Community Services and Youth Committee - Regular Meeting

There it is. I hear it now. Okay. We're going to call this meeting to order today. And the first order of business is to say the Pledge of Allegiance. So, everyone, please stand. Ready, begin. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. All right. Please play the recording.

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 roll call okay commissioner trim here commissioner stewart president commissioner dunstan here

She read them. We should rent. We should ran for dollar. Sure thermal here. We surely hear vice chair Cleary here commissioner Pellegrino. We have quorum.

We're on to public comment. Okay, please.

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 9. When called to speak, press star 6 to unmute. You can also join via Zoom. The meeting ID can be found on the agenda.

I would like to now introduce... Do we have any callers? Do we have any callers? Okay. I would like to now introduce our presenters. Okay. Yeah. Okay. We are going to hear from the City of Riverside Marketing and Communications Department.

Good evening, Commissioners.

Good evening. Hello.

I am Christina Klebel, Deputy Director for the Marketing and Communications Department. also known as MarCom. You'll hear me say MarCom throughout the presentation. I'm here tonight to give you an overview of our department and show you some examples of all the work that we do throughout the city. To start with our mission, MarCom is responsible for helping tell a Riverside story and keeping our community informed and connected. We work with departments throughout the city to communicate programs, services, initiatives, events, and important information to residents, businesses, and visitors. Here's a look at our team and the different areas of expertise within our department. Our team includes an administrative division, Riverside TV for video and photography, front-end web design, social media, email marketing, and a dedicated communications support for Riverside Public Utilities. While everyone has their own expertise, there is quite a bit of collaboration across the team to ensure information reaches the public. This slide gives you a good snapshot of everything that falls under Marcom. In addition to the teams previously mentioned, we also support the community calendar hosted on the city homepage where events that are open to the public and within city limits can be added. We also have done placemaking for various areas in the city, which I'll showcase in the later slide. And we also ensure branding and promote tourism through our visit Riverside campaign. Our administration team keeps the department moving behind the scenes. It includes our deputy director, Caitlin Ryerson, myself, senior project manager, Chriselle Schneider, and senior admin analyst, Brittany Hodge. This team oversees our operational needs, strategic planning, budgeting, project coordination, and administrative support. This team also coordinates many of the larger projects that involve multiple team members or several city departments. Our graphics team consists of three full-time staff members and part-time staff. They are responsible for visualizing and branding all things Riverside. That includes everything from flyers and advertisements to logos, publications, signage, wall wraps, and complete campaign identities. They create more than 14,000 projects and campaigns annually and support more than 75 campaigns each year. Here are some examples that show the range of projects this team works on and the variety of creative work they produce. Examples include various community events throughout the city, the Explorer Magazine, the Shop Riverside Community Card, an internal core employee newsletter, economic development brochure, and a bus wrap. Our front end web design team consists of three full-time staff members. They maintain more than 14,000 ADA compliant web pages across 19 department sites. And those sites receive more than 8 million visits a year. For most people, the website is one of the first places they go when they're looking for city information. So there's a lot of work that goes into keeping that information current, organized and accessible. Here are a couple of examples of web pages that they built this past fiscal year. Our Riverside TV team includes three full-time staff members, Angel, Nick, and Trevor, in a recent vacancy due to some changes after the presentation was published for this agenda. We also have a handful of part-time staff. Riverside TV handles our video production and photography for city initiatives and provides live coverage, including city council and committee meetings, press conferences, and local high school football games. They also manage our government access TV channel. I'm sure you've met the people in the back room right now. Those are also Riverside TV staff. Last fiscal year they covered more than 259 public meetings and overall our YouTube channel has generated over 4.8 million views and has more than 14,000 subscribers. Here are some examples of the content on Riverside TV. Life Works Here is a series that highlights arts, facilities, and the quality of life. In Good Company and our Business Spotlight series highlight local businesses. Riverside Sports Update provides a recap of various high school sports. And here are some other examples of videos created for public information campaigns. Our content creators focus primarily on social media and email marketing. On social media, our full-time staff member, Lawrence Carbone, directly manages the city and Riverside Public Utilities social accounts and provides oversight and coordination for 45 active accounts across the city, each managed by designated department administrators. Combined, those accounts have more than 721,000 followers and generated more than 14 million impressions and reached last fiscal year. On the email side, our full-time staff member, Kaylin Kuntz, oversees 73 subscriber lists with more than 370,000 unique subscribers. She directly manages the citywide Riverside Public Utilities commercial and residential email newsletters. and is the main point of contact for all our GovDelivery email admins. She also assists with content writing for some of our publications like the Explore Magazine. Here are a few examples of the social media posts, email newsletters, and articles in print publications from this past fiscal year. We also have a dedicated communications support for Riverside Public Utilities. Amy Navas-Lopez is our customer communications coordinator. Our MarCom team works closely with RPU and has regular coordination meetings to ensure their projects and programs are shared with the public. That includes information about rebates, conservation, energy programs, water quality, capital improvement projects, customer programs, and other utility information. RPU has more than 21,000 followers on the social accounts that our team manages. And our email newsletters perform very well, with a 52% residential open rate and a 44% commercial open rate, well above industry average. Another major project we oversee is Visit Riverside, our tourism marketing effort. VisitRiverside.com launched in February 2024 and has received more than 300,000 web views and more than 100,000 unique users. Social media accounts for Visit Riverside were created in September 2024, and we launched a YouTube channel in May 2025 that have generated more than 9.8 million video views. Since the launch of the social media accounts, we have had more than 60,000 followers and generated more than 9 million impressions and 6 million in reach. The content is focused on showcasing experiences in Riverside, including our arts, food, outdoor recreation events, businesses, and attractions. We also have advertising for Visit Riverside placed at the Ontario Airport, Palm Springs Airport, DMV screens located in Orange County in LA, hotel guest books, and regional publications. The goal is to build awareness of Riverside as a destination and encourage people to come experience our city. Now we will get a little into our placemaking efforts. Midtown is one example, located near Brockton Arcade, Elizabeth Street, and Sunnyside area. We developed an identity that carried across to signage, streetlight banners, event flyers, and other materials to help create a recognizable sense of place for the area. Arlington Village is another example, located near Van Buren and Magnolia Avenue. In the revitalizing area, we created an identity that carries through to signage, street banners, trashcan wraps, and other applications. The Arts and Culture District is another example located in the downtown area. The branding extends into window wraps, utility box wraps, banners, signage along Main Street Pedestrian Mall, and more throughout the district. As we look ahead, these are some of the strategic goals we are continuing to focus on as a department. They include tourism promotion and placemaking, collaborative partnerships, internal communications, crisis communication preparedness, inclusive and accessible community engagement, and sustainability and green initiatives. We want to continue looking at how we communicate and make sure city information is accessible and reaches as much of our community as possible. Finally, there are many ways to stay connected with the city. We are active across Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, X, email, and other communication channels. You can find those resources at riversideca.gov forward slash connect. That concludes my overview of the Department of Marketing Communications. Hopefully, this gives you a better sense in the size and scope of our department and the amount of work that happens behind the scenes. Thank you again for having me. I'm happy to answer any questions you may have.

Wow, you do an awful lot.

we do and when we put it into a powerpoint i have to choose like the top of the top because if not it would be 100 200 pages long well do you have any cards or anything that you brought with you no but i i should have i did not but i will definitely um i can get your contact from daisy and i'll i'll send you my information yes because i'm gonna need to talk to you okay thank you perfect

Thank you for all this information. Wow.

Hello. Not surprisingly, your deck is beautiful. Thank you. Coming from communications, that's the expectation. It has to be, yes.

Did you make that just for us? Did you make that just for us? No, we didn't. Yes, it was a template, and we massaged it based on the audience that we're speaking to. so um will you talk to us more since we are your commission on disabilities about the inclusive and accessible communication with community engagement yeah so we there's actually for web in general there are some guidelines that will be hitting in april 2027 um so our web team is actively working through the website all digital aspects to make sure that we meet that deadline um Other areas that we do for accessibility is we ensure closed captions are on all videos produced. And at press conferences when there's a major incident, we make sure that there's an ASL interpreter and often sometimes Spanish interpreters. I'm trying to think at the top of my head. That's it for now. I think there'll be more changes that you see, especially because of the WCAG roles that will be coming next year.

And then I guess just as far as... Imaging and visuals as far as pictures that we use. I know we kind of had a little bit of a faux pas with our trifold where we had an individual that had an identifiable disability. And we then were marketing that. We're using that. And so do you have someone on staff that is specifically placed to kind of look for that? things like that, that there's not any type of ableist either, you know, visuals or vocabulary that's used within any of your communications.

We have, we're always mindful of everything, right? Even down to diversity, all of that, whenever we're taking photos and using it for print publications or anything, communications. So a lot of our team members, even down to our graphic design team, when they're using photos, they're like, nope, can't use this photo, got to use this photo. So we are definitely mindful. Is there an individual specifically on staff that that is their job? No. No. Okay. No.

Yeah.

That's all. Thank you. It would be nice if we had that. It would be nice if you had that. Okay, good.

Nice to hear. It's just kind of more an intentional practice rather than kind of a hope we catch it practice. Right. But thank you for your presentation.

Of course. Yeah. Thank you. Any other questions?

Anybody else have any questions? Thank you very much for your presentation.

And I'll send you my contact info. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Our next presenter is from the City of Riverside Urban Forestry Department.

Hello, good afternoon. My name is Louis Fremont. I'm the Urban Forestry and Landscape Supervisor. So a little information of who we are. The Urban Forestry and Landscape Division manages and oversees city-maintained trees and landscape in the right-of-way areas throughout Riverside. Our work includes tree maintenance, inspections, landscape maintenance, irrigation, water features, contracts, planting, removals, and community service. We work with contractors and other city departments to maintain a safe, healthy, attractive, and sustainable public landscapes. Our urban forestry, at a quick glance, we have 150,000 plus approximate street trees, 300 tree species, 450 acres of maintained landscape, and 81 square miles of service area. Our urban forestry includes trees, medians, parkways, reverse frontages, irrigation, infrastructure, and other public assets. The division's work protects and enhances the assets for residents, businesses, and visitors. Our structure for our team is the urban forester, leads the city's urban forestry program, planning, policy, and long-term strategy. Supervisor coordinates field operations and oversees staff and contract services. We have three maintenance inspectors for trees. They inspect trees, oversee contract tree work, respond to tree services and needs, and help ensure work meets city standards. We have three landscape maintenance inspectors. They oversee landscape maintenance, irrigation, and related contract services. We have one downtown maintenance worker to maintain the downtown area. We have an administrative team and field support staff. They help manage contracts, purchasing, customer service, records, billing, and daily operational needs. And what we do, we do tree inspections, pruning, planting, removals, and hazard management. We do landscape and median maintenance, irrigation and management, and water conservation. We do line clearance around utility lines. We do contract administration, procurement, and contractor oversight. customer service and response to community requests, tree protection and coordination with construction activities, and tree inventory mapping data management and long-term planning. Part of our utility program, we do utility line clearance. The program manages approximately 20,000 public and private trees and vegetation each year. Regular inspections and maintenance help reduce potential conflicts between trees and electrical infrastructure. The tree maintenance near utility lines help improve public safety, maintain electrical stability and reliability, reduce the risk of service interruptions, protect critical infrastructure and maintain a healthy tree growth. The division works closely with Riverside's public utilities and contracted tree maintenance professionals to ensure work is completed safely and in accordance with the city and industry standards. We have done 413 trees planted, 121 trees removed, 13,323 trees trimmed and 5,088 service requests. Our urban forest includes trees, medians, parkways, reverse frontages, irrigation infrastructure and other public landscape assets. We handle resident requests including broken limbs, tree trimmings and removals and the division works to protect and enhance these assets for residents, businesses and visitors. In addition to tree work, the division completed 35 flower planting projects in the medians and right-of-way areas throughout the city. These projects enhance major corridors and public spaces while contributing to the overall appearance and quality of Riverside's landscape. The tree and landscape investments work together to create attractive, functional, and sustainable public spaces. urban forestry policy manual. City Council approved the update urban forestry manual on February 6, 2024. The manual provides a framework for preservation and protection of Riverside's urban forests. The updated manual incorporates current best practices, provides clearer guidance for city staff, the community, and those working around public trees. The completed manual gives a division a stronger foundation for consistent and informed urban forest management. Our tree database was funded by an inflation reduction grant and approved by council on 8-19-2025, and it was awarded to Planet Geo. A modern tree database helps us understand where our trees are, what species they are, their characteristics, and how they're being maintained. Mapping and inventory information support maintenance planning, tree planting, contractor oversight, grant applications, and community engagement. I believe, I think this one was a repeat. I'll go ahead and skip over. This is a demonstration of our map and how our database looks like. Different colors that are on there is different type of species and trees that are on there. Clicking on one of them will show you the tree history, the type of tree it is, and the location and address of the tree. Our community engagement map. Our community engagement map gives residents an opportunity to explore city-maintained trees. Residents can learn about individual trees, including location, species, size, and other available information. The map creates an opportunity to connect with people, with the trees, and they see every day. With helping to grow our urban forests while working with various civic organizations, nonprofits, and neighborhood groups, we will conduct tree plantings in disadvantaged communities utilizing our existing tree planting funds to help augment the in-kind contribution. The inclusion will help add additional trees into our urban forests. Our Arbor Day, Riverside has designated a Tree City, excuse me, Riverside is a designated Tree City USA. They've been for 38 years. The next Arbor Day will be held in April, 2027. The event will include informational booths from various city departments, such as parks and recreations, community service, police, fire, and various community partners, such as Keep Riverside Clean and Beautiful and the Riverside Corona Resource Conservation District. Continue improving and expanding our tree database. We increase tree plantings and long-term establishment, improve young tree care and maintenance, continue implementing the urban forestry policy manual, expand community education and engagement, and pursue grant funding and partnerships. We use the database to guide long-term decisions about the Riverside's urban forestry. A recommendation is that the Commission of Disabilities receive an update on administrative operational duties and responsibilities of the Public Works Department Urban Forestry and Landscape Division. And that will conclude my presentation.

Thank you very much. Does anybody have any questions or comments?

Oh, I find this fascinating. You guys, the map is incredible. I don't know who, yeah, I don't know who came up with this. Yeah, completely off. I mean, not off topic, but, you know, working with students and students that are interested in careers and and kind of learning about the different careers available. You have a very unique career and the whole department is very unique. Would anybody from your department be willing to talk to students kind of like about your careers or what you do?

Yes, definitely. We've been looking into working with community schools in our area within the city of Riverside. So far, we've kind of had it in the works. It's kind of slowed down. But our Arbor Day, it does include various schools. They get their hours for volunteers. um they get those signed off they help us plant trees plants and they kind of go over a whole understanding we kind of explain and educate them a bit about trees we've also done a arbor day event with the school of deaf and that one was just kind of the same thing but it was you know specific to help them understand what we were doing and same thing it was like an educational presentation We gave out plants, flowers, kind of had that engagement and involvement with them, and it was pretty exciting. We had a good turnout, and we are planning to do it again. We just had kind of a slowdown with our budget right now, but once it gets kind of going again, we're going to have a planting event with them.

That'd be incredible. And what other ways do you have to reach out to the community to make sure we're including individuals with disabilities or individuals with different needs?

So when we have events, they have one of our staff, they send out a flyer and it gets shared throughout the community. And like I said, everybody is welcome. We're open to everybody. We have people from all over that kind of come out and participate. And we change up our duties and responsibilities to help assist anyone that shows up and wants to participate.

So what distribution list would we need to be on to get this? Is it Parks and Recreation or who would be distributing this information?

It would be Parks and Recreation as well as the Public Works Department. Like I said, it will be streets and it will be our urban forestry. They share it on social media. They share it on the city website. And I believe other organizations also share our flyers.

Okay. I'll have to try to see if I can find some online or how to get on the mailing list. Thank you.

Anybody else? Any other comments, questions?

I just want to report that the two Jacaranda trees in front of my home are alive. I just checked on them. That is honestly the coolest thing. We're learning so much about our city. So this is just a pleasure to hear from you guys. And we thank you for what you're doing. I'm sure after the winds, that's when you're particularly busy and that happens frequently. So we thank you so much.

Yeah, I mean, the winds always increase our workload, but we're out there, our team's dedicated, we try to address every issue as fast as we can. And the jacaranda trees are very beautiful when they bloom, you know, beautiful purple flowers. So a lot of people, you know, they take the opportunity to take photographs and kind of, they enjoy it when it's blooming.

yeah this map is very cool and i i think too with i mean this is also a little off topic but it'd be really cool to be able to share that with um our usd students you know i can see a teacher doing a project on like let's use the map and figure out what um our urban forestry looks like so very cool thank you

Thank you. So we'll get in contact with you guys and we'll share the link. It's pretty cool. It's pretty interactive. You can type in your address. You can see the schedule for trimming that we have coming up for that specific area or grid and ward. And like I said, you can pretty much look through the whole city and see the variations of species that we have. in games or scavenger hunts or anything that kind of interactive that's already created for um your urban forest at our arbor day yeah yeah we give out a lot of like goodies we have questions um that we ask anybody that's been participating since we kind of talk about trees and later on we ask them and anybody that participates and gets the answer right or has been paying attention we give out a bunch of goodies related to urban forestry

Do you guys offer any, say, classes for citizens who want to know more about how to maintain trees, you know, their own private trees? Or do you guys reach out, like, say, yeah, just do you guys offer any classes for citizens to learn how to maintain their trees?

As of right now, no, but it is an interesting thing that we should look into.

Mm-hmm. Yeah, that would be good. All right. Now, if someone were to call you up and say they have a problem with their tree, do you guys go and check on them or you leave it up to them to...

Yeah, so if they reach out to the city using our service request, the 311, it gets sent to us. Once we receive that, our team goes out there. They get in contact with the reporting party, and they'll discuss what they observed out there on the field and talk about the tree and then let them know why we came into a certain conclusion of what's going to happen to the tree.

Good, thanks.

Thank you so much for all the information. Thank you very much.

Thank you for having me here. Thank you.

Our next presenter is from ChildNet Youth and Family Services.

Hello, everyone. There we go. So we had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Cleary at one of our outreach events, so we're really appreciative to come out to talk a little bit about what we do. So I am Dustin Harris Covarrubio. I'm ChildNet's Inland Empire Region Outreach and Intake Administrator. So I'll talk a little bit about our services. Overall, ChildNet's mission is to promote safe homes, education, and counseling to vulnerable children and families in the community. We have a couple different offices. We're based out of Long Beach, so that's where our home office is. We have an office up in Bakersfield, but specifically for Riverside, we have an office down on Market Street, so right underneath the 60 Interpass. So in the Inland Empire, one of our biggest services, our behavioral health services program, And so within that program, we provide mental health therapists. We also have behavior coaches for anybody that is struggling with mental health, emotional regulation, any kind of transitions in their life. They could be matched with a clinician that can help them through that or a behavior coach. We also have parent partners. And so to be a parent partner, they have to have some type of experience with, whether it's foster care, any kind of county involvement, just so they can have that one-on-one relationship with the parent. And as you see to the right, most our clients have to live in Riverside County to receive our mental health services and then also have Medi-Cal as well. And as far as mental health, we also have a psychiatrist on staff. So if there's any kind of mental health medication needs that our kiddos might have. And then specifically for our behavioral health program, we work with youth from birth up to 21. And so our next kind of higher level care program that we have is TBS, therapeutic behavioral services. So with this one, this is for kiddos that with the challenging behaviors that they have, it might put them at risk from being moved from their current either home or placement. So a lot of our kiddos are in foster care. They might be in an SDRTP or a group home environment. And so their behaviors are challenging or intense, and it's putting them at risk of moving. And we know how traumatic that could be, so we want our TBS clinicians, supervisors, and behavior coaches to get in there to try to reduce some of those challenging behaviors. And so typically that program is about three to five months. It's really designed to be time limited, really intense as far as like the hours are concerned to hopefully see our kids graduate from the program and stay stable where they're at. And that program as well is from zero to 21. and then our newest program is our enhanced care management program so ecm so this is where we have case managers that are able to work with families and they could be in riverside or san bernardino county but so their role is to help families with resources that they might need they might be housing insecure food insecure they might need help scheduling doctor's appointments essentially working with vulnerable children and families this has been kind of the last missing piece that we had to be a fully one-stop shop so if we get families that come in with little ones that need mental health we can provide mental health but say if they have an uncle that lives in the home that needs support we can also assign them a case manager that can help them meet whatever physical or mental health needs that they might have And then regarding outreach, we also provide free workshops to the community. So typically these are mental health related topics. We've done one on the mental health stigma. That's a lot of what we see, especially with caregivers, just thinking, you know, there's nothing wrong with my kid. What does that mean if they might benefit from therapy? We've also done one on motivating for school success with school starting. So that's kind of been our way to reach out to the public, not only to let them know about our services, but also just to educate on mental health. And so with all of our services, we can either provide them in the home. About 80% of our client services are done in the client's home. A lot of times if they are vulnerable, they may not have access to transportation. They may not be able to get to us. So then we come to them. And then we also can provide services at the school if the school will allow outside vendors on campus. We can also do virtually if it's appropriate. So typically it's for teens. We can hop on Teams or Zoom to be able to work with them with whatever kind of mental health needs that they might have. And then we can also meet with them in one of our local offices. So I mentioned our Market Street office, and we also have an office out in Palm Desert to reach the desert region. And so with our services, we hope to help our caregivers understand more about our kiddos' behaviors, our needs. We know our kids communicate through play. They communicate through their behavior. So what is that telling us about what's going on with them that we can't see on the outside? Helping caregivers learn new parenting strategies, maybe some that are helpful or maybe unintentionally hurtful. So just kind of helping them see a different way to parent their kiddos. and getting connected to helpful resources for their family. So again, whether that is a case manager, whether that's just a psychoeducation, teaching our parents different ways or different concepts, we could do that. With our clients, we hope to build emotional regulation. So we do a lot of coping skills work, really trying to find those things that if our kids feel that they have uncontrollable emotions, they could check in with themselves and tame that. And then ultimately a lot of our kids struggle with self-esteem. And so helping them, once we kind of get them to feeling safe, then we can start working on that identity piece, that self-esteem, making them feel good about themselves. And we also hope to improve that communication between our kiddos and our caregivers. Ultimately, our goal is to provide good treatment to where we're not needed anymore. The parent, the family unit is able to take good care of their kiddos, meet their needs, whatever those might be. And then also just improve communication with teachers. Sometimes we're in the schools, our behavior coaches are training our teachers how a kiddo might need to deal with a stressful test that's coming up or how they need to deal with unstructured time. So just that extra support there. And that's all I had. Any questions about child net? Yeah. so families can self-refer so if they have medi-cal they could call us directly and then we start a referral we want to make sure if they are a kiddo if they're looking for behavioral health we get them connected to a clinician sometimes we get adults that call us and so with that we can't provide mental health for like say a 30 year old but we can connect them to a case manager that can connect them to an outside referral So they get either self-referral. Most of our referrals come from Riverside County directly. So RUHS, Riverside University Health Systems. So a lot of our children have been touched by the foster care system. So they're either currently with a foster parent right now or they've just recently reunified. So dealing with that stress of coming back home. We also look at the family system. A lot of times birth parents are stressed with that new change and transition, so to help them with that. But typically self-refer and then from the county.

So funding is coming from the insurance, medical, Medi-Cal, Medicare?

From Medi-Cal, yes. And so we do have a contract with Riverside County specifically to provide those mental health services. Okay.

And then the last question, what type of credentialing or training do your behavior coaches have?

Behavior coaches, typically they have to have a bachelor's in some type of social science or they can have an AA degree but with significant child experience with kids. So a lot of times that could be staff that have worked in daycares before. Maybe they've worked with kiddos with special needs. Somehow they've had some type of one-on-one experience with children. And then so we do have a really robust training program. When we have new team members come on, we have a lot of shadowing, a lot of training, but primarily some type of degree, and that would be for our clinicians as well. They would have to have a master's and then experience in some type of clinical field.

Follow-up question to that then. So they have the behavioral training and they have the bachelor's. Do they have any specialized training in the different disabilities then?

Some. So we do a lot of caregivers will have questions about do we do ABA therapy for kiddos on the autism spectrum? And so some of our work is very similar to ABA specifically for autism, but it's not considered ABA just for autism. We're more talk therapy. So we've had some cases where kiddos might come to us with situations that maybe talk therapy isn't as most helpful for them. So we do work with the Inland Regional Center. If they do have some type of delay, that's kind of where their struggles are. Or with one of our case managers, helping them find that support.

Yeah. You refer to them as kiddos. Do you have a certain age that you work with?

Yeah, so we primarily with our mental health programs, birth up to 21. Typically kids under two, usually they don't meet medical necessity. So essentially when we're doing an intake for a little one, it's seeing are they making eye contact? Do they smile? And if so, usually we have to make a referral to a physician to check out what's going on intellectually. But so birth up to 21. And then for our case management program, that's any age. So the only requirements that we have as far as age would be our mental health and our behavior coach programs, would be 21 and younger. Okay, thank you.

Yeah. Any further comments, questions? In that case, thank you very much for your presentation. We will now go on to number five, which is the approval of the minutes for the meeting on July 16th. Well, the consent calendar. Okay, we will do numbers five, six, and seven together. Okay, does anyone wish to pull an item from the consent calendar for discussion If no do we have a motion to approve the consent calendar I'll make a motion to approve the consent calendar Omega motion as well

Commissioner Trim? Yes. Commissioner Stewart? Yes. Commissioner Dunstan?

Yes.

Commissioner Lee?

Yes.

Chair Tarmel?

Yes.

Vice Chair Cleary?

Yes.

Motion passes.

Okay. Okay, we are going to move on to the discussion calendar. Do we have any callers?

No callers and no participants in chambers.

Okay. Okay. We're going to go on to item number eight. Item number eight. The general services. We are going to discuss the direction regarding the department of a community survey. Development of a community survey. Do we have any comments from our audience? Okay. Now, do we have any discussion amongst all of us?

So the first thing is, all of these questions are great. I would want to pare it down. I mean, we've got two sheets of them here. I think this would take too long if I saw this many questions. I'd probably stop halfway. So I guess the question would be, going through them, and I don't know if we want to do this tonight or maybe take them home and look through them, which ones do we want to prioritize?

Yeah, that would be up to you guys. And if you guys want to do it right now, we can. If not, you guys can send them over to us like you guys did, and then we can put them in order and then bring them back in an actual survey form.

This is quite lengthy. I think that would be a great idea to take these with us and then get back with you on how we're looking at each one.

Are there any here that the city requires that they're going in no matter what?

No, these questions are the ones that you guys provided to us. So these are all questions that you guys want to put out in the survey. Okay.

And we are electing the questions that we want on the survey. That's what we're doing here. Yes. Are we limited on how many questions we should have on the survey?

No, it's up to you. No, we're not limited.

Yeah.

Because of the multiple choice on everything, which we almost have to have, but It is quite lengthy.

Once they're in survey form, they won't look as, I mean, you won't see all the choices. It'll just be, you know, it won't look as bad, I don't think. But I still think there's a lot of questions. I mean, I did submit some of the questions, and I'm good with getting rid of all the ones that need to get rid of. I think there's a lot of really good ones that came on the other suggestions as well. So I think both of them, we want to look through both of them to see what the priorities are, because with all four pages, I believe it's a lot. It is.

It is a lot.

It's just a rough draft, whichever ones you guys want to keep, we keep. And then we'll put it into a survey format so you guys can see how it looks.

So do we want to have a time limit on this to get back with you? That's up to you guys.

So amongst all of the commissioners present, What do you think about the idea of taking this home, looking it over, prioritizing in your frame of mind, and bringing them back at our next meeting? Would that give you enough time?

I think that's waiting a bit long. I think we need to get back to Daisy with our recommendations so that at the next meeting she could have something in a survey form put together. Okay. Correct. So can we say by the 1st of September?

Daisy, could you do a survey of the survey? Something that you sent out that had all the questions on it that we could either check yes, keep, or not keep. With all these questions? Yeah. Okay. And that way you could email it to us and we could just submit that back to you.

And send it back to you really quick, yeah. Okay.

We might want to do it rather than a yes or a no, because there are so many. We might want to do it more like a rating where it's like, which one, which of the questions are our favorites?

You know what I'm saying? Well, it's going to just be created as a survey so you guys can see how it looks. Yeah. And then once I send it to you guys, you just tell me, take out number one, take out number five, or leave this one, leave that one. And that way I can bring it back to you guys next month so you guys can see it.

Yeah, I'm wondering if it would make more sense for us to rank the questions in order of, um, I don't know, like what, yeah, like definitely keep, there's so many questions. I think if, um, I think because there's so many of us and then we're not really having a discussion about it, we're kind of each making our own contribution to yes or no. There's no real discussion or no real opportunity to talk about anyone else's point of view as to why it was included in the first place or the value of that question. So I don't know that making the decisions kind of on our own and then giving that to you really opens up the opportunity for us to discuss. Why somebody might have a question on here and it's very valuable just to them personally and they might want to share like why that question is valuable to them. I do think it's worth the opportunity of discussing it as a group. Also, we don't have a lot of our commissioners are absent this evening. And so I think that might be something that maybe they might want to kind of chime in on the next time that we're together, especially if there's not a rush necessarily.

Okay. In that case, then we can create the survey with all these questions and then we can put it into the next meeting so that you guys can see them and discuss them during the next meeting.

I mean, we could probably do both. I don't know. Maybe we do a survey and then kind of discuss the results of the survey. That's what I had in mind.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So do you want us to do a survey, send it out to you guys, and then you guys decide what you guys want to keep or not, like we had said?

In my mind, that's what I was thinking. The yes or no is the easiest way, and if we've got the majority that want to keep it, we can discuss the ones that we're going to get rid of at the meeting based on that result. If there's a reason somebody feels strongly about keeping it in, or if we feel that there's still too many at that point, we can deal with it then and make some conclusions at that point.

Sorry, just what I understand. I'm going to create the survey with all these questions. Send it over to you guys. You guys are going to tell me yes or no. And then I put the draft of the ones that you really wanted to keep for the next meeting.

I think a draft of all of them the ones we want to keep and then the ones that we decided against and then that way if there's somebody that's just really passionate about the one that got the one one of the ones that was you know removed we can discuss that okay so three surveys if what I'm understanding so one with all of them no no one survey the results of the survey

So when we're at the next meeting, you might say, put all the questions together in a logical format. We're able to go through them and say yay or nay. And then just the results of that, five people were yay, two people were nay. So just one final document at the meeting.

I'm going to ask the communications department how they want to deal with that part. And then once I get that yes or no survey, I'll send it out to you guys.

Okay.

Are we OK with that? OK. After all the comments have been discussed, OK, we are going to ask for a motion to approve the development of a community survey.

So we're not going to approve it right now because we're still rough drafting. Right. So we're just going to move it forward. We're going to move it to next month. We're going to table it for next month. Okay. So continuation.

All right. This is why our city attorney is over here. Okay. This is Ruth Ann sitting over there. The revision of Commission on Disabilities Standing Rules.

You still have to ask for callers.

Do we have any comments from our audience? Call or callers to speak or state. We have no callers at this time.

No callers online and no participants in chambers.

Okay. Do we have any comments from our commission members? For standing rules.

Would you like a little background on the standing rules? Please. Yes. Sure. All right. Good evening, everyone. My name is Ruth Ann Solera. I'm with the city attorney's office. I wear a lot of hats for the city, and one of them that I enjoy is I help advise the boards and commissions. So a lot of times I'm working in the background, so you don't see me here. but I'm always available to provide advice. And one of those is procedural advice. And so the question had come up and was brought to me that you all had questions about how your standing rules worked and potentially wanted to revise them. So the city charter does authorize you all to develop your own rules. Your current standing rules were attached to the report. And as an advisory body like this one, you can see they're pretty simplified. The actual conduct of the meeting is within the authority of the chair, and that's about as procedural it gets. A meeting requires six members to be a quorum, and then a majority vote is what it takes to pass a vote. But other than that, this body doesn't have what you would consider detailed parliamentarian rules, likely because you don't necessarily need them. But if you had specific questions, I'm available to answer those for you. Or if you had ideas about wanting to revise these rules, I can take those down and bring you a more detailed report about what those potential revisions would look like.

Mm-hmm. Does anybody have any comments, questions for our attorney?

Is my microphone on? Yeah. I think the question had come up because we were doing a training with Manager Futrell. And I'm trying to remember who's our representative from the city. It's like her name's on the tip of my tongue. Donisa. Donisa? Donisha. Donisha? The clerk's, from the clerk's office. Donisha. Anyways, and she had just listed off the different boards and commissions that didn't have, is it called parliamentary?

I don't know what her specific reference is, but often like a more detailed procedural rules, especially like what the city council uses, those are referred to as parliamentarian rules.

So she had just listed off like, you know, of all of our thousands and thousands of boards and commissions that we have here in Riverside, she listed off like a handful of us that didn't have those and suggested that we go back to our commission and suggest that we put those in place. So I don't know whether that was mistaken or what that was. And so I had brought that up, um, Commissioner Trim and I were both there for that. I think Commissioner Cleary was there that night, too. And so I think we just wanted clarification on that if we need to put anything else in place other than what we already have. It looks like the standing rules in this case also include our duties and functions. And I think that we were also kind of, because our commission members change, were a little bit, you know, confused on like email practices and, you know, kind of like gathering after the fact. And, you know, like, do we have, are we allowed to have a quorum outside of the dais and things like that? And so I think it was just more of those types of questions. We even had one point where we had a meeting where we skipped an item and went down to an item. And then there was a question of, oh, wait, we've already discussed that item. We can't return to it. And so those were kinds of the questions where we were not all of us not clear and we're getting kind of conflicting information on how do we run our meetings and then what our behavioral expectations outside.

Okay. Yeah, well, to start with the behavioral expectations that you mentioned regarding emails and meetings off the dais, that's actually a Brown Act issue. And if you want, I can bring you guys a Brown Act training to give you more details on that. We don't have that on the agenda tonight, so the Brown Act actually prevents me from giving you a presentation on the Brown Act.

And we've all received a Brown Act presentation. Like, that's part of our training, so we're up to speed on that.

Yes, and you're always welcome to reach out to me via Daisy if you have specific Brown Act questions, and I'm happy to answer those for you. And then as far as the rules before you, some commissions and boards have more detailed rules than what you all have adopted, but these, I would say, are the rules that you all have, and I don't have the... They were adopted in 2025, but you have the ability to make them more detailed if you want. So, for example, like the Board of Public Utilities has a much more extensive procedural rules and so does the Planning Commission, but they also hear what we call like a quasi-judicial proceeding, which is a lot more complex than the work, the types of proceedings that you all have. Some of them will some boards and commissions will Adopt the City Council's rules like parliamentary rules by usually just referring to them And those rules are a little more detailed as far as like how to make an motion Precedence of motions and things like that so if that's something you would like to look into we can bring your report of what that might do and

um but right now you have very flexible proceedings it just the the conduct of the meeting and how it works is just placed in the authority of your chair and so you can kind of keep things open as you move along and things like that that that piece of information in and of itself is very helpful to us we were getting kind of conflicting like you you are done with this item you can't return to it kind of um directions, which was new to us as a commission. And so I think that did kind of come up as a question where we weren't really sure, did we miss something in the training or is that just maybe rules for standing rules for some other commission or board that, you know, had, you know, been brought here. So up to the discretion of our chair.

Yes. Okay. Thank you.

Super helpful. And it's nice that we do have the flexibility to jump around. It sounds like.

yes i think that would just be something within the discretion of the chair or whoever that what we call the presiding officer so if the chair is not here your vice chair or whoever's um presiding for the evening thank you okay thank you very much anybody else thank you

Okay, we're going on. Okay, we've gotten through the discussion. Okay. Are we on updates now? Updates from the webpage ad hoc committee. Anybody? Anything?

I see Fred is here. Fred, do you have anything to tell us about the webpage? Oh, give him three minutes. That's your time limit. He'll talk all night. Hello, commissioners.

Oh, this is loud. I do have a draft ready, so I can send that out after the meeting for the ad hoc committee review. Same thing with the QR code card. I have those ready to go.

Very good. Thank you.

Oh, 30 seconds and he's done. Yeah.

Okay. Seemed like three minutes.

Yeah. Okay. Do we have any updates from the event ad hoc committee? Oh, that's me. Okay. October 17th is the planes and treats at the Riverside Airport Cafe from 5 o'clock to 10 o'clock at night. Okay? How many passes are you going to have? There's only a few thousand people come. And it's wonderful fun. And we pass out so much candy. But it's good.

Yeah. We have to figure out the passes this year so that people who want to help can get there.

Yes. Yes. In the past, we've gotten there very early, like about 3.30, 4 o'clock, so that there's places for us to park and places for us to set up. I don't know how they're doing it this year, but I'll try and find out. Okay? I'll try and find out. But anyway, it's a lot of fun. So come in your best costume, and we'll have a good time.

Hold on. On that one, we discussed in the past methods of providing clarity on who's expected to be there, who can be there if they are going there. Who's bringing what? How many people can go? There was some discussion last time about the fact that we were limited on how many could go to that event. I was just kind of curious.

There's no limit. We can spread it out. If you're available to come from 5 o'clock to 6 o'clock, that's great.

I don't know if you remember, we have a form. Actually, Commissioner Trim made a beautiful form for all of us that we agreed upon. And then there's kind of like what supplies do we bring? Who's volunteering? Is there a pass necessary? What's the entrance and all of that kind of background information for the event?

Okay, Fred, you're on.

We still do have the event proposal form so we can bring that back at the next meeting for you guys so you can decide who's going to bring what and stuff and we'll have that filled out at the next meeting.

I will tell you if you get there early you're allowed to park in by the areas where we were handing out stuff so it makes it much easier than parking and then trying to get down to the event.

Yes. And we'll double check on the passes to see how many we actually can get. That way you guys can arrange who's going to be there and take what.

Yeah, I think the tough thing is that if we're doing it, because you said, Chair Tarmo, it's 5 to 9 or something?

5 to 10.

Oh, right, so 5 to 10. So it's long, right? And so if you want to just do the second... um shift or anything beyond because i think um church room and i came and it was like seven or something trying to do that second shift it's wild and so i don't know if there's going to be like a little bit more coordinated effort this time of like

the problem is getting in because once it starts the way it looked this time there was you had to go through the line there wasn't a separate vendors uh who who is who's the lead on that event uh that would be the uh the airport restaurant so that would be like riverside airport cafe whose ward is that

Robillard. Okay. Yeah.

That might be like a discussion to have with council member Robillard around, you know, is the, uh, owner of the restaurant. So she's the one that kind of sets all this up. Okay.

Um, so she's our contact person. I feel like if, you know, we're inviting city, uh, representatives that it's it's good to have some feedback around access like have a separate access space or something like that for us so it's different than being um it's being you know a tabling is different than participating you know okay

Then that would be up to Momo to come up with something. Because like I said, the way it seemed to be run last time, if you got there prior to the event, then there were quick ways of getting in. But if you waited until the event started, you were in line, which As you know how long that line was. It was absolutely ridiculous. So it's almost like you have to almost plan to be there for that length of time.

But that's why we need a form and we need very clear communication on when we need to arrive, who we're reporting to, is there a phone number we can call if anything happens, you know, are we expected to bring candy? I mean, last year there was so many, like, is there candy already there? Are we expected to bring candy? What's going to be on the table? Who's bringing all those things? You aren't expected to bring anything. Right, but I mean, just the understanding. The understanding.

Understanding. I think just, I mean, it's a big event. There are very specific things we do need to bring. We need to have how much candy, who's bringing what, who's showing up. And so anytime that we have an event, I think just professionally, right, we want to show up as professional. We want to be able to know what the expectations are, what the action items are, and then who's responsible for what. I think that's just a little bit more professional way for us to handle it.

I believe that, yes. That's why the form is so important.

I have been on a continuation, but a slightly separate topic. I have been in touch with Christiana Jaime from Parks and Rec, who is in charge of adaptive PE and adaptive activities. for the city of Riverside. And she and I have been talking about setting up special games for the city of Riverside next year, probably. Okay. We've filled out a guide, which none of you have, but I have it on my phone. Okay. But I will get it to you. And we are in the process of kind of figuring things out and figuring out what we would like to do I think we've got a fairly clear idea. I think we'd like to have this at a school, a high school preferably. I think we would like to have it, if possible, on a Saturday morning, if possible, like from 9 to 1 or something like that. I think if it's possible, we have a lot of ideas. She has a lot of ideas for games and things that we could do for this special games. She's full of ideas. So I will try my hardest to get you that information so that you have a clearer understanding of what we're going to try to accomplish here in the city of Riverside. And I hope, I will try and make that, I'll try and get that to you as soon as I can.

Chair Tarmo, is that a collaboration between you as an independent resident of the City of Riverside and Parks and Rec, or is that a collaboration between the Commission on Disabilities and Parks and Rec?

Well, it was my idea, and I went to City of Parks, the city, and I'm hoping the commission will be on board with it.

Is that something that the event ad hoc committee is participating in those conversations currently?

Not yet, but we're going, it'll get there.

Okay.

Okay. Updates of conferences, seminars, regional meetings, anybody have any information about that?

I don't know if this is off topic, but on Saturday, I recently met up with a chef from Temecula, Marietta. And he, I mean, next year, I'm going to be putting together a cooking class with my work, Yes to More Life, and with a partnership with Riverside Unified School District. So just think of the name Stephen Trendy Chef Moore.

OK. So this is with your, which group is this with?

Oh, my, my day program, my day program, yes to more life. Okay. And with a partnership with Riverside Unified School District project team. Okay. And this is going to be a cooking lesson where he's going to teach us how to make pizza. And it's gonna already have the location already set up. It's at the American Legion.

Oh, very good.

Yeah.

Anybody else?

Well, I took the time to go to the Ability Conference and spoke to quite a few of the vendors there. And I'm in communication with them. The gentleman that was here tonight from ChildNet was one person. We have others that will be coming in and doing presentations, including the lady that came up with this presentation. project, the whole project of our Ability Fair. She'll be coming in and giving us a presentation as to what her efforts are and where she'd like to see it go. And that will be after January.

It was at La Sierra University? Yeah, that one.

But I understand there's another one from Commissioner Trim, there's going to be an ability fair in Long Beach in January. Do you know the dates on that? Is there a website that we can go to to get tickets or whatever we... Abilities.com. Thank you. i have that little project of mine to uh with the community connection with sean mill and ward 5 on the 27th of this month time is set starting 2 p.m it's going to be an ice cream social but also his community connection, where he brings in various city departments to discuss what's going on in the city with the residents. I was hoping that a couple of people from the commission could be there to just man a table, answer any questions that any of these residents may have regarding disabilities. They're very used to seeing my face, No one else's, you know. We do have the Commission on Aging going to be there also. So if anyone would be available, it would be great. You get ice cream.

What day is that again?

That's a Thursday afternoon.

What's the date?

It's here in Riverside. Oh, the 27th of August. Yeah. It's coming up. All those are coming up.

Is there a way, can we do, can we maybe each email Daisy whatever events that we have coming up and she can forward those on to the group?

Sure.

Okay. Because then that way we have the abilities link for the website and the tickets. And then we also have a roundtable coming up for our autism roundtable through Phoenix. And... your event and then also the the planes and treats so maybe we can just get like a list of all the different things and kind of forward that on i think that would be a good idea okay up an upcoming schedule if you will yeah um especially if you want us to like basically you're asking for someone to come kind of table on the 27th and then in that case back to the square one again which is we need to have a table and i don't even know if we have a skirt or what materials we have or whatever all i need was a skirt i get that from fred yeah but we have tables we have chairs over there at our clubhouse so yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah but i would like to see us do that with everyone We know, you know, you're bringing those things or whatever. Yeah. So you just want participants.

Yeah, I just need warm bodies. Gotcha.

Understood.

So I did find the flyer I was looking for. There is a group in town that is working on... um bringing more inclusive hiring practices to the city of riverside and mentoring and partnering with businesses that are interested in doing so it is the inland empire narrow divergent business roundtable and that's what we that was what leah was just talking about the next meeting is at the riverside chambers of commerce um it's coming up very quickly on thursday august 27th at 10 15 a.m so if you know anybody who owns a business it could be a small or a large business they're looking for anybody that's interested in inclusive hiring and would like information or partnership or mentoring on how to make that happen please encourage them to to go to that meeting and i will make sure that i send daisy and fred the flyer for that please yeah i just i just did

Is there any further business that the Commission would like to discuss?

So you say we're going to get a printout of all these different events we just discussed, so we'll know what we want to help participate on.

Right. When they send them to either Fred or myself, then we'll go ahead and forward them to all of you.

Thank you.

going to the last year senior center tomorrow um we don't know yet so not yet i will reach out tomorrow morning again to the park staff and find out if that's still going to be a possibility okay if you could let the people on that committee know yes thank you so much the next meeting for this commission we have one item

items for future discussion so items for future discussion what would you what are we going to discuss in our next meeting items for future consideration as requested by the members Any comments? In that case, this meeting is concluded. We will again meet on September 17th at 5.30 in the evening. And in the meantime, you all have a wonderful rest of your day.