Development Committee - Regular Meeting

Wonderful, wonderful again. Wonderful seeing you girls here. Thank you very much. Wonderful job. Beautiful, beautiful. Thank you for coming up and doing our pledge. Next, we're going to do roll call. Ava?

Member Jonathan? She didn't practice. Garces? Member Jonathan Garcia is absent. Member Darlene Wadler. Here.

Present. Present.

Thank you.

Member Terlene I'm representing Ward I'm representing Ward 4. Thank you.

Darlene. Terlene Sketti? Present. Present. Member Blair Rasmus? Present. Present. Member Mike Anderson?

I'm here. Thank you.

Member David Reynolds? Here. Here. Thank you, present. Tinka Friend? Here. Present, thank you. Renee Visco? Absent. Member Lisa Price?

Are we all set? Good. Thank you. Next we have well, we need to discuss the topics before we move on. Public comment, (951) 826-9688.

And on Zoom, we have 926966. If you call and want to request or press 6 if you want to make a comment and 9 to unmute. Any public comments on the phones?

Are no callers on line.

Thank you. We'll move on. Next is number two if you've looked over the minutes. Number two, item number two, we need to vote on that. Please remember to click your button to approve the minutes for item number two.

Vice Chair, may I have a motion and a second?

Yes. Tinka. Motioned. Motioned to approve the minutes and a second. Lisa Price seconds.

Thank you. May proceed. Now go ahead and vote. Let's run the numbers. Working on tallying up the numbers.

I had to restart the vote. Yes. I need to clear the vote. Hold on a second. Proceed.

Good? Am I good? Over here. Oh, This is for vice. I'm in the wrong spot for the vice chair.

Motion is unanimous.

Thank you. Thank you for voting. Now we're ready to move on to the discussion calendar. Oh, no, no, no, no. I jumped ahead. Wait a minute. I need to honor you deaf Girl Scouts now. They're going to give a presentation. Take it away. That's item number three.

PowerPoint please. For the Girl Scouts, we have the PowerPoint please? You can proceed. Hello. Hello. We are the Girl Scouts, and we're proud Girl Scouts. And we're here together to lead Girl Scout zero two one eight. Okay. We missed it. We don't have the camera on the girls.

Okay, so we're going to start over because they didn't have the camera on the girls. Hello. Hello. We're the deaf girl scouts and proud girl scouts of troop two eighteen. What makes us great leaders?

The Girl Scout mission is to become great leaders by learning, helping others, working together and leading with kindness and confidence. We learn. We help others. We work together, we lead with kindness and confidence. How our troop has led this year in 2025 and 2026.

Community service projects, participating community events Badge activities Planting trees Cookie business donations to organizations, leading the pledge of allegiance here at the Commission of the Deaf. Promise, on my honor, I will try to serve God and my country, to help people at all times, and to live by the Girl Scout law. I will do my best to be honest and fair, friendly and helpful, considerate considerate and caring, courageous and strong, and responsible for what I say and do. And to respect myself and others, respect authority, use resources wisely, make the world a better place, and be a sister to every Girl Scout.

That

was beautiful. We were getting goosebumps. One day in the future, you ladies will be up here where we are sitting now. In our future, you're gonna be the future of Riverside when you grow up. You're gonna be up here, of the commissioners. And I look forward to seeing you up here. I cannot stay young and continue this. I'm gonna get older, and I wanna be on that side watching you guys up here. So thank you so much for coming. Let's give them a round of applause.

Okay. We're going to move on on discussion calendar, which is item number four and five. We're going to start with item number four, work plan. I understand Blair has something to propose. She can go ahead.

Hello. So for our work plan, it's still developing. I think we should hold off till next month to put it on next month's meeting. So we're going to move it on to next month's meeting. Thank you, Blair. Thank you. Are we good? We're going to move it to a future agenda item. Item number five. Discuss what we had at last month's meeting.

If anybody wants to make a motion to open or close it. Okay, David? I move to close the discussion and vote. On what? David, Commissioner David Reynolds has made a motion on number five to close it and vote.

What are we voting on?

Anybody seconding? I need to know what the motion is. To close the discussion and to vote.

To vote what though? To vote that you

vote What is the motion?

Item number five from last month, the discussion to observe item number five?

Are you proposing for or against the discussion?

David's going to repeat what he had to say. So yes, I move to vote against that motion to clarify. So David Reynolds is making a motion on item number five on the agenda voting against it. Anybody second?

Public comment.

Because it is on discussion, we need to open up the lines for public comment in case a member from the public wants to speak.

That's right. Okay. So we have to repeat that. Okay. So we'll open it for public comment for item number five. So if you can do the phone call and Zoom recording, the automated recording. Or do we have any callers or anybody on Zoom?

Let's check. There's no hands raised.

None? Okay.

You could close it now. You could close public comment.

Okay, so now we're gonna close public comment and

You could speak, yes.

Last month we got this sample letter. It was very long and lengthy, so it was really difficult to make any kind of decision since we hadn't had an opportunity really to read it. I did read it, and while I'm not sure that this is the time just before, you know, fiscal year twenty six, twenty twenty seven to be asking for this, I thought there was a lot of good ideas in here that I thought our this body could look at in-depth and see if we wanted to incorporate some of this or ask our city to incorporate some of this. I saw it more as a discussion for us to work on or to delve into at a greater depth. Because I do think there's some good ideas in there.

Thank you, Tinka. I can add two things to that. I'm very concerned because this letterhead, I just feel like, you know, we you know, so the person who brought this up to the city of Riverside is what I just have some concerns about the format itself. The ideas within the letter has already been taken care of. We've already had a meeting with the city manager a cup last week or two weeks ago, similar things that are on this letter.

So most of this has already from our concerns that have been brought up, We've already brought it to their table. So we're moving already moving forward with some of this. And the commission of disabilities, they also have concerns. They're not comfortable with it, so that, is to add to, your comments, Tinka and David. Also, there's concern with concern with, not a very appropriate approach or process.

We don't want, it's not representing the deaf community, and, it's more of an individual approach. And I did have a good discussion with a disability group, and they have concerns. And so we are we have reason to believe that we should vote against it. Strongly believe.

I was recommendation that we have also had a discussion about a Deaf Cultural Center. And it seems like a large ask to ask for two separate departments with staffing from a budgetary standpoint. I would recommend prioritizing which of those two are more important and leading with one of those efforts first, while maybe the other idea, you work on it in the background. But having been here, I know that the cultural center is a priority for you. My assumption would be that you would want to press forward with that first.

Both would require staff, budget, and you're right, the next fiscal year starts in less than ninety days. Thank you.

Thank you. Are we go go ahead. I'd like to thank the community for your ideas. This is a good sample for our community on how we can use the commission of the deaf, right, to use us to get together, have meetings, come to the meetings, and communicate with us so we can work with other commissions as well to have other proposals. Like, right now, we have a priority.

We're not ignoring this. We do have to follow a process. There's a process with procedures and policies, and we just wanna make sure that the deaf community works with us and understands that we have a procedure to follow. So we have Blair. And from our recent meeting with Ward 3 council person Steven Robillard, We had a good discussion on how the procedure should look between the city people, the staff, the commissioners.

There's things that have come up that are individual requests that they keep bringing to their attention, saying, oh, we represent this community and this community, and we wanna be a spokesperson. So it's a little unclear. So we wanna build more of a relationship, more rapport, collaboration. Like what some of the commissioners have mentioned, it's important to you for everyone to come to these meetings, talk with us, make public comments so we can build bridges to learn from each other and also be able to go to the city staff who works in the city who can also lead to this commission, and we can bring that to the community and continue to work together, not jump ahead and because one person speaks you know, not to think that one person speaks for everyone. Any more to discuss?

I think we can go ahead and vote. We can vote, right? So we can vote for against

Okay. So the motion I just want a clarification on the motion is to not establish an office at this time.

Right.

What was the recommendation in the report?

Right. Not to send it. Right. Okay. Right. It's to not send the letter. Okay. Not send a letter.

Motion is to not send a letter. And then if I could repeat again, motion maker and the seconder.

Reynolds? Teri Ling. Teri Ling seconded. Okay.

Okay. Now you may vote. Please vote.

You can vote. Oh, and David. So we're yeah. We're voting against sending the notice out. To clarify, should we say yes if we don't wanna send it? Right? Okay. You are in agreement. We always get confused with the language because it's like, don't like, you don't mind. Mine is Meaning Yes. Okay. So just a little confusing. So we need to say, we're voting yes to not send the letter.

Motion is unanimous. Thank

you.

Thank you, thank you. That's a good discussion. Maybe one day if I see him, we can talk about how we can discuss this for the future and how to move forward with this. Item number six, the ad hoc committee. Ad hoc committee.

So I realized there's no outreach because one of the ad hoc outreach, I believe k. We're gonna go back. So ad hoc outreach, one of them is Blair who's planning to do a PowerPoint and put that together for us to get it ready for the National Association of the Deaf Conference. So that's coming up in June. So we're gonna share that in June.

So we can all look at that in June and get it approved. Approve the power Point. I think it's best if once we get the Power Point, we're gonna send it to Renee now because it gives them time to communicate to get to get approval from the communication department. Right? Yes. Right. Okay. Are you okay with that? Alright. So we can do that.

Thank you. And another ad hoc committee is oh, yes. I received an email. You're all welcome. Renee Visco and myself, Mike Anderson, are going to May 20.

The reason why we changed it is because it's a deaf well, we changed it to deaf commission. So it's on the agenda. So that's gonna be on May 20, you know, when, we have the wellness and safety committee. So I will send that to all of you. Renee agreed that we're gonna have everyone included. So do we have to make a list to send to the PowerPoint or just do a two two minute presentation? Which is it?

It's on the agenda for discussion. Yeah. It's on the agenda for discussion.

I believe They can

It's on oh, sorry. The item to consider the name change is on the agenda for discussion. You are welcome to make public comment.

Right. But so we like we're we're very visual. So should we send the PowerPoint for May 20 meeting so they can see it a lot more so they it's clear. Should we send that soon? It's coming up quick.

We wrote the report. Did we one one second. Did we include PowerPoint? Tell them they could go ahead and send it. Yes. You could send a PowerPoint. It's going to

be, like, two slides just to explain why we're changing the name, you know, one, two slides. Do you agree? Yeah. So we're gonna

I will join you also. I I put it on my schedule so I can come down. That way, I can be of assistance. If there's any additional questions or background, we can kind of work

we can Sure.

You can present, and then I'll be there to support.

Great. Thank you. I'm gonna go back to what this meeting had discussed about changing the name to dev commission, and I'll share that with all of you, and then we're gonna send it we'll send you the slides for May 20. I realize that's next week. Wow. Okay. Thank you. I just realized, May 20. It's at 01:00? Yes. Okay. 01:00. Here. Right. Thank you.

I'll send it I'll share it with all of you. I think for ad hoc, that's it. Oh, yes. There's, the disc we discussed so DefCommission, once that's finalized, we're hoping to, you know, make it fast, the transition, so we can have it done in time for July for the National Association of the Deaf Conference. So we'd like to get it all moving.

All good. Now we can move on to number seven, item number seven.

Oh, no. The only update I was going to give was about that meeting. And Eva has already arranged for interpreters, and I was gonna let you know that I would be there if you needed help presenting. So that is next Wednesday here at one p. M.

Yes.

It's Safety, Wellness, and Youth Committee.

Yes, I just mentioned safety, the committee, it's a committee. Anything else on that?

Councilmember Perry sits on that committee.

Perry?

Yes, Jim Perry.

What are you talking what's that? Let's see. Wellness Safety Committee. Jim, Jim Perry, he's facilitating that. Or is it Terry?

What was his name again?

It's Safety, Wellness, and Youth Committee. And the chair is council member Jim Perry, and it is also Chuck Conder and Sean Mill also sit as members. Ward

6. Yes. Yes. Anything else?

No. Nothing else?

Staffing? Okay. All righty. Thank you. Now, the cameras and all, can the commissioners related to this commission, Terry Lean? Oh my gosh, I can't say your name. I haven't seen you for a long time. Awesome. Announcements. Hello.

I'll wait a moment. Okay, perfect. Hello there. Clarissa would love to have a meeting and meet with everyone in Ward 2. People in Ward 2. Deaf people in Ward 2. Deaf, hard of hearing, deaf blind, any and all. People who sign Love ASL, everyone's welcome. It's a meet and greet for coffee sometime early in June, maybe the first week in June. And I will let you all know, I'll follow-up with announcement on where.

It's at DRC on DRC's website, the Riverside DRC. So you can monitor that website to see when and where that gathering is coming up. Thank you. Okay. Award three.

The commissioners went to recently here. We had the town hall and our council people were there. And we it was a very productive meeting last month. And we touched base and saw how everyone was doing. It was nice to honor the Vice Chair of the Commission on Disabilities.

It was really nice to meet some faces, you know, put the names to the faces. One line town hall is awesome. And then I'll explain more about that. Mike Anderson will explain more about that. No comments about Ward 4.

Announcements? Lisa? No, I don't have anything. Lisa, do you want to comment about Saturday? That's important.

Oh, yes, yes, yes. Good evening. Yes, this coming Saturday, Riverside University Mental Health Behavioral Systems and Wellness is they're going to have 23 booths and the cute little train that goes around in different booths and activities. And there'll be a morning presentation virtual also on mental health and then afternoon Stop Bleeding seminar. Staff from Cody's there.

It'll be wonderful. I'm going to let Mike go ahead and speak about that proud moment. Thank you, everyone. The town hall. Thank you, Lisa.

Let's save the town hall for now. Now I want all of you wow, Gallaudet University, there's a consultant, a woman by the name of Meredith that came. And she came because on Mother's Day, there were six of us at the last minute. And, you know, I remember at Gallaudet University, you know, the first four tests. Astronauts would test.

Do you remember where they were testing? The first four. And then there were interviews with the deaf about the G force. And they were just fine. They spinal meningitis, they learned it was spinal meningitis.

And so it was a raw film and it was 11 of those from Gallaudet, from Florida, New York, from all over. And they tested them. They tested them over and over and it was amazing. And then in future years, they think that NASA will be able to test with these 11 DEF. And it was just amazing information, that film.

And so that will be coming next year. Now do you remember yes, it's a documentary. Remember that I proposed about outreach for having a booth for the City of Riverside Fair. What's it called?

It's our City Safety and Wellness Fair. It's actually put on by the HR department. So I asked them to invite you to the There

you go. Yes, Right, right, right, right. Yes, they just recently told me. So it's HR and DCR, the Deaf Community of Riverside DCR. We're going to have booths and they'll be all different displays and the booths will be hopefully June 3. We'll have our name changed by then. We will you know, did you know that? You remember those things? Did you know that? Like the 11 astronauts.

Yeah, that's a new thing. And, you know, so did you know that? That's a theme. And don't reveal it, you know, have people curious and then wait until September, the Deaf Awareness Month and at the city hall booths, you know, and things that deaf people have created, inventions, things like that. So yeah, you'll get an email and try to show up. I think it starts at ten to two, correct?

Yes, it's on June 3, which is a Wednesday, from ten a. M. To one p. M. And it gets quite a from bit of foot city employees and sometimes folks that are just out in the area will also come through right in the City Hall Breezeway area. So right here out front.

Thank you. Thank you, thank you. Now We will be getting emails out about that. Now, Renee, you know, we need to mention that we need to ask permission. Code workers. One's in IT anyway, Renee will ask permission first. And if we can use your name, what department you're in. And oh, you're a CODA. You're deaf. You're a CODA.

You're going to follow-up with that, right? Those employees? Yes. Okay. Okay, perfect. Thank you. I will email you. I know this is a lot. Now also, last week, just recently, finally, the city manager, the manager's department, the city manager's department. Mike Fertel, you know he's going to stay? He had planned to transfer but he's going to stay. No, he's staying. He's staying. Yahoo! Yay!

I know. I know. She'll be happy. The city manager's department, they called a meeting and all the directors were there. You were there, the director of this, director of that.

Oh, Parks and Rec. Everyone was there. An interpreter, the system. We talked about proposals, proposals, Deaf Commission. And it wasn't easy. It was like four months' worth of trying to get this all together and finally. So I wanted to thank them for this. It was an hour and a half. You know, we discussed and followed up on all these items and learned so much. So it will happen again in the future. We'll have another one in the future. It was really good. I was there, Renee was there and Barbie.

I was going to recommend that maybe we try to meet that way quarterly or every six months. I think it's a good idea. Yes. We were able to cover a lot of topics having everybody in the room. It was housing and homeless services, myself, marketing, a representative from the city manager's office, three representatives from Mike Anderson's deaf community group.

And it was a great meeting. Parker and Park and I forgot that also Park and Rec were there, so we were able the two deputy directors attended. So we had a lot of it was a fruitful discussion, and I think we should do it more often. So I will work on coordinating that.

Yes. What's behind this, you know, most departments, they're direct like HR, for example. They have their own specialties. But the deaf, we're all it's all. We're the specialty for everything.

And so with her assistance, you know, it's like, why not the deaf? Yeah. So ideas. Now Megan, Megan She wrote that. And it's once or twice a year and we can add a bunch of things to that list. I didn't realize that. Now, lastly, my part, the town hall. Wow, The town hall. Terri Lean Singh. Oh, the town hall.

Wow. It took me twenty five hours of communication, communicating with each individual, senators, assemblymen, Riverside County supervisor, three city council people. I communicated and spoke with all of these people. Approve, approve, slides and all that. And it worked out really nice.

They all had an opportunity to see what the city of Riverside has been doing, what the Commission of the Deaf has been doing. There's the reports. They were streaming right in front of them. And then they had their own opportunity to Jose Medina was there. He gave a short presentation.

The state assemblyman Castillo, he was there, had a short presentation as well. State Sabrina, Senator Sabrina, the assistant was there. City Council video? Sean Hill, civil rights. Sabrina Gonzalez was there.

She was speaking. Did I miss anyone? Oh, the president. Finish with that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sean Mill, thank you. Not Hill, Mill. Thank you. Thanks for that correction. And Community Connections.

Superintendent of the school for the deaf had NCSDR, California agency for the deaf, president gave a speech. Each one said their words. They all took their turn and it was really nice. Barbie, Barbie Gomez was there, the Deaf Community of Riverside president. And she said a few words.

COTD. Blair gave her a few words as well. Yes, it was very nice, very nicely done. The audience, oh, they were really enthralled with all of the information. They just were learning so many new things.

And there was mention of a new building, a new deaf community of Riverside. We'll have a focus group, establish a focus group. A deaf architect will come in and put his ideas in and understand that the budget, you know, has to be processed as well. That's a process. Was a great sharing of ideas.

And the city of Riverside, as you Castillo, yes, yesterday. And Riverside Public Library, you know, where's the deaf community? The reciprocal helping out of each other. Yes, yes, right. That was mentioned. Zip books. Riverside Art Museum now has four deaf artists on display. Museum of Riverside is helping to renovate and provide deaf displays. And let's see, what else, what else, what else, what else? Oh, there's so much.

There were so many different departments, city departments. And lastly, thank you for reminding me. Oh, yes?

I was gonna ask you, Mike, to confirm the name of the meeting that you're describing for the minutes.

Oh, it was the Deaf Community Town Hall.

Oh, okay. Sorry.

Are you good now? Okay. Do you want me to go back or

We heard it all.

We're good. Right. So save for last, how many Deaf organizations and services are in Riverside proper? Sixteen, twenty, 37. There are 37 different organizations, deaf related organizations. And Darlene is saying, I'm shocked. And Blair is saying, I have a question. Can I ask a question? Yeah. It's related to last night.

Oh, Blair. Okay. Waiting for the camera. There we go. Okay, this is Blair. A question about last night. People from Parks and Rec, they work out summer concerts in the park, the summer concerts in the park. And they showed me their flyers. And they created an interpreter logo on there and it looks right. They asked me if it looked right because they're developing an interpreter logo and asked if they could use ours.

And I said, oh, no, that's the Commission's. But this is for citywide. So I missed that message. I think they have to contact you about that.

Who were you working with from Parks and Rec, Blair? Was it Noemi?

Three women. A superintendent I always communicate with Vanessa Okay, to make it I'll follow-up. And there were three women, Blair Sain. Yeah, there's superintendent. Yes, okay. So our question is that, you know, we've already created a Riverside logo for interpreting. It's already been approved and all. We're going to use that.

Is that right? Is that Yeah, that's my understanding.

Is that right?

Yeah, I don't see why they can't use that logo. So I will get it to them.

I hope there's not a misunderstanding. So Vanessa, okay, okay, that's okay with you? All right, good. So I didn't have a chance to, you know, at the end, the survey, the survey, there were like five questions on there. I didn't have a chance to look at it. I was so worn out. It was unbelievable. And so I just wanted to check with you on the website there, the DCR website that has the PowerPoint, the videos, surveys, everything will be on there soon, okay? All right? Anything else? Part is finished now. Shall we go on to six?

No, no. I just wanted to say that I thought the presentation from the Girl Scouts was so lovely. It literally brought me to tears. So thank you, Blair, for organizing that. It was beautiful.

Uh-huh, sure. Of course, you're welcome, you're welcome. I think we can ask them back again. Maybe every three months or so. How's that? Oh, yeah, yeah. Good idea, good idea.

What about having them come for July? The July 4 month, maybe they can do something or if it needs to be later to give them time because it's not too far off, the two hundred and fiftieth celebration. I think that would be really neat.

Oh, we will have events. There will be events for fourth of July event or

No, I'm just saying for our meeting in the month of July, maybe it would be nice to have them do something patriotic or any, you know, I like the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary idea. Maybe if you talk to them, Blair, they can come up with something. I think that would be nice to have invite them back to this meeting.

Mrs. Blair. One thing to consider is that we have to heavily focus on the meetings at the end of the year. We have some girls that live And so it's a residential school. But it doesn't matter. Whoever can come, if you let me know in advance, if there's some activities, we can put it on our schedule for the summer possibly. Yeah. But when we start the new school year, it might be a little easier

Whatever is

when they're in session.

Whatever is the best for them and the most convenient. I thought it was really great to have them. I can't wait to show the mayor. When Yes,

yes. Yay. Now, this is Mike. Back to the young girls. At the town hall yesterday, they had the Junior National Agency for the Deaf Association for the Deaf. And they should come and fill the seats and fill out the applications and all but I'm seeing not many youth coming. So I'm hoping to see more soon. More pop up soon. Anything else? Any more?

Any more? Okay, boom, boom. Meeting adjourned at 06:34. And thank you. You for your

first time with us. Yay. Congratulations. Thank

you all.