Human Relations Committee - Regular Meeting

All right, at 6.34, I'm calling to order this meeting of the Human Relations Committee on May 7, 2026. Welcome, everybody.

You get two of them, and I don't get any.

We need to start?

I'm ready.

All right. There are, for any attendees, there are copies of the agenda available if needed. And I will now ask the principal management analyst to take a present by roll call.

Thank you, chair. Committee member McDonald. Thank you. Thank you. I said here, but I guess it wasn't. Thank you. Committee member Quickbone.

Here.

Committee member Smith. Here. Committee member Webb.

Here.

Vice chair Lester. Here. And chair. Here.

Okay. Moving on to item three, amendment for roll call. The minutes for the March 5th, 2026 regular meeting have been delivered to committee members and posted on the city hall board. Would any member of the public like to comment on the minutes? Seeing none. If there are no corrections or additions, a motion is in order to approve these minutes.

So moved. Second.

Okay. Although a show of hands or all those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed? We will now move on to item four, oral communications from public. This portion of the meeting was reserved for persons wishing to address the committee on any matter that's not on the agenda. Each speaker has up to three minutes to make their comments. State law prohibits the committee from acting on non-agenda items. For those attending the meeting via Zoom, please use the raise your hand function or star nine on your phone to make a comment. The committee will receive in-person comments first. Seeing none, do we have any comments coming in via Zoom? No? All right. Moving on to item 5, unfinished business. First, we will hear from the Know Your Rights Ad Hoc Committee, who will now present an oral update. I'm non-city sponsored. Know your rights for random residents.

And I have to tell you that it was very exciting to see people of all ages coming for the very first time to any city meeting and coming away with the notion that their voices could be heard.

Thank you, Joan. I think first we want to hear from the

committee members will do a quick update and then if there are any comments yeah yeah i can do that one um so we've met uh i want to say it was last week uh pretty much we're still in communication with the youth advisory committee um and other uh partners with respects to the know your rights training, whether it be senior rights, labor rights. And then as the youth advisory committee had mentioned, probably speech rights or public action. So more news on those initiatives to come in the future.

Are there any committee member questions or comments?

Javier or Commissioner Webb? Are there any plans? So you're going to, you're working with the youth advisory. And so when you guys finish, is there going to be like a potential event?

Right. So the idea, and we're still working it out, is seeing like whether you have workshops or just like these discussions at the Rensselaer area. More news to come on that, like I mentioned. Okay. And

Stapp, As a member of the committee. I would also like to comment that I just saw walking in here a notice for a senior resource fair coming up. And so I'm planning on attending that and seeing if I can get more ideas for the senior know you guys have a timeline. Stapp, Staff member

James, can you refresh my questions on the timeline? Absolutely, Chair. So the timeline is really dependent on the Know Your Rights Ad Hoc Committee identifying partners to provide the training. So they've all reached out to potential partners to help promote and shape the training who are subject matter experts in as individuals who are youth or seniors or workers, and is in the process of identifying potential partners that can provide the legal side of the training. And once they do, then we can start scheduling the trainings themselves.

And are you working on a target audience, like a specific part of the city or members of the community?

I can answer from the senior perspective. Our target audience is going to be seniors and their caregivers as well. I know that we will be definitely relying on promotion from the senior center. So hopefully a lot of the folks that go there have connections to that.

And if I do the chair, I may add that we'll be dependent, of course, each one of these areas are going to be specifically targeting certain communities, right? Depending on who has a vested interest in them, but we're also going to be dependent on the fellow committee members to help us with the outreach efforts, especially with the respective areas that we mentioned.

Thank you, Chair. Is there any public comments? Seeing none, move on to the... We will now receive an oral update from the Civic Participation Ad Hoc Committee. No action will be taken on this item

So thank you, Chair. I think it's a brief update. You know, we still have to organize a working meeting. We're going to be able to sort through all the data that we've collected in a couple of different forms, including Google Form. We also have verbal notes from a previous committee member that we're going to be referencing as well. And then figuring out how we're going to quantify essentially the data that we collected so that it can be an effective tool for staff and a guiding tool for us in future action that we take as a committee.

Great. Any other questions?

None.

Any public comment? No. We will now move on to item six, new business. Item 6.1, fiscal year 2026 through 2027 work plan development discussion. The committee will now begin developing the fiscal year 2026-2027 work plan. Principal Management Analyst, James, will present on the slide.

Thank you, Chair. And while we're filling up the slides, I do want to remind everybody that we started on presentation. And so annually, the city council policy A23 requires all boards, commissions, committees, as well as council member committees, sometimes to make work plans that are then approved by council, typically in September. And the purpose of that is to help guide the project selection and workflow for those boards, commissions, and committees, and to determine how staff resources should be allocated. It's something that the council would rather take. So with that, I'm going to move on to the next slide and talk about the development process. As we do annually, typically in May, we have a work plan ideation or brainstorming meeting after the committee provides project ideas. staff, staff to get back into an analysis based on criteria that we discussed with the committee ahead of time, and come forth with a recommendation for the next year's work plan, which then leads to the selection of the projects, and then a recommendation to council that will go to the council for approval in September, and then we get started on working on the work plan through June 30th, which is the end of the fiscal year. So having said that, I'm going to circle back to the next. Thank you. Which require so again, the count quality 23 requires everybody to submit a plan and it occurs around this time of the year to align with that adoption in September. All Council advisory body work is all of you know is to be authorized by the City Council. Thank you. Next slide please. So as a reminder, the HRC was established to act as an advisory body to the city council, serve as a liaison or facilitator between city government and the public, and serve as a forum for public discussion on issues related to tolerance, involvement, and inclusivity, which are defined as such in the Resolution 18989, which is the establishing resolution for the HRC. So as we're talking about work plans, we want to make sure that the projects that end up getting recommended in the work plan align with the HRC's purpose and mission as given to them by the city council. And on the next slide, we will talk about some of the criteria that we discuss when we're, again, selecting and analyzing work plan projects is understanding the capacity and time required for project types. And that includes both staff capacity and time. And in that lower category of things that are often easier to execute and to get done, are participating in or supporting relevant city events or projects, informational updates on existing initiatives, or events involving a single professional speaker, facilitator, or organization that regularly handles events like trainings, et cetera. So in that medium capacity category that require more intense support from staff and from the committee, are events with multiple speakers, components, or partners that require a lot of coordination and communication outside follow-up. The storytelling projects that HRC has worked on in the past, which involve interviews, a lot of synthesis and analysis and putting together large final projects for the community. And then smaller research projects like the civic participation project, where we have to take the time to gather data, analyze it and synthesize it before we share it. And then finally, there are, of course, those high-capacity projects, which are the major and multifaceted research projects, like the history of housing project that the HRC completed a few years back, which was quite an effort. Studies like the LGBTQ plus needs and assets study and the immigrant communities needs and assets studies that HRC in years past did. And large-scale or multi-day events or series of events, again, because of the level of coordination, the level of communication. It just takes a lot of time on staff's end and on the committee's end. So as we're selecting a balanced workload for the next year, that will factor into the staff recommendation. On the next slide, I have some updates about the current work plan project status, which is also an attachment to the agenda item for today. The Multicultural Festival obviously is complete, as you all enjoyed this past weekend. Thank you to committee member Webb for serving on the planning committee and organizing everybody. The CDBG and home funding recommendations were made in April. Pardon me, in March. One of the ongoing work plan items, which again, this is the blue section at the top, includes responding to referrals from council or from other council advisory bodies. And that was completed this year with committee member and committee member or vice chair Lester attending the youth advisory committee's meeting on their invitation. The MEP informational update was swapped this year with the community for all update, which was completed. And then the council neighborhood committee meetings, the September 11th meeting in the work plan period has passed. And then of course there are the two upcoming meetings, one next week and one at the end of June. So that is ongoing. And then of the one-time projects, The civic participation project is in progress, and I would say looking at the committee members, probably at about 75% complete. The Know Your Rights workshops are also in progress, probably in the 30% complete arena. LGBTQ plus outreach is just getting started, working on scheduling the first ad hoc committee meeting. And the human library project was removed, and the climate change outreach project was removed. And that is a more recent update. based on very recent council direction to staff regarding the resilience projects associated with the decarbonization plan, since they are no longer moving forward HRC's role in the outreach for that work, which gives you more room on your work plan for new projects potentially for the next fiscal year. So moving on from those updates to ongoing work item slide. This is a reminder, these are the ongoing work items that carry forward from year to year. We just reviewed the current status. Here's a preview for the Council Neighborhoods Committee meeting that will be showing up in the next work plan year, September 10th at Monteloma in the Farley and Rock Street neighborhood. And then on October 15th, the Mobile Home Parks neighborhood meeting will be held actually at the community center. And then there will also be two May or June meetings that are yet to be determined, which the Neighborhoods Committee will adopt in early 2020. Additionally, I've pre-scheduled this year your MEP update for October 2026. The Mountain Pew Police Department annual update happens in June and hasn't happened yet for this year, but the next meeting we'll be doing the first year of the biannual CDBG and home funding recommendations in spring. The Multicultural Festival, now an annual event, will also take place in the spring. And then, as always, respond to the study council or referrals from the advisory bodies. So with that, I want to review briefly what we've used in the past for our analytical approach, which is when I bring, staff brings the projects back to you with a recommended work plan, we do a brief high-level analysis of what the estimated level of staff or agency capacity will be like. Do an analysis of the project's alignment with the HRC's purpose in that council resolution that we looked at. And then also as a bonus alignment with council strategic priorities. And that's been at the direction of the committee in the past and is subject to the committee. So moving on. We do have those short-term work items, the carry-forward projects we just discussed. And for new fiscal year 25 through 26 projects, or 26 through 27 projects, excuse me, staff recommends no more than two new projects. and recommends considering one to launch upon the work plan approval in the fall, and the second to launch upon completion of another project so you're not carrying too heavy of a project workload throughout the year, and considering balancing a mix of project types and intensity in the final. So moving on to our questions and recommended process slide, the questions that staff have for the committee today Are there any changes the committee would like to make to the work plan projects? Does the committee have feedback on staff's analytical approach for developing the new work plan? And then we can also brainstorm the committee's new work plan projects. So with that, my recommendation is that each committee member share up to two project ideas. Staff will record those ideas in a document that we'll put together. and then the staff ask the committee members to discuss, to ask clarifying questions, to identify commonalities or buckets of projects that could be combined into one, and then to scope ideas. For example, we should do something around teapots into defined projects, so much more specific than we should do, and then just to celebrate national team.

So with that,

to hand it back to the chair for discussion.

Thank you. Thank you very much, staff member James. Before we move into discussion of specific project ideas, does any committee member have any clarifying questions about the presentation or the process itself?

I have a question or... It occurred to me that I don't know whether there's a policy or procedure to be sure that there's somebody who can translate probably into Spanish and into Mandarin or Cantonese, either way, when we have open meetings for the public.

Okay, thank you. Just to clarify, are you concerned about the public's ability to engage in our process right now, or is that more an item that you're thinking could be a potential work plan item?

Definitely, you know, have on the work plan so that we know that we're reaching people who aren't necessarily fluent in English.

So briefly, Chair, if I may, committee member McDonald, at the top of all of our council advisory body agendas is information in English, Spanish, and Chinese about requesting interpretation or translation services. And it's also at the top.

I think you have to give them 24 hours. If you give them 24 hours, in most cases, they're able to get a translator to any event.

Our team does ask for two business days. Oh, okay. Sorry. But we have and you can make a shorter term. I put it on occasion. It depends on you.

48 hours seems reasonable. I'm wondering whether in the event of people coming to part of the public coming to our meetings that we have somebody to translate for them too.

Yeah, we do upon request, yes, with a little advance notice because our interpreters aren't available to attend every public meeting without advance notice. OK. Thank you, Chair. Thank you, committee member.

OK. So I believe, staff member James, you suggested that each committee member share one to two potential project ideas. Hi, Chair. Absolutely. I would recommend opening for a public comment vote. Thank you. Are there... Would any member of the public like to comment on this item? Yeah. This is the year 2026. Consider work plan development discussion. Anyone online? Okay. Seeing none, we will now move into committee discussion. And Dr. Regime, may I, should I still call on people or is committee discussion more of a free flowing? Thank you for that. Does anybody have any project ideas that they're really want to get out right off the bat?

I think I raised it last year and it may have not fallen exactly within the scope defined by our staff liaison of tolerance and inclusion. But I really am interested in exploring community stability as it relates to affordability and a lot of the strains that our community is facing, especially in this time. And I'm not entirely sure what that looks like. And I'm definitely open to you know folks have any specific ideas that fall within the scope in which the committee is chartered on that issue but I do think it is tied to a sense of belonging when residents feel like they are not stable in their home and they are you know worried about the essentials in terms of survival on an everyday basis it does impact their ability to engage with the community and I think you know, as we're seeing with the Civic Participation Committee, a big theme of that was how do we reach the folks that we don't already hear from on a regular basis? And, you know, usually it's the folks that are already connected to resources, already connected to the neighborhood associations that are able to, that get access to these surveys or share in these surveys. And so I would love to, explore something on that route of, you know, how do we hear from our low-income community members that are especially under strain this year?

How do you care about your neighborhood when you're hungry? Yes, exactly. Focus on other pressures. Exactly. Thank you guys for your question. Staff Member James, can I request we go back to the slide that has all the the project summarized or the chart that it has. The current status of the project? Yeah, the one that had, the ones that are going to be carried over and the one, yeah, the current status one. It's like six.

It wasn't letting me move it for a second.

There's kind of something to keep me grounded here. Yes, Commissioner Will.

So I have a quick question. As far as the work plan is concerned, and I know I've done this for several years now, but I always seem to forget the process. This is just where we're coming up with ideas. Next week or next month, are you taking this to the city council now or are you taking it after we've gone through another iteration of this?

Thank you, committee member Webb. Next month at the June 4th HRC meeting, staff will return with a brief analysis of the project ideas and a recommendation for the work plan for the committee to consider. And the committee will vote on the work plan that's recommended to council, essentially. And then all of the advisory body work plans, except for the youth advisory committee, will be sent to the council for approval in September.

Yeah, I'm asking this because there's some ideas that I wanted to do some research on work. Throw them in. Yeah. The one thing I want to throw out is just a whole health-like survey, something that we can build together, that we can get out into the community to get feedback over like a long-term period and either using staff resources or us ourselves through various activities, getting out and filling out these surveys. And then we take that information. Maybe it's a five question survey about, like you said, how you're doing in the city, how's the city doing, or how we're doing as a human relations community. Finding out what they want from the city, from our committee going forward. A lot of times it's just stuff that we've decided as a committee and not the citizens of the community helping us shape what they want to see. But we can't do that unless we actually make an effort as a committee and staff to get out into the community basically and put boots on the ground. We find out what's going on, what we should focus on instead of just the people here in this basically in the ivory tower making this decision. And this is something I've seen every year. And we haven't gone out and put boots on the ground and find out and come back with some kind of information. So I think that's something that's important going forward. And I think we can figure out some kind of way to work this into our workforce. I don't know how to form it right now. So if anyone was to help out, that would be great.

Yeah, I think what I've seen other HRCs do in other cities, I know the Palo Alto HRC did a NHPI lived experience survey, and obviously that is specific to a specific group of people, but maybe just in a larger form, a lived experience survey.

Exactly, a bigger one.

Yeah. Thank you. I'd like to add to that. if we have the easy way to find out what percentage or numbers of families are here for the first year, for five years, for more than five years or 10 years, whatever it is, we'd have a better way to get feedback that's meaningful to the people who are here. Because what's meaningful for, you know, people who are here for the first year may be totally unreasonable or unimportant to people who've been here 10 years ago. And to you know, have feedback that's so broad, it really doesn't reach the needs of people whose longevity here varies.

Can I add to that? So part of what I was thinking was in this survey, That could be a question in the survey or a part of like your, like the demographics. So we want to be able to parse out the data. Right. So it could be how long have you lived here? Right. And then you can drill down deeper into that.

Exactly.

So that could be a part of the survey.

Yeah.

And then once we gather all that information, we can say, okay, you have people that lived here a year or less, they care about the parks or they care about traffic, whatever the case may be, whatever we as a subcommittee or HRC decides.

A few years ago, HRC had a display that showed But if people could come in where the display was and check in the box or the whatever it was that was on the wall that represented their longevity, the Mountain View. And my guess is that that's probably changed a good deal since then. And maybe we need to pass up.

Thank you. I would say I'm hearing some themes of community stability, of kind of wanting to understand more about folks who are here, how long people have been here, how they feel about their ability to stay secure in our community, hearing themes of wanting to just get more information, more connection to the individuals that make up our community. Staff member James, I'm wondering for projects, can you give us some information on projects in the past that have been more about listening sessions or surveys or that seems like it would be kind of at the medium to high effort level.

Yes, thank you, Chair. In general, yes, this would be medium to high. And if we're talking about surveys, definitely on the high end of the effort. In the past, the HRC has combined the two to do needs and asset studies with specific segments of the community. Those often took five years to complete. And that was with a member of the HRC who had specific expertise in developing that type of document as part of their professional background. I have recorded projects related to community stability some kind of large survey in the display where community members can indicate how long they've lived and not view as potential projects. But yes, I would say that the survey direction tends to be a high-intensity project. Okay.

I think for me, something that I'm kind of turning over in my mind is not so much a project idea, but Also relating to getting more in touch with the community is just attending more events on behalf of the HRC. And I don't want to say, oh, we're just going to attend more events, because that's not very helpful. But I do see that as an opportunity where if we attend events, I hesitate to say in an official capacity, because I think that has I don't know, that has certain things around it. Like, for example, going to the neighborhood committee meetings and basically working things that we, I'm trying to think of things that we could do to get people more aware of the HRC as just an entity that exists and also to make it easier for folks to make connections with us in the community so that we can have those conversations that Or that before we're doing it here. So, like, I'll go. I'm going to go to the senior resource fair. That's something that I just happen to see I don't know if I remember James, maybe you can help me summarize this as Something that we could actually put on a work plan.

I mean, we could establish like I don't know if it would be an ad hoc committee that meets, but just like a group of us that's in charge of almost creating like an events calendar, I guess, that informs maybe on a monthly basis or every other month, the entire committee on things that are happening in the city that the committee may want to attend representing the HRC.

We could get the best, like the forest service. With like information on the back. We'll all have like some handbook.

I've already come up with t-shirts a long time ago.

T-shirts are like making me change my clothes.

Whatever the case may be, it's probably going to be a mess.

Let's bring it back to the...

But the thing I wanted to add to that was instead of just going to the events, think tabling at events is important. Because that visibility, and again, bringing the survey, that's all we bring is we're at this table. When we want to have a survey with a QR code or a physical survey that they can fill out, that presence and having them see us with that tablecloth is important. This is one of the things that we failed at as a multicultural festival. We had a table. We didn't have a tablecloth that identified who we were. So people were walking by and they were like, who are you? So if we want to be out in the public, we want the city to know that we exist. We need to be taming whatever they are. And like you said, if you want to come up with a Subcommittee that figures out a calendar. It's that these are the ones that we want to go to. And then we sign up as volunteers to attend them. Fine. We also have to work on our elevator pitch, who we are, what we're trying to do.

Tables are hard to travel with, but vests are really... Thank you.

Tablecloth for travel. No, no.

that most people bring.

Bringing it back to the agenda item, I like that idea. My thought is maybe we could propose a work plan item about us developing, like basically developing an outreach toolkit, you know, a standard, here's the box of items that if somebody volunteers to table at an event, they can pick up from this office. It has a tablecloth, this information, and maybe as part of that, we can, amongst ourselves, or maybe, you know, have somebody who's, somebody who is good at that sort of thing, help us with the elevator pitch concept, because I think you're very right on that one, is that I have to, when somebody asks me, what is the HRC? I find myself kind of fumbling for a concise and helpful response. So I don't know if that, would that be an appropriate work plan project, staff member James? Because it kind of feels like it's sort of something that's maybe for our internal work or something.

Thank you, Chair. I think there's an opportunity to discuss some combination of the different items that were just proposed. And I can share with you what I captured, which was to create an outreach toolkit that potentially includes a tablecloth. Invest. I got him on my side. I got him on my side. That potentially includes a tablecloth and other identifying items, alongside potentially developing some kind of ongoing full survey, possibly, and an elevator pitch, potentially also And this is my addition with outreach materials related to HRC. Along with the team working on that identifying community events at which this outreach kit could be. So that members. So some combination of those elements certainly could be. Great.

Do you have anything else? Do you have anything else? Women. Do you want to start that? Let's do something to celebrate with.

Okay, smart. I have metal next to me.

Yeah, it's been a while. Just the acknowledgement either of get a subcommittee to work on something that is acknowledging the assets that women have been in the city of Mountain View and potentially having something of an event where we celebrate or acknowledge Whatever the case may be, but the core of it is to highlight women in Mountain View. Civic-engaged volunteers in the city, historically and currently.

Do you think that we might engage the schools to...

But when you want to be on a super meeting, I think you'd be good on a super meeting.

Well, I'd be happy to.

I've been waiting for you.

I have some engagement by HRC with schools.

So you want that as a work plan?

I don't know whether just inviting them to come to our meetings or inviting ourselves to come to theirs.

Mm-hmm.

Thank you. To clarify, Committee Member McDonald, are you proposing that we engage more with the schools as a separate work plan item, or is that an add-on to the idea of an event celebrating women?

I knew that there was a question that would come up after I finished, and I would like to do this in a way that is the least labor intensive way to do it for staff and for us so that maybe we can find out when the schools are having an event for the public to come like us, an ice cream social or something of that sort. And we could have a table. and talk with people as they came. There might be other ways that are as little labor intensive as that. Thank you.

I have a project idea.

Oh, and I think

if we can invite ourselves to gatherings of new parents in Mountain View, I think that would be a gift to the new parents and to us. Thank you.

I'd like to comment quickly. Actually, I have a separate item. So, yeah. Please go ahead.

There were, I'm thinking about this as even if we think about what we're talking about. I know some countries where they provide like a gift baskets to newborns in the city, in that country. maybe we can work with doing something like that with... Sure, go ahead. Just take it over.

No, I brought this to her last month? No, two months ago. So Sunnyvale does that. They have a new parents to the area baby shower, basically. And so that was one of the things I was thinking, like, if we just kind of did like a welcome new parents kind of thing and saw who... different aspects of the community. Theirs, I believe got like maybe old or not, not exactly old, but maybe like spare extra library books, I believe. And then there was like a raffle and then kind of like a, a resource collection for them to access. And so that was one of my things was something along those lines, kind of, kind of a, yeah, a welcoming of a new parents, but also like a resource informational thing. Um, they go around and meet new moms all the time. And I'm always telling them about like the shuttle and like, oh, well, and they're like, oh, I just can't, I can't do that with the kid. And all of a sudden I'm like, oh, I just take them on the shuttle. And they're like, I'm sorry, you take them on the shuttle. You don't need a car seat. You just pop your kid on the shuttle. What kid doesn't like the shuttle? Like it's a bus. And then, you know, you get to go around town and, you know, give those resources to people that forget what, you know, how to function properly.

So maybe we can have the city look into that as far as, like, a resource basket of some sort. So it gives them, you know, bottles, you know, whatever is maybe in all the, like, resource bags. And that is curated by parents. Mm-hmm. Something like that just that that general idea, but something that helped him feel the part welcome in their child some rest.

Expanding on that. Related to it. I would like to propose a project idea that has to do with understanding access to childcare in the city, especially with a specific lens of how that impacts those families' ability to engage in civic life. So for example, you know, folks that might want to go attend a meeting like ours, but they can't because they don't have childcare or and basically just understanding the resources that are already out there. I know that for a lot of big city meetings where they expect folks to need childcare, they will provide childcare. I know the city sometimes organizes that, but it's unclear to me what triggers that being added to a city event, how that information can get out. So I'm interested in understanding accessibility of childcare, as it specifically relates to engaging with city events and just engaging with our local government. And as a potential expansion of that, understanding we're kind of just taking the temperature of what childcare options are available for specifically low-income families in our area, because I know it's hard out there, And I have a feeling that I don't even have half an idea how hard it truly is. So that is something that I am particularly interested in. At this point, staff member James, would you recommend we kind of do a review of what we have so far? Or how would you recommend we structure the rest of our discussion? Assuming nobody else has another burning idea they want to also.

I have a question. Is the City of Mountain Cave going to be doing a pride event again this year? My understanding is yes, but I don't know. Okay, because that might be something that we think about engaging with in a similar way we do the multicultural festival.

If I may, I believe that the event, and I will double check by the end of the meeting, but my recollection is that it's on June 20th this year.

Okay.

And my understanding was that the LGBTQ community was planning on potentially could coordinate additional events from the HRC.

Not maybe, 18.

I think that our presence at this Council neighborhood meetings would be a good place to at least start or continue gathering data.

Is that, yeah, and I, yeah, that is, but we have to get we have to get the data that we want to look for.

Exactly. Yeah.

You can't put the cart before the horse.

Right.

But again, so I know.

But the reason I asked the question is that that would give us a start date that we have to have the data.

Right.

You know, we, I mean, we have to have. That's fast. I doubt about.

Whether McDonnell, I think, would you give us.

Yeah, just really quickly to the chair. Um, So the purpose of this right now is to make propositions to potential work plans. And so later on, depending on the June meeting, which work plans we would like to implement, right, and work on, we can start doing the ad hoc committees to specifically know where those ad hoc committees want to target.

Well, we don't want to let these kinds of dates go by and be ready.

this is going forward. So the ones that are already there, can we make it?

Committee members, I'd like to hear from Staff Member James. Thank you, Chair Chappell. At the Council Neighborhood Committee meetings, there's certainly an opportunity for if the HRC has a QR code or a paper survey to provide that. The format of the meetings is very structured and specific, and it's not necessarily an opportunity, except for before or after the meetings, for committee members to ask questions of attendees or have those conversations. It's definitely a Q&A with the city staff primarily. So it is a great outreach opportunity to get materials out there. And it's not necessarily a delay that you have to hurry towards because it may not be the best option for getting that information for those projects. Thank you, Chair.

Yeah, as we're wrapping up this discussion, I think I just had one idea based off what Vice Chair Lester said. Two, which is possibly having a civil discourse workshop. As you know, it's Pretty divisive times, right? Where we tend to either go to either extremes, depending on the subject matter we are debating and wonder if there's an opportunity, especially when it comes as the HRC platform is to engage on these matters. See if we can create pathways for folks who have better conversations with one another. not lead to conversation enders but understand how we can have a fruitful conversation despite uh disagreements that may exist i'm sure there's partners uh along the way that we can find should this get approved but yeah that's roughly the idea thank you um stuff number james do you think you could

help us with a kind of summary of where we're at so far, and maybe we can start to identify.

Absolutely. I would be happy to share my screen to show you.

If you could please remind us quickly of what are we trying to end this meeting having accomplished in terms of them?

Of course, Chair. Thank you. So the goal here is to provide specifically this, a brainstorm of potential projects that could be formulated into recommendations and evaluated for the work planning. So to recap what I have heard from you this evening and recorded, and this is also your opportunity to correct me if I mischaracterize something that you said or proposed, is that there's interest in potentially exploring a topic or event or work for something related to community stability, related to affordability and how that might impact folks' sense of belonging. There's an idea around creating a display where community members can indicate how long they've lived here based on a previous HRC project. some idea of a whole health survey to get feedback over a long-term period. How are you doing in the city? How's the city doing? How's the HRC doing? And I think that also ties back to this idea that's in a separate section about the whole point survey, just like in a moment in time, taking the temperature of how people in the city are feeling. And that it may be useful to get information on people's length of residence in the city or being a member of the community to help give a sense if there's differences based on that information and to explore something akin to the lived experience survey that was administered in Palo Alto. There's an idea for an event to celebrate women's contributions in Mountain View, historic and current, or display some kind of memorialization and celebration of that. explore partnerships with schools in the least labor-intensive way, which would fold into some of these other projects. Interest in creating an outreach toolkit for the HRC and or attending more events on behalf of the HRC. I won't delve into that because I feel we've covered it pretty well. An idea for a civil discourse workshop that creates an opportunity for community members to learn how to have connecting conversations with each other even when they disagree. And then Finally, interest in reaching out to new parents in different ways to provide resources and be they items or information. and to take a look at how childcare access, especially for low-income families, can impact civic participation, thinking about access to childcare generally, and also the ability to participate in things like evening meetings, other parts of civic life in the city. Thank you. Thank you. So in terms of next steps for this, staff will take this, use the criteria that we've used in the past unless the committee gives different direction to do a high-level analysis of which of these projects might be the most intensive, which align with HRC's purpose best, to come up with some recommendations because we are looking at staff recommendation will include one project to begin at the beginning of the work plan and a second project to be started once one of the current projects is complete so that will the number of projects in the recommendation

yeah just a question i guess in terms of staff analysis of the feasibility of these ideas is there a way to measure and kind of balance uh impact with capacity uh i know for you know other projects that are you know transportation related right they'll For grant applications, they'll look at number of people served and other criteria to measure impact and then balance that against capacity, you know, because we may not want to do a project that's high capacity, low impact for a project that's medium impact, low capacity, if that makes sense.

Thank you, Committee Member Lester. That's a great question. My response to that is twofold. I think we've substituted alignment with the HRC's mission for that type of analysis simply because it's more feasible to do that analysis and also because in the analysis we're looking at it from the lens of like is this what council has tasked the HRC to do and what they consider to be in doing so. I think that it would be difficult to, ahead of having a more specific scope and execution on the project, identify the impact, especially since a number of these projects are really focused on understanding. And with that understanding, it's a little easier to identify where there might be impact.

So that we can thank you. Are there any other item or does anybody else have comments or questions for the mini discussion portion of this item? Pretty good ideas.

All right.

Well, seeing none, we can move on to item seven, committee staff comments, questions, and committee reports. No action will be taken on any questions raised by the committee at this time. State law prohibits the committee from discussing or acting on substantive non-agenda items. I will open this up to the committee. Yes.

Thank you, Chair. I just want to give a huge thanks to committee member for a successful. No, thank you for your leadership and always your wonderful energy in those spaces and allowing many of us who participate as emcees. I want to give you a huge thanks and Happy Mother's Day. Soon to be.

I've been doing a more limited walk through my precinct to make sure that people know. In the past, I have rung every single doorbell in the precinct. But this year, I wasn't up to that. So I made sure that everybody got information. And I rang doorbells that I knew somebody was going to be there. And I could talk with them. And it was very interesting. People were more concerned about international, national, state, local than they had been in the past. And I think that it's because, well, I know as a matter of fact, it's because they're so upset with some of our leadership. And I said, you know, it's a good thing because you're engaged now. And without engagement, democracy dies.

Are there any other comments?

Show my picture.

Which picture?

The one with our chair.

The one that is embarrassing?

The one with our chair.

No. So yeah, I wanted to give a big thank you to our chair for leading us at the event and showing up in her multicultural

Yeah, the event was well received. We got our proclamations from the county and from the House of Representatives, which are here for us to take a gander. Uh, yeah, but the, the official that, um, they look forward to the event now every year and they're, they're all excited about participating in it. Um, even if it's, you know, only for the very beginning, they stay, but we want to make sure that we try and get them.

Yeah.

And of course our, our wonderful mayor came out, city council came out, um, to participate as well. The turnout was great. We thought it was going to be better, but I know it's weather driven. If it's cold, people don't want to come. This is one of the things that we continue to push it out every year. It started in March and now we're in May. So we avoid the rain, but we were still, the weather was still there. So we may end up pushing it out a little further. Maybe not. We'll probably end up doing May again this year. We'll see. where we stand. But yeah, it's the city staff. I definitely want to give a shout out to the city staff. They do a great job with putting this all together. You know, families are engaged. People that are just walking down the street, they see what's going on in there. They get excited about what they're seeing. And we've expanded to get groups a little further out into the county. So some came from San Jose. Actually, one of our groups came from Fremont. The participation as far as bringing in items is getting better with the display case. We need to work on it a little more. The bigger thing would be to expand it, maybe get it to do a full day. Because there's a lot of performers that want to come out and participate. We had to narrow it down significantly. I think there were 30 some odd groups that applied to come in to the event. And then, of course, with all the great booths that we had out there, we still have to... It's getting bigger. The park is filling up even more every year. so it'll just get bigger and better every year so yeah thanks for showing up just kidding we have a main stage and a side stage and a kids stage yeah I mean big kids are great big kid groups that may be something we can do like you said the story time was a big hit I'll tell you that everyone had a great time came out participated So I'm looking forward to seeing it grow every year.

Wonderful. I think with that very positive, wonderful update, we can move on to item nine, adjournment. Oh, I apologize. Do you have any comments or questions from staff? That would be changed. All right, with that positive update, we can now move on to item nine, adjournment, where we will adjourn the next regular meeting of the Human Relations Committee scheduled for June 4, 2025, 6.30 p.m. in the Plaza Conference Room at Mountain City Hall. Thank you for attending and adjourn at 7.39 p.m.