Community Relations Commission - Regular Meeting

We can go ahead and get started. Do we want to start with a roll call?

Commissioner

McCall? Present.

Thank you. The first order of business for our community relations Commission meeting tonight is to accept the journal of proceedings for the Community Relations Commission meeting held on 01/17/2026. So if someone would like to make a motion.

Motion to accept.

Second. Second.

We have a motion and a second. Any discussion related to the January 17 proceedings? All in favor of approval say aye.

Any

opposed? That journal has been approved. The next line on our agenda is related to the journal of proceedings for the meeting held on 02/12/2026. Same. We'll take a motion to approve.

I motion.

We have a motion. Do we have a second? Second. We have a motion and a second. Is there any discussion related to February 12? And I will ask all in favor? Aye. Any opposed? That journal of proceedings has been approved as well. We'll move next to communications. Going to start by welcoming both of our new Commissioners, Commissioner Johnson and Commissioner Shanklin. Thank you for joining us. Welcome to the Commission. You will find that this group likes to really engage with our community and solve things that we're hearing from them. So welcome.

If you have any questions, a lot of us have been serving since the beginning of the commission, so feel free to reach out, ask questions. We're here to support you all and hear from you what your passions are as well related to serving the city. Thank you for joining us. The next thing to mention, those of us that were here last month, we know that the mayor has set aside time for us to meet with him should we want to. The open door meeting hours for this month are March 27 from 10:30 to noon.

So if anyone wants to meet with him, those are his open door hours. I would imagine we still would need to reach out to Haley to get so if you're interested, reach out to his assistant to get on his schedule for that time. Any questions related to either one of those communications?

Yeah, just to clarify, there's only a certain number that he can meet with at one time. Is that correct?

That is correct. Now that we are fully staffed, we can have up to three. Cause you can't have the majority of a quorum. So now that we're at eleven, we could have three.

Yeah. Thank you.

Yeah. I'm I'm on the calendar for 10:30 that day. So I'm already in.

Just a reminder commissioners, if you're going to speak, pull the mic down in front of

you just so that our captioning can pick

it up for the folks that are listening. Will now move to our public speakers. First is Steve Della.

Is this on? Yes.

It is.

Initially when I signed up, I was just going to promote the flyer that you have on your desk. But I happened to watch the city council meeting on March 2. Alderman And Bell gave a very passionate request that this committee review the cameras in that situation. And I would have wholeheartedly supported that. And I think it would have been a wonderful idea.

But my understanding is that's not going to happen. I made some notes about what I wanted to say to this committee. And it's just that your investigations have been comprehensive, thoughtful. You have all been engaged. You're very concerned about what you discuss.

And you're insightful. And I think this is just a fantastic group. And I hope you get to review some other sticky situations. Now, I'm with Eliminate Racism eight fifteen. And we are bringing David Cooper, who is the former police chief of Madison, and after he retired from that became an Episcopal priest.

He has agreed to come. All of our events will be at the Nordloff Center and 06:00 Wednesday, March 25, and then 10:00 Thursday, March 26 in the Sullivan Theater. He is meeting privately with law enforcement on Wednesday evening. And then immediately after that, we'll have his presentation. So that should be fun.

And then on Thursday morning, he'll be meeting privately with community leaders. And we were very careful not to have a quorum of anybody invited. So it should not be a problem. I would love it if all of you could attend. Either one it's going to be basically the same presentation both times. It won't be one followed by a more advanced one. So I appreciate the time. Thank you.

Thank you. I

do have one quick question. Is that going to be recorded?

Good question. I'll see if it can be done.

That would be fantastic.

And I assume the meetings with the mayor are not open since you they're in?

Those meetings, it's open office hours for the commission, the commissioners.

That's what I assume.

Thank you.

Our

next speaker is Stephen McMaster.

Hello, hello. My name is Stephen McMaster. Most of you folks know me, but for the newer folks, hi. I'm not sure if I look familiar. If you come to anything in the city of Rockford, I might, as the other Steve mentioned.

Not this past Monday, but the Monday before that was a rather contentious city council meeting. A lot of the conversation was surrounding the flock AI surveillance cameras, you know, whatever term you want to use for the license plate plus readers that we have. And it became pretty clear that there were a lot of community members that were very against the concept of flock itself. Now there were several people holding up signs. We also filled this entire room, which as you see normally that does not happen.

And there were interjections from the audience, shall we say, that members of city council and mayor and city staff really didn't appreciate. They don't like to be interrupted, just as you folks, I'm sure, would not like to be interrupted during your proceedings. The reason why there was such a large public response, including for the record several members of the community being escorted out by police officers. This isn't just like a little thing where people were kind of upset. No, people really wanted their voice heard.

And they didn't feel like they had an opportunity ever to address anybody within the government regarding this situation. As Steve mentioned, Tamir Bell offered to send this situation to the Community Relations Commission to have you guys interact with members of the community and whatnot and possibly have some more back and forth prior to a vote. Then he voted to approve the flock cameras. So I don't quite understand how that process worked. But one thing I want to bring back to, a couple months ago you guys had some breakout sessions at the fire department.

That was a great opportunity to really have some in-depth discussion about like things that this commission wants to look at and things that the community is passionate about. I thought that was some great conversation. If anybody noticed towards the end somebody offered a question of trying to ask the mayor how much he cares about the Community Relations Commission. And I was feeling cheeky and I held up a big goose egg. You know, he does care to some extent.

But to defend my goose egg, that city council vote that was super contentious and the community very, very much wanted their voice heard, the offer was to send it to this commission. To have this commission interact with the community. That vote went seven to seven. And the mayor chose to not vote. The mayor could have voted and broken that seven to seven tie.

But he chose to not vote. He didn't even vote no. He just tried to quietly pretend that this commission doesn't exist, that the voice of the people doesn't need to be heard, that he doesn't have any power in this situation. But very, very much, if you have office hours, if you have the opportunity to ask him, asking him directly why this commission wasn't even given the opportunity at his he had the final vote. He could have made that call.

And instead he chose not to. I think my goose egg is pretty accurate. I think this commission is viewed much more as a good political move rather than a body that can actually impact change. I want to see that change. I want to see this community, this commission, these folks to have more say and more power in our government. I just don't quite know how to have that happen. My name and face has started to garner a larger reaction from the city of Rockford. And I don't know how long I can make these statements. I was told by the chief of police that I'm lucky I haven't been banned for a year, that she has done that to people before. So I sincerely hope that doesn't happen to me.

Please try. Don't really know what to do. I know there's a lot of angry people out there. I know they have thoughts when it comes to flock. Everybody's response is, well we have a baseball bat. We can fix this problem. That's not the right answer. The right answer is to have community engagement. Gina Meeks brought up the data centers during that conversation. She brought up the fact that she was going to have a listening session that just occurred.

It was a fantastic opportunity. It really felt like the constituents were able to actually talk, actually voice their concerns, and not a single person was disruptive at that entire event. Nobody caused any issues because they felt like they were heard. And that's really vitally important to ensuring that the government is both transparent and honest. So I plead with you to try to get anything you can done. Thank you very much, sincerely.

Thank you. Thank you. All

right. We will now move on to unfinished business. The first thing on that piece of the agenda is the Community Relations Commission ordinance revisions. Those of us that were at the strategic planning meeting, you all know that one of the goals that we had was taking a look at our ordinance and making some changes related to the ordinance. Commissioner Krutup and I were able to kind of both take a look at it and have some ideas on what we would like to see changed in the ordinance.

So we'll just kind of go over you'll see in the packet there is one form that has the full ordinance as it is, and then you'll see under that some revisions. Highlighted in yellow are the things that we both kind of talked through, and those of us that were in the group together chatted about making changes to. So under Section eleven-forty one, we added specific language that says, At least one member of the commission shall be between the ages of 18 and 24 at the time of appointment to ensure youth perspectives are represented in the work of the commission. So we all talked about the fact that all of us come from a number of different spaces in our community. One of the things that feels like from listening to our audience and then when we engage is we need some of that younger perspective of our city.

So we know that it's mentioned. If you look in F, age is mentioned. We wanted to specifically call out though that someone should be appointed in that youth age group. So and then in the next section, eleven-forty two, we also talked about in our strategic planning meeting other opportunities for us to engage with the youth. So we left this one a little bit more open.

Should there be other opportunities outside of appointing that person. So in addition to the appointed membership, the commission may support youth advisory and mentorship opportunities that allow young residents to learn from and contribute to the work of the commission. You know, one of the examples that we threw out when I had the strategic planning meeting was that we could all have someone who was kind of sitting with us at the desk and we're mentoring them. I think if we decide to do that, we need to explore what does that look like. We probably need to engage city leadership to see what that looks like from their perspective.

The last thing that we changed, it's a little bit different than what we had originally chatted about when we did our strategic planning. If you all remember, we talked about doing reports to the mayor every six months. In thinking that through, I think that that is a fine option, right? But also, maybe we need to have some more regular conversation with him. So what we wrote and this can change, none of this is in stone what we wrote is that the Community Relations Commission shall submit a quarterly report to the mayor and city council considering concerning its activities and enforcement of the chapter, including recommendations.

Upon receipt of and review of the report, the mayor will disseminate it to the city council and relevant members of city administration. If you all remember, what was happening before is we were submitting it to the mayor. It didn't specifically call out that it should go to city council. So we're specifically saying, Mayor, once you receive it, it goes to city council, it goes to relevant city administration, and it's quarterly. The idea being that engages him and the administration more regularly with what we're working on. Jiria, is there anything else that you wanted to

No, I

believe we did everything that we have in the administration.

Commissioners, any questions, thoughts, concerns?

Yeah, I just have a question. I think these proposed changes are all very, very good. In regards to the last one, I just have a concern that this doesn't fall just to the chairman because that's the heavy load. A quarterly report is a heavy load if he or she's doing it in isolation. So I presume that you chatted about that and tried to figure out what that might look like. I realize it doesn't fall the category of changes and more like procedural things beneath that. Does it

I think you bring up a really good point that, you know, if we take that step, we will need to look at how are we reporting. Because the yearly report largely does fall towards the chair. Obviously, over the years, people have provided feedback. But we will need to really look at how do we communicate that to him. Maybe one of our meetings each quarter is specific to, Okay, what are the things that we're putting in the report? Let's dot point all of those things out. And then if the chairman then has to put it together, it's not just the chairman putting it together.

And I think one of the reasons why we were looking at it to be quarterly was because yearly, we went through so much. And to remember all of that, we all know that we could be missing something. So going that route I think will be much better than waiting a whole year to put everything together.

Any other thoughts? We do not need to vote on this item tonight. This is something that you all can take with you and review. I think we'd probably put it on a future

Just a thought. With a quarterly reporting, maybe we do something where it's more structured. So maybe, obviously, three months and a quarter each, we report out on each meeting kind of basic a quick summary, any action items that were taken or completed at those meetings, and then ending with any formal recommendations or conclusions from that specific quarter. So it's the same stuff that you're reporting on every single quarter, same layout or format. That might make it a little bit easier to compile that report and not be too much of a burden on whoever is doing that.

We could even potentially look at a subcommittee or something that could do that. But I think if we structure it with maybe there's like three areas that we're reporting in, a summary, and action items and recommendations might be a good way to formulate that so it's easier to do. Just a thought.

Thank you.

With no other questions or concerns, we will just allow you to review it. If there's other feedback, please send it to me, email me, other thoughts that you have. We did not make changes to there there are things here that we didn't touch. Right? That doesn't mean that we can't. If there are things that as you review the ordinance, we try to stay focused on the things that we talked about in the strategic planning. But if there are other things in the ordinance that you want to see us change, highlight those things, send those to me, and we can bring it back for conversation.

Can I add just one thing? So something maybe that if we are going to be spending the time reviewing this ordinance, I watched I wasn't able to come to the city council meeting last time, but I was watching most of it online. And it does beg the question, what is this commission sort of empowered to do on behalf of counsel, in conjunction with counsel, etcetera, etcetera? And in discussing the recommendation that the commission review the FLAC issue, they had to keep going to defer to the city law director, which I found super interesting. Also, I thought it really highlighted where are our boundaries?

We're appointed, not elected, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. So I think as was said at the beginning of our meeting, we're a bunch of very engaged folks and we would like to affect change as much as we can. It would be helpful, I feel like, to have a little bit more of a concrete understanding of how we can operationalize that.

Agree. I think to your point, I think that is addressed in section eleven-forty three, but it probably needs to be more specific because so if you look at number seven in that section, it talks about advising and consulting the mayor and city council. What does that mean?

And if

that's there, do they know it's there? Do they know that we are here to serve in an advisory role?

Well, and since me and you have been here, they've had a whole new they've elected several since me and you have been on the commission. A lot has changed since this was rolled

out. Yes.

So again, review that over the next month. Come back with ideas. I really like the idea of kind of fleshing out how do we communicate effectively to counsel. We want to be here. We want you to send us things. So if there are ways that we can do that, let's make that happen. The next thing on our agenda is the action plan review. I'm gonna have Mikayla kind of lead us through that.

So just kind of as we work through this, this is a living, breathing document, as we've talked about. April is pretty full. I'm going to be moving down the director update from Health and Human Services. That's a pending item that has not been confirmed yet because we have so much on the agenda for April. So moving that down for us, but everything else is kind of standing.

But just thinking about fleshing out these future months and what it is that we're wanting to do as a commission and getting your guys' ideas. I know we briefly discussed it at the last meeting. And I was wondering if any of you had thought about it over the last month and some items that you would like to see added to this agenda as we try to move forward with making some actionable items. One of the things I was thinking about we have a workforce development roundtable scheduled for June. As of right now, I know Commissioners Bravo and Crudup are leading that one.

There's some housing. We have had some discussions on that as well. But what types of things do we need to add to this action plan to make these items happen this year? With adding a youth participant, do we need to start engaging some youth? Should we host a listening session? Should it be during one of our regularly scheduled meetings? Is this going to be something off-site? What do those look like? When the mayor was here, he mentioned holding listening sessions outside of city hall. So have

any

of you have any ideas or suggestions to be able to start adding some items to this action plan?

I do. Yes. Commissioner Bravo and I, as we delve into this affordable housing issue, which is a huge issue, we have uncovered and I will give a report at the end quite a few things that require more insight and discussion and knowledge that we need to have, just from meetings we've had with people here in the city. There are things that are being done, things that can't be done, things that should be done, things that we hope to be doing, all of those categories that I think as we develop more information on the subject, we should be bringing people in. And we can filter that up that these would be good people from the city themselves, as well as the community, to speak to this issue.

So are you thinking, is this a panel discussion? Are there additional just speakers that you're wanting to bring in?

There'll be additional speakers on specific subjects

that

we can filter up as we develop our knowledge base and plan. I think that that we have in our action plan I mean, that's just the one that I'm involved in. But anything that we have in our action plan, think probably is going to involve steps down the road that we need to filter in and work it.

Absolutely. So if there's anybody that you would like to have come and speak, if you want to schedule them and just let me know that, hey, I've confirmed them for June. I've confirmed them for August or May or whatever the case may be. And then we can add them to the action plan. I know for April, I have confirmed our housing program manager to come in and provide an update of the different types of programs that we have going on.

And those are using our CDBG and HOME funds, a lot of HUD funded things. It's affordable housing. It's those types of developments that they're working on. They're working with income eligible folks to make repairs to their home and bring things up to code, things of that nature. So that is an update that we will get in April, which I think will kind of help us to figure out, Okay, where do we need to go from here? What is the city already doing? And then what items do we need to add to your point?

I was thinking also, we have two new commissioners to let them have an opportunity to look it over and see what their ideas may be, their fresh eyes. So, give them opportunity to bring something to us also for the upcoming months. And I'll talk to the two of them, too, just of bring them up to date of what we've been working on. Sure.

That would be great. Thank you.

I have a question. So Commissioner Bravo and I are the number one under the Alderman question update. In February, we passed along some just draft questions for the Alderman. And at that time I was just reviewing my email at that time, it was sort of the consensus that it would be better for the mayor to reintroduce

the

CRC to the city council before the alderman got some draft questions from us. What's the status of that?

Let me follow-up with the mayor on that. We had chatted after the last commission. And I know that that's where the office hours and we talked about some of the things. Let me double check and see if he's made that introduction or not and I'll let you know. Okay.

Thank you.

Anything else related to the action plan? We will now move to commissioners reports for our new commissioners. This is a space to really share what you're hearing in the community, what's going on in the spaces that you have influence. We'll just kind of go around the folks here and allow folks to share. You do not have to. If there's something that you don't want to, that's okay. You can pass as well. But it's an opportunity for all of us to share. We can start with sure.

I'll start since I already said I had one. On the affordable housing front, what we're discovering, we know that this is a very complex issue. Commissioner Bravo and I had a great meeting just this morning with Sarah Lees from the construction development department and Rudy Marino, who approves all of the plans and things for the building department here. And we learned in that little meeting that there's already quite a great deal being done by the city in the direction of affordable housing. We also learned some of the stumbling blocks which will be reported on as far as getting developers interested in developing affordable housing in Rockford.

They can make more money in Boone County and Janesville and places, so they don't necessarily want to look here. So there are several steps being taken, but steps that need to be taken. And as a community relations commission, one of the things that came up several times was simple public awareness. So I think one of the things that we want to develop in our study of the affordable housing is how can we and what should we make more publicly aware. And I see that that's also highlighted that here.

Number 6.6 assists city departments in establishing and maintaining good community relations and to serve all segments of the community. Well, we need to probably, as far as affordable housing is, we need to get on board with that ourselves. So there will be more coming next month when we formalize more of a report. But a lot to be done there.

I don't have a report. But then just to piggyback off of some of the things that we spoke on tonight, do you and we can all maybe think about this. Is there three areas that we maybe need me and Commissioner Bravo kind of talked about this. We have array of things that are here. Is there something that we really need to focus on first?

Because we all have we can prepare a meal, but all the meals are not going to be the same. And then we can be all over the place. Is there a way that we maybe should come together and maybe really think of something that's going to be impactful that we know that we'll be able to flush it out instead of us just doing so many things. I think that we might need to just focus on a few things instead of array of things. And I think I've even spoken to Mikayla about that, too. Because we'll be all over the place. And by the end of the year, we'll be pedaling backwards just to see what we did do.

I know I wasn't here last month, I haven't been part of the conversations. But my concern is like when there's an issue that comes up, I remember a developer saying that they were not getting the permits, you know, in time or for the production of the housing and that we never circle back of what happened, that that get cleared up. And we're getting a lot of information, but that's not the point of this commission. We have to be educated in that. But where is a community?

We we we just have all leaders and no community. And I I just feel like I'm I'm just hearing a lot of things, and and we've had, like, the lady that had the water issue and things like that. Those are things that we could even give testimony about that the commission does. You know? So that's why it's just like a big question mark in the community because there's no, you know, fruit of it, just a lot of information. And I agree that if we take one thing at a time, then we can really, you know, these people that are experiencing problems in the affordable housing, where are they? Where's their voice? What are they saying? Is there a problem? We have to know.

I know that I see a lot about Rockford being number one for people to come and live and things like that. But yet, there's some issues here of affordable housing. But we need the people. We need the community to hear what they have to say, what they're missing, because they're not connected to information. But we need real, live, you know, instances, not just getting a lot of information.

If I can just piggyback off. Everybody's piggybacking. I've been thinking a lot about this too because in our strategic planning meeting we talked about kind of this ideal situation where we would have spaces around the city similar to where Pastor Martin's facility is where there's information and there's somebody there that can answer questions and so on and so forth. I'm wondering if that's just kicking the can down the road. I mean, I don't know that there's any reason why we can't is there an opportunity to use like the why at different areas in the city?

And should we as commissioners go maybe two of us at a time, you know, through and just have kind of a listening session? We can publicize it at Wednesday at ten in the morning or whatever. Vary the times. We'll be there.

We'll be able to take

questions, concerns, offer the information that we do have from all of the speakers that we've heard, and or try to find that out for folks so that we can be introducing people to the resources that we know now are available in the community. I just, I don't know, I'm worried about perfect being the enemy of the good. I mean, I don't know that there's any reason why we can't just go out there and start and then we'll see what happens.

Makes sense. Just to piggyback off of that, you guys are absolutely more than welcome to make those calls, schedule those meetings, have those sessions. I think the mayor even encouraged you all in the February meeting to reach out to city staff, utilize the resources. If you need me to get you a phone number or an email to make that connection, I'm more than happy to do that as well. And then Commissioner Barrera, to answer your question, I think what we decided to do was formal memos for those types of communications.

So when there is an issue that's brought to the CRC and there's some city work that's happening behind the scenes that city staff is communicating and stuff, we're going to provide you a memo at the next meeting or once it's resolved as to what city's done and how it was resolved. That way it's being read into record as well that this is the problem that was brought forward. This is what the commission did to address it. This is what city staff did. So that that way it's kind of cleaning up some of those communication gaps that we've experienced in the past.

I do I'm sorry. I do have a question about that in terms of are there gray areas in that. For example, I know someone in a class at the Y who was having some issues with the water department. This is an individual who wanted to have his lead pipes replaced as part of the program that I think we heard about from the public works director. And he felt this is someone who is a former employee of ours for a long time, high level public employee.

And he couldn't get a good answer. And I felt that it was my job as a commissioner to try to help him get an answer. I will applaud the water department, public works department for getting back to me immediately, explaining the situation. And as I understand, that water department director is going to communicate directly with the individual I spoke with. Is that something that would require a memo? Or is that just something that, good, we got it taken care of. Does that make sense?

Yeah. I think that's one that you kind of dealt directly with, got an answer resolved. I think that's a great opportunity for a commissioner report, just what you did and sharing that with the commission. If you guys feel differently, that's fine. We can do memos. My thought would be if, let's say, we get an email to the CRC email, We share that with you guys. And there's work that needs to be taken place. It's more than just a quick, hey, email. This is what happened. We're going to call that resident and explain that situation.

But we can memorialize that. I can do whatever you all would like to do. But that's just my thought. I thought that was a great opportunity for a commissioner report. And then something that maybe is a little bit more extensive where we actually have to do some investigation or connect with different folks, maybe that's when we provide a memo. But I'm happy to do what you guys think's best on that.

I like your solution. And by the way, that was my report.

Very good. Very good. I have a question, a protocol question regarding these little thingies that some of us wear around our neck. When we go to public events, what is our protocol to being recognized as part of this commission? I know that I volunteer both with the Park District and with the symphony.

And I have a pocket lanyard that puts my volunteer badges, and I stick this right on top of that. Now, don't know if I'm breaking a protocol or not, but I don't think so. But I want people to know, and I want them to ask me questions. On that note, there are probably some questions asked that we should have some stock verbiage prepared that we approve that we can give out. They say, what do you guys do?

Well, we probably should have some stock verbiage on that. But I mean, recommend that. So if we're going to go to this March 25, March 25, the Nordloft, I think we should be recognized as representing. And then we need to properly represent the city.

I agree. I mean, don't so they got these for us so that we could go out in public, right? And people would know that we're part of the commission. So I think feel empowered to wear those in those spaces. And I hear you as well on the we need to have some language that we can communicate. And maybe it's, you know, turning this ordinance into a one pager that's in plain language that we can all kind of get comfortable with so that as folks ask questions, we can tell them about the commission or hear their concerns and ask them to show up to our meetings to express those more formally if they want to.

And on the same note, and I brought this up before, but both Sarah and Rudy from the city asked me, as we were concluding our meeting this morning, if I had a card, which I didn't, other than my own personal, hey, here's my phone number card. But that's an issue I think should be put on the table as well.

Is that something that

Business cards? Yeah. I can make the ask.

Any other commissioner's reports?

Okay, sorry. Keep

No. You're

So back to the other point and to kind of address all these other things we've been talking about, I think it would be helpful if we are going to be out in the community more actively and purposefully. It occurs to me that we are here to support counsel, provide information to them and be a resource. Also though, my understanding is that the older people are the conduit between their constituents and cities. So I want to be respectful of their roles. And in the effort to foster a working relationship with counsel, how do we kind of suss out being helpful and not being at cross purposes or stepping on anyone's toes.

So I think that's an interesting I

think that addresses the conversation we had about increasing our exposure to the council members. Now I've got three wards pretty locked up myself, just from all the experience I've had with those wards dealing with things. But I think that if we do have anything that is an issue in a specific ward, we need to address it to that older person, but as part of our continuing to foster a better relationship with all of the older persons. I don't have a problem. I mean, we all know they're basically pretty receptive to anything we have to say.

And if one of their constituents has a problem that they didn't take to their older person and we become the conduit, we're just kind of a conduit. And it should be part of our fostering a better relationship with them ourselves.

Agreed. Think so if I were out in the community and someone brought something to me that was something their alderman should handle, I probably would either connect them directly to, or I would reach out to their alderman and make that warm handoff, right? And may even say to the alderman, is this something that you would address, or is this something that needs to go in front of the commission? Kind of give them the ability to say whether they wanted to be involved. I think all of them, to your point, are fairly accessible to us and all of their information is online. Phone numbers, emails, all of those things are online. If we needed to get ahold of them, could.

Yeah. I think our key word is perception. All of my years in sales management, I taught and preached perception as you are or whatever product, you are your own product you're selling yourself, but the perception the person you're talking to has of you is what you are. So if you're approaching an older person, if their perception is that you're there to help them in a friendly manner, then you're going to have a good relationship.

I think there is an issue that and I guess I'll just speak for myself. I don't know how the Community Relations Commission is perceived by aldermen. And I realize it's a mixed bag. But I think that goes to the point of sort of being reintroduced. I think I'm at least in an uncertain position right now, not knowing, for example, why the mayor didn't break the tie and the fly cameras and bring this to the Community Relations Commission.

There's not just one answer for that, right? There could be a number of reasons why he did not do that. So I think there's just some uncertainty now, again, just speaking for myself in terms of how we are perceived by the council members.

I hear you. And I think even if their perception isn't great or they're not clear on what we do, I think we all know that our community needs some assistance and reaches out to us. Right? So even if we don't have an understanding of what what a certain alderman's perception is, I think we still would reach out to them. Right?

And still make that connection and make very clear that we are members of the Community Relations Commission and a constituent of yours reached out to us. We are passing that communication along. And I think in a way be advocates for that resident to have a connection with their older person. I don't know I think that we have to be mindful of those perceptions, but I don't know that we need to let those perceptions stop us from connecting our community to the older person.

Absolutely. I just would love some clarity as to our role. Again, that speaks to Commissioner McDowell in terms of if we could just have a short description of what we do and have that be part of our, you know, of part of this refining of our article of incorporation or whatever it is.

I think you also, I mean, we've heard a couple of times about the FLAC cameras and the mayor's choice. Is that an opportunity for us to say to him, we'd like a memo on this, and we'd like to better understand those numerous reasons why this commission wasn't consulted or because I think he also mentioned and folks that were listening are here, I think he did mention at some point that there might be an opportunity under some circumstances. Circumstances. What that means though, I I don't know. So maybe we need to go back and I'm happy to send something to him if there is a desire to to look at that.

Maybe we pull the language directly from the council meeting and say, You said this, and this happened. Can you give us guidance on if we're going to be involved, what that looks like, and if not, why not? So that we can communicate back to our community what our involvement really is. I don't have a problem doing that if there's a desire to have more conversation around those cameras.

I mean, I'm torn. That sounds awfully formal. On the other hand, I would like some clarity because I don't think there is with all due respect to our speaker, I don't think there's any just one obvious reason why the mayor, you know, did there was an action there.

And I think you're right. I think it gives the opportunity for both things to happen, right? The mayor can hear. Sure, he can listen to the recording. He can hear the concerns the community brought forward tonight and address those, or give us the tools to address those if he chooses.

I agree.

I'm happy to reach out to him and just ask for some clarity based on what was said at the last council meeting and what we heard tonight. Again, just to close that feedback loop so that we are part of the process, or if we are not part of the process, we understand why.

I have just one quick thing. I mean, maybe in the absence of a memo or instead of a memo, I know the mayor is very, very busy, but maybe he'd like to make another appearance before Sure. Us Yeah. To explain. You know, maybe that's better than something that, as I said, might sound kind of formal. What's the commissioner's thought on that?

I'm okay with the memo. Okay. I mean, I know he's very busy.

He's Cool.

I'm Okay with the memo.

I think that's a great opportunity to bring up at the office hours.

Yes.

That's a way to have a conversation face to face and maybe more in a personal manner. And I do know that there was an article that he is quoted in kind of explaining that reasoning and what type of a statement that was that he I don't know if it was in today's paper or yesterday's paper. But that's something to look as well. Maybe that could give some additional clarity there. But I do think that that's why the mayor proposed the office hours, to have those types of conversations with you all kind of one on one.

So if someone couldn't make those office hours, how would we report out then? And then we have a problem then with public information, right?

You could absolutely still schedule a time with the mayor that would work for your schedule. I would just reach to Haley and say, hey, I'm not able to meet these office hours this month or this quarter. Could we schedule a separate time?

Or the one person that already is on, can we have them ask that question? I

do think your question to follow-up on that though does bring up the we need to have a way to communicate that back to the community. It's great that the mayor wants to meet with us in his office and do one on one conversations, but how are we getting that information back to our community? And maybe those conversations are different, right? The things that we're talking about in his office, we can still bring that forward. How do we do that?

I will still reach out to him, and I will ask the questions that we talked about, but I would also, again, encourage anyone who wants to have those conversations with them, have them. And maybe as part of that, say, I'm going to bring this back to the commission during our public meeting, so that he knows we're still bringing this to our community. Any other commissioner's reports before we reach our adjournment?

I'll just say I was gone last month, but I do keep online with the Rockford committee pages, and when those things come out for the community, I repost them on my page so that people that I know that may not have they might not be on that website. So I would encourage us to do that when things do come available that we also tag ourselves and them or post them so that the community can know. And that's one of the ways that they're going to know us too as commissioners as well. I always comment even the good things that happen. I comment great, because we are the advocates for the government and the community.

We have to have a good, neutral balance there and know that we are for the city of Rockford. We are for the community. And I think if we want to be visible, those are the little steps that we can take.

That's a good point. We talked about the difficulty of managing a social media site as a group, but individually we can manage our own social media sites.

Yes, yes.

That's a good point.

I did see that the city, at least once, has shared information on the community Relations Commission.

Yeah, I thought I shared this, but I'll share it again if I didn't share it before. Laura, who's our communications director, is making an active plan to start sharing things about the commission. So I shared with her the annual report. So she's going to be pulling out snippets of that, creating a series of posts, things like that. Our quarterly report would be a great opportunity to share that.

If there's anything that you guys are aware of or things like that that you would like us to share, we can share those types of things as well. If you're comfortable with it, it was kind of an idea that popped into my head. I don't know. I have these ideas all the time, so forgive me. But maybe introducing the commissioners maybe one by one or two or three at a time, giving like a short bio or something like that so the community can start getting to know who the commission is. I know we're in the have the pictures gotten uploaded yet?

They haven't been uploaded, but she has them.

She has them. So we're working on getting our page updated to get your guys' photos on there and things like that. So maybe that's part of that process or campaign that she's doing right now to reintroduce the commission back out to the community. If you guys are comfortable with that, I'd be more than happy to have that conversation with her and add that to our plan. Just let me know.

I did want to say something. I appreciate everything that you guys have already done. And I was sitting here just taking notes and asking questions, and it's everything you said is about inclusivity, like how you mentioned about the meetings at the YMCA. And that's a big consideration because some people have public transportation. How can we have different levels to where visibility is available to everybody?

If it's only 10 to 12 and a single mom or a single dad, it's like, I work always those hours. I don't have a voice in this. Do we have flexible hours available to everybody? And then the eighteen to twenty four, I think, is an amazing add to this team, especially because I operate a housing in a facility in Rockford that transitions 18 to 24 year olds from the shelter to stable housing. Awesome.

And that aligns with affordable housing because some of them have aged out of group homes or they are reentering society and they don't have anywhere to go. So I I did ask the question about when we look at the action plan, are we doing things that ebb and flow? Kinda like what did they say? Shaking before the egg was born first. So do we do affordable housing and then work development? Or is it more important for you to have a job first or a house first? Is stability more important than security? So it's like how do we decide? And it might be attacking one, but it might be something that has to be run parallel because they can feel empowered to get a mission.

It all does this. Yeah.

Yeah. And I think that '18 to '24 is great because there's so many already city programs like the community action. They get grants, the WE program where they go to school and get pharmacy tech, they get all these certifications free, but they don't have an appointment. How do we connect them to employers too? And I think that'll run great together. I'd also wrote down it's funny. She mentioned the the CRC video. You had mentioned a flyer, which I think is great because you get people that just physically want something. They feel like you're giving them something. They feel empowered. But then you got some people like me. I'm a video person. I like to just watch a video. I'm kidding. I wanna watch a video.

I'm a TV movie type of person. I think it's great if to have something that actually speaks to Yes. What is CRC video like? What does it look like? And it could be showing you guys already having meetings in the community. The only question I put it I put a double star for this one. When you mentioned about the cards, and I get it, they cost a lot of money. Probably giving emails cost even more. But how do I give follow-up with somebody? Do I give them my personal cell phone number or my email address personally?

Well, that's, yeah, we've had this discussion. And that's, I guess, to be continued to discuss. You know, I have no problem setting up an email expressly for this. You know, I've already got five emails for different things. It's the phone number is the thing, personally, don't mind putting my phone number on a card. I don't mind taking a call or actually listening to my voicemail. But I think there's issues there.

Not everybody has the email and there are some people that don't have internet, right?

Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

I hate that they got to go find WiFi to talk to me or, you know, that makes it limited. I don't know if there's one number that we can create. Maybe people can call in and leave a voicemail. If we just have one phone number we all share, then information can go there. Somebody constantly checks the voicemail. There's like a line. Of course, we have to

go Well, then you don't know where it's going. I mean, the whole purpose is when I take meetings and I want to leave my contact information with the person I've taken a meeting with, I can hand them my card because I want them to contact me. I'm not gonna go tacking them on telephone poles around town, but when I do meet with somebody, I'd like to have a way for them to know how to get back to me easily. And typically, most people will put it in their contactless and throw the card away. But at least I've given

it to them.

Well, you can if cost is an issue to have physical cards and it doesn't address the issue of folks who don't have access to internet. But you can generate a QR code, business card for the purpose of meetings and whatnot. And then you're not having people throw away. Right. And you can adjust it and change it as you need to if necessary. That's another option.

If you have a Facebook page, they could do the messenger, leave messages there.

I think the issue with the Facebook page and Makayla, I think that it was how we were going to manage it and city staff not necessarily being able to manage another one.

We talked about it. It wasn't an immediate no. When I asked. The bigger concern was it takes a lot of work to generate a following for a page. And the way it was explained to me is that the city of Rockford's page has so many followers. It's a well followed page. There's a lot of engagement. And to create a new page, we wouldn't have followers. And that was more of the concern. So we could create the page, but how do we get the people to start following the page?

And you're going to get a lot more engagement by posting on the city's website just because there's already naturally so many more followers. So that's why we decided maybe starting with a more targeted plan to reintroduce the CRC and engage that way and bring things to the forefront because there are so many more followers that way. For the email, we do have a CRC email set up. We got an email recently. I think Steve sent it.

Yeah. And we sent that out to your guys' personal emails that we have on file and to keep your information confidential. And then Eric was able to address the community member directly. So that's kind of the plan we have in place right now. As far as a phone number, I'm more than happy if you guys want to give them my work phone number. It's on all of my communications. If I get I return every call that I get. So if you want to give that number out, I will make sure that if I get a voicemail or a phone call that I am communicating that back out to you all. I like to pride myself on the fact that I really try to do that well. So I'm more than happy you guys can use my phone number for that.

It's been on flyers. I get spam stuff all the time. So it's not going to hurt anything.

I heard the follow-up piece is that especially that's where the trust piece comes in, is if we're hearing things in the community, we're bringing it up. There has to be a follow-up aspect. What does that look like? Is it us putting a piece of communication out and saying, okay, you we heard this and we took these steps. Or we addressed it by doing x, y, and z. Or what's the next steps look like? So I don't know if that's something that could be on the city page.

When somebody reaches out directly

Like if we do an event or a community piece of something that we're hearing in the community, if it's been addressed here and we have an action plan put together for it or whatever we're hearing about, how do we communicate this action plan? How do they go to

the community that is being done? So what we can do, if there's something that we discuss and we take an actionable step or something that we're wanting to communicate out to the community, just let me know, hey, I think we should share this on social. And I'll reach out to our communications director and get that post created for you guys. So just if there's anything like that we feel like that needs to be communicated, we can absolutely do that. Yeah, that's not a problem at all for us to be able to do that. I just need to know from you guys what those items should be or when we feel like that's a necessary step.

Is there delegated tasks like in a sense of I heard you mention when you mentioned affordable housing, you have a partner here that you work with. Is it like assigned where someone their expertise in something, so you guys do certain things? Is no, it's just we just all do it.

We had a panel of people that came and talked to us about different things. And I was just saying, like, some things came up, that they were having barriers. And I was just suggesting that we know the closure of it. What happened? Did he get the permit? Did he did? Did he not?

We do have So when we met for the strategic planning, we each agreed to work on together a certain thing. So like the ordinance, Jiria and I just worked on that together right? What we've seen in the past is sometimes we will do work groups where we'll split up and work on things. So yes, we can work together to get things done. If there are things that you're passionate about and have some expertise in, bring it forward.

And I'm sure there are folks around the table that would be willing to work on it with you. All right. If there are no other commissioner's reports, we have reached our adjournment. So I will take a motion to adjourn.

So my vote.

We have a motion All and a in favor of adjournment?

Say aye.

Aye.

See you all next month.