Housing, Community Development & Public Health Committee - Regular Meeting

Just a little housekeeping before we start. There's a sign-in sheet at the table for public comment. We will be taking it at the end. So if you wish to talk about this or anything else, please feel free to sign the public comment sheet on the table. I call to order the Toledo City Council Housing and Community Development Committee meeting of Thursday, June 25th, 2026. The purpose of this meeting is to discuss the food policy update. Clerk, please call the roll. Jones. Gattis. Here. Kramer. Martinez. McPherson, Meldon, Williams. One present. Thank you. And I'm sure the others will roll in as the meeting goes along. I am going to turn the floor over to you, but I am very excited about this update. So when you're ready, if you could say your name and who you are for the record and dive right in.

Yes, thank you so much, Mayor Mominey. I am the food policy manager for the city and here to share some updates. So I guess I'll dive right in. Presenting more so to you all, but thank you for being here, Council Member Gattis. Today, we are here to talk about just the need for a coordinated local effort to address food policy issues. We know that, you know, federal food insecurity support systems are rapidly changing. Grocery prices are rising due to gas prices and inflation. We're seeing or hearing anecdotally rather that our pantry demands are going up, especially for first-time pantry visitors. So I was hired to help with this strategy and with the help of many community partners we have kind of taking the first step in completing this food policy audit, which I'm very excited to share about today. So we determined that we need to know how we're performing currently before we decide where we should be striving to go, where we need to go next. So today I'll be sharing first my carrot audit findings, a little bit of progress to date, and then some next steps, and I'll be happy to field any questions that might come up from you or any of the audience members. Overall, really want this to lay the foundation for building towards the Food Policy Council, which is coming next, as well as a food action plan that ideally will ensure all Toledoans have the food that they need to be well. All right, so I'll dive right in. I didn't know coming into this position that there are several ways to do a food policy audit, but there are. So in doing research, came across the CARAT tool and determined that this was the best way forward. CARAT stands for Community and Agricultural Resilience Audit Tool, and it was developed by a very robust team of researchers, extension agents across the country, kind of spearheaded by the North American Food Systems Network. Overall, CARAT allows your community to develop a baseline, shared language, shared metrics to measure food systems' strengths and chances of being able to weather a crisis or whatnot. I really liked that it emphasizes a team approach, so the more contributors you have in the process of doing the audit, the stronger your outcome will be. I actually had the chance of working with an awesome team, some of which are here today. Amy Abudili from the Health Department, Caleb Brown from the E-Bide Center, and Jill Bungie from United Way. So they really helped me tackle this whole process, which was no small undertaking. We also like that it's comprehensive in its analysis. So if you remember back to my September presentation last year, I did the listening tour to kick off my role, and we kind of developed five themes that were important to our stakeholders, so everything from public participation in the policy process to growing the food, distributing it, customers accessing it, all the way to food waste, and all of those themes map very nicely onto the carrot audit tool itself. So a little bit more about the tool. It has 101 indicator questions across seven themes. Themes from natural resource management, looking at are we taking care of our soil and are we preserving farmland, all the way to community health and well-being. That looks at social determinants of health questions. all the way to food sovereignty and distributive and democratic leadership. So is your, well first of all, do you have a food policy council? Is that council representative of your community and all of the sectors within the food system? So I mentioned my team. We did have the opportunity of applying and getting accepted into the national cohort that was conducting this audit together. So Toledo is one of 12 communities across the United States going through this process as a group. And that was just awesome for peer-to-peer learning, hearing what they're doing in other states to collect the data. So we actually went for a mixed methods approach, which I think is probably the only way to do this. We started with a deep dive into the research to see what we could gather as a team first, and then we dove into one-on-one interviews with kind of like topical experts, people in the field doing a lot of this work. We had one-off calls and emails and even conducted a few focus groups with, Ben let us present to the Sustainability Commission, we went to the Junction Coalition, we presented to the Eat Fresh Live Well Committee that's hosted by the Health Department and Amy, and we also formed, if you remember the March Farmer Gathering that we had a couple months back, We really were intentional about forming that to fill in gaps with a lot of farmer input. So overall, we had 43 contributors, individuals who were interviewed or called, emailed, plus those four focus groups. And if I had to estimate just the numbers of all of those groups, I would say about 100 people probably touched the audit in some way or another. So thank you to everybody who did contribute. And thank you to Chief Clemens and Deputy Director Ali for just all of their guidance along the way. So a little bit about the scoring key. So 101 indicators, all of the indicators were worded in a way that said, do you have a program policy or practice related to XYZ? And so we came up with a scoring metric where three means yes, a program policy practice exists, it's implemented and it's enforced. Two means something exists but there are gaps in coverage and or funding. One points to there's an early stage initiative just emerging and zero means no efforts are happening. So overall, we gave our team a score for Toledo at 53%. So 160 points out of a total of 303 possible points. So I think this is positive. I think it points to all of the amazing work happening in the community, but just huge opportunity to grow and get better in each of these seven themes. So some high scores were across themes three and seven, which I'll say there's a lot of overlap between these themes. So I do think, I think three and seven are very related in that they look at, do you have the framework in place to support urban food production? So self-reliance in food and place-based economics. Do you have like zoning regulations that support urban farming? So we scored the highest in those categories. Our lowest scores were across categories four and six, distributive and democratic leadership and food sovereignty, both of which relate to how are decisions made, how is power distributed, is your leadership representative of the community, does everyone have a say in shaping policy? So I mentioned a lot of overlap and initially I was going to do a deep dive into each seven themes but I think that was probably going to be a little bit lengthy, so today I'm gonna stick to high-level cross-cutting findings. For a deeper dive, I did print out, I don't think there are enough copies for folks, but I have this executive summary that links to the full report, the full 85-page report. There's a QR code. You do have to scroll down on the website a little bit to find it, but you can follow along that way as well if you want to take a deeper dive. So to get into some key strengths, we are doing really well. We have awesome zoning that promotes urban agriculture. It allows for home and community gardens, commercial agriculture. It allows for farm stands where you can sell onsite, composting, backyard chickens. These are, you don't always find that in cities across the US. So the urban ag regs that we developed in 2018 are very permissive, I would say. We also have a very robust community of urban farmers and rural farmer partners and awesome community-led food production happening. people growing food for their neighbors, teaching kids how to farm, where food comes from. So that's something to celebrate. I think with our position on Lake Erie, that points to why we have a really strong policy framework for protecting our water resources and our watershed management is pretty strong. So we have awesome partners in Lake Erie West and Black Swamp Conservancy is kind of those regional entities that are guiding that policy. And they're all very interested in working together on food issues. We also have a really strong regional asset in the Center for Innovation and Food Technology and their Northwest Ohio Cooperative Kitchen called the NOC. If you're a small food business and you want to develop a salsa or a jam, you can go to them. They help you develop a label, a business plan, walk through every step for not only giving you the equipment you can rent out for the day to make the product, but then getting you into a store like Meijer. So they're an awesome resource that we have to work to protect because they are having some funding uncertainties right now. We also have a really strong partners in both Ohio State and Central State University Extension. I'm very happy to be working with Michelle Wallace closely on promoting the homestead class. And she also does the fast track farmer class for aspiring farmers. There's also Ohio State, they host their annual leave a zucchini on your neighbor's porch day. So all of their program kind of covers everything from production to food access initiatives. So they're an awesome asset. And then we have an emerging opportunity in Farmalot, which I'm sure you know is new through the land bank, where if you are looking for land, they have a vacant land portal. They connect you with an application where you can show an interest and perhaps start to lease that parcel with a pathway to ownership. So again, that's not common in every community. So something to celebrate. As far as the gaps or opportunities to grow, we do not have an active food policy council, and I would say this rises to the top for me because I see that as laying the foundation and building capacity for all the other initiatives that we are trying to do. Our urban farmers are self-financing for a lot of their endeavors in growing food, so while we have awesome zoning and programs like Farm-A-Lot, doling out their own resources for soil testing and water access and buying tools it's just a lot especially if you're starting out and maybe don't know if you have that ownership yet of the land further oh and to that point at the farmer gathering we heard that soil testing and water access are the top barriers so that's something to think about further along we do not have a food hub a farmer directory or a kind of formalized procurement system that promotes local sourcing, which we heard at the farmer gathering, you know, growing food is the easy part. It's the getting the food to the market that's the hard part. So working on that infrastructure to support farmers. We also have several committed policies on paper that remain unimplemented. And I think a lot of that is due to waiting on the sustainability manager to be hired. But we have goals in our climate action plan around local food first procurement, composting goals, fertilizer reduction. So really looking forward to that hire so that I can work closely with that person, hopefully on the council. We also have, we have a lot of great mentorship opportunities, but they are all kind of acting alone, siloed education and workforce training with a lack of formal support from the government as is. So, you know, this is especially urgent if we look at the average age of farmers, which is climbing past 60, we need to teach the next generation of farmers. and finally we are dealing with a funding crisis we know that the knock is struggling with funding we've seen produce perks which is our double up snap program end at the farmers market as of right now we know that snap ed was terminated last year so a lot of really important support systems are struggling to continue on so again pointing to the need for a local coordinated effort So again, you can dive into the executive summary if you wanna go theme by theme for the recommendations, but as far as cross-cutting recommendations go, let's relaunch and properly resource the Food Policy Council invest in the farmers who feed Toledo, build the infrastructure the local food economy needs, turn existing policy commitments into action, protect what is working from federal and state funding cuts, work towards an emergency food plan, which we also do not have, build a coordinated food systems workforce pipeline, and finally affirm Toledo's commitment to change by signing onto the Milan Urban Food Policy Pact, which I'll explain more in a few minutes. These are very broad buckets of actions, but it's my hope that we can all plug in. I will continue to use these to shape my work moving forward, but every organization can hopefully take this document and plug in as they are able. So now I'll share some progress to date. The other handout that I have prepared for you all kind of breaks down work I have done to date, what I plan to do next, and then what the Food Policy Council can hopefully tackle together. So for the purpose of the presentation, I'll just focus on the green sections, what's been done so far. There's also a lot packed onto these slides, so I'm just gonna highlight a couple of bullets from each, but happy to circle back if you wanna dive into any of those bullet points. As far as relaunching and properly resourcing a food policy council, we've been working on finding funding. Most councils across the U.S. operate on less than $10,000 a year, so it's not a huge lift to get it going, but obviously the more funding, the more you can do. And ideally you would have a paid staff position and maybe some co-facilitation positions. We did go after a regional food systems partnership grant last year with our grant writer, Laura Schaefer, who's awesome in that endeavor. We ultimately did not get that, but we did have 25 letters of support from across the city and region, all saying we would like this food policy council to happen. So that's an awesome show of support. We are also looking at funding, Lake Erie West requested funds from Congresswoman Kaptur and those funds would, they would be eligible for supplying funding for a food policy council. So we actually teamed up on their community economic development strategy and made sure that food was in their plan. We also hosted a farmer gathering, which I mentioned, and the picture on this slide is actually one of the stations that was asking farmers what would make it easier for you to be a part of the planning process, to be participating. So we heard things like farmer stipends would make it easier, meeting in the off season when they're not farming because they're very busy during the summer, as you know. So different things like meeting offsite at local farms and nonprofits would make it easier for them to participate. So that's very valuable information. Further down the list and related to data, which we need to guide our actions, I was able to contribute to the latest community health assessment conducted by the Healthy Lucas County Coalition. I was able to actually help with the question formation, inserting a few more food related questions. And they interviewed me afterwards just asking what I've heard from the community so far. So looking forward to that data and hopefully we will incorporate that into the commission itself, the Food Policy Council. And then I am working with Deputy Director Ali to work on this concept of, okay, what data do we need and how can we work towards a survey with the Food Policy Council once it's launched. Let's see. So overall, we just want a coordinated representative group to not work in our own silos, but to work together to shape policy. Moving on to investing in the farmers who feed Toledo, we really want to increase the capacity of our growers who are already growing a lot, but to be able to expand their operations and increase the food that they're producing. you know, sharing with their neighbors. So we actually already changed the high tunnel permitting process, which I heard was the biggest barrier in my listening to her when I started the role. So we actually have two pictures here of Sofia Quintero and one of the Cultivate Toledo farms. They both went through that new process and hopefully saved a little bit of money in the, you know, in the process. We secured $30,000 from, well 15 from the general fund and a land bank match to get a micro grant program going. So hopefully I will be partnering with Reinvest Toledo to get this micro grant program going in the fall where farmers can use a couple thousand dollars to invest in farm equipment, seeds, irrigation, storage, whatever they need. So really looking forward to that initiative. Also partnering closely with Extension, as I mentioned. So one of the pictures at the bottom left is a picture of a garlic workshop that we hosted at Oscar Shahir's Your Community Market in Junction. We actually worked on getting all the donations for that material, built six raised beds with community partners, and then hosted the workshop, which was a success. And now that site is the home base for the homesteading class that Michelle Wallace is hosting. So that's been an awesome experience. And then further down, we won funding at the Steiner Summit last year. It's kind of this annual statewide summit. It was in northwest Ohio this year. And we won $9,000 to host a Northwest Ohio Food Farm Summit in the fall. So I'm helping plan that with regional partners right now and hoping to have a really strong Toledo presence there. As far as building the infrastructure the local food economy needs, we know we need a food hub, so we're actively exploring funding opportunities. There is one right now in the Healthy Food Financing Initiative Fair Fund where we would be able to apply for technical assistance to figure out what structure should the food hub have, who should the operator be, etc. So ideally, we would be able to coordinate with all the partners who are talking about a food hub right now to go after an application for that money. Ideally, that food hub pilot would complement the healthy food small market program, which is hosted by the health department and the great work of Amy Abedeli and Stephanie Baltes right now to be able to support those stores in sourcing locally. And another thing that's going to help with that is at that Steiner Summit I mentioned, we did win some funds to create a regional farmer directory. That's the picture in the middle of the screen. That's our draft for the mock-up website that they're working on right now. So ideally, all of the farmers in our region, which we synced up with Lake Erie West's region, would be able to create profiles. And then there would be a buy-sell forum where buyers can connect with local producers and filter, see what certifications they have, what products they have to offer. So ideally that'll set the stage for, you know, first supporting the healthy food small market program, but then moving into farm to school, farm to institution, kind of increasing our local food procurement system. I just messed up the mic. There it is. Okay. So moving along, we also are using ARPA funds to bring a food resource to our NERSA neighborhood, Englewood. It's really exciting. We're teaming up with the Toledo Design Collective to use those funds for some preliminary drawings to rebuild Red and White Market, and we're going to meet them halfway on this rebuild project, and I think that's going to be a great asset for the community and thinking about that new housing development, the Grand right there. That's just going to be really nice for the neighbors. And then a little bit down the block, we're exploring the opportunity for a pop-up farmer's market at Swainfield. So just met with Lori, the interim manager of the farmer's market. She seemed very interested, but she's gonna pitch the idea to the board and see if they're willing to work with us on that. So that would be an awesome way just to kind of create a model for a city partnered pop-up and then be able to spread that around the Toledo area. As far as turning existing policy commitments into action, really looking forward, like I said, to the new sustainability manager hire. Ideally with our local food first procurement policy for the city, that farmer directory I mentioned will help us identify potential partners to source from. uh we do have some food waste goals in that not only around increasing compost but i see a huge opportunity in food rescue so whether that's gleaning or rescuing food from cafeterias that is totally edible and good quality we actually teamed up with the health department to write a new toledo lucas county food rescue and donation guide in partnership with a local chef so we we worked with chef chris at dana corporation who does a lot of food rescue we walked through his process took pictures of the process and hopefully we can spread that around, get more food rescue stories collected. I know Pathway was doing a lot of work with UT in their cafeteria. So this is just a huge untapped area I see. And then further along, I did recently join some statewide strategy calls with the NRDC. They're hoping to get a coordinated statewide effort to go after some larger funds. So several cities on those calls trying to work together. As far as working to protect what's being cut right now, federally and statewide, I mentioned SIFT needing some support, and actually I recently worked with them on a specialty crop grant where ultimately we were not funded, but as we were writing this application, we were hoping to get funds for a farm to food accelerator curriculum. So we thought we had that in the bag, but we're here to explore other opportunities like that. I think that would complement well with the farmer directory, and I did offer some match for my salary to support their programming. So that's a cool regional collaboration to continue working on. Recently, we also, a couple of funding partners and community partners got together with John Henry Eldridge Foundation as the host to try to find a regional strategy for funding produce perks, which I mentioned ending at the farmer's market for now. And we had a really good turnout, awesome conversations with both farmers and funders about how we can secure funding for this program. So we actually did help the head of Produce Perks Midwest to apply for the new GUSNIP grant. So ideally we will get funding to secure that programming for the next three years. So that was really positive. And like I said, continuing to work closely with Stephanie and Amy to sustain the healthy food small market program and expand it. It's already having great impact in some of our food desert neighborhoods. And they even got produce perks in Phoenix. That's our only produce perks program still operating right now. So huge shout out to Stephanie and Amy and their work with the store owners. In terms of working towards an emergency food plan, we definitely saw the need for that last fall with the HALT and SNAP benefits and just the kind of quick mobilization of community partners, but sometimes not knowing, well, what is my role in this? So I know this matters deeply to Dr. Jones. She's talked about a task force. There are other cities and tools we can use to look at who have developed emergency food plans, like Columbus. There's an awesome tool through the Johns Hopkins Institute for Food that looks at how to develop one. So we can use that as a council. Another action we took as a city is we really showed up to support Ken Hayes and the Grand Lodge Food Pantry. So as a city staff alone, we raised over 1,500 pounds of food during that time to support folks in need. So that's something we really want to continue on. Karen Maloney just saw me the other day in the elevator, and she's like, we're doing that again. So that's something to look forward to. As far as building towards a coordinated food system workforce pipeline, I have partnered up with some UT classes and hope to continue educating some classes on what food policy initiatives look like at the city level. Had the privilege of talking to Emily Bedwell's classes, which were looking at mapping food assets throughout the community. There's a picture down there of them visiting Mr. Johnson's produce farm. Also teamed up with Professor Olivia Summons in her honors engagement class. Her students did a deep dive into co-op practices. You know, what does it take to form a food co-op? So we'll definitely continue to draw on their research as a student team. I had the honor of connecting Stephanie Covington, who does amazing work for the city, with the Northwest Ohio Cooperative Kitchen. So they were talking about programming and they kind of took it from there. And then additionally, we're advocating for Senator Hicks Hudson's Senate Bill 120, which would formalize an urban farmer youth initiative. I know Sonia from Urban Holistics is already working closely with the Senator and has done a lot of amazing farmer training, but those farmers need resources to be able to train the youth. So this is currently passed by the Senate and in the House Committee. So we're looking forward to that legislation. Finally, we would like to affirm Toledo's commitment to change by signing on to the Milan Urban Food Policy Pact, which ultimately is a framework for cities recognizing that a huge amount of our population lives in cities and we have a commitment or a responsibility, rather, to take action on. climate change and on food security issues so i did write a briefing to the mayor to encourage him with council member jones's support and it sounds like he is open to signing on we would be joining columbus cincinnati and cleveland as pact members so i think there's strength in numbers we would be showing great strength in ohio as a state so and have that that leverage tool to say well we're committed so therefore we should be funding said program and just having that peer-to-peer network I think would be really strong. As far as next steps, I really want to kind of focus on the two that I think would create the capacity for the rest. Again, relaunching the Food Policy Council and properly resourcing it as well as affirming Toledo's commitment through that pact signature. So as far as launching a food policy council, we are actively working right now on forming a governance working group. So we have a group of about 20 folks that we're hoping to engage in just helping us firm up the structure because again, this food policy council could look so many different ways could be embedded in the government it could be a standalone nonprofit so looking at models i have been interviewing councils across the u.s and what do we like from baltimore what do we like from you know knox knoxville etc so ideally as a council we would identify those or as a governance working group we would identify priority indicators from the audit tool itself because 101 questions we're probably not going to rescore that every year But what are the top 10 that we would like to assign metrics to and track moving forward? And ideally, we will form working groups and then be able to move into action planning, which is the next step. And then again, with the Milan Urban Food Policy Pact, we have that strength with the peer-to-peer network across Ohio. And they also have a tool, a monitoring framework that maps well onto the carrot audit itself. So it's a tool that helps you assign metrics. And they do have a policy platter, so to say, that has a lot of ideas for action you can take. So I think between the carrot audit and the Milan Pact, we have a great foundation for an action plan in the works. So that is all I have prepared for today, but happy to dive into any of these documents if you have follow up questions or if you have anything you want me to look into.

thank you sure and before we continue i just want to acknowledge councilwoman kramer and councilwoman mcpherson this is great i you've been busy really busy this is a lot and to build something from the ground up um that's a lot thank you had a lot of hope Yeah, and I appreciate all of our partners, because it's really going to take all of us, right? Food is a web. We can't all do it alone. I really enjoyed the audit. I'm a data girl myself. And what do you think are going to be some of the most challenging things or ways in which you're going to need council's support going forward?

I would say, referring back to the farmers and what they asked for the greatest support on, that soil remediation, which I know we've had several conversations on, kind of went silent on the BG front where we might have had support from that professor, but how can we get a coordinated effort to support PharmaLot where we are pre-testing sites and saying, oh, you're interested in this site, it's pre-soil tested, ready to go, safe, or rather,

here's where you could place your raised beds because of contamination here are the recommendations for that so i just think a really well supported soil remediation plan would be a big help i appreciate that too and i i think that that plays into our need our active need for uh all this vacant lot what are we going to do we should have a broad plan throughout the whole city and know where the safe lots are for growing where they would be for

whatever other plans we have i am a big proponent of that definitely oh i see that councilwoman kramer has some questions sure i do yes thank you so much for all this information um it's really very comprehensive and I was like oh and I'm jotting questions down because I think you know I'm new and so I'm like okay um you talked about relaunching um the food policy council can you give me a little background on that sure we used to have a northwest Ohio food policy council that was when Carol Contrada was working at the county commissioners got it that was a lot of c's um but

I think it fizzled out after she changed positions and there was no paid facilitator position. Everybody was kind of volunteering their own time. So definitely drawing on, we have some of their old planning documents. We can see the structure, who was involved. So learning from that endeavor and then how can we make it more sustainable? So I am pushing currently for the council to live outside of the government or to be kind of a hybrid model so that if there is a change in office and food policy doesn't rise to the top, it'll still... be able to be sustained.

Yeah, I love that idea. Also, I really like the idea of the food rescue. I don't know if I've heard that term before, but I'm like, wow. And it totally makes sense because, you know, there's people, there's a lot of food in one place and then there's people who need food somewhere else. So getting the food to the people who need it is so important. Is there talk of working with like TPS and Washington Local on the food rescue program?

Interesting. I bet the Natural Science Academy would be very interested. I know Brian Ellis, they have a huge greenhouse there if you haven't been. They raise a lot of food themselves. I know they currently team up with Thomas Jackson to do some composting, but I haven't heard about food rescue efforts. I did mention the Pathway-UT partnership, and I'm guessing students are involved in that. I did reach out to them to try to interview them for the food rescue guide, but they declined at that time. So I think there's a huge opportunity to loop students in for sure. And also through that effort, learned about a new group, the Maumee Valley Gleaners Association. So have a new connection there. I think that could be a lot of extra produce from kind of a regional farms to funnel into places like Seagate. Tim's Rescue Kitchen that does food rescue work.

Wonderful. And also, this is totally like an extra thing, but I love the TOL graphic.

Oh, thanks. I was just like, oh, it's so cute.

So, yeah. That was a fun little extra thing. Right, yeah. But thank you so much for all of your work. And, you know, we're happy to support how we can because this is so important to our whole community.

uh councilmember gaddis was saying food security is kind of the it what sustains all of us and and we need to make sure that everyone in our community has access to fresh and healthy food so thank you thank you i'm going to have sally go get the sign-in sheet so if anyone would like to talk we're going to open it up for public comment but we'd like you to sign the sign-in sheet that she's going to get well you'll get three minutes and uh Okay. Yeah, I think that I would appreciate as you're thinking about the food council is a hybrid because my concern is there's laws, there's gonna be things that need to be changed. And I fear that if government's left out of it, that we won't be able to make those changes.

Yeah, I do appreciate Columbus's model. They have a food policy council outside that's more kind of advocacy, but then they work with a formal food board within the government and they work together on a food action plan. And you are also on the list of folks that would like to be at those meetings if possible. So yeah, I would love your support in that.

Awesome, thank you. Okay, well, Ms. Ivey, I see you've signed. You have three minutes and the floor is yours.

Thank you. My name is Charmaine Ivy. I'm a 10-year community activist in Toledo, the areas where I specialize education, employment, recreation, transportation, and housing to derail the school-to-prison pipeline and expose mass incarceration by legislation.

In hearing, was it Mara?

Mayor's presentation. First thing is an emergency food hub versus the food pantries that we have here already established. One thing Toledo is different from a city like Chicago is Chicago is a real food desert. In Toledo, you can get food all day, every day. The Ohio State University did a comprehensive list So all day, every day, it's just resources. Where do you go? How do you become informed about resources? So this is where you want to push clerks and libraries. They know everything. So I really want to highlight that we are not a food desert like Chicago. Chicago is a real food desert, and that's why crime is so high. One of the most uh study things in lab racks is food lab rats is food scarcity they know they'll kill each other for food scarcity is now how we can see it in community also so um the 300 plus community gardens that already exist and are overgrown at this very time um there there was a lot of resources put into those and now they just lay dead if if food uh security and and freshness is really the priority more resources should go back into those if more sustainable jobs would come out of behind prison walls. You know, the Fortune 500 companies that have sustainable jobs behind prison walls, people wouldn't have food scarcity or any other kind of scarcity if sustainable jobs were in the public and not behind prison walls. Lastly, the school year that I just wrapped up, I'm always looking for information, right? So in this school, I learned that Toledo Public Schools, our school, MHA, there's varying packages of freshness. Some school districts have three chefs, a full kitchen, get their food fresh every day. Our school, along with TPS, chose the C package, which is the same quality as an inmate. So when I look at my research on the school to prison pipeline and the focus on discipline rather than mastery of the skill, and already they're eating the food of inmates. have to give it to them because it's a state commodity and if they don't give it to them, the schools get sued by the states. Just like states get sued, I mean, states can get sued by private prison investors if they don't generate a customer to keep those sales for. I mean, come on. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting a different result. We need a vision for the community or we can keep on swatting at these. Every time somebody shoots, swat it. Every time something happens, swat it. Or we can get together, create a vision for the community and go that way. I think food is very important. It's medicine. Nutrition is health. So I think the topic is very important, but we have things in place already that have just gone by the wayside because people got bored with it. And we can't keep on giving resources to new ideas if they're not going to sustain the long term. Thank you. Thank you. I agree. And I learned a lot. Thank you for that.

Yes, that was one of my concerns with the $300,000. we had the water department or the water department came in and they said, you know, we have this wonderful like they they install water pipes for the gardens. And I asked how many you know, what was your follow up prop policy? Because when I drive through my district there's a lot like miss ivy said there's a lot of abandoned community gardens and i don't know if we have a process to follow up with people to cultivate new growers as older people have moved on but i understand i see of community garden graveyards throughout my district as well so that is a concern

We already got 300 of them.

Thank you. Oh, please.

Hi, everybody. My name is Sherita Lewis. I am here with the plan from Blight to here. Can I pass this over to you, ma'am, so you can pass it around? Y'all can get a copy and give it back. Yes, please. My name is Sherita Lewis. I am architect. Sherita Lewis from Safe Family Association. And we are already running a pilot program to help do all this. i am here in regards to getting a building some sort with that paper there so you can see what's going on i need you guys to help to help us in the community like she's saying i'm at the douglas center trying to get that revamped right now with no resources as she said um it gets boring but we still want the food and the resources but we cannot expect the community to come in like you said What do you say, type C for the food?

Can we get you a little closer?

I have family members that are in the jails that are eating that food. And if we're trying to change the trajectory, we can't keep doing the same thing. So with all this information given, that right there is what I'm offering to the community. I've had a whole speech here. That right there speaks for itself. My name is Sherita Lewis, and you can get a copy, and I'll be abreast and ready for you guys.

I'll make sure everyone gets a copy of this. Thank you, ma'am. Is there anyone else that would like to speak? Hello?

Good afternoon, council members. I am Paula Hicks Hudson, resident of West End. I've been interested in this issue and am working on legislation at the state level to deal with this very same thing that you're talking about. And I'm sorry I'm late. I came late to the party. But I think a couple of things that I'd like to add just from what I have been seeing and working with across the state of Ohio. One of the things that I think that Ms. Ivey raised was this question about when we talk about food or creating a food council, we need to make sure that we have our clear definitions of what is urban agriculture, which is the production of food for sale. You have community gardens, which are more in line with feeding community and creating a neighborhood holistic kind of approach to this issue of food insecurity. I think what I would beg somewhat to differ with is that rather than maybe looking at having a hybrid form of the food council, that it is enshrined within the city code if you're going to have a food council at the city level it's enshrined in legislation becomes part of the code you need to look not only at the issue about how to produce things and what's in conjunction with the health department but also zoning also looking at ways in which to have sustained funding for whatever it is that you have decided that that the city is going to support If it's going to be complete from ground to table, then you need to look at each and every aspect of that. What we're doing at the state of Ohio is we're looking at creating a statewide task for food council. to make sure that we have state policies to support the uniqueness of these types of urban, I'm gonna use the term urban agriculture, because that's what I think we need to think about. And think about it also not only in terms of community support, like as she said, food deserts, et cetera, but also look at it as a tool for economic development and job training. so when we when we uh do a little bit more than just um have a some one focus on this issue and broaden it i think you can come up with additional support to help make this happen and so i just wanted to come pick up the materials let you know that i'm still interested in it i stand ready to help from the perspective serving as the ranking member on the natural resource agriculture committee at the state also serving on the executive board for the Great Lakes consortium that's looking at at how we can take care of our land to support Lake Erie then also on another national organizations that is is called the State Agriculture and Rural Legislators. And again, trying to move the needle for folks within the agricultural area to understand that urban agriculture is just as valuable as the rural agriculture points of view. And so this task force and these policy updates we have to have it seamless from local to state to federal. And I noticed just reading very quickly in the report that there's continuing overlooking what's available at the state house, overlooking the fact that the current director of Ohio Department of Agriculture understands very clearly what we are trying to do because I served with him in the house. And then also now he's the... to the director, whether he stays the director, we will see after the end of this election. But the point is that we have made inroads into this whole question. And so I want to make sure that here in the city we don't lose the sight that you have state support and you continue to look. And I'm not knocking going to the U.S. Department. We've got a great friend and advocate in our congresswoman. But you're missing a missing a major piece. And I also need your support to help move this needle down there in Columbus as well. So with that, thank you.

Thank you so much. Is there anyone else that would like to come before council? I'll come.

I would just like to extend my thanks to Mara for the fine job that I believe she's doing for York Community Market. I think I couldn't find a better person to work with me the way that she's working with us at York Community Market at this time. I wish there was more people like her. I text her, she texts back. I email, she emails back. I call on the telephone, she calls back. She doesn't hide herself from me. If she can't get in touch with me, she will leave a voice message. I don't think I could find a better person than she has been to your community market. Thank you, Mayor. Keep up the good work. Thank you.

Thank you.

I just want to add one more thing.

As far as urban farming, self-sustainability, What happened to our fruit trees? What happened to our fruit in Toledo? When I was a little girl in Toledo, we had peaches, plums, grapes, rhubarb in the neighborhoods.

We stayed outside all day long.

I'm 53 years old. This was in 1972. I grew up. What happened to Toledo's fruit trees? I was told that areas of heavy Wi-Fi kill them, but every time I see Toledo plant some, they're male trees. So when we talk about urban farming, self-sustainability, health, what happened to the fruit in Toledo? It was everything except like oranges and lemons. We had everything in our backyard. In my own backyard was cherries, pear, and blackberry. Tire, plums, cross street, grapes. What happened to our fruit in Toledo?

I'm pro fruit tree, by the way. So let's get more fruit trees, yes, I agree.

Well, if there's no other public comment. okay well thank you so much for coming and giving us an update i'm very excited uh let me know how we can support you and um this meeting is adjourned thank you