, you know, substance abuse with substance abuse disorder. Um, it's terrifying. Yeah. Well, you don't know where they are, what's going on. They're one bad decision away from being gone forever. And, uh, you know, you never know.

And that is one other thing that you just remind me of that whenever I get, um, like spike alerts, I'll get spike alerts. I'll spread that information around to the community just so they know, so they're a little bit more, because I think you can get maybe complacent and then all of a sudden something hits the streets and, you know, so I will say, hey, this is what's out there, you know, and because those regularly come from like Columbus or Pittsburgh or Baltimore or something like that, so.

Yeah. Well, thanks for what you do and thanks for that question because it's usually meaningful. That aspect of what you do is usually meaningful.

Yeah. It's a tough line of work, right? Yeah, it is. And you get attached to people and it's... Yeah.

I've started that. You do. And you end up knowing people's personalities and little quirks and stuff like that. But it is painful to watch, because some people, it's just, you want to know what the end game is here, and yeah, and it's just kind of slow sometimes. Any other questions? Okay. Thank you. All right, you're welcome.

Thank you.

All right, we had one council-submitted topic on the agenda, permanent full-time shelter. Correct? So just kind of open up the discussion. Yeah. I submitted it. Yeah.

I mean, it's, you know, something that's absolutely necessary. I mean, I think it's, in conjunction with permanent supportive housing. I think one of the toughest things for our shelters and our outreach workers that we were just talking about is meaningful exits for people so that they can be in permanent housing after a shelter. It should never be our goal to make sure that people stay in shelter for In perpetuity, it should be as short-term as possible. Our shelters are more efficient and we need less of them the more we can meaningfully exit people and keep them housed for longer. So it's like part and parcel.

We appreciate some of the statistics Mindy was sharing. Was that last week? I don't know. Whatever it was. And in the newspaper. About the The shortened timeline and the exits from not returning people back to the streets. So that's encouraging. Always need more beds, though.

Yeah. The goal is to make it rare and short-term, right? That's the biggest thing. So I think that's, like, always a piece of the conversation that should be tied into it. Yeah. Yeah.

And I think there was some conversation with the coalition about opening some space out there at West Run for a more permanent year round shelter to help supplement. And then with the status of that facility, clearly that's not going to happen. I know at H3, we're always in talks with Catholic charities about additional space or, you know, transitional housing, tiny homes, taking over that sobering center space permanently for extra bedroom. I think right now that's where we're talking about. The warming shelter, again, possibly, I mean, if it's there, that's where it would be. But maybe seeing how that could factor in long-term would be a good option, but more beds, more money.

Yeah. So I, I guess, you know, for, for me, this was kind of a topic I wanted to talk about because we passed a camping ban and, and, you know, without reopening that, um, and no matter what anybody thinks of it, it tells people where they can't sleep.

Yeah.

It doesn't, it doesn't, uh, it doesn't, you know, make a place that they can. And, um, To your point, we just lost 30 beds on West Run Road. Our warming shelter still has no confirmed site and is facing the prospect of a third less funding. So I wanted to talk through kind of the capacity, the capacity we have, the condition we're in, and what's missing. I think we've got Grace Shelter with 19 beds. I think the Rainbow House is what I've heard is about 24 or 25, something on that order. So we're somewhere around the mid 40s.

for a population of, what, around 200? Yeah, yeah, yeah. But that's depending on counts, which aren't all that accurate.

Right. The latest pick count was 150, but that's in the middle of winter, right? Exactly. And so we could probably safely guess that that's a little undercounted. But let's take it for what it is. It's a third of our point in time count. Danielle, you mentioned Mindy. The bed stays open for four hours.

I was happy to hear that MPD was just able to help someone move in. She said they had a female bed come open, and they were able to help someone get there.

I think it was reported today they've turned around. Ben Conley had an article in the Dominion Post. They're turning away about five a day and ten during the winter.

I don't know if those are like the same five people that show up every day or if they're different. We certainly know there's that many people here. Yeah, I spend a lot of time up at H3 and it's a tough space to be in. People are there for day room and the food program and everything. you know, when dinner's done, where are they supposed to go? So.

I think she also pointed out that of the 19, at least as of July 21st, 11 were employed. More than half were from Montague County, were Montague County residents. And we're seeing referrals mostly coming from the hospitals or jails. So, you know, I think this is a population that we're discharging from, you know, our institutions into this condition. So anyway, I think, you know, with all that, I think we can all agree that our services landscape is lacking.

It's a little crazy to me that our hospital systems can take someone that they know is not from the Morgantown area, but for whatever reason ended up at one of, we have the two major hospital systems and they literally drop them off at the door of our shelter knowing that there's no bed available. That is not responsible care to me. Like, that's crazy.

Yeah. At the same time, what other option do they have?

Maybe they could have put fun to some stuff. Yeah.

Well, speaking of Joe, did you have something?

I would encourage our hospitals to create a no-glide shelter of their own to help address that and save on the workforce they have leaving the hospital itself to drive the residents that are struggling. I thought they took a, what is it, a Socratic oath?

A hospital system recently came to, a hospital system approached H3 about renovating part of our unfinished space because they were interested in a, like, not like assisted, what's the word? It's not like medical hospice, but people who are discharged. Yes. Thank you. Could not think of that word medical respite. And we were like, that sounds great. We have the space. Let's talk about that. And they were like, Like, you have the experience, we have the space. And they're like, oh, we don't want to have to staff it or run it or help with that. We just wanted you to start it so we could drop people off. OK, great.

Everybody has a great idea.

And I think that is needed.

Right. It's been like Becky Rod's biggest bailiwick since I think she moved back here. which was medical respite. I've had conversations with the Director of Behavioral Health at WVU Medicine. But I think it's one of the greatest needs. One of the things Becky tried to point out after she ran that warming shelter was she saw people carrying their chemotherapy in a fanny pack. Wow. A lot of people get discharged. And I think one of the considerations that's not made as much is that folks can coalesce at home perfectly fine, coalesce on the street. And 10 degree weather is quite different, right?

Well, we've certainly seen people with insulin that has to be refrigerated. Yeah. Doesn't have access somewhere.

Well, they usually go to Healthright to destroy their insulin because there's not really great places to do that.

I listened to, so it was shared with the MCR board today, a podcast, I guess, us and them from West Virginia Public Broadcasting. And it was who can call Morgantown home or something. And Laura was interviewed on that podcast and it was probably one of the most depressing things I heard was After the downtown Dollar General closed, people lost access to their medicines because they used to take medications and hide them in Dollar General because that was the safest place for them and they would go there daily and retrieve. And once Dollar General was gone, people were unable to find, because on the street, depending on what kind of medication you have, it's likely to get taken or, you know. It was one of the more depressing things I've heard.

Yeah. I mean, I think medical respite is also in the best interest of insurance providers, the hospital system in general. They have to treat these people when they walk in. making their conditions worse by discharging them to the street.

I certainly understand the position they're in. Both of my parents recently spent a significant amount of time in hospitals with significant medical conditions, and when they both presented at the emergency room, it was like, okay, well, you could be here up to 36 hours while we're waiting on a bed to come open in this giant facility. We can put you on one of four floors, but none of them have a bed open right now. I certainly understand the situation the hospital systems are in, but discharging people to the street is not.

Well, when you're in affordability, preventative care is cheaper. And when people are in there for things that they struggle with control over, it would be more affordable to give them that 24 hours because typically people relapse within the first 24 hours.

Sounds like we want to work on a medical respite.

I mean, well, we wanted to work on that, yeah, for, I mean, six years. And I mean, you know, it seemed like WV Medicine was a natural partner for that. Because again, these hospital systems, it would save them some amount of money. I think you'd be able to rope, like, Aetna and other major insurance providers into that, too. I mean, a lot of times they provide supplements to Medicaid and Medicare. You know, this is, it brings premiums down, too. I mean, there's good financial incentive there.

Well, so funding, funding came up, and I mean, for the, you know, it's worth acknowledging for the last three years that city and county funding have decreased year over year. And so we cut our funding while our resources have diminished. And that instability is a thing that I think has been reactionary to a large degree, right? Like Bartlett House fails, goes, you know, goes, you know, fails. I don't know, for whatever reason. Whatever the situation was, it didn't work out. We just lost West Run. We talked about that. You know, it's Catholic Charity steps in, you know, throw money at it. It's like, you know, it's like we're constantly, it seems like over the past, recent past have been just responding to crisis after crisis after crisis without a you know real systemic plan and um and you know in the in the past in the past and so you know all that said but when i was doing research for this topic i was back in 2010 when the city and the county jointly created a homelessness task force and, um, and that was, uh, hired an executive director, John Sauna day. Um, at that time, based on the research I did, uh, there were about 120 folks that were, that were identified as homeless. Um, when they started that program and by October 2015 that number had been cut in half. So I don't know what that playbook looked like. It seemed like there was a lot of coordination that was going on. I regret that Councilor Selene couldn't be here tonight, and I tried to call her earlier today because I wanted to get her perspective on that as having been around, I don't know if, I don't think Ryan, Emily, I don't think, were either of you around to bear witness to?

I was here for a report or two from Reverend Sonnenday about the work of that group, and I have reviewed their establishing document. I thank you. I mentioned you have it in your research, but I'm not very familiar with it.

Yeah, and neither am I, but HUD funding went up. We were successful at securing HUD funding. There was a lot of good things that were happening. And then in 2017, Reverend Sonaday retired, the program did too. And nothing replaced it.

So I think ‑‑ I would look at the national experience at that time in 2010 in terms of what we had for Congress federally in terms of funding and being able to make stuff like that happen. Because in 2017 we had a change in federal leadership and the funding went away. And tonight we heard about more federal funding going away. So I really think that the obstacles that we're looking at is not on the efforts so much as the consistency we have in places like D.C. for that money is a big one.

Chair Greg Musil. No doubt. No doubt, Joe.

I think ‑‑ Even with funding that is available still, you're jerking back and forth. Like sometimes it's emergency shelters. Sometimes it's permanent supportive housing. Sometimes like when all of these nonprofits or agencies get a plan and get things moving in the right direction, then suddenly, you know, the feds changed their mind on what they want to fund and everyone has to pivot and it takes time to get that built back up. And it's ready to go. We've changed again. So I think that there's a lot of, uh, A lot was what Joe said there, yeah, yeah.

I'm trying to say it as nice as I can.

Right.

The pendulum swings back and forth, right? I mean, that's the nature of our system of government. But I guess my point is that we had a plan that was working in 2013 that we have access to, and I think it's worth our while to dust that thing off and have a look at it. And, you know, The central finding that was reported by the Dominion Post that I was doing a lot of reporting on this was that there were 40 organizations that were serving this population. And we just heard Kelly go through, you know, a long list of organizations. And as she was reeling those names off, I was thinking, you know, okay, this sounds familiar, but we have 40 organizations at the time in the city and the county. And what was missing was the kind of that connective tissue and the plan. for coordination between them. I think we're having a lot of that stuff that's happening very tactically and on the ground and that kind of thing. But, you know, without a system around it, it's just, you know, relying on relationships.

»» Yeah, I believe there's been a couple iterations from there, I think, and maybe it was the transition from John Sonaday. Whenever I started, there was a group that I was meeting with the city and county and the coalition and homelessness was on there. And more recently, that had transitioned. I believe the mayor was on one where we would go and meet various places. a lot of the housing and there was a lot of different organizations in that group as well. I don't remember if that group had a name.

Even before my time on council, just as one of the neighborhood leaders at the time in like 2019 or something maybe, I was part of the Morgantown City Council Special Committee on Addressing Unsheltered Homelessness. And that was something that I think it was then Mayor Delaney's kind of brainchild and he was leading those meetings. And at first it was very invigorated. It was very energetic. And then participation with agencies started tapering off as participation with the public started amping up. And a lot of people like, Especially when COVID hit, um, there was a lot of frustrations from both sides and the meetings just kind of turned into, I'm not going to show up so that someone can yell at me about what they think I should be doing or what I'm not like, there were a lot of tensions during everyone was frustrated during COVID about everything. Right. Um, So I know that even during my first year or two on council, counselor Celine and I were still attending those meetings and then it kind of sunset. It wasn't, we, we weren't doing things. There were seven or eight subcommittees, you know, one was on community outreach and education and one was on like treatment things and one was on housing and it just didn't, didn't seem like it was working at that time in that iteration.

So yeah, yeah. Um, I, I think, uh, in something like I can actually see 2022, I sent an email out that included, um, an attachment of Sunday's plan. I mean, it was developed with a lot of different posts, still available on our website, but if you read it, I mean, what I was told at the time in response was, well, we already did all this and we accomplished all the goals of this. I couldn't agree less with that assessment. If you read the plan, You know, it's create a central organization to coordinate community-wide action to reduce homelessness. Specifically in that part of the plan, and I think this couldn't be more spot on, is that it calls out that coordination takes time and none of the participating organizations have any time to spare. The expectation that collaboration can occur without supporting infrastructure is one of the most frequent reasons why it fails. It's so, like, it gives you chills with how much it makes you think of how much we have failed and how much this plan that was created 16 years ago knew that it would fail. The success of this entire plan rests upon the creation of a central organization. It says 15 years ago we had a Mon Valley homelessness initiative. It was not successful because it relied entirely on volunteer service. There's no staff to develop common goals, coordinate activities, and follow through on unidentified actions. The second point is create a day center. Third is enlist all service providers in using HMIS. I think that happens more now. I know Health Right uses it. I know obviously the coalition uses it. create an affordable housing task force, enhance discharge planning, create an organized program to prevent homelessness, develop a process to address unique needs of rural persons, like this is once we're getting all these other things solved, right? Develop a new task force to address the lack of addiction recovery services and the special needs of the chronically homeless. develop a public relations communication strategy, and then research and seek funding. And then it kind of loops on itself, right? So, I mean, it's like this incredibly well thought out, you know, coordinated effort.

That has results. That had results. Right.

Yep. I mean, it talks about path funding, you know, path workers in here. Things that, like, we have pieces of. things that we did accomplish pieces of.

And some of those, you know, tenants or swim lanes are better today than they were then, you know, in terms of treatment recovery.

Yeah. And some of them are markedly worse, much worse. Like calls out laundry facilities in here, shower facilities, a cold shelter.

Emily's, I'm sitting here, listening to what you're talking about. And Emily was right. There is another iteration of this group that was meeting more recently, not more frequently.

We were meeting at Valley. We started at WVU, and then we moved to Valley.

And that's where that MOU for group case management came from. Are they still doing that?

Case conferencing? I mean, I used to get... uh, invitations that I don't anymore. So I don't know if it's still happening. It was useful. It was very useful.

That was part of something. That was one thing that came out of that group that was useful. I never had a place in those service providers. So I don't know if that's still happening.

I don't know if it's still happening. It was, it was useful. I know that like, I've been to some case conferencing conversations that used to happen between Rainbow House and Grace Shelter when Jessica was still there. Yeah, and that was like effective only because I think one of the frustrations like Kelly's talking about sometimes It's just like, have you seen Greg?

Yeah, kind of like if we can get this guy to show up, it's a more complicated case. Everyone who needs to meet with him should come together and meet with him at once and get his health care and his housing.

I mean, even just at H3 the other day, I remember Danielle Stoneberg saying, can you tell the girl with the red hair to come see me because I've got to. housing litter for you. You know what I mean? So it's like those things are that kind of connective tissue is super important. But like, yeah, I do think like the plan is there. It's like, how do we ensure that the wherewithal in order to execute is there? And I mean, this plan tells us how to do it, right?

Yeah, but we need to own one again. We need to own a plan again.

Yeah, we need to. Our community partners need to, right?

Can you send that back out so it's top of inbox? I tried to do a quick search on my email.

This worked before it can again. We just need... commitment from our partners.

Yeah. And, you know, it's, it calls out in here, United Way, government, city, county, state, representatives, police and sheriff, hospitals, businesses, legal, landlord, school system, faith community, WVU, consumers. Like, it's so comprehensive that it's hard to say like, oh, we need, you know, something, some other guideline to follow because it's just so well, in my mind, so well done. Yeah. And we were lucky to have it at the time, I think.

How much money do we get a year from the federal government for CDBG funding?

I believe it's about $400,000 a year.

The entitlement?

That's still the number? Because that was the number we were getting in 2015.

Yeah. I don't think that number has increased. It may have decreased from where we used to get.

Yeah. Because that was a lot of the money that they had used for the programs you were talking about. But the value of that $400,000 does not have the same impact as it did 11 years ago.

Yeah, 11 years ago. Right.

And we can get you an exact amount.

I just, I just wanted the context for that. Thank you for everything to just understand how we got here.

I feel like there's probably opportunities with ARC too, right? What regional commission for these sorts of things? Um, at least, uh, especially like job development side, another very interesting funding, those sort of initiatives.

If we just, you know, had a good proposal for them, especially with the current Medicaid requirements coming up. I mean, I think that seems like a, yeah, a win-win there.

Yeah, exactly.

Okay. Well, um, I think I said everything I wanted to say, but I, you know, I'd, I'd like to see us, you know, form, form, form, you know, some kind of committee or some kind of, you know, make this a priority. However, we make this a priority, but to get, and we'll get the plan back out and circulate it. But I'd love to see us actually, you know, take this on as a project to, to be worked.

Yeah, 100%. And I think, um, you know, with the goal of, you know.

Having, you know, to me, I haven't watched, I've been through, you know, you know, close to a couple of, warming shelter cycles and you know one on council one not and you know kind of super close to them and and to me it's just tragic to watch people come into come come into shelter and and find you know some monicum of stability and see, first hand, see the positive outcomes that are happening, the relationships that I've formed, the good things, the relationships that are happening, emerging right before your eyes. And then to see that all just go away, because when people have that stability, their orders of magnitude are more likely to end up in better condition. And this isn't about just providing somebody a cot to sleep on. It's about giving them a first hand up to get back on to a path to self-sufficiency.

Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, the primary goal should be to ensure that we understand that there is a desire to have an organization that is staffed to do this, however that forms itself. I mean, you know, just looking at the original members of this task force, it's a county commission member, Carrie Demasi, the ED of Partlett House, executive director of the health department, a credit analyst from Huntington Bank, Laura Jones, director of St. Ursula's Food Pantry, the homelessness facilitator for Mon County Schools, WVU office, the Associate Dean of Students for the WVU Office of Student Life, Assistant Dean at the College of Law, Sanande, of course, Don Spencer from City Council, of course. You know, it's just, Mon County School Board Vice President, Main Street Morgantown Assistant Director. It was just like that level of coordination. That's what's required. I mean, we've, we see that. And so like, um, I would say, Hey guys, we're interested. I would like other people to step up.

A lot of these organizations still exist. It's the same situation that we run into with, a group that you and I both regularly participate on, the Mon County agencies addressing food insecurity. It's a great idea to try to get all of that coordination happening, but unless there's a staff member that's kind of dedicated to actually other, I mean, it's it's still useful we show up and we talk about how we can help different food pantries and programs and what your program needs that maybe someone else can help with but it would it it's always going to be more effective if there's someone who's dedicated to that work yeah 100 percent anything else from anyone on that top

Just as a quick update, our fiscal year 26 CDBG allocation is $460,878. Awesome. Thank you. I believe it was less in 2015.

I believe it was less right on in 2015. Thank you. I appreciate it.

I mean, yeah. Counting for inflation. It is less.

Okay.

Uh, well we have no executive session for this evening. Um, anything else from any count from counselors for the good of council? Yeah.

I mean, entertain me for a moment. Um, I just have an announcement to make. I, as of today, have put in an offer on a new home. It is outside my ward. And so as of the time of me closing, I will be resigning from council. So that'll be a good month, I would say, usually is what that takes. I want to let council know, and obviously people are going to see my house listed.

Your wife already posted it on social media.

So let council know so you guys have time to get interviews. Hopefully get a great candidate like Joe in there. And then, um, you know, uh, a point I would imagine you guys would appoint. I don't think you'd be interested in holding a special election, uh, for a term of like seven months, but when do you move? Probably in about a month.

Yeah. Okay. So it isn't like a month.

Yeah, probably. And then, and then you guys had 30 days to appoint after that.

Yeah.

But if, um, what I, uh, talk to the city manager about is, um, Also, I'm comfortable with you guys holding interviews as soon as you want, taking applications as soon as you want. If you would like me to not be in those interviews, that's fine. If you want me there, that's fine. I would say, I would default to not having me there to influence that. But if you want me there, that's fine too.

Congratulations.

Thanks, John. It is, you know, I won't get too sentimental now. I will later. But it has been the privilege of a lifetime to be able to serve this city. And I love this city. And I am confident that it is in some amazing, capable hands right now. And glad that I could be a part of Jamie's hiring. I think that'll be the best thing we've done for this city. But that'll conclude my remarks.

Certainly have appreciated working. We were elected at the same time, appreciated. We've had a hot and cold relationship over the years, but I think over the last several, we've really started working well together. I'll certainly be sad to see you go. Even when I didn't always agree with you, I always appreciated your approach to the position, so. Yeah, it'll be a loss for the city, but I guess as mayor, I will say we will work with city attorney Simonton and manager Miller, mostly city attorney Simonton to figure out next steps then. And we can discuss at our next meeting when we can put it on an agenda.

All right. You'll be here in the next couple of meetings. Yeah.

Appreciate you. All right. That's the short of it. All right. All right. Move to adjourn.