Community Services and Youth Committee - Regular Meeting

Pursuant to the city council rules of procedure and order of business, the members of all boards and commissions and the public. Oh, please play the recording. Much easier.

Pursuant to the City Council rules of procedure and order of business resolution, the members of all Boards and Commissions and the public are reminded that they must preserve order and decorum throughout the meeting. In that regard, members of the Boards and Commissions and the public are advised that any delay or disruption in the proceedings or a refusal to obey the orders of the Board or Commission or the Presiding Officer constitutes a violation of these rules. The city of Riverside is committed to fostering a workplace that provides dignity, respect and civility to our employees, customers and the public they serve.

I will not call a meeting to order. Can we? If you're able, please stand for Pledge of Allegiance. Can we do roll call, please?

OK, taking roll. Commissioner Trim?

Present.

Commissioner Stewart? Present. Commissioner Dunstan?

Here.

Commissioner Beltran? Commissioner Rand? Present. Commissioner Dryans-Lagala? Present. Chair Tarmo? Commissioner Lee?

Present.

Vice Chair Cleary?

Present.

Commissioner Pellegrino? Present. We have quorum.

Please play the recording. Public comment is now open for this item. Call 951-826-8688 and follow the prompts to access the meeting. To request to speak, press star nine. When called to speak, press star six to unmute. You can also join via Zoom. The meeting ID can be found on the agenda.

Do we have any callers online?

No callers online, no participants in chambers.

We have a presentation. Are you folks ready?

Good evening, Commissioners. My name is Michael Peterson. I'm the Executive Director for Adult Education and Community Initiatives at Riverside Community College District. And I'm here to tell you a little bit about our Promoting Achievable College Transitions program. Next slide, please. Oh, do I hit a button here? Oh, excuse me.

Oh, I think I went back. Okay.

All right, so I'm just going to give a little bit of background on why we developed this program. So currently, 4.5% of eight-year-old children in California are identified with autism spectrum disorder. So we've got nearly that percentage coming into our K through 12s and into college eventually. And 68% of young adults with autism never attempt a post-secondary education, despite the vast majority of them not having any sort of intellectual disability, although I believe we should be working on helping those students as well, of course. Now, when we look at the data for the post-secondary completion rate, you can see that the general population is around 52.4 nationally, while students with autism are at 38.8%. So we hoped that we could improve these numbers. We hoped that we could improve transitions to college. One, have more young people with autism going to college. And two, of course, having them complete college was very important to us. So I'm going to have Christina tell you a little bit more about the process of how we do this. So just to give sort of the elevator pitch on how PACT works, we work with students in our service area K through 12s, students who are high school seniors. And our goal is to help as many of those high school seniors ideate themselves at college. Before they go, we help them work through that process. We do persistence efforts with them over the summer, and then we help them in their first term at college. And I'll tell you a little bit more about the results in a moment, but I'll let Christina tell you about some of the wonderful work that she's doing.

Good evening. My name is Christina Miranda. I'm the Student Success Coordinator for PACT at Riverside City College and Marino Valley College. And my colleague Gina Godoy Zambrano, she serves Riverside City College and Norco College. So pretty much what we do is we go out and visit the high schools with our great partnerships with RUSD Workability Program, where we're able to go into the classroom and talk to our students about career exploration. We give them enrollment support as well. And so in their senior year, we want to prepare them for college, start exploring options. We're open to if a student just wants to take courses for a certificate or a degree, transferring, whatever their goal may be. And we still also like to help our students even if they choose not to go to RCCD. We still like to, the days that we're there, we like to explore their career with them. We also give one-on-one support. We meet with parents to help them out with the process. of transitioning into college. So basically, Gina and I are the extra support that the students need going from, you know, K through 12, where they have a case manager or case carrier to college where they do have support with the Disability Resource Center, but where those additional hands that can be there for them. Okay, so something I really wanna highlight is we have a peer social skills class. This is a UCLA curriculum that Gina and I are certified to facilitate. And what we do is we discuss different topics such as making and keeping friends, communicating in the workplace, how to enter and exit a conversation. We even talk about dating, relationships, boundaries, things that our students need help with. So not only do we help them academically, but also socially, we want to give them a sense of belonging. So as you can see here, This is our spring 2026 cohort from RCC and a lot of them grew that semester and I'm going to be going into specifics soon. I also want to talk about professional preparedness. So we also help our students by offering student employment opportunities on campus. We also partner with Phoenix Gateway And we've offered workshops for professional preparedness as well as I want to highlight that we're going to host a conference October 9th at RCC in partnership with Phoenix Gateways. We're really excited about that. Definitely want to invite you all to attend. So additionally, I would love to highlight some of our students. We do have about 200 in our cohort. However, I just want to highlight a couple of our students. So Grace, she participated in our peer social skills class. She was honestly one of the shyest students that we had in the class. She wasn't really speaking up or talking. talking to other of her classmates but after taking well during the class and after taking the class she was able to open up she on that first picture she started taking her baking class and she baked me a sourdough bread with some jalapenos which was delicious and And she also attended a piano class and she invited me to go watch her play. So as you could see that just in her face, she has grown with this program. And additionally, I want to highlight our student Thomas. So I met Thomas tabling and he got a job with us working with PACT. And through working with our program, he started building a lot of confidence within himself. He signed up for the study abroad program, which he's in Japan right now. which is a great opportunity. He got an internship to be an editor with our literary journal at RCC, which is called Muse. He is planning on going to UCR, by the way, next academic year. And with working with us, he's built a lot of confidence. Like I said, he's been a panelist. He's been doing public speaking. So he presented at the Board of Trustees meeting for Riverside Community College District. He's presented at UCR with the K-12 or K-16 initiative. He's also presented several times representing the Disability Resource Center. So PACT has, as you can see, impacted him very much. I know that he has a personality that he would have been successful either way, but I know that PACT definitely helped propel him into the next level. And so I'm going to hand it back to Michael. I just want to say that we definitely have a heart for these students, passionate about it, and we definitely thank you for your support. We want to keep this going as long as possible.

Thank you, Christina.

OK, let's look at some results here. So we helped 200 students this year in our first cohort transition from high school to college. So how did they do? In their fall semester, they had a course success rate of 81%, which is 9% higher than the general population. And in the spring term, they were at 80%, 8% over the general population. So these students are advancing past the general population peers. I've always been a very, very big believer in case management and that high touch case management model because for a lot of students, sometimes they just need that one person to really show that they care about their success. And then that student invests their time and their hard work, but we make an investment of caring about that student. And I think that's what really makes this work, is that each one of these students have somebody they can talk to, whether it's about, I can't figure out how to enroll in this class, or I'm having difficulty with this professor, I don't think they like me. Whatever it may be, we've got somebody there to empathize with them, to talk with them, and to help them through whatever issue that they are having. So nationally students on the spectrum tend to historically complete college at negative 20% the rate of their peers. So we're really trying to change that. As Christina mentioned, well, I haven't mentioned this yet. This came from a grant funding. We got a million dollars from the Inland Empire Regional K through 16 collaborative. that funding will come to an end in the summer of next year so we've got our second cohort coming up and it's it's going to be bigger than our first we've got 300 students with student IDs ready to go to college in the fall and these wonderful individuals working with them helping them you know achieve the success that we're seeing here we want to see more people We want to roll out the red carpet for people, tell them we have a place for you. We have a place that you can thrive. We have a place where there's somebody who empathizes with you and a place where you can be successful. And ultimately, that's our goal is to help as many students on the spectrum find their place at college, whether or not that is going to UCR and having an advanced degree, or whether that's just exploring, taking some classes, seeing what they like, seeing what makes them feel good, Gives them some confidence or gives them some skills in their life. So we hope to do that as many times as possible endlessly. So thank you so much for your time. And if anybody has any questions, I would be more than happy to answer them.

I do have some questions. Sure. So nice seeing you. I've seen you years ago. Yes.

Nice to see you again.

Okay. So I have some questions. One is, is this strictly for high school students? Is there an age limit?

So the intent is to work with as many high school seniors as possible. And the reason for that is when I started looking at that data point about the number of students just simply not even trying a post-secondary education, I think you really lose an opportunity when students go to high school, and then they take a long break afterward. Now, it doesn't mean we won't help those students. We've got plenty of students on our packed roster who are not high school seniors. We've got plenty of students who just reached out to us and said, I'd like the support too. And how could we say no to something like that? And they've been very, very kind to make sure that they have that capacity. So I've been very pleased with that. So no, it is not limited to high school seniors, but that it is our target audience that we go after every year.

I have more questions, but I'll wait for somebody else. All right, so one of my questions. So you have grant funding. What's going to happen when the grant funding ends?

We are currently working with our leadership to try to institutionalize this piece. We had 200 students this year. We're expecting a much larger group this next year. Like I said, we've already got 300 student IDs. And when it comes down to the final enrollments and everything, we're expecting a pretty good number of students. We feel that the results are speaking for themselves. We feel like this is a large population of our community that can benefit from this. And we luckily are having the kind of outcomes that we'd like to see to continue to make this argument. But we will have to continue working with our leadership to develop a way to institutionalize this.

So other community colleges have something called College to Career. And there's also Taft Community College, which has programs specifically for people with intellectual delays. Any comparison in your program to theirs? Yes.

Taft is something really special. I mean, Taft is, I would dream of something like Taft in the future. Largely, a lot of the impetus behind even developing this program was I really wanted to start seeing more programming at RCCD that had to do with adults with disabilities or serving adults with disabilities. And as far as I can tell, this is the first piece, the first program that does that. My hope is that over time we can have something as nice as North Orange Continuing Education has in Cyprus. I mean, that's a twinkle in my eye, but it remains a twinkle in my eye because I've gone there, I've seen the good work that they do there, working with students at every level of ability, and it's really inspiring. And I hope to aim there, yes.

So what's the hindrance in getting a college to career program in the Inland Empire?

That I don't know. I mean, if you have some additional information to tell me about the college to career, I'll certainly look at it after this meeting. But I'd love to talk more about that, because I guess I'm just less familiar with that particular program.

You are, actually. That's Cyprus, the one you're talking about. Oh, is that Cyprus? Okay, then I do know it. Yeah, okay. In most of the wealthier communities and community colleges, they will have a college to career programs. In the poorer counties, you'll find they're not there, and that bothers me. It bothers me. So I know that approaching an assembly person or a senator to request having that in our community would go a long ways because you have to have somebody who's basically a sponsor of it and says, yeah, I want it here.

Okay. Thank you for that feedback. I may follow up on that.

All right.

No. No, you're not.

Yes. There you go. There you go. Hi. Hi. Hi. So a couple of follow-ups. First and foremost, and I always say this, and I really appreciate that you started off your presentation by talking about this, there's a big difference between cognitive and intellectual. And so we do want to be very careful. Both of my children are autistic and both highly, highly intelligent. More so than most people. We'll just say kind of off the charts intellectually. And so I appreciate you making a very important difference between intellectually delayed and cognitively delayed. And it's very specifically autism is a social disability, right? And so we're not comparing intellect. That being said, tell me how your program supports individuals that are high, high intellect and really struggle socially. So they would struggle with the interview process or they would struggle with, you know, being on a sport team, you know, being on a team in high school or kind of all of those extracurricular or just a lot of different things that you would be looking for within a university system, at least with a four-year college. Like, how are we supporting individuals that are struggling socially? I'd love to kind of hear more about that. Although I know the answer.

I'd love to hear a report out.

Christina, I think this is a very good boots on the ground question for you.

Thank you. Okay, thank you. Yes, so we would be meeting with our students one-on-one, assessing their needs, right? Everybody has a different need. We do have peer mentors, social coaches that we hire every academic year. to help the students. We have the peers class as well. But I have seen that with social coaches and peer mentors, our student workers help our PAC students be able to develop and increase their social skills. So right now, you know, we just finished our first Pierce class. I think as we continue, which we're in the fall, we're going to have two classes going on, one at Moreno Valley College and one at Norco College. And we hope to be back in the spring at RCC. If we can continue and expand, I would love to host the peers class at each college every semester if possible. We do see a high interest there. We just need to have the permanency established. But pretty much we would be, like I said, meeting with them individually and make sure we partner with the right social coach and peer mentor to help them.

And then on top of that, either one of you, whoever's purview this is, tell me about how you train specifically your staff. So I'm big, big on, you know, I think it was Holly Robinson-Pete, she said, I wouldn't change my son for the world, but I would change the world for my son. Sure. And we cannot change someone who has a social disability to just all of a sudden be socially appropriate. And so how are we instead training our staff at RCCD to receive individuals that have autism?

Did you want to talk about your training a little bit?

It's OK if the answer is not yet, because that's the answer out right now in the community. I think we're on the verge of it. So that's OK if that's the answer, too.

Well, we're continuing. We're always, you know, RCCD is big on professional growth. So we did receive that UCLA certification course, Gina and myself. We did take that about a year ago. We've also worked with other, we've gone to conferences like the College Autism Network Conference and as well as we took a different course as well that we were referred to. So this is like a continual process. We have some experience from my work experience as well in my previous work working with OPARC in Montclair. But of course, we're always open to professional development.

Yeah, I'll directly hit on your question. Yeah. Yeah, the question itself...

The question... My microphone is not working. The question is... Tell me the question is...

The question is, how well are we training our staff and faculty about... Your staff in general. Yeah. This is our first cohort year. You know, it's been interesting to hear all the different kinds of feedback you hear in different spaces for it. And what that tells me is that there's a lot of people who do understand it and there's a lot of people who still could use some extra understanding and empathy and all those sorts of things. My hope is to keep this program supporting the students going strong. But beyond that, I do agree with you that we have a responsibility also to continue to train people to spread the news about, not spread the news, but to make people aware and to give them the resources so that they can work with students and be more successful in that. We have some opportunities for professional development. We have these flex presentations that we put on. This year, I'm already doing two flex presentations on different topics, but you've given me a great idea for next year, a really good one.

I think, too, to close it out, you'd mentioned the 4.6% of individuals that have autism that are coming as adults into your world. 25% of our population has some form of neurodivergence. And so what's great about these trainings is that it's not just specific to individuals with autism. It really is a real big catch-all, even if you have a student that comes in that is wildly anxious or overwhelmed because they've never been in a college setting before and they're potentially having some kind of a breakdown. Yeah. which is very, very, very high percentage if we're just talking about the disability of mental health. And so a lot of your students that come in transition, they're not at home anymore. They're out of their element. They're needing to get a job. It's just all of this overwhelm. And then how does an instructor support those individuals? And so happy to hear that that'll be something that's coming up. And then obviously, that would be a collaboration partnership opportunity for funding as well. And I'll connect with you afterwards, but there's lots of opportunities for that, too. Wonderful.

Thank you. I have another question. Sure. I know you're doing the PEERS program, and, yeah, I've been fascinated by that for a few years. It has two components. It's one for training the individual who's on the spectrum, and then the other one is for the caregiver. Do you have both?

Yes, we have both.

This cohort, our first cohort was six individuals. We were only focused on the student, so we are planning on expanding to the caregiver for the next cohort, but We're, you know, as it was our first one, we were working things out. But, you know, I have hopes that the more that we do these classes, the more, you know, we're just gaining the experience. But we are meeting with the caregivers either way, one-on-one, individually, or like with the students individually. but not in the social skills aspect. But thank you for bringing that up. I will definitely be talking with Gina and planning for this next cohort.

And then another question I have about the peers program is, is that strictly for high school students?

That one is the young adults program, and it's for existing college students. So they would have already been, like they have to be 18 and over, 18 to 34, and they should already be enrolled in the college. So we're not working with the high school students for those.

Okay.

I have another question. You have a conference. What's the topic in October?

So it's a professional preparedness. Miss Nicole Rand would have more information on that as well. Yes.

Do we have a topic?

Yeah. So it is professional preparedness. We are looking to target sort of a broader range of individuals because we realize that there are individuals that want to kind of find out maybe what industry they want to go into, maybe dip their toes into the water of understanding, you know, what post-secondary education might look like, give them that opportunity. But we also know that there are individuals that haven't been presented with that opportunity in the past. And so we want to provide that as well. So we're really looking at a fantastic event coming up with many, many vendors. We're having seminars for the individuals and for parents and workshops. So yeah, it's going to be quite an event. October 9th.

It's a Friday.

I got another question. I'm sorry. It's me. Okay, so I know you're talking about, you know, autism, but is this... When they're on campus, are they... And you said you had one-on-one. You have an aide. What's the educational level of the aide? I don't...

Yeah, so the aid would be coming from the student and their parents, whether they work with the Inland Regional Center or are you saying like an instructional aid that is going with them to class? Yes, that's my question. So we don't provide aids, so they would have to be working with the Inland Regional Center or CRSIL, Maxim, you know, the different agencies to get their own.

And is that aid able to go into the classroom with the student? And is the process as cumbersome as it once was?

well they just they do they are able to there is a documentation that and their identification that they need to provide it's a process that I would say I'm not sure how it was in the past but it's definitely doable and I've seen it and when we meet with students and we assess their needs If they don't have an aid and we feel like they would benefit from that, we definitely let the parents know because it does take about six months or more to get approved and processed and everything. So their portion, yes. But for us, once they have it to get them in, it's quick. It's the process to get it that does take a long time.

Okay. Thank you.

Mine isn't really a question as much as just a comment and some gratitude. I watched the program kind of develop and the way we've been able to work with students. So when we have a student that just needs that extra support, being able to match them with you has been a game changer. And so as we look at these incredible numbers of the students that are being successful in the program, I would also like to say there are many more students attempting college in the last couple of years than we might have had in the past, so to me those numbers are even higher than what we're showing there.

Thank you.

Do we have any other questions? Well, thank you very much for this informative time. I, for one, was not aware of everything you were doing and I find it fascinating.

Thank you. It's been a wonderful process of developing this program. I've been very fortunate to work with wonderful people like Christina here and, of course, people like Tedra and everybody at the K-16s. This really was a takes a village thing, and the village showed up, so we really appreciate that.

Please let us know if there's anything this commission could help you with, and if we're able to do it, I think we would.

Thank you. I will definitely keep that in mind. We appreciate it. Thank you.

Thank you. Moving on to consent calendar. Does anyone wish to pull an item from the consent calendar for discussion? If not, could we have a motion to approve the consent calendar? Do we have a second? Please take roll.

OK. Taking a vote on the consent calendar. Commissioner Trim? Yes. Commissioner Stewart? Yes. Commissioner Dunstan?

Yes.

Commissioner Rand? Yes. Commissioner Duran-Sagala? Yes. Commissioner Lee?

Yes.

Vice Chair Cleary?

Yes.

Commissioner Pellegrino? Motion passes.

Thank you. We'll now move on to discussion calendar. Do we have any callers?

No callers and no participants in chambers.

OK, then. The item number six discussed the absence of Commissioner Stewart from the regular meeting on June 18, 2026.

Fred, I saw that on the agenda. I thought I had emailed you. I was actually just looking for that email now. But I was out of town for the June meeting. But you didn't receive an email from me?

I'll give you one moment.

OK.

I thought I had told you about that ahead of time.

Do you have a date by any chance?

I'm sorry?

Do you have a date by any chance for that? I know.

I'm just looking for it right now. Anyways, I thought I had already told you, but I will look and see. I don't know.

There's a lot of emails back and forth between us.

um let me let me track that down and see um but yeah if i didn't send you an email then um we can maybe revisit that next month or whatever you guys want to do on that one but i thought i had emailed you is

Yeah, is there a reason to table it? I mean, if it's one unexcused absence, that's one thing. It isn't the third one, that's for sure. So do we have a discussion on this?

Yeah.

Yeah, we can do that. I'll second.

Okay. Taking a vote on excused absence. Commissioner Trim? Yes. Commissioner Stewart? Yes. Commissioner Dunstan?

Yes. Yes.

Commissioner Rand? Yes. Commissioner Duran-Sagala?

Yes.

Commissioner Lee?

Yes.

Vice Chair Cleary? Yes. Commissioner Pellegrino? Motion passes.

Oh, you're like...

Item number seven, discussion and direction regarding the development of a community survey. Do we have anybody online?

No callers and no one requesting participation.

I know this was talked about briefly.

Right.

I think that was something that I brought up. Okay. I was hoping that there was going to be something out there that says we're finding out more about our community, its constituents, their needs. And so that's where this originated. And I think, I feel like somebody said, yeah, we're already in the process of doing something.

Is that not you? Nope.

I'd be with the resource guide ad hoc committee yeah I just find that we'd love I would love to do this but we need to let people know that we are here that's if they don't know we're here how do we how do we get across to them we want you guys to tell us what you want

I agree. That's why I sent emails, probably, I don't know, 20, 30 emails out to people who I know work somewhere, know something about the disability community. But I think we can all do that. I mean, really make it an effort to say, I'm going to invite people personally to just come. They can say something or not, but they can be here.

My memory of this is that we had just gotten those pamphlets in the home with the Planning Commission for the city, that they were sending out information to the citizens. But one of the discussions that came with this was the fact that we have no funds for the coming year, and so in that case, that committee was able to send something home and get encourage people to do a survey. So my question is, what avenues do we have to send a survey out? I mean, do we have a citywide email system that we can use at no cost, or how would that happen?

Actually, we do have something where the community has the opportunity to participate and put their email on file for every commission, actually, and for the city. So we can use that email distribution list that we have and send it out through there. Or we can also – what I've seen in the past before is they do a QR code, and we provide that to you guys, and then you guys can pass it on to the community, whoever you want to have that –

survey sent to okay so the next step would be since we have already have a resource guide committee and you suggested this that this be part of the resource guide committee is that we come up with a list of questions we would like to ask on that survey bring them back to you at the next meeting and then get those i know a lot of us have been gone the last month so yes i apologize for that that's probably what happened yeah but if we get those together and bring them in we can then as a group kind of decide what we think is appropriate or not like give them to ahead of time and

Actually, if you guys have questions already in mind, you guys can send that to me and Fred. We can compile it together and send it back to you guys so that you guys can have it ahead of time. And then when we come back to the next meeting, you guys already have those questions in hand and you guys just can approve them. I love that idea. Okay, perfect.

I have another question. I have a lot, don't I? I know I'm a big talker. I know last week I got a text from the city of Riverside that was a survey. And it was about trees and the environment. And it was easy to do. Because here it is, a text on my phone. That seems like so much an easier way than putting something in paper and mail and

on that if you get a response. So I will say Chamber of Commerce does a 60-second survey like once a month, right, which you would think that is the least bothersome thing you could possibly do. And me personally and lots of us, because I know the analytics behind those surveys that go out, are not responding to that. So, I mean, we can try it for sure, but I think we'd probably – want to look at the analytics that the city already has around what is the response rate from the community around offerings like that and i i think i already know the answer but yeah just thought of experience from the other sorry from the other commissions that i've had um we do send out surveys and we get no response yeah

So that's why I was saying that we can provide the QR code to you guys and then you can send it out yourselves to the community you think will respond to maybe hopefully. And maybe hopefully that will come back with results. Yeah. We can do it in every single way.

It's very clear when it is cut. Like I said, like my chamber wine comes from the chamber that I am one of the board members of.

And, you know, we just don't risk the same.

Same with our USD. Our USD sends me these lovely surveys, too. And I'm like. So, it gets lost, unfortunately. I do see a dual purpose with it, though.

Even if nobody responds, it gives us a reason to be approaching people and telling them about the commission. So, we do have the resources that we have. And as many people have mentioned, a lot of people don't realize that the commission exists. i mean if they i do find that the disability community tends to be very vocal which i think will be on our side um but also if even if they if even if nobody responds the fact that we can give them something saying here's the qr code do this survey and we're doing it as part of the commission here's information on the commission it gives us a really good place to speak like for instance we could go to our our friends at rccd pact

and ask if they could disseminate it through their groups and other groups that we work with and i know a lot of us are very connected so i do see it you know even if it does isn't completed it does have a dual purpose and might be very beneficial i agree with that i think that um oftentimes and this is true with anything this is true when we were not getting our trash cans picked up during covid all of a sudden people that didn't even know where the city hall was at came out of the woodwork and were like my trash can's been sitting out there my day is friday it's wednesday where is the city and so i think unfortunately we do show up when we're frustrated about something um and so i think it is nice to have a door or an avenue that when you talk to somebody in the community and they are frustrated that it's something that they can voice at least start with that and then maybe eventually get to the place where we have just resources for people that you know are looking for community they're not necessarily just you know upset about something but yeah i i agree with you guys i just don't know that an on-demand survey is going to get the response we want it just doesn't we just know it doesn't but at least have something i can't work a microphone

If there's no cost to it, if we've already got the avenues to disseminate it and we can give a QR code to those that we work with and there's really very little cost to it, there's not a lot of harm done if it is not responded to and maybe even good that they do have that opportunity.

There is a cost to it, but it's not that... It's not significant.

I'd love to see, since RCCD is in the room, and RUSD sort of is in the room, and Phoenix is in the room, and I'll be chamber for these... For this discussion i'd love to see some type of a collaboration and I know like libraries would be up for this to city of riverside library. To have a monthly gathering for individuals with disabilities just a. I would love to see a monthly opportunity for families of individuals with disabilities to be able to come together on some topic, any topic. And what's most important about that is it doesn't even matter if we talk about popcorn and our favorite flavor of popcorn, but it just gives an opportunity for people to network where we could have you guys come and speak about your programming and you never know who's in the room. And who's there to fund or who's there to support or who has a child that has autism and they're like, you know what, I also have a revenue source for you or whatever. Or, you know, someone that's, you know, maybe has mobility challenges and they want to be able to get together and talk about what are some exercise programs that we can do or whatever it is. So I'd like to see something like that. I don't know if our commission can spearhead that, but I'd love to see a collaboration or just a sit down at a table together and talk about what can we do that's just a monthly opportunity to gather together. It just feels good to have a platform. Mm-hmm.

Well, and that's something I will just say briefly. It's already been discussed amongst Phoenix and RUSD and is kind of in the works. So it's top of mind.

Good, and I think, too, if that's already in discussion and in the works, then definitely invite RCCD in, invite Chamber in, invite Disability Commission into that conversation. Always, always, always inviting Disability Commission into that conversation, for sure.

Just a quick reminder, I know you guys want to do those meetings, and I think that's wonderful. I just want to remind you that if you guys do participate in those meetings, just to make sure that you guys don't create quorum. That we don't what? Create quorum.

Oh, yes. That we do not create quorum. Okay. Yes. And so, but that's a wonderful idea. Yes. So to elaborate on that, what is our quorum? What is our current quorum right now? Six is our current quorum. Understood. Okay. So there is never to be six of us in the same room or seven of us in the same room. There's never to be six of us in the same room. Okay.

May I clarify on that? That is if we're representing the commission. And if we're talking about commission matters, some of us are there representing other entities, and it would not be commissioned.

Actually, yeah, yeah, yeah. Actually, let me clarify on that. Again, those are Robert's rules. This commission does not have a, what is it called? We do not currently have a set of rules that govern this commission, and Roberts is not one. We don't currently have a… Parliamentarian officers.

What's it called? Parliamentarian officers.

We do not currently have a parliamentarian. I don't know what you call it. Officer. Yeah. Not officer, no. We don't currently have a set of rules that is governing the way in which we operate. And so we actually don't. But we need to put that in place. And remember, I discussed that not last month, but the month before. Yeah.

Because Denise, Denise?

donisha donisha the clerk the city clerk was very clear that these commissions do not or boards do not currently have one parliamentarian parliamentarian guidelines they're officers those are the ones that kind of set the rules for the so no no no that's not the word i'm not using the word parliamentarian officer okay We do not currently have a parliamentarian set of rules that we're following right now. So when you guys are saying we can't have quorum or we can't have this or that, we don't currently have any guidelines that we have agreed to around any of that.

It's part of the Brown Act. So it still falls under the Brown Act. So you still have to follow the rules on the quorum.

OK. Don't we follow the rules of the city council? Yeah, which they don't have a they don't follow like Roberts rules either, but they do have a set of rules and we have to, and since we don't, since we have not voted to follow Roberts, we have to follow the rules from the council.

It's the Brown Act. So we don't, so again, that is not what she said in this training.

I can't. Can we have, can we please have her come? I can ask her to come.

Yeah, please have her come because it's a little confusing for me. I know Commissioner Trim was there. You were there that night too. So she did not say that we default. She said we need to choose one. So anyway, again, let's just choose one and move along with that because we have also been given directions during our meetings that seem like those were... I don't know what rules someone was choosing to kind of give us, where it was something about not going back and visiting an item once we've already gone past the item, that we weren't allowed to go back and revisit it. So can we choose a set of rules?

The rule that you guys chose for your bylaws was at the beginning of the year, which you guys agreed upon what's on the bylaws. I can provide you guys with a copy of it. We can revisit it if you like, but I'm also going to have the city attorney come over. I want to say maybe next month so she can explain a little bit more.

For Donisha to clarify what she was saying because she listed off four or five of us that were commissions that remember and she said we don't have these commissions or boards do not currently have parliamentary rules that they've landed on and she said and that we need to she said go back to your commission and let them know that we need to put that into place. When you're

brought that up i talked to the city attorney because the city attorney has more knowledge on that so i wanted her to come over to talk to you guys but she's on vacation this month oh okay so she's gonna what'd she say she said she's gonna come next month to so that she can explain better to you because i'm not professional on that so i want her to come over and explain to you guys and clarify whatever questions you have you have on that was did was donation mistaken i i'm not sure I don't know what Donicia said in her meeting, so I'm not. Oh, right.

Yeah, you were there.

Yeah. So that's why I'm going to have the city attorney come. I want to say maybe next time. Clarify for us? Okay, good.

Yeah, because I know because we're trained on Brown. We've all been trained on Brown, so. Okay.

So going back on the item number seven, do you guys just want to revisit that and bring it back next month with questions that you guys already have?

In the meantime, we can send you kind of some of the ideas that we have, and you'll kind of consolidate them? Mm-hmm.

Okay.

Okay, then we'll just bring it back.

And let's move on. Communications, the updates. Do we have anything from the web page, Fred?

We have a list that we put together, and so we're discussing with our marketing team so they can add that onto the webpage, and that way we can kind of show you guys what we have so far.

Super. Thank you.

And then one more update just related to the other ad hocs and everyone else. We do have a budget for this year. Not 100% sure on that, but I can give you an upward later.

and on the event ad hoc committee and speaking with Sandy oh yes the planes and treats she did speak to the lady over at the airport I can't think of her name offhand anyway yeah it's on for the she believes the second week of October as always and so we'll have to be looking into having people to staff that situation it was a lot of fun last year I will tell you that we have to make sure we get enough passes for people this year I can ask for more but their limit was to for everybody Okay.

Without having a pass, it's not, having tried to go last year, if I didn't have a pass, I would not even attempt it again.

Right. Yeah.

Agree with that. It's, that was, it was completely honestly, like, I don't even know if like a safety concern, it felt like, yeah, it felt like,

Yeah, if they limit us to two, I mean, that's completely understandable, but we wouldn't be able to expect anybody else to go. It's not, you can't get in.

But one pass is good for more than one person going in. I can tell you that. Because we brought in four of us on one pass. Yeah, because we carpooled in. Then we would need to organize. To work it out so that, oh, yeah, we got in. OK, we'll run a pass out to you. It can be done. It's just a matter of communications. Anything on the abilities conference at La Sierra University? You were going to check in to see if we could get a table? I had sent that to you previously. I'd have to go through and find it. I don't even know. Okay.

Do you have a date for that event?

It was in there. Thank you. I'm sorry. There you go. Coming up soon.

I know. I went to that conference last year, and... We could really be our help to them if we did have a table and we did sit in and help participate with them. Sort of like, you know, let's reach back and help our partner. They would really appreciate us sitting in there and contributing to them.

Michelle, it's the La Sierra what? What's your disability conference?

Abilities conference.

Abilities conference, because we did CBU.

They have flyers out, and I could get one, but they do have flyers out already on that program.

I went last year, and what I found, I'm from the Commission on Disabilities here in Riverside. We have a commission. Yeah, and we all ran into that there, and so it really speaks out that we need to be there to let people know.

Mm-hmm.

Okay.

Thank you.

Resource guide. Okay. Updates of conferences, seminars, and regional meetings. Anybody? Anybody? I have one Sean mill from Ward five puts on what he calls community connection meetings where he brings in people from various city offices and like public utilities city attorney, so on and so forth, to come in and speak to the community about what's been going on in the community itself. And so he normally does it at various community centers in his ward. And where I live, which is in Riverside Country Club, it's a mobile home park for seniors, he has a very close connection with us. And he suggested doing that at our clubhouse. So we're setting that up. And I asked him, I said, well, you know, Sean, we're trying to get the word out that there are commissions here to help people. And I'd like to have at least three of the commissions have tables at your community connection. He agreed to it. So I was hoping that I could get a couple people from here, get some people from the Commission on the Deaf, and get some people from the Commission on Aging to attend so that we would get people to understand that there are people out there that would love to have that connection helping them. And as you can see on here, if you look at the other side, it's also an ice cream social, so you'll get a bowl of ice cream and, you know, whatever else we can scrounge up. And that is on August 26th. It's just a couple hours in the afternoon from 2 to around 4 o'clock probably. Anybody else? Any other meetings coming up?

So, again, just a... Open invitation for anyone that would like to join. We have our Wellness and Disability Equity Alliance through the county, through RUHS. And that is once a month on the first Friday of the month at, our time changes, but I believe one o'clock. So feel free to connect with me if you'd like to join for that. And then I am also with Inland Empire Community Collaborative, and we have a children's cabinet. And so we have two different children's cabinets. Again, also an open invitation. One is around education. Well, we have four components of our children's cabinet through IECC. The two that would be interesting, I think, to this commission is the health and wellness table, and then there's education table as well. And there's just a basic needs and then there's a like one to do with homelessness. But anyway, the health and wellness discusses any type of policy change and kind of anything to do with quarantine. kind of concerns within the community and we also that is also a lane by which we put out surveys for our community and asking parents and there is a there's a specific effort right now around autism which i'll connect rccd with that as well but um anyway open invitation for that if you guys want to come join for any of those let me know um most recent updates really just had more to do with around funding, around mental health, and that's been changing recently, a much kind of larger conversation on that.

If there's nothing further, we can adjourn.

I have.

We're still on item 12, right? Oh, wait, I'm sorry.

Did I miss one?

I'm so sorry.

So on item, are we ready for item 12? Sure. All right. A couple of things. We had a presentation a few months ago regarding the blue card and law enforcement. That's right, the blue envelope. So what's interesting to me is that there is another version of that that's been around longer, and it's the sunflower.

Yeah.

And I traveled with Cecilia this past – a few weeks ago. And I had seen it in Charleston back in 2019, but it, when we went to Ontario airport, she's given a lanyard that has sunflowers. It put her information on it. And we basically walk through everything. Everybody, you know, just, uh, you know, there is no line, there is no hold up, everything, and nobody says anything about it. It says some disabilities are unseen, but it's very discreet. You don't see it unless you're really looking for it, but it's just a bunch of sunflowers. If she walks into one of the restaurants or the one time that she went to this magazine shop, this was when we were in Charleston, this is woman went way overboard and was like, here, you want magazines? So it shouldn't be that crazy. But I do think that's lovely, and if we were ever looking at making the city of Riverside friendly towards people with disabilities, I like the whole sunflower thing. They put the logo in windows of stores, and they're just to make sure everybody knows they're kind of friendly.

How do we find out more about that? Do you know?

You know, I have the land eater at home. I'm traveling with that all the time. So I'll look and see what they have on it.

So Dakota Brown was the one who came and gave us the presentation. You're talking about Dakota Brown from RUHS. And so then she also leads the Wellness and Disability Equity Alliance. And so she would be our contact for that, which I'm happy to.

connect you or whatever it is that we choose to do as a commission?

I would say this. Neither of my children would be caught dead wearing any kind of a sunflower lanyard. Period. I don't know that I want one. And I also don't understand a thousand percent how the Blue Envelope Program works. I love that our fire and PD are trained on them. And as we've talked about before, they're more trained than our school district employees are probably more trained than some of our staff in our higher education. But I will say that if we could get a combo where it's like just a blue lanyard, just throwing it out there. I'm kidding around. I'm kidding because I'm not the decision maker. But I'm just saying that that sunflower thing, as beautiful as it is, and I love the vision of it. Yeah, I don't know that everyone wants it. Boys are not going to be. My 16-year-old son and my 13-year-old son. They'd die. That'd be a hard pass. A hard pass on that one.

But I love the idea of it. But I love the idea that you could put it in a business window the way we put – we do that for Safe Haven. I know we had it at Wiley, and it would say any lost soul basically can come in here, and we will be welcoming. And that's – Yeah, yeah.

So the Sunflower Program, I know I learned about it a while back. I know it's traditionally in airports. Right. And that's been going on for a little bit, and Ontario brought it not too long ago. And then the Blue Envelope is more for local around town, especially when you're dealing with... emergency response I think that's a fantastic program I love that the county offers multiple different ways to wear it you know I mean so that if you are not in your car you know you can have a bracelet or a lanyard or you can have a sleeve on your seatbelt you know so so it lets them know right away but yeah

The only thing about the blue envelope is you have to go to the law enforcement to go get it.

Right. I did ask when they were here if we were able to have that information in our office. No, you have to go directly to them.

We can absolutely. Sorry, go ahead.

Through all their clients?

Yeah, I was informed, too, about the lanyards. Those lanyards are, when you go to, all you have to do is wear it and you go into an airport, they know immediately that you need assistance. So they will make sure that, you know what I mean, they'll be looking out for these lanyards, actually. So when they see you wearing it, you don't have to go to them for assistance. They usually come to you from what I'm told. When they see you wearing this, they will make sure that you get able to move through the airport with assistance.

To bring it back to wrap all of us back back on topic. So for item 12, I'm wondering if maybe for a future item, if we wouldn't want to have blue envelope come out and speak to us because they do train more than emergency responders. They do. They're looking for all kinds of opportunities to train on. I'm sorry.

We just had that. Did you want them again? Oh, so sorry. So sorry. Did you want the sunflower program one?

And that nonprofit, so we had our police department come tell us how they were trained by Blue Envelope. Blue Envelope is separate. And they would come out and they would talk to us about what community efforts they have, how they work, how we can have, for example, a bracelet or we can have the sleeve for the seatbelt. The other program that we could, and we also had RUHS come out. Dakota Brown come out and talk to us about the Sun. One of the many things, she's such a beautiful presenter, was that she talked about the Sunflower Lanyard and the airport. We can also then have the Sunflower, I don't know what they're called, but the Sunflower nonprofit organization come out and present to us and talk to us about how they can then work with the City of Riverside.

Okay, perfect. That settles an ask. Did you guys want them to come out? If you guys do have their information, if you can provide that to us, I can reach out and set up what meeting they can come to.

I mean, if Regional Center is giving out the I Can Help bracelets, which are the same thing, I mean, why are we having the blue envelope people come out when a lot of our people are getting the others?

So the blue envelope organization has lots of different ways in which they participate within the community. And I think it would be really interesting to hear how they can partner with the city of Riverside. And I know they were even just looking for opportunities to just talk with the community, right? Just talk with community members at large about how they can best interact with individuals that have autism and, or neurodivergence and, And I just think that that would be interesting to hear from them about how we can partner best. Same with any service provider that is interested in providing any kind of a training in the city of Riverside around any disability, honestly, I think should absolutely start here. And we can then promote that to our city and say, hey, yep, we'd like to see this happen. They're free. It's always free.

Regional centers sending out to all of their clients. I'm so sorry can you speak into the mic if regional center is sending to all of their clients these I can help and they've got the bracelets they have the you haven't you should talk to your worker because they're sending out like four four different items to every one of the clients so we can't say that everybody can yeah everybody's supposed to be if we can have have we had IRC out here lately That's what I keep asking. Why haven't we had IRC out here?

We had Dakota Brown out here probably about a year ago. But she's not IRC.

No, she's Riverside Unified Health. She's Riverside.

She's RUHS. RUHS and IRC are two different.

I mean, I saw her at an IRC event, but she's not IRC.

Are we happy to reach out to them if you guys have the information? I reach out and have a presentation for you guys here.

But again, Bryn, those are two separate topics. So IRC may be providing the bracelets, right? Blue Envelope would provide training in our community. From what I understood, I spoke with them at the autism... What was the autism event called? What was the autism event called that we had out at the train park out in Paris? Anyways, we had an annual autism event that we do. It wasn't, oh, I forget what it was called. Anyway, and so I went out to that, and that's where Blue Envelope was tabling. But they have lots of things they do, long story short.

I've never seen them at any other.

If we, my thought in bringing this up was more on as an item for future consideration are things that we can do to make the city of Riverside disability friendly. And there can be more than one thing going on, but to find a way to advertise that.

It was the autism walk at the train museum in Paris in when is autism month? April. April. Were any of you guys there?

No. I'll get you the information if I can see it regarding the sunflower. That would be perfect. Thank you.

We had a paper that was still out that basically said we want to be here on this day, we're asking for a visiting volunteer, planning to have a table, whatever it was, and we were kind of delineating that out. And it would be nice to, I don't know if there's a way we can get a copy of that email that was, we can get that turned in, but that would be really helpful to have that clear communication about what we're being asked to do and who's going to volunteer. We knew ahead of time that, yes, I volunteered, or it's very clear who's going to volunteer.

Can I say, this is my last one, I promise. I'd like to have a comment or a topic on loneliness because people with disabilities tend to be lonely. They tend to be more isolated. There was a wonderful community project that was downtown on Fifth Street called artworks and it closed down and that's where I used to send a lot of people to go because it was open Monday through Friday from 10 to 4 and it was free art and and now that's gone I find And people, you know, I know as a mom, I was always worried that my daughter would be lonely. I know when people are shut in for some reason, they're not able to get out, they're going to be more lonely. I'd like to figure out, and I know that it causes so many health issues.

I wonder if that wouldn't be a good partnership with the Commission on Aging.

Or even the Parks and Rec, because I mean, Fontana has a Parks and Rec arts program every Friday for $3. And it's like, that doesn't seem out of bounds for us. I mean, we've got the Bourne Center that has a ton of open space.

I would just love to have a way to send children, teenagers, young adults, adults to something that they could, that they're going to knowing that this is a place where, yeah, you're not going to know anybody, but hopefully we're going to have a facilitator who pushes a little conversation and maybe you make a friend out of it. So if that means bringing in park and rec or aging, absolutely.

What's our NPO community that does the – that puts out the magazine with all of the parks and rec events, all of the community events? Oh, I'd love that. What's it?

Explore.

Yeah.

Explore.

What's the nonprofit called? Oh, I'm not sure.

Parks and Rec. Yeah.

It's the, so it's the non, we have a non-profit.

Foundation, it's the Parks and Rec Foundation.

It's not the, it's not called the Parks and Rec Foundation. But yes, it is the Parks and Rec Foundation. It's just called something else. Anyways, moving on. I am a wealth of knowledge tonight. If you guys want to know something, it's not here.

What kind of a topic would that be? Because I'm not too sure how we would bring that into a topic.

I think it's really addressing loneliness. Do you know in the UK, for example, they have a whole department on loneliness now. Wow. Yeah. And this is something that is definitely sweeping in various countries and municipalities.

Is this something we want to do like an ad hoc specifically looking at loneliness and how to engage partnership around it?

I mean, or creating social functions for our kids. And that is events. I know that Parks and Rec has been working on that, but it's

painfully lacking i'm just trying to figure out how we can incorporate it into a item into the agenda i know i know it's a something that does happen but i'm not sure how to bring it up in a agenda topic do you guys want to do an ad hoc to maybe meet with parks and recs or i'm not yeah sure parks and rec as well as she's correct it's aging and it's it'd be a loneliness ad hoc where you want to talk about

I'm putting together a group that wants to discuss loneliness, and then from there we'd go, you know, we'd figure out how we would engage partners. That'd be a group that'd want to sit and meet about that topic.

Let me figure out how to put it into the agenda, and then I'll try to bring it for August.

Okay.

I'm not going to be here in August.

Do you want me to wait for September?

September. Yes, please. Unless somebody really wants to get started on it, I'm all for that, too.

I almost missed a very important subject there. I'm sorry.

That was very informative.

If there is no further discussion, let's adjourn.