Community Relations Commission - Regular Meeting

Alright. Commissioners, having reached 05:30, we are going to call the, community relations commission meeting for 04/09/2026 to order. Can we start with the roll call, please?

Commissioner Barrero? Present. Commissioner Bravo? Present. Commissioner Brown? Present. Commissioner Crudup? Absent. Commissioner Garwick? Present. Commissioner Johnson? Absent. Commissioner Call? Present. Commissioner Martin? Present. Commissioner McDowell? Present. Commissioner Pekayla? Present. Commissioner Shanklin? Absent. You have a quorum.

Commissioners, I would just remind you to pull the microphones down to you so that, we can pick up the recording. The next thing we're going to move to is the acceptance of the journal, the journal of proceedings for the Community Relations Commission meeting held on 03/12/2026.

So moved.

We have a motion, and do we have a

second? Second.

We have a motion and a second. Is there any discussion related to, the Journal of Proceedings? With no discussion, all in favor?

Aye.

Any opposed? The next thing on our agenda is public speakers. We have, Steven McMaster to join us tonight. Stephen, as usual, have five minutes with us.

Thank you. How's it going? So last month I kind of talked a little bit about some of the issues I've had trying to communicate with members of city council and members of the legal team and trying to get some things like changed, some of the simple updates that I think should make sense, you know, things we all agree At City Council, I keep bringing up this whole discrepancy between five thirty city council meetings and the law that says they have to meet at 06:00. It's our law. We can change it.

We totally should. Everybody wants to, but nobody wants to put the effort forward. I don't really understand why not. And just to give some insight, the reason I focus on those kinds of like little minor procedural things that shouldn't matter is because they're apolitical, Right? It shouldn't be a big ask to get a law that we don't follow updated. Like that doesn't make any sense. Know, we have the rules that say you to take off your jacket when you enter council chambers. Please don't find me. Thank you. It's just little things that we don't follow.

I like to focus on those because the bigger issues, the things that involve like actually convincing people to, you know, agree with me and change, join my side, is a lot more difficult. And they require a more nuanced conversation. They require that pathway in order for members of the public or whoever to actually have an entry point into the legal process that is our city. I don't think that reasonably exists. Like I don't know. I've been trying. For the last six months, I've gone to every single city council meeting, say one. I've been to as many of these meetings as I can, as many as every meeting. Everything that shows up on the data call for the city of Rockford, I try to be there. And I try to say things like this.

I try to advocate for the little changes that just allow a little bit more transparency, a little bit more accountability, a little bit more understanding. So that way when I interact with people in the city and they go, Why did they go into closed session like that? I can say with confidence that it's for a good reason. I can say with confidence that City Council's going to come back with some sort of like thing that makes sense. Or here's where we can find information. But I can't seem to do that. I have way too many difficulties with that. I don't know how to convince people to care. I've been trying. But I'll transition slightly into something that I think you guys can help with.

Alderman Bell brought up a couple of weeks ago, or about a month ago, the flock camera discussion and talked about bringing you guys into that conversation before we, of the city, approved another $200,000 annual contract with FLAC. Unfortunately, didn't happen. But now that the data center on the South side of town is being talked about more and more, he has indicated at City Council on Monday that he wants your input on that. That he wants to try to get you guys to have some sort of comment. And I think this is a great opportunity.

Right? Like these seats are empty and you guys are very receptive to actually communication with the populace. And I think that's great. I really hope that anybody has been in conversation with Alderman Bell or like is actively engaging in that process, if at all possible, Because I think it would be great. I think it would be great not only for the community but for this body.

You know, have another thing to tuck under the, you know, into the toolkit, whatever analogy I'm trying to say, but have another thing that you can say we did, we were a part of. And we had power and we had some agency over the way things are done in this town. There's a lot of people who really, really care about this data center. There's not a whole lot of information. I'll be honest, like I'm not kind of choosing a side so much until I get more information.

But that's the conversation that needs to happen right now. What information do we have access to? What information can we have access to? And I don't know, can we there are some people in this town who want to ban data centers outright and say we should never have them. There is a legal process that we could invoke that would result in that. But we need to have those conversations. We need to understand exactly what it takes to get what the citizen wants done. I really hope that you have the opportunity to engage with some of the Facebook groups that exist. I know several of you are pretty active on Facebook. There are some anti data center stuff for this area.

I'm gonna be posting the CRC email in those chats starting this week. I kinda wanted to give you the heads up. And people want to communicate, so you might get a lot of feedback in those channels. But that's a great way to interact with people. Those are real citizens who really care about something that hopefully you'll have some power over. Just think about it. Try to reach out. If there's anything I can do, I'm happy to help in any way I can. Thank you.

Thank you. Alright. Commissioners, the next thing on our agenda is an update from the Community and Economic Development Department Housing and Urban Development Program.

Hi. Hello. I'm Andrea Henrichs. I am the Housing and Program Manager for our Community and Economic Development Department. I work underneath Sarah Liese, and so you may have obviously seen the housing strategy framework, so that's something that I'll be trying to help her with as much as possible with our programming that we get from our federal government.

We receive Community Development Block Grant dollars, which we call CDBG dollars. We also receive Home Investment Partnerships Program dollars. Those are short for HOME, we call it HOME. And we also receive emergency solutions grant programs, which is for homeless. Those three different grants are community planning and development dollars that we receive from our HUD, from the Housing and Urban Development.

So generally, what I do is I work on the planning for that, those funds. We get about $2,000,000 in CDBG. We get about $1,000,000 in HOME, and we get about between 150,000 to $200,000 of ESG dollars. The ESG dollars are generally managed through our Health and Human Services, but the Community and Economic Development Department administers the CDBG In Home program through different programs that we do. Just recently, there was a public hearing, and that was a public hearing to talk about how our funds are going to be used over the next year.

Well, actually it was about how we used our funds over the last year, and then we did some amendments for programming that we're going to end up doing for the next year. And then about September ish, October ish, we start planning for the next year, and you'll start seeing a public hearing that would be talking about the future funds that we're going to get. Right now, we just had allocations of dollars for 2026, and so we had gone out to the community in SeptemberOctober of last year to determine how we're going to run programs. And generally, what we do is for home, it's all you can do new construction, you can do rehab, you can do home buyer assistance, you can do multi family, you can do single family. It's all in regards to housing, and it's for low income families throughout our community, so it has to be within the City Of Rockford limits.

Our CDBG dollars are more flexible. It's a block grant. And so we can do infrastructure, so we can do streets in low mod areas, we can do sidewalks in low mod areas, we can do new construction with certain types of contractors. They have to be what's called a CBDO. And I apologize, I don't know. I should have I'm so used to saying the acronyms. I don't have that one. But generally, the home program, if you're a CHOTO, you're automatically a CBDO for CDBG. So you could do new construction for that.

Could you go back?

Yeah. Yeah.

So community housing development organization, if you are a not for profit and you do development, you can become a community housing development organization, which we call short for CHOTO, right? You can get home dollars then to do new construction, to do rehab, to produce units in the city of Rockford for low income families. And if you have that designation, you can also be a CBDO for CDBG, allows you to do new construction. CDBG being the funding source, CBDO being the not for profit. Generally, you have to prove that you're serving the low income community.

So you have people that are on your board that are going to be making sure that the low income community is being served. And there's different ways that we have to check on that. So it's just a makeup of your board and how that's going to be. Some of this information is on our website, so it's easy, accessible. You can always call me if you have a not for profit that's interested in doing that.

So CDBG then can do so generally, CDBG cannot do new construction. It's only if it's that type of an organization. You're doing rehab for housing, you're doing economic development, you're doing community development, you're doing public services. The CDBG Community Development Block Grant dollars are much more flexible and can do so many other things. We right now, currently, in our 2026 budget, the things that we're doing is preservation of housing, which would be our rehab program.

We are doing sidewalks in low and mod income areas. And we do demolition. And we do public service. We do home buyer assistance. Those are in our 2026 budget for those funds, for the $2,000,000 Generally, you will not see that those funds are spent in one year, but we do do an annual action plan every single year, and we do do what's called a CAPER, which is our annual report about what we did the previous year.

It takes several years to administer all of the funding sources, so that's why you might see an amendment of some of the funds going into new projects that are coming through. You might see through city council that we have done a certificate of consistency for maybe a grant that somebody's applying for. So any of the organizations that are not for profits that are applying for some grants that are out there through the state, through foundations, they might need a certificate of consistency. That would be done through our department as well to show that they're doing something that we think is really important in our community, and we need to make sure that, you know, we're lined up and we're all focusing on the same thing. We're all looking to make sure we're doing our housing strategy, right?

The other things that you might see through city council, too, would be our Low Income Housing Tax Credit applications would come through this department. We provide gap financing. So a multimillion dollar development that's 64 units or usually they say if the development is more than 50,000, that's when it makes it reasonable to be funded with low income housing tax credits. And when there's that many units, there's a lot involved with it. It's very expensive and there's usually a gap in financing.

And so that's when they come to the city and they use either home dollars or they use that CDBG dollars to go ahead and fill that gap to make that housing development work, right? So right now there's the one going through city council. Well, just did that one. We provided a letter up front to basically say preliminary, we are interested in going ahead and funding this. Should you get approved for the Low Income Housing Tax Credits, then we'll underwrite the project completely and make sure you meet the guidelines, and then we'll go ahead and go through city council again to see if that can be approved then the way that it's been written up for that application.

So the preliminary is just saying, yes, we're really excited about this project being here. We want to make sure that it can be done. But then we have to totally, fully underwrite everything. There's a lot involved with that. We have to do environmental reviews.

We have to make sure the subsidy layering, that there's not too much money, federal government dollars going into the project, that there's a good variety of the capital stack of funding to make that happen, and that it's going be successful over a long period of time. I could talk forever, so I don't know where I'm at timing wise. I know that you're, you know, obviously you're interested in hearing about what we do and that type of thing. I didn't know if you wanted me to open it up for questions now. I just wanted to give you a short summary of what I absolutely love what I do so I could talk about it forever.

Our rehab programs right now you might be interested in knowing that we're looking at kind of usually we received Illinois Housing Development Authority grants. So we receive other grants besides just the federal government. So I just listened to a webinar, for example, for the Federal Home Loan Bank of Chicago. Very interested in applying for that. I have to have a member of that bank to apply with.

So I'll be talking to member banks to see if they're interested in partnering with us to go ahead and apply for more funding to bring to our community, and that would be for rehab dollars to supplement our program that we have with our CDBG money. And we can do rehab with HOME, but it's a little more difficult so it's easier to do with that CDBG dollars. HOME is great for the bigger developments because there's a lot of rules and regulations that you have to follow for all of our funding, but it really marries well with low income housing tax credits because they already have all those rules anyway. So it's just really easy to fill that gap with that. Grant that's out there that I would love to apply for is lead based paint grant, looking for radon grants so that we can bring more funding to supplement our programming.

So that's another thing that we do. Did you have specific questions?

How does this get into the community, this information?

Okay, so a couple of ways, right? We advertise on our website whenever we have a public hearing or if we have programming that's available, we do get a lot of phone calls about it. And we have people we have a newsletter. So we have on our website that you can sign up for a newsletter so that you can be informed of these things. We, through our social media, will have our mayor's department go ahead and get that information on our social media.

So that's out there that way. Sometimes, like for our public hearings, we have to put it in the papers, so we'll have it under the legal section in the classifieds. So word-of-mouth, we send out things like for our public hearings, we send out information to all the not for profits that we work with on a regular basis, so we're hopeful that they're getting the information out. Besides all the other things that I had mentioned, we send it out through our ED newsletter that we have, which is very similar to our neighborhood development newsletter. So if people are interested, they can get on these different listservs, guess, like email distribution lists that we have.

I have a question about how the rehab funds work. And if you've already addressed this, I do apologize. Oh, don't think Especially you in regard to the CDBG grants, again, relative to rehab, is this a this is maybe this isn't the right way to say it. Is this a push system or is this a pull system? Do you do outreach or do you do it application only? For example, you have someone living in a home that desperately needs to be rehabbed. And as we all know, that's pretty expensive these days. So do you wait, if you will, for people to come to you in sort of your targeted neighborhoods? Or do you reach out?

Sure, sure. So what we do is we advertise and we have application phases. In the past, we've had lotteries, and so we've had like over there's a big need for housing rehab in our community. And every time we do an application, we end up having 300, 400 people apply, and we've done a lottery. I mentioned at our last public hearing that we're looking at changing that a little bit.

I'm very interested in we did lottery because we want to make sure that everybody has an opportunity, every population has an opportunity regardless of your skills, of computer skills and all of that, to be able to apply, right? So what we want to do is do an RFP, which would be a request for proposal to ask for not for profits to step up and be able to help people submit applications. And then we would have those not for profits also help with the marketing of the program, and then they would be able to go ahead and help people for the first couple of weeks while the program opens. We launch a program and accept applications online. They can help with that submission online, and then we can help pay them for that.

That would be an administrative function that would be an eligible expense for the programming that we do. So that would be very helpful. And then we would open it up to the rest of community because then in that respect it would be a first come, first serve application phase. It wouldn't be a lottery. So we want to make sure that the elderly and physically disabled are getting that first opportunity, and then they would have priority in our application phase to be able to apply for funds.

So it sounds like there's great need.

There is

great need.

Do you have a feeling if you're reaching the people in the areas you want to reach? And again, if you've addressed that, I'm sorry.

No, generally we work citywide and so we have not been focusing in a specific area per se. So it's open to everyone in the community. And like I do believe we must touch a lot of people because we do have a heavy application phase, and that's a heavy number of people that are applying, which is very time consuming to go through and determine if you're meeting the pre qualifications and then being able to pull a lottery. So we're hopeful that doing it this way and having a minimal fee for that application might reduce, you know, the number of frivolous applications that we get because if you don't ask, then you don't know whether you get assisted or not, right? But there's a lot of people that when we get to their name, then they don't respond.

They don't come in. They don't want to have their application further, you know? And that's hard because we've already done a lot of work up front to see that you prequalified to move forward, and we don't understand, like, why wouldn't you want to move forward anymore? And so that happens, or they don't qualify because they don't own the home, you know, and we don't find out that until a title search. It might it could be anything that would disqualify them.

And we don't a lot of things we can check up front. And so this new way of doing it, we're not going to be checking all those things up front. What we're going to do is have a self check. And if you've self checked, then you can go ahead and continue to apply and submit your application. So just some minor changes to the way we've done it in the past. I've been here since 1999. I started in the application, so I have a lot of experience with different ways that worked and didn't work. It's really difficult to make sure you are meeting the people that really need that. So I think we always are striving for ways to do better, right? We always everybody can do better.

So we're always looking at ways to, Okay, let's try this now. And the community changes, right? So needs are different. And so we're always looking at ways like what is the need now? How can we meet those needs?

Out of like 300, say you have 300 people, how many of those are serviced? How many get through the application?

Sure. You know what? It depends. So right now, we had an Illinois Housing Development grant. We initially received just over $1,000,000 and then we did really well with that. So they gave us another million, and then they gave us another million. So it's great. We're at 3,000,000 now, right? We've helped about 40 some odd people so far out of that program. It's 60,000 a shot per property, and that's to bring the house up to local code.

Now this next year, we also supplement that's just the IDA funds. We supplemented that our program with that program, right? So we ran it together. And so we also did side by side community development block grant preservation of housing. So we did both of those programs. We called it the same thing. Everybody was treated the same except for there are a couple of requirements for CDBG that the Illinois Housing Development Authority didn't have. For example, with lead based paint, it's a little bit different when you're working with federal dollars than when you're working with state dollars. But other than that, everything was pretty much the same. You had to meet local code, got $60,000 that type of thing.

So our local code. For the Illinois Housing Development Authority, the funds that we received, you have to bring them up to local code. Our community development block grant is a little more flexible, so we don't have to bring it up to local code, the properties. But since we were supplementing the programs, the IDA program was supplementing our program, we wanted to treat everyone the same. So we did require that the property met local code when we were done with that property.

In the future, I think that might have been where my train of thought was going, in the future, what we're looking at doing now is possibly looking at a number of different things that need to be done That can be done on every single property. Since it is community development block grant, we don't have to make sure the property meets local code. What we would do is we would do an inspection just to make sure that the house was in a condition that if we put work on it, that it would be in a better condition and not still in a position where we put money in bad place, right? So we want to make sure that the house is going to be in a good position for them to continue to live there and be safe. And so we'll do that initial health and safety inspection first.

And if people pass that, then what we would be able to do is pick like five different things. We haven't set that in stone yet, but we're looking at possibly your electrical, right? Your roof would be something that's very important to have done, plumbing. Specific things that have to be done, we would go ahead and anything that we can get pricing for up front. It might also be exterior, like you can price siding up front.

So then what we can do is we can do like an RFP or we can do an RFQ. We can do pricing up front and then do possibly a round robin with contractors that qualify so that we're not going out to bid for every single project, that we're able to quickly move through and assist people, but we're only doing those core things. It makes it a lot easier on the contractors. It makes it a lot easier on the homeowner to understand what we're going to do. Specs are much easier to do.

So it's something new that we're going to try. We've seen other communities do it, and it's been really exciting to watch how successful they are. So we do look at other ideas. So if you hear of other communities that are doing different things that you think might work here, I'm all ears. I'm happy to hear what might be able to work here as well.

But that's something that's coming out in the future. So you might have been asking earlier, like, when is the next round? We're hopeful to have another round of applications in the fall. Then every year what we would try to do with that program, that would be our standing program, and we would try to have an application round at the beginning of the year to get enough applicants to be able to run that program through the year. And then the next year in January, we'd do the same thing. So then that would be our staple program and then we would keep bringing in other grants to be able to run-in the meantime or in between, I guess I should say, not in the meantime.

Any other questions? Andrea, so all of those repairs are they're being paid through the dollars that you're talking about. Are the homeowners required to put in some part of that?

So currently, over the years, we've done different things to try to have homeowners put some dollars into it. Generally, what we do is there's a maximum, and if it goes over that maximum, that's when they would have to provide any money. So right now there isn't a match per se that homeowners have to put any funding in it if they qualify for them. To qualify for these programs, you have to be at or below 80% of median income. We were very fortunate with the IDA funds that we were able to go from 80 to 150 as well.

And so the IDA program paid for anyone that was 80 to 150, and then we used our community development block grant dollars to pay for anybody that was below 80% median income. So it was great to be able to help that middle income that were never able to help in the past, so it was really great to be able to bring that money in and solidify more funding to keep coming in, you know? So I'm crossing my fingers that they have more money like that. But yes, we have tried in the past to have, you know, based on where you are in the scale of up to 80% median income, can you bring in some dollars to be able to provide that if you have equity in your home? Unfortunately, what we found out is when they found out they had to provide any dollars, then it wasn't as exciting for them to come through the program anymore, or it was difficult for them to come through because then you have a monthly payment, which can also be capacity wise with the city to be able to manage the taking a payment every single month for 100 people would be, you know, cumbersome to do capacity wise.

So looking at all of that together and trying to really pick a program that works for the community, we do help a lot of elderly and physically disabled persons that are on a fixed income, which it's difficult for them to come up with any type of additional funds to be able to do, any payments on a monthly basis or even just having to take the equity out of their home, you know? So it's very difficult to do that.

Which median income are we using?

HUD gives us that median income. And I can look it up right now if you wanted me to. But it's generally, you know, looking at one family in 80% is a certain dollar amount, then two people, three people, four people. And it's in the way we look at income is household income, so it's not like I own the house and I have friends that live there and family. I have to look at all of their and It's add it not just that my family lives there and I ignore everybody else that's living there. So anybody over the age of 18, we have to project what their income is over the next year and add it all together, and that's how we determine what income is.

But our our medium income baseline is at Rockford, Winnebago County, Illinois, National. What are we using as a means?

Rockford MLS.

Rockford, thank you. Yes.

Thank you. Sorry, didn't realize that. Yep, Rockford MLS, yep. And usually, HUD comes out every year with an updated income.

Thank you.

I'll I'll leave my business cards over in the corner there if you wanted to pick them up. If you wanna give me a call or have any other questions, I'm available.

Thank you. Thank you. Yeah.

Thank you. You're welcome. Commissioners, before we move to the next item, you'll see me do this regularly throughout tonight. Based on Andrea's presentation, are there any things that we want to add to our action plan around housing? Any action items that as we were listening that you all feel like we need to address or bring folks in to talk more about?

I wonder if can you ask that question again after we do our presentation part only because I think a lot of what we were just told kind of relates to this Yes. So maybe after that Yep. Like I'd have a better way to answer your question.

No problem. Okay. If there's nothing at the moment we will move next to a presentation from Makayla on the MWBE spend report.

You guys get to see me on this side of the table today. All right. So annually we present to the CRC the city's total MWBE spend. For anybody who doesn't know that acronym, it's the Minority and Women Business Enterprise. We track that.

For these numbers, just so you're aware, these are tracked at the prime level. So that's going to be the lead contractor on the project. We're not tracking any subcontractors at this time. Our current software system does not allow for us to do that. We are trying to figure out a way that we could do that manually where we're not duplicating those types of numbers.

For example, we have a business, a women owned business, who does quite a bit of work with the city, several millions of dollars per year. They meet that requirement, right, when we let's say we're contracting with them for a million dollar project. That million dollars would count as an MWBE firm, right? But if they subcontract that out, we could be losing dollars that way, right, if they subcontract out 500,000 or they're subcontracting out to another MWBE firm. So then it could be duplicating those types of funds.

So we're trying to look at a way that we can accurately track and represent what those dollars look like when they're going out to the subcontractors where we're not duplicating or potentially losing dollars. So we're still in the process of figuring that out because our current system does not allow for us to track it that way. I have never used this thing before, but let's try

it out.

There. Okay. So for 2025, our total MWBE spend was over $35,000,000 a pretty great number, I think. And that's going to be citywide. It's going to be our vendors that we use.

A lot of that is going to be in those construction type projects, thinking all of the roadwork that we've had done, all of those types of things is the primary for this spend. I have a lovely little chart here for you guys to take a look at for the last several years where we've done our annual spend. It started in 2019 at $5,500,000 That was our spend in 2019 for MWBE firms. By 2025, we have grown to $35,000,000 That's a 75% increase essentially in what we've done over the last six years. I would say that that is a very big win.

MWBE participation really continues to grow. This is tracking how many people are registered with the City of Rockford. So we have a local registration process where vendors, businesses, agencies can register with the city as a minority or women owned business. When I started, it was around 80 ish, I think. And in the three years that I've been here, we're up to 119 total registrations.

So we've done a lot of work in the last couple of years, reaching out, having events, educating people on what that process is. So I feel like that's been a big win for us and how much we've grown. Some points of pride for us. A big area of our spend, like I already mentioned, continues to be our construction contracts, home rehabilitation programs, so HVAC and roofing, and our streets and water divisions. A big part of that are a lot of the programs that Andrea told you about tonight, our home and CDBG funds.

So she gave you some rough numbers, about $3,000,000 a year roughly that we get in those funds. And last year, we were at a 92% rate for our MWBE spend. So that means out of that money, 92% of those funds went to MWBE firms. So a pretty high rate. So over the last three years, it's been well over 90% that we've been awarding to minority and women owned businesses through our CDBG and HOME programs.

So some steps to success. We've really been driving NWBE growth through some outreach and partnerships. We partner every year with local government agencies to host in the past, it's been cutting the red tape. This year, we kind of rebranded it a little bit because we were trying to reach minority and women owned businesses. And how can we help them better succeed and be ready to do business with government agencies.

There's a lot of red tape there. And this year we just called it the public procurement event. We had, I think it was well over right around 80 people that attended the event this year. We talked about everything from what a standard bid packet looks like and all the different components and requirements, how to be prepared and ready to submit a bid, and really just tried to give them some more tools in their toolbox to be ready to do business with us as government entities. Another big barrier that we saw was that a lot of our small minority and women owned businesses don't have approved apprenticeship programs.

I'm not sure if you guys know about responsible bidder ordinances, but that sets a precedence for who can bid on contracts over a certain dollar amount. The city's threshold is 50,000 Any public construction contract that's over $50,000 they're they're going to have to have approved apprenticeship program in order to bid on that work. As you can imagine, that's probably going to eliminate a good portion of our minority and women owned businesses. If they're not part of the union, they're not going to have an approved apprenticeship program, most likely. So we talked about how to get an approved apprenticeship program.

How can you become a union signatory? And what that process might look like. So I felt like people really took a lot away from that event and took some tools home to be able to be ready to do business with us. So some opportunities for growth. This is my last slide. I really thought about what ways can we make this better? What can we do differently? What can we do bigger? So increasing participation in bidding opportunities. The event that I just mentioned, that's a way to increase participation.

We have our procurement teams there. We're talking about the bidding process. We're giving them upcoming opportunities that they can bid on, connecting with them one on one and making those relationships so they feel comfortable in reaching out to us. Supporting their expansion. Some people are ready to expand, so connecting them with financial resources or banks or things like that that can help them do those types of things.

Strengthening prime contractor accountability. One of the components of that event that we had was a meet the primes, where they could come in and meet prime contractors. A lot of prime contractors know who they want to do business with. They tend to work with the same firms from contract to contract. So this was an opportunity for those smaller agencies to come in and make some real connections and hopefully be able to work with them in the future on a future project.

So that's a way that we can kind of strengthen their accountability. Expanding access to some smaller, more flexible contracting opportunities. When and where we can. We try to break down those big contracts into smaller opportunities so that those smaller firms are eligible to bid and participate. And then also just enforcing compliance with the human rights ordinance. I think that's just an ongoing thing that we're trying to accomplish. So that's it for that presentation. Do you guys have any questions about that spend report?

I've got one. Yeah. And you kind of addressed it on your last page here. But you say that a bid opportunity of 50,000 or greater acquires an approved apprenticeship program. How many of the bids that go out actually fall under that number? I mean, are we looking at? A huge discrepancy here?

That's a really good question for our procurement team. I can ask that question and get that answer. But I would say quite a bit of our contracts are going to be over 50,000 Quite a bit. Yep. And that's where it comes into enforcing our prime contractors that they are reaching out to these MWBE firms because we do have requirements within our contracts that they're supposed to contact our MWBE firms. We give them the link to that page where all of the registrations are listed and just really driving home and enforcing that. So, yeah.

Thank you.

Yep. Any other questions?

Mikaela, then how do you how are they becoming approved?

How do they get an approved apprenticeship program? That's going be through the Illinois Department of Labor. And there's a whole formal process that they go through. Gina Krono, which is the director of the workforce development, did a fantastic presentation on it. I don't know the nuts and bolts on it. I couldn't even pretend to know because there are several components. If you'd like, I can share that presentation with you. She graciously gave that to us. I did send that out to the event attendees. So I'd be happy to share that with you so you could have a better understanding and maybe even share that with people that you meet with that's interested in what that process would look like.

Yep.

Any other questions? No? Okay.

Makayla's staying with us for a bit. But before we go to that, again, there anything based on what we heard that we want to add to our action plan? Are there groups that we want to talk to? I guess, Mikayla, is there anything in your work that you feel like we as the CRC can support, or help amplify the work that you're doing related to this?

Oh, that's a good question. I don't know. Maybe supporting some other types of events like that. I don't know what that might look like. I feel like our public procurement event this year was a really great success.

But what other ideas might there be out there that we could do to help people be able to bid on our projects? It's really even Jiri is not here tonight to speak to it, but she had talked about a bid that we had had and how much that that presentation that I gave helped on what that process looked like, what those different documents and requirements were, and where to find all that information. So there's so much red tape. One of the things that she mentioned is really maybe having some of the government agencies sit down with people and do more like one on one or small, like classroom style trainings on really getting into the specifics of that process and that bid packet to each agency and what that looks like. So maybe something along those lines would be helpful.

I do have additional question, and this is about a comparison to similarly sized and with similar demographic communities. I mean this is a great success story. I mean 75% increase in the last six years. But how does that, what is that, 35,000,000, roughly 36,000,000, how does that relate to, again, communities maybe we compare ourselves to, either here in the state or across the country?

That's a really good question. I can look up that data and see what that looks like. I don't have that now, but I think that that's a really good data point to take a look at and maybe even including that in our next year report as well. Thank you. Is there another procurement event scheduled for maybe later this year as well? We usually do one of those type of ones a year, but we the committee that I work with would be open to hearing other types of events. We have already put it on the calendar for February year to have our annual public procurement event.

If there are no other questions, we'll let Mikayla share with us the Equal Employment Opportunity Plan.

So this document that you guys have is the, as Eric just said, the Equal Employment Opportunity Plan. This is a requirement of some federal funding that we receive. If it's over $500,000 the city has to maintain an equal opportunity employment plan, and we have to submit a utilization report to the federal government. And basically, that is based on our hiring data. Who we've hired, who's been promoted, what types of disciplines have taken place, the makeup of our employees, so the unions and things like that that are all part of our agency.

And we have to report out on that. If there are areas of underutilization, for example, one area that we consistently tend to underutilize are white males in administrative roles. That's an area that we don't typically have a lot of white males who are employed in those positions based on the data for the makeup of our community. So what happens when we identify an area of underutilization, we have to then have a plan of how we're going to correct that underutilization. So how are we going to advertise to white males to apply for these administrative positions?

Female firefighters, minority firefighters. That's an area of underutilization for us. So how are we going to do a better job of getting folks in those positions? If you look further in the paper plan, our HR director, it's Sections five and six, really kind of outlines what the city is going to do to correct those underutilizations that were identified in the report that we submitted. So really this paper plan, there's components in it that are required by the federal government.

It's that background of the general workforce. There's those recruitment statistics that I mentioned and our workforce data. There's a couple of appendixes. They're massive Excel documents that we did not print off for you tonight, but they will be attached to the minutes so you're able to see what those items look like and see where we're falling there. So that's really about it that I have for this report. If you guys have any questions about this report or anything like that, I'm happy to answer.

I have a question that falls on a very sensitive line, but I'm looking at a sheet that has male and female listed. And we live in a world that has a large community that crosses those lines

Mhmm.

Identify as nonbirth, nonbinary. How do we classify them if they're applying for a job? As they classify themselves on the application, is that how we classify them?

It's voluntary information, so they can decline putting that information in. For individuals who decline to share that information, they're going to be listed as unknown. Okay. Yep. Any other questions?

No? Okay. Well, that's all you get to see from me on this side.

Okay. Now we will move to unfinished business. The first thing on that agenda, you all remember last month that Commissioner Krutup and I brought to you changes that we suggested related to the ordinance for the CRC. We included that at least one member of the commission shall be between the ages of 18 and 24 at the time of appointment. We also put language into, in addition to the appointed membership, that we may support youth advisory mentorship opportunities that allow young residents to learn and contribute to the work of the commission.

And then we made the reports quarterly with the idea that that would give us more of an opportunity to focus on here are the action steps that we can take in the next ninety days, six months, year. And we also put the language in that the mayor will disseminate to city council and other relevant members of city staff and the administration because we know that there was some conversation at our strategic planning about we do these plans, where do they go, and who reads them. So we we wanted to make sure that you all had last month to review. Is there anything that folks want to add, have conversation about, related to those ordinance changes? There are no questions.

I think we have to probably vote to approve so that we can send it to legal so that legal can do their review. No? We can just send it?

Yeah. Just send it.

Just send it? Okay. We will then just send it to legal and and have them review it. Makayla, remind me what's the timeline for the legal team?

I believe we have it on here by July. Let me double check. I know April draft ordinance, send it to legal. And I think it was by July we were hoping to have the entire ordinance reviewed, approved through counsel.

So next steps legal will draft. We'll take this draft, add to it what is necessary, and then, our friends on city council will review it and do what they need to do to it. I asked before again, is there anything that we want to add while we have the opportunity that it sits in front of us before it goes to legal? Anything that we want to change? Pastor Martin, I know you were not of, here with us last month. Was there anything that you wanted to no? Okay. Awesome. Alright. We will then move to the next part of our agenda, and that is the housing development ordinances, commissioners McDowell and bravo.

Alright. Well, we had hoped to have a paper report on this, but we're still waiting for some pretty important information. And as we addressed in the previous meeting, there's a lot of a lot of avenues to wrap your head around when it comes to the affordable housing situation. Now what we have discovered, and we've already heard some very good information this evening on this subject, is that the city already has a lot of programs in place, designed to low income and middle income housing opportunities. And what I met with the mayor, and what I'm waiting for is he's having a a single page splash sheet compiled of all of the initiatives that the city currently has in process on this subject.

So that's kind of important to finalize a report. But as as we see it, there are a few things that that I was not aware of. There's a thing called the Rockford Community Investment Fund that is, independent of what we've already heard this evening is a grant based lending fund to redevelop housing geared towards the low income and middle income. And it's a lending process for the acquisition and redevelopment of properties to be repaid when the property is either sold or rented. It's another initiative that I wasn't even aware of.

But everything that I have discovered, we've discovered is new construction development is not profitable in the city of Rockford. The the the large builders, for various reasons, and that is also, I'm waiting for information on. But taxation, hookup fees, various things. We don't really have a barrier when it comes to codes. We have a barrier when it comes to profitability to build in the city of Rockford.

And the large scale builders simply make more money, in other areas. We started this whole thing looking at modular homes as an opportunity to provide a more affordable housing in new construction. And that still appears to be a very viable, avenue to pursue. The problem there is, as we've mentioned before, is it requires a certified builder by the state of Illinois. And what I kind of hope to be able to propose is some sort of a, an avenue to pursue as a city much like this Rockford Community Investment Fund to where we can entice a smaller builder who doesn't need as much profit as the large builder who wants to build a community.

We have smaller builders who if we can find a way to get them certified to build modular homes. We have property. We have opportunity to sell the structures. We don't have anyone to build them. So I think that as we compile all of this information, awareness is very important.

There are a lot of things being done that I don't think everybody's aware of. So that's the one component is is as we discussed earlier this evening is how do people know to pursue what the money is available to accomplish what they want to accomplish. But, when it comes to new construction, I think we have to look at how can we develop a new program, to entice that type of building. And, hopefully, we will have a a more formalized paper report next month when we finalize gathering all of the information. That sound good to you, Rita? Okay.

So that's the that's the action. Right? So a couple of action steps. One, we need something from the mayor. And then once we receive that, you all will have more formal recommendations that we can put into our action plan or implementation plan?

Yes. So

I hate to sound like a broken record, but as part of that report, I presume you'll have some sort of best practices from other communities that look like us. Great.

Any other questions from the commissioners?

We

will then move to new business. The commissioner's questions for the aldermen. I know that a couple of us have had some conversations around this. Commissioner Carlin Bravo, do you want to share where you're at or what you're thinking related to these questions for the Alderman?

Well, I'll start and then Commissioner Bravo can chime in. I confess that I'm unsure about where we were on this questionnaire. I thought that we were waiting to find out whether the mayor would favor a reintroduction of the Community Relations Commission to the council so that these questions didn't kind of come out of nowhere. But I may have dropped the ball on that. So

I do think that that's what we decided. And I know that the mayor wasn't opposed to that. I don't know that that reintroduction has necessarily been made. If you'd like to, I don't did you happen to make the office hours with the mayor? I did. Did you ask then or probably not?

No, I'm sorry. I planned it. Yeah. Don't think it's coming up till June, though.

Oh, okay. Yeah. So if you'd like to, if you want to send a mayor directly to Tom and you can do that or I can do it.

Just so Can I actually this did come up in my conversation with him? May I? Oh,

of course.

Yeah. So he asked me actually to bring to well, we said I would bring to the meeting this evening. He, wanted to know which of two options we would prefer. So would we prefer a small group of members of this commission and a small group of members of from the alderman to have a meeting, or would we prefer that he reach out to each of the older people, with an ask to say, you know, we'd like you to meet with your respective member of the CRC based on, you know, where you live. So each of us would potentially, if it worked out that way, meet with the elder person from our area. So the question was which is preferable, small group meeting with representatives from each or one on one? And then the ask would come from him either way.

If you wanted to do the small group, I know based on our current size now that we're fully seated, you could meet up to three people from the CRC. I think

So I'm sorry, just if you wouldn't mind repeating. So this would be a small group of the Community Relations Commission and council members? Just and this would reflect the zones, if you will, that the or no? That doesn't necessarily have to?

Yeah, that doesn't necessarily have to when the areas geographic areas came into play if we were going to meet one on one with the older person from our particular area, if that was applicable.

I'd love to hear from the other commissioners about their thoughts I on

guess my my one concern with the one on one is what happens if we have an alderman who is not engaged or has a desire to connect with the community relations commission. We might be missing out on that perspective. Whereas if we met with the group, hopefully that perspective would still make its way into the group. And that way too, there was a commissioner that was in one of those boards, they wouldn't be left out from the conversation. That would be my only concern with the potential one on ones.

I have the same concerns even if it were a group of three. You know, how does the message get disseminated? When it comes to Commissioner Bravo and my questions, still that may come in sort of a vacuum a city council member when he or she gets the questionnaire. I guess I would favor the reproach that the mayor would reach out himself. But if that was one of if I understood that correctly.

So I believe he would be kind of the conduit in either case. So my sense was, to your point, that, should we choose the small group meeting with representatives that he would choose a variety of perspectives to address your point. And so, and I don't know if from that small group do the folks from the CRC who are part of that then go to the full council meeting to give kind of a report so that Okay. We act that that was not part of my discussion with the mayor. That's just my thought at this point so that it isn't only these people who are in this room for this meeting are privy to what was discussed.

And also to kind of put a face in front of counsel to our committee, maybe more than one person. So but either way, whatever we would choose, my understanding is the mayor would be the initiator of our choice with the I council

like the the addition that you made too because then, you're right, the three folks from this group could go But then also, the aldermen who are part of that conversation will be present as well and can add in things and it can be more robust than it's just relying on the three people from the CRC. There's hopefully folks around the the horseshoe that are sharing as well. Other thoughts, ideas? How do we want to proceed?

Just I wanna make sure I understand. So the three on three meetings, right, the CRC and the alderman who however we designate those people, that will then be reported to the council. That report will then be shared with the council at large.

It

could. Right? That's not something necessarily that that you and the mayor talked about, but it it is, it sounds like, something that we could say back to the mayor, We want this with this addition.

Just a thought. For City Council, there is an opportunity for them to provide reports just the way that you all do. So I would say that the aldermen that you meet with that you ask that they share that your guys' discussion in that report. So let's say it's for Alderman and three CRC members. You know, I feel like coming from for Alderman, they would be able to share a really good picture of what your guys's conversation was. We could talk about a more formal report option as well. But I think if it's coming out of the mouths of the aldermen themselves, I think that that would be a really great representation of what it is that you guys are trying to present. Just a thought. Do

we want what is the formal ask that we want to make of the mayor, and who wants to make that request of the mayor?

I still am struggling with these are small groups that may or may not be representative of the consensus of the larger group. For example, say, just throwing it out there, say you have three aldermen who are very much in favor of the approach of handing very controversial hot button issues such as the data center to the Community Relations Commission. And then that may, again, may not reflect the consensus of all I lost track. Is it 11 members of the Community Relations Commission?

11.

Yeah. I mean, we're only talking three people. So I guess I'm losing track of what the goal of these discussions would be. I guess I, again, just speaking for myself, the way I visualized the reintroduction was that the mayor would remind city council members what the ordinance creating the Community Relations Commission includes and what we have done in the past that is of no to our consequence, for example, body cams, that sort of thing, and just throw it out to them, this what you want your CRC to be doing? And I realize it's a bigger discussion, but I'm just trying to again, it's just my own personal having trouble visualizing what the goal and the potential outcome of these three on three meetings would be.

Think

that's Or is it issue based?

Yeah.

As we develop issues and develop our actions, do we need to convey that upline and get some sort of unity in in in thought and discussion and action? It could be entirely based on the subject matter.

I think my understanding was that there has become some uncertainty about as this commission is interested in becoming more active, and proactive that there is some, need to redefine how do we function as a commission in relation to and in conjunction with the council so that we aren't working across purposes, that we're being supportive of one another. And so we can kind of get a let's see, just get everybody on the same page. Because I think if you watched the city council meeting where the flock cameras were discussed when the CRC came up, as Stephen brought up earlier, I thought was clear that there was not a uniform consensus among counsel with regard to an understanding of our commission and what we do. And so that was when I was speaking with the mayor, that was sort of what seemed to be, you know, his under I don't want to speak for him, but that was what we were discussing all of these options in light of. How do we get on the same page so that this can be collaborative and better defined?

Does that make sense?

Yes, it does. Absolutely. I just don't know how we get there with just three of the council members and three of a representative, three of the CRC.

To Kayla's point, it would have to be a public meeting otherwise, yes? Well,

a couple of thoughts here. So I think what we could ask the mayor to do in that initial introduction is that he reintroduces the CRC, the mission, your guys' purpose, what it is that you're trying to accomplish to the entire City Council. He then gives them the option. The CRC would like to meet with you guys and post some questions about, what it is that they're wanting to do, upcoming things, that sort of thing, right? Realigning the mission with the council.

And then say who would like to meet with the CRC, opening it up that way. If we have, let's say half of the aldermen that would like to participate, maybe we have two different small groups that gives an opportunity for two different meetings with six different CRC members, three in the first, three in the second, and then the ability to meet with the different aldermen. Maybe that's an option as well. But I would think that that would be a way that we can get the introduction there, But then also getting you all a chance to be face to face because the way that council typically operates, as you guys know, there's not really an opportunity for real conversation. You can be a public speaker or you provide a report.

If they have a question, they'll ask a question, but they don't always ask questions. This would be able to be more intimate and that you guys could really have some solid conversation. I don't know that in that public format with counsel that that would be an opportunity for you guys.

Good today. But I think one of the biggest issues is I think that when we look at this commission, I think it's it's backwards. So we we have we represent the community, period. I know what we appointed by the mayor, but we we represent the community and the community issues. And I believe that what happens is is that we see we've seen historically and even currently of hot, hot button items.

We we we seen it when we were dealing with the the the body cams. We see that flop cameras, and now we have a data center. I really believe that with with our, speaker today, with what the alderman is saying, because I don't think that the three alderman, that's not that's not gonna work. They can't get on the same page in the horseshoes. I don't think that we'd be able to bring anything out of that as another waste of time.

But what I do believe is when they're hot button issues such as the data center issue because as city commission, I have no clue what's going on. There's no information that has been, brought down, but it's a very hot issue. And based upon what I'm hearing, nobody wants it. And so I believe that if if this forum, this setting is a place to to deal with first those hot items where the community can come and literally have a dialogue with us, that means it's hard to do it with city council, but if they can start it with us to deal with these top these issues and understand what the community is going through, then we, as a commission, can present something to the mayor in regards to where we are. So it doesn't look like, you know, when you come to these these settings on on Council Day where you have the media outside and everybody inside protesting and doing all this stuff.

Let's bring the temperature down and present a forum such as this to kinda at least hear some of these issues and city council is not, you know, blindsided when it's time to deal with it. And I think if we if we're reintroduced that way, and I know we have a busy schedule and I know we're looking at this calendar, but there are some things that's very hot that's going on in our city that I don't think it should be a city council right away. I think it should probably start here and then we can kind of have those discussions and issue it back up to city council with a presentation versus three people.

I completely agree. I love that idea. I think that first step, though, is we have to get reacquainted with them, and this might be a great way to do that because they have to trust us to be able to make those types of recommendations. And right now they don't know who we are. So that I'm happy to do whatever you guys think is best. Whatever forum I just I'm not quite sure what that looks like because of the Open Meetings Act with being able to get the most people together at the same time. I think the small groups is a great proposal. I I don't honestly, I don't know of another way to do it other than having an open meeting where we got counsel and you guys together.

Being introduced on a hot topic is not good. So I agree that we make this first initiative, of getting the group together, even if it's three of us and four of them, that that's important. And like you said, so that we can feel for each other and we're not, you know, in that hot moment. So then when the hot moment comes, we can understand. And, I was I was gone for that for that month and it I came in, boom, to that, and I didn't know anything about it at all. So I I would I say that it's good for us to be informed of that the community is gonna have a reaction. So we have to be available to, you know, help process that.

Also, brother chair, I just think that there's just a breakdown of communication, and I understand the trust issue. I don't trust some politicians either. But I think there's a breakdown in communication. So even when it came down to to to flock, there were those cameras. There was no information that was presented to city council. I mean, to us to even understand what's going on and even now with the the data issue. But I think we got the ultimate. Yeah. We got the ultimate here. Ask the ultimate. He said here, what's what's the best way that the ultimate wanna what what do you think in regards to sitting with CRC? Hate to put you on the spot, but

Hey. Good evening, everyone. No. I do appreciate your comments. I certainly think the public meeting with everybody, all city council members present, I think we can hash this out what direction.

I do like the fact that we have to look at our vision and our mission and what your purpose is and kinda make that determination whether these hot topic buttons, how do we address those to come before this commission because you guys all represent the city. And that's why I'm here because when I heard that you guys were working on a plan, I'm like, I wanna know what the public and what this committee wants to tackle and what things that me as an alderman, you know, could also take back and and use. And that's why I wanted to inject myself in into those conversations. But most definitely, I don't have a problem with, what I would like to see is, like, communication. Like you guys said, whatever is discussed here, whatever recommendations that you guys give up to the mayor and his administration, I'd like to see that.

Right? Because, there's policies like miss McDowell, on housing that there's a lot of things. I I'm trying to do, tiny homes in my ward because I have empty lots. And, you know, to build a $203,100,000 dollar home in my ward, it's not gonna happen, the rate of return. And my concern, just real quick from that perspective, is, I'm seeing the higher prices, the assessment values, but I'm seeing a lot of folks, developers from outside of Rockford, right?

And they're jacking the price up. And so I'm seeing the rent prices go up and everything. I'm concerned about that, right? And so there certain things like that that you guys are kinda tackling that, you know, I wanna hear, because I'm just I sit on these committees, and then I take, votes on policy and and try to get policies through. So, yeah, I certainly would love to hear what you guys have to say that I get that communication up forward.

That plan that you guys are putting together, I'd like to see that as well, just like we do with economic development and just like Andrea tonight presented that, I go to those public, hearings because that's all I feel, sometimes that's the only way that I can interject myself and get that information as much as possible. I I understand it's on the website, but, you know, to get there, where do I go? And and, you know, so it just becomes that a little proclamatic on on my aspect of it. So I do encourage, you know, to have these conversations with us. I'm open to participating with that, and I don't think anyone on city council would.

But I do want to just reiterate, make sure we follow the structure that we currently have. And then if we do need to make adjustments, we certainly can. And those questionnaires can be asked to the mayor and to city council how that needs to come about, right, if there needs to be an adjustment, from that. But I do wanna make sure that you guys have the structure because, you know, you hear, a, we should do it this way when, really, it should be this. Right?

And I want to make sure that we follow that structure and whatever direction we want to on hot topic buttons. Certainly, I'd like to get more input feedback from folks because, like we say, sometimes we get it at the last minute. And and that does not mean that someone's trying to hide something or information is just the information is not available at that time, and it's kind of like at the last minute where all this information comes in. And we're sitting here, and, you know, we're we have to make the big decision one way or the other. So but I do encourage that.

That would be my only recommendation, but I do would like to see more involvement from city council on certain things that relate to what the community has to say, because that's our job. We represent our citizens in the community, and that's why I'm here tonight. But I'd encourage you guys to continue to move forward. So I don't have no opposition to that.

Thank you. Thank you.

You.

I guess to that point, the alderman brought up wanting to see our action plan, which tells me that our action plan that we approved a few months ago hasn't made it in front of counsel. So

maybe wrinkle. Yeah. Part of that

conversation where where the reintroduction is making sure that that gets in front of counsel at some point.

And we can do that. I think I have felt that we've still been a little bit in draft mode. So I haven't shared it. But if you feel like it's at a point where we can share that, I'm happy to do that. I just I have felt like we met earlier I this week, felt that it was still in draft mode before we presented. But if we want to do that, I'm happy to do that.

And yeah, maybe we share the topics of a discussion, unless to your point, unless we feel like we're this is full, ready to go, maybe we just share the we're talking about housing, and we're talking like, we just share those points and the things that each commissioner has agreed to prioritize, just so they have it. And I guess also, I mean, these are part of our agenda packets, so they are public currently. Even if they're in draft form, they're out there. So our aldermen or city leadership could access them.

If you'd like, I'll clarify with counsel, the clerk and Angela, the legal director on what that process would be to be able to provide these types of things to counsel, whether it's having, the chair or a member of CRC present that formally. I'm not sure. I don't think that we've really done that, at least not during my tenure. So I'll get some confirmation on what that process would look like.

So going back to new business item A, what would you like to happen with those draft questions that Commissioner Bravo and I came up with. They were very, very close. We hewed very closely to what we talked about in our strategic session. And it does have an intro. I don't know if the rest of the commissioners would like to look at those before they're distributed in any small meeting that, you know, three on three meetings that would occur or how we should go forward on that.

I think I guess, what the commissioners who have not seen the questions, would you like to see them before they are potentially used as part of on three or whatever this turns into. Again, Commissioner Call mentioned, they are

They are very, very short. Can actually read them. I realize we probably don't want to be here until eleven tonight. But again, there is an introduction to it and I won't bother you with that. I think it's just pro form a or just standard. But these are the questions. How do you listen to your constituents? Where do you meet with them when they have concerns, for example, your home or a designated spot? What are the top three challenges in your ward? Third question, the Community Relations Commission has identified housing as a top concern in Rockford.

How are you helping to make housing more accessible and affordable in your ward? And then question four and the last one, are there areas in your ward that would benefit from one of the following: revitalization of current homes or alternative housing options, parenthetically such as tiny homes or assisted living centers assisted senior living centers question. Again, we can share those with the commissioners, but just what what do those sound like? Those sound like good. I did in part as part of the intro, I just basically we just basically said, try to keep the answers short, and I think I think we said 150 words or or fewer. So

I I I got one thing to comment on the term tiny homes. I think we need to to redefine, and use a term something like smaller footprint homes because tiny homes are exactly that. They're very small, and they are designed for, more of a shorter term living actually or a less constructive living. So the term tiny home is probably not what we want to talk about when we're talking about putting more affordable housing into our community. But people don't need 2,000 square feet.

You know, it's a lot of people that can get away with 700 square feet. A tiny home is more like 350. So I think we might wanna look at our terminology there.

Okay. So so smaller footprint homes, and then we say parenthetically, what did you say, seven hundreds, for example, 700 square feet

or Yeah, something that feels

like seven fifty. Could probably get you an exact number.

Okay, I just think that would help visualize for a lot of people. And then is the assisted senior living centers, I don't remember from our discussion how that came up. Is that something we want to add or leave it out?

I think that was kind of more towards elderly parents. If, you know, if there's a way to keep them living at home instead of putting them in a nursing home, a lot of people, I think, would appreciate the opportunity to leave to be able to keep them living close.

Sort of the group home for seniors type plan, and that's not the right term. But so we don't leave that in there then, do you think?

I think it's a reasonable but I think that's a good point. Like, we want to make sure that we have options available for people who want to remain in their homes and not go to nursing homes if that's not what they want. It's a valid question. Yeah.

Should we have Mikayla, I don't know how this would look. So should we have just a draft of those questions available during these meetings? Should we put this off for another month? What's

the thought?

So scheduling, I guess we would need to decide if we want to move forward with scheduling the small group meetings with the Alderman. Have the mayor asked that he make that formal introduction across the board and then trying to see who would be interested. And then based on the number of responses that we get, schedule as many small meetings as or small groups as we would need for you guys to be able to have those. And then I would be I would provide the questions ahead of time so they could think about it. Prepared answers to it. They might have to do some research or something like that. I'm not sure, or come with data maybe, and giving them the opportunity to be prepared. I think it would give you a more productive discussion.

So do we do we want to ask the mayor to make that introduction at the next council meeting? Where? Or when the next available council meeting for him to do so. And then we can hopefully receive requests for meetings by our next meeting, and we can start scheduling those out? What's the I guess, again, what is the request of the mayor? And then who's making the request to say, at the next available council meeting, we want you to do this with this outcome in mind.

Oops. Sorry. I just have one question. There be preceding the, excuse me, the specific questions, would there be are we understanding that there would be a general reintroduction of our commission and its purpose and goals in case there unclear about that. So we have a starting point. Is that was that our thinking?

Is that what the commission is wanting?

That I will say that's what it's it sounds like

Okay.

Is what I'm hearing is that there needs to the mayor needs to reintroduce the commission so that everyone around the horseshoe understands what the ordinance says and what we are currently tasked to do. And then the next step, it sounds like, would be, now that you've been reintroduced, the commission is open to having conversations with you. We have questions. We'd like to know more. We'd like to have more involvement. Who's available for those conversations? That's what it sounds like we're saying?

Yeah. Yes.

I can make the ask to the mayor for that and then ask if he if there's a certain process he would like to follow, whether that's having somebody from the commission attend that particular council meeting, maybe your public speaker to give a brief overview. I'm not sure what he would like that to look like, but I'll make that ask and then schedule that who if he would like somebody to attend, who would that person be so I can reach to that person directly?

I'm struggling with if our purpose and functionality is to, advise city council, I I I'm just I'm struggling with the ask type of situation. It's it's it's like we're and I think that's I think that's one of the biggest issues even from every presentation is the lack of communication. This commission has been established for many, many years. This I mean, a small city. This is not rocket scientists.

It's rocket science. Like what we're supposed to do, what our purpose. We've only had one election since I've been on this commission, so it's not like they're brand new faces. I I'm just trying to figure out why we're having such a long conversation on how to present to city council and the ask should come from the chair. You're the chair. It should that ask should come straight from you Right. To the mayor, because you're gonna meet with him and do all that. So it shouldn't come from anybody else outside of that. And then whatever those questions are going to be, we have to also make sure that and I love those questions. But if we're looking at three aldermen, that might not be an issue.

That might not be something that for based upon it with their area. And so we just heard from Alderman today. He's looking at something, you know, totally different. Another Alderman, they they might not even have land, even talk about housing, so this might not be a discussion to even to have. So I think that one of the things we should do is present, you know, who is willing to come to sit or how are we gonna do it without breaking the law, to deal with these particular issues.

I might not want the whole city council because it might not be, you know, for them. It might not pertain to them. That might not be for them. So if we're looking at that, we if 're gonna bring those questions out, maybe we should present it in a way that these are the questions that we're gonna ask. If it's gonna be senior, maybe I know in in the 5th Ward, all the woman is looking at putting the ACIP, you know, structure or something like that right there on Main Street.

Maybe that's something that she might want to talk about. If it's something else, maybe we present that and allow them to come because all 11 we're not going to get every ward is different and every you know, and so we wanna make sure that we're not wasting their time. They're not wasting our time that we're able to to get what we're trying to get out. But the reintroduction of what we're who we are that and we've been on this for many, many years. I just don't I I don't even understand why this is a reintroduction.

Are we gonna reintroduce all of the other commissions as well? I mean, we have a bunch of them. I I just think that when we're looking at this, I I think that there has been a communication gap in what our purpose and functionality is, and I don't think that we have been utilized or being used in a way in which we were created historically. And I think that we've evolved into something that it probably was not the original intent, and and and and therefore, we don't get the input from the community as we should. And we only get that we only get it when it becomes a camera situation or when it becomes this data center situation.

And I think that we can ease city council if the discussion starts here. That's not replacing them, but at least to open up a form in our meetings here to deal with those issues along with what we're doing with this the calendar to allow this to go. So now that the alderman, when they come into city council and have to deal with it, it won't be new news to them, and it won't be a shock in all to make a decision. We have no information in this in this council for any hot button issue. There's no person that that when a person asks us a question that we can really defend or whatever, give any information about any of the major issues that's going on in the city.

I think it's unfair to this commission for us to sit in this seat and not have any information to provide to the community considering the name of this commission is the Community Relations Commission. I'm done. Thank you.

No. I I hear you and I and I think I go back to the conversation around the cameras. We had an alderman who said, I want you to send this to the community relations commission. And we watched the horseshoe vote no. So to me, some of the reintroduction And you and I have been on this commission since the beginning.

I wonder if the reintroduction is reminding them that some of these things could and should start with us. Have they forgotten that over the years? Where body cameras was, Go straight to the community relations specialist, you guys got this. Use of force, go straight to the community relations, you guys got this. And then we referred it back to them. Is that part of the reintroduction, because they're not utilizing us in the way that they should, do we need to remind them?

So I have a basic question. I'm reading this ordinance creating the Community Relations Commission several times. I can see how body cams and use of excessive force would relate to a lot of the terminology about equal justice for all. I'm not sure how data centers fit into that. And again, I'm just speaking for myself as a commissioner. I'm not sure that I want to be a repository for every hot button issue that comes before the council. Not to denigrate how important the issue of data centers is, I just am not sure how it relates to the ordinance that created us.

Mm-mm. I think based upon the fact that we are community relations commission and it's a community issue, that it automatically falls within the in in the parameters of what we're doing. I I'm not saying that we've there there's a vote one way or the other, but I think that this is a forum that we welcome community input and to push it out if it's a a a hot button issue with the community and with the Community Relations Commission and it never hits the floor here and there's never a discussion here or we never have the information here, then, again, we're not voting which way, but I think that we have a an opportunity instead of it going straight to city council where you don't have the opportunity to speak outside the three individuals or whatever that is, that we could have that here, you know, measured. Of course, we don't wanna be all night with it, but at least have some of those issues to to relate so that we can at least better present something to the city. Say this is what's going on.

This is, you know, these are the concerns, and they can do what they want with it, but at least let it hit here first.

We we have to also consider the fact that just by definition, relations is a two way conversation. And we're talking about how do we relate the community up to the council. And on this data center issue, the city has done quite a bit and made quite a few statements to satisfy some of the community's concerns. And I don't know if that message is necessarily getting out well either. So how do we you know, we've talked about how do we create public forums and how do we, you know, get wards to to do like what Alderman Bell does.

Community relations has to be a two way conversation, so we gotta consider how do we get the word out if the city is doing something that needs to be administered to the community.

Well, we can we can we can do that if we have the information. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Exactly. Information.

Yep.

I think, pastor Martin, to everything you just said, I a thousand percent agree with what you're saying. I think the glitch is, to Mikaela's point, we they have to wanna give us the information. And I'm not sure, to the chair's point, watching them vote no, no, no to send something to us was really sobering for me. I was like, wait a minute. What am I doing here?

Like, I wanna be useful, but to be useful, like, I would love to be able to be a, you know, sounding board to the community and then take that message up. But if they don't view us as legitimate, a legitimate body, I worry they're just not going to that it will not be as collaborative as it could be. I want them to want to listen to us and to see us as a valid legitimate group who's trying to make this easier, not like what are they even doing here. I mean, there was one councilman who I I mean, admittedly, I was surprised. He was like,

no. Yeah.

No. I those people are probably very nice people. And I don't wanna repeat if you watch this, but he said, I'm sure they're very nice people, but no. And I thought, what we've gotta we gotta disconnect here. So that's my concern.

And and some of that disconnect could be them doing commissioner Cole, what you did, they're reading the ordinance and saying this doesn't fit the ordinance. No. Or they're saying, We don't know enough about what the community relations commission does. No. So is that part of the reeducation of this is what the ordinance says. If you wanna send us something else, fine. But you guys have to understand what we're here for. And and maybe they don't know. Maybe they do know not.

Based on this conversation, it just feels like like this commission is the enemy. Like, we're not part with them. It's it's it's almost like we're forcing ourselves on on the commission I mean, on the on the council when we're here, even according to that, you know, they didn't need to be reintroduced when we were doing giving out money at city council people here. So it's it's not that they don't know what we do.

Right.

It's not that they need to be reintroduced. I think that again, I I just don't wanna feel uncomfortable in a commission that's that's here to represent the city just like they represent the city, but to make it feel like we're so disconnected and like we're an enemy group versus being a part of the team to help move the city forward. Because I think right now it just appears that we're it's us against them when it's not that that's not the intent. It's it's it's it's how can I help the city council bridge how do we bridge what the community is saying and how do we help push it up to make what they're saying possibly policy? Mhmm.

But we're not fighting against city council with these issues. Again, it's not like we're voting one way or the other because of the city council gonna make that vote anyway. But I think that we we should have be able to present a document to you, to present to city council to say, look, this is what this is what it is, and based upon what it is, you all do what you all want, but at least we fulfilled our purpose as a as a as a commission to hear that because we're hearing it already. We we we as we walk in, I'm I'm hearing conversation when I came back into town, you know, with a whole big issue about data center. I'm like, what the heck are we talking I didn't even know anything about it, but it just came at me so hard. And I I don't have any information at hand that I could to you know? And that's the only thing I'm saying. It's it's not that we're gonna vote anything

No.

But at least

We know how to respond.

We know how to

Because if we don't, then now that's a further disconnect

Right.

Between city and and community. And we're trying to bring the city and community together. That's the only thing I'm saying.

I would just caution offer my own personal caution against reading a no vote as as this commission being of no value. It could be a whole lot of things.

A whole

lot of things. It could be that the council and the mayor perhaps want to protect us from being just the force field on a whole lot of misinformation and anger and conspiracy theories. After twenty five years in journalism, I'm not going to shy away from a controversy. But I also don't think that just listening to people's frustration and anger in this vacuum of information with no solid proposal coming to the council, I just think that that may not, again, be going back to the ordinance that created the Community Relations Commission. I'm not sure that may be in keeping with.

But I think there's a difference of opinion, and I respect that.

What are our next steps? We've talked about a lot tonight. What is the will of the commission? I think as commissioner Paul mentioned, there's a lot of different perspectives and a lot of reasons that we might not have connection or reasons that we might have connection. What are our next steps related to the agenda item? What are we doing with the questions? What are we asking of the mayor? What are the action steps? Even if we need to take further action steps next month or the month after, what are the action steps for this meeting?

I know I'm very newer. I'm the newer member here tonight. And, pastor, I agree that in the past, it seems like the only time that the commission the community relations commission has been helping is when there is a hot topic. Yes. But, like, such as body cams and use of force.

I think earlier when we were talking about the mayor maybe reintroducing us, I like Mikaela's idea of the smaller groups meeting with the alderman and just leaving it up to at least putting it out there, asking the mayor to ask the alderman if they would consider meeting with us. These are the questions we're gonna have to discuss with you. And just leaving it to them and whoever wants to come and meet with us, then we take it from there.

I I think that's all good what you wanna do, but is this what the mayor wants us to do? Is this why he developed the commission? You know, is it you know, for the hot topics are you know, that's that's the thing too. Are we going way in or we're staying outside? So I think that, I you know, not all hot topics are something that but we just want I believe that we're to be informed so in case when people have somebody in the community and we need that information so that we can help them process things.

Right? So is is this what he created? And if so, then we should have the small meeting with this with the three, whatever, start from there or reintroduce, you know, but we have to now, really, is this what he wants us to do?

I don't wanna speak for the mayor. I think if we want to ask him, he we can invite him here to tell us, but I would imagine what he wants from the community relations commission is likely in the current version of the ordinance. Now could he change that? Could he ask us to change that? Could he ask the council to change that? Sure. But I think the intent of the commission was based in the ordinance that relates to the community relations commission and what we're tasked to do based on the

ordinance. Okay. But

I I think if we want to ask him that directly, we can invite him to tell us that.

That might be a really good question to ask your Alderman when you have the small groups to is what do you want from us? How can we help you? Because speaking to Pastor Martin's point, there would have to be a process change, I think to get things to you guys before they go to council and what things what would those items be? When would they come to you? What would that timeline look like? What are they expecting from you guys to then provide to council? Some of these are very time sensitive as well. So that might be a question for the alderman that come to those small group session is what is it that you want from us? How can we help with these hot button items? And what does that look like?

Because truly to get them to you guys first, there would have to be a formal process change.

And I think that was probably some of the issue with the cameras getting to us is there was deadlines related to that and for them to be sent to us, at least from listening to counsel. Right? It sounded like that might have been the barrier. Whether that's the barrier, I don't know. I can't I'm not part of counsel.

But it sounded like it was also process issue, that it might create some process issues for them that they need to fix before they give us something. Is there anything else for that? Are we asking the mayor to do a reintroduction? So we're asking the mayor to do a reintroduction.

Yes. Can you?

I I'll reach out to him.

You'll reach out?

I'll reach out

to him. I will ask for the reintroduction. I'm also then going to ask him to make clear to the council members that we have some questions, and we'd we'd love to connect with them and learn more about what they are, to pastor Martin's point, what they are passionate about in their wards, and maybe that can help us better identify when things should come to us and when maybe they shouldn't and how to navigate that. I will make that request this week. Do

you want another copy of Commissioner Bravo and my questions, maybe taking out the housing emphasis? That was put in there because I thought we agreed at our strategic planning meeting that we wanted to continue with the housing emphasis. But we could certainly take out any kind of leading questions, if you will.

What do you guys think? I mean, if the initial ask is a reintroduction and a we would love to set up some meetings, we are not necessarily sending the questions with that initial ask. We could form those questions before the meetings get scheduled, if that's

That sounds good.

Agreed. Yeah. Yeah. That's the high for the city. Yeah. Anyway,

that's not going away.

And senior too. Senior housing is going.

Yeah. There you go.

So when I reach out to him, what timeline am I giving him as far as we are available to start meeting with the council members as of May, June? When are we going to make ourselves available? Because I think, commissioner Callah, to your point, that will be when we need to have those questions finalized. What are your thoughts?

I would say May because June people start vacationing and stuff.

Okay. So we're making the request tomorrow. As of May, we are available to start meeting. Please reach out to city staff or myself to schedule those meetings, and we can if we have three council members, we can reach out and say who wants to meet on these dates. Okay. Mikayla, you and I can sit down and kind of navigate that once we start getting responses, I

think. Okay.

Yes.

Yes. I'll find out for the open meetings

act. Yep.

We have more things on our agenda tonight, friend.

I have a meeting.

The next thing on our agenda is the affordable housing pilot program from commissioners Pekayla and Garwick.

I'll talk really fast, like super fast. So our task as a result of the strategic planning process was to do some research into housing initiatives in cities comparable to Rockford. As I started looking through this, some of these are such places. Some of these are cities that are a little bit larger only because I was starting to see themes that were consistent across cities of various sizes. So I'm not going to read all of this to you, but you can read this.

A lot of this has to do with zoning. Something that was interesting that is in here similar to the procurement event that Mikayla talked about was about bringing in developers and builders. And once we would have, you know, if there were changes to zoning that need to be made to allow for multiunit dwellings and so on and so forth, That once we had things kind of where they were going to be to bring in developers and builders and talk about what it would be like for you to build here. This is our structure. This is what we currently have set up so that we can make it a little bit more attractive, educate people as to what we have to offer here in Rockford.

Pardon me. Some of these are about making plans available to folks who would like to build in the city so that they don't have to go and pay for plans on their own, things just to make it easier. So I'm not going read all of that to you. One thing though that did kind of peak our interest is that a fair statement is a project that has been developed in Minneapolis. It's called Avivo Village.

This is more for not temporary super temporary housing but perhaps a year for folks who have housing instability but also are in need of other city services, social services to get them back on their feet in order to move to the next level, which is I think the sort of housing that we've already talked about tonight. So this is about a two minute video I believe. And maybe it's time to go home and we watch this video and we ponder and we come back and we talk about it more. But after seeing this, Commissioner Garwick and myself and Kat Valdez Doyle, who does housing in the area, she was helpful in meeting with us. And we talked about how what would it look like if we wanted to bring something like this to Rockford.

We got all of our thoughts together. We sent an email to Mayor McNamara just so he is aware that this is a thing in the world and he passed it on also to then city staff which is kind of where it stands. So we thought we would get because to your point about it's hard to know what we don't know about what existing projects are already in the works. We thought, well, what if something like this is already out there? We don't want to reinvent the wheel. So we inquired about that, and and we're waiting to hear back. So this is this is what piqued our interest, most recently.

I met Avivo through the North Loop Neighborhood Association when they came and presented their proposal to take an old abandoned warehouse on the corner of Washington Avenue and Plymouth and make it into Avivo Village.

I think the fact that Avivo is able to step in along the journey and address housing instability, employment, puts them in a place where they're really looking at these individuals and families as a

whole system. Right? And they can walk alongside them through that whole journey. We really try to support nonprofits to use volunteers effectively to serve their mission. We're really trying to draw connections in community. We want them to be able to make a tangible impact and to being able to walk away learning about challenges in our community and how they can make an ongoing difference.

Through housing, addiction treatment, mental health services, career training and job placement, Avivo provides wraparound services to help the whole person.

I believe that Avivo is very unique. Avivo moves on barriers by welcoming everybody and I believe that they look at everybody as a individual.

Every person who comes in here is different and has different needs and desires. And so it keeps everything really dynamic and really fun and challenging, but challenging in a good way.

Once we look at somebody as an individual, we get to learn who they are within and not what we see.

It's really fulfilling to see people go from sleeping outside to being in their own apartment. If you don't have your own place to stay, how can you get well?

Seeing those mile markers develop for people, like figuring out where the challenge is for people and then seeing them pass them year after year is incredible. It's really, really

amazing to see how people can change when they have access to emergency shelter that's a low barrier and they can have a secure and safe space to sleep. That's amazing to me.

We've seen research and programs that demonstrate that it takes more than just treatment to help a lot of people move along their path towards recovery. And I think one of the things Avivo offers is kind of those those extra elements that make treatment more successful.

Working with organizations like a vivo really helps us bring our mission to life and we hope that by working together people are learning and seeing firsthand the impact that a vivo makes in the community and that it's creating long term relationships.

Avivo is there to do the work, to help whoever needs it no matter how challenging the case may be.

I love serving the community. I really do. It just makes me feel like I accomplished something.

So, unfortunately, that's not the video that I thought we were gonna be watching. So yeah. So I don't know. I apologize. I thought I was sending you

another video.

It's a nice video. I mean, it doesn't really show you what it was, though. Right. Is there okay. So that's the home page. Can you go to the about perhaps? Oh, wait. There was an embedded video that had the gentleman that was speaking about what happened. Is that the video that we just

That's what we just saw. Yes.

That's what

we just saw?

Yeah. And that it's not

the video I saw that you had referenced.

Know Oh, you saw

that It actually shows the little units.

Okay. So I'm not losing it. I might be, but not about this. Because that is very helpful. Is really bad. Sorry. Wonder if it's in the

Is it something we can find and then send out to the full commission for review?

Larry, I thought you

saw what I was talking about.

Yes. No. You it was there, and I don't know what that video was.

It was on the home page,

and it was the video on the home page, and I don't know.

Is this something we can do, like, at the next meeting next month? We can find a video, watch the video and talk more about it next month. Can we put that on the agenda?

Yeah. I mean, the long and the short of it

is they took a warehouse. So part of

what I found in the research, thank you, about all of the other cities is that it can be difficult to have multiunit or multifamily dwellings. You get a lot of zoning issues around that.

This

is a model where they took an old warehouse and they built within it small, lockable, secure units where people can keep their belongings safe, can be safe themselves to sleep at night. And then within the same building, residents can find many other services under one roof.

Alright. So I know you're not crazy because I'm looking at the video right now.

You are? Yeah. I'm on

the phone. So you're not crazy. I see. It's it's not on that one, but they if you go to their their website, if you just go to their website, avivomen.org. Yep.

It's embedded. It's right there. Right?

Yeah. It's in there. So I see it.

Okay. I have been foiled by

So

ponder away and we can have more discussion next time.

Yeah. And there's more we can say about it. There's quite a bit information.

Next month, we have some updates from some of the directors. So there probably is some room that we could add this back onto the agenda if that is

And that's if the directors can all confirm for me.

Right. Yep. Thank

you. Alright. Commissioner's reports. The only thing holding

us from I'd like to share that this week well, I volunteered for seven weeks. I'm helping out the the public schools. They have a program called opening doors. And so I'm volunteering on Wednesdays for two hours to get involved with the community in that way. So just wanna Awesome. Thank you.

Where is that?

That's on the Brook Road Okay. Methodist Church. Sure.

K. Can't believe I'm gonna keep talking. Part of the discussion that I had when I went to the office hours with the mayor was around our discussion about how to make the services that are available in our city more accessible and help residents become more aware of them. To that end, I'm going to meet tomorrow morning with the, director of the United Way around the two eleven program, which I imagine folks are probably familiar with. But just I I'm I just want to learn from her kind of how because that really is a resource and referral versus, like, a let me help walk you through this process.

But I'd like to know kind of from her what her experience has been working with the different agencies in the area and how might we fit in that process. So is there any are there any questions that anyone would like for me to ask while I'm with her?

Are there other languages? What's that? Are there other languages? Yep. Okay.

The director of the United Way. Yeah.

And I would just be curious as to what steps they're taking to make sure that people know what two one one is and how it's available. I yeah. I've lived in the community a long time, and I'm still not exactly sure what two one one is. Okay. So I think it just speaks to, you know, what are they doing to disseminate the information.

Great. Thank you.

Commissioner Peckela, maybe depending on your conversation with that executive director, there's benefit to bringing her to the commission. But I think based on maybe some of the answers that you have, maybe next month's commissioner's report you can kind of give us an update on how that conversation went. And based on that, maybe we bring her here to just share more details.

Would you like me to ask her if she would be open to that now or wait until we get some more information?

I don't think it would hurt to say, you know, if we have further questions want to dig a little bit deeper, is that something that you would be willing to do? So I think depending on the answers that you get tomorrow, I'm sure it'll be a great meeting, but depending on that, we may have further things that we want to discuss or even bring her in related to some of the things that are on the action plan.

Okay. Any

other commissioner's reports? I will just say really fast before we go to the adjournment, please make sure that you're looking at the action and implementation plan because we have commissioners who in the next few months will be responsible for tasks that are on that. So just make sure that you're keeping a month or so ahead so that we can keep going. And with that, I will ask for Oh, you got something. You're

killing me.

Pastor Martin, is that that sounds like a

Oh. A second.

Emotion in a second. All in favor. All in favor, say aye. Aye. See everyone next month. Run.