Video Description:
City of Longmont Human Service Department – Special Meeting
Note: The following is the output of transcribing from a video recording. Although the transcription, which was done with software, is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or [software] transcription errors. It is posted as an aid to understanding the proceedings at the meeting, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
Read along below:
Unknown Speaker 0:00
All right shorts
Unknown Speaker 0:21
Okay, all right
Speaker 1 0:30
okay, all right, we’ve got a little bit of some technical difficulties with our recording starting out. And
Speaker 1 0:50
we had a little bit of difficulty with our recording starting out. And then we have a couple of new people that come in. So let’s do introductions real quickly again, just for the sake of our recording. I’m Christina Pacheco, I’m the human services director for the city.
Unknown Speaker 1:12
Everyone, I’m Jenna Clinton. I’m the Executive Director for rice ginsenoside.
Speaker 2 1:16
Mike’s animal, for sure the housing and HR board. So
Speaker 3 1:25
Jackie this CCFC shelter. Cassie Lau also on the advisory
Speaker 4 1:31
board, Corey Hollister, Executive Director for medicine, divorce, and pro generations program manager at overcoming public health. Emily
Unknown Speaker 1:38
Klieman, Executive Director of the Reentry Initiative,
Unknown Speaker 1:41
Carrie Kirschner from true community care.
Unknown Speaker 1:46
Tim Rocco was the in between the blonde one Executive Director
Speaker 3 1:49
Jen Jepsen, recovery Cafe along with an executive director. And then this is Chris Palma. He’s program manager recovery cafe,
Unknown Speaker 2:00
Human Services program and
Unknown Speaker 2:03
you want to, to proceed.
Speaker 5 2:07
So I think so what we do at the end of the World Cafe is that we come together and we can take more notes if you want. But it’s really a chance to talk about both groups have a chance to engage with the questions. And every group will have different perspectives. So it’s a chance to look at the question again, and just summarize some of the things that we’ve learned. We can take more notes if we want. But really, it’s a chance to learn from each other, and to provide ideas to move forward. So we can start that way, we can start with the question, the first question that was up here and all that, do you know, do you want to take more notes? Sure.
Unknown Speaker 2:46
It doesn’t matter I can do. Okay.
Speaker 5 2:50
So why don’t we start with what our take our best our greatest takeaways from the first question was from both groups and maybe give insight to each other? Because we could every group has their perspective. So
Speaker 1 3:03
what our group and you could take notes on mine, if you want to take notes on yours. So where are we? I think one of the themes that was really evident through this first, through this first question, was the idea about collaboration amongst nonprofits, between nonprofits, and how to do that to really impact your bottom line, right? So ideas, to share bookkeepers, finance people, to share peers peer support, kind of like a substitute teacher kind of thing. So if the recovery Cafe has peers, and maybe safe shelter might need somebody to fill in, that’s a good way to share those resources. The other theme, I think, was about having a clearing house or a way mechanism for nonprofits together and to disseminate to share that information. Let’s see, somebody talked about being part of another collaboration where nonprofits actually spend two straight days together, just learning about each other’s business practices, and what they’re doing and how they might collaborate more. Again, strategic and intentional meetings. So this was an interesting one is that as we fund nonprofits, and they get toward the middle, third quarter of the year, what if that nonprofit that was funded is way under budget, and there’s another nonprofit in that same focus area take education for example, and That program is over budget, how easy would it be to switch funding to be able to transfer funding to those other nonprofits that might need it and still spend the whole pot of money. Um, we talked about doing that in focus areas. So applications requesting hard data, this wasn’t necessarily a money saver, but really pointed out the importance of qualitative data. We’re working with people. And so oftentimes it isn’t about numbers, or widgets. Oftentimes, it’s about really having that meaningful data stories. Somebody else said that it was a good idea to hear from the City of Long lines point of view and our program managers point of view, about some of the struggles that we might have in in making sure that all of these needs get met. Learning more about the city’s priorities and focus areas, more communication around that. See, the idea about smaller nonprofits, grassroots nonprofits, it takes just as much time to write a $3,000 grant as it does $100,000 grant. And so what does that look like? Again, these meet ups having more informal ways to get together, we have lots of meetings that are facilitated and have a script. But what about just having time to to do some sourcing of each other? Deciding how many groups we’re gonna find on the outset, and make people smaller set minimums and maximums based on meeting? Again, just more face time with our for being collaborative. My main thing? Pretty much anything that I say anything that I didn’t mention that I should have,
Unknown Speaker 7:12
or anything from what just mentioned
Unknown Speaker 7:15
in the news.
Speaker 6 7:26
Members, would board members from your group wants to be invited to like, let’s say we’re having an informative event of what we do for our board members. Would we extend? Or would it be appropriate to extend the invitation to city of Longmont board members just so that they get another opportunity to have face time with our group?
Speaker 5 7:52
I think it’s definitely worth looking into Melbourne in the hands of the board members. But it’d be worth exploring the idea though.
Speaker 1 8:04
Yeah. I think the only thing we need to manage on our end is the whole public meeting kind of thing. We have to have board members. But yeah, I think it’s definitely worth
Unknown Speaker 8:19
it. Yeah, we can look into that.
Unknown Speaker 8:25
Yeah, yeah. Two or three.
Speaker 5 8:30
If there’s three board members present, it needs to be noticed. But we can look into that with our folks. Can see. Yeah.
Speaker 7 8:40
You said one or two if they can bring it back. Right. Yeah. Yours?
Speaker 5 8:51
Yeah. Any important for switch gears? Any other thoughts on on this on question number one, and what came out of it? I will say I appreciate the most challenging question because she is the director. You can you can have the hardest questions. It’s hard talking about economic realities. You all do wonderful work, and the city wants to support the one of the work is happening. And we have limited resources, just like you have limited resources. So how do we work best together to get as much wonderful work done as possible with the limited resources that we have, right? That’s ultimately our goal and it should and we believe is your goal as well, knowing that you will do great work, you will do great work in the community and you’re needed and and you will need more money and we’ve been committed said and if I had all the say, but we don’t. Alright, so we’re gonna switch gears. And we’re going to talk about now, the second question was really less about not that we didn’t talk about finances, but it was really about how because of counsel desire and also our board desires wants to know you know, part of that We’re doing these meetings because our housing Human Services Advisory Board really wants to get to know our partners or local nonprofit partners. And so, you know, Christina, and I imagine this a lot with Brenda, like, what if you’re going to have these kinds of, you know, facilitated informal gatherings where we talk, we will go over some questions, and then, you know, learn from it and share with another. So downstairs we were talking about how do we best demonstrate to the board to the council and ultimately to the Longmont residents, right? How do we best demonstrates our successes and challenges as partners in the work that we do together. And so what came up in the, in the first group, we really talked about some of the things that some of the low hanging fruit is a little bit easier to talk about, like, numbers of people serve numbers of things time. But we also talked about some of the challenges that came up when she was talking about the privacy issue. Some of you here, because of the work that you do, has a pretty high level of privacy issues and constraints. Because you want to keep people safe, you want to keep people healthy. And so you have federally mandated locally mandated just confidentiality issues, right. So it’s but we’ll talk about how, even in that, you know, sharing stories, and putting a face to, for those that want to bring a face to the work that we do is super important, not just the numbers. And we I think we agree with that. So we talked about some of the things like it came out in both, you know, meet and greets. We talked about, you know, talking about your potential videos, creating video, and I know, I happen to sit on the board of the LA Mercury foundation, I know that Eric loves videos, right? He even did a video, we’re out of here still doing this video contests that he does every year, because he wants to share this story. And the second group really talked about well, I want to bring this point, I think this is a true point here. One of the chat and one of the challenge that we have is nonprofits. And I think governments too, are always, you know, people want us to prove ourselves, right. We’re always under a microscope to prove ourselves that we’re doing our work that we’re making a difference. And so that’s a challenge that we all face, right? We’re always, we’re always in the spotlight to make sure that we’re doing we’re doing so I just want to recognize that there’s that sentiment, which I think is true sentiment. The second group, again, I think went to the quant quantitative thing, but they really focused on. And I think Jackie started this off as like, how do we talk with the larger community in a particular business committee? You know, they are at an important part of the of the community, and how do we better engage with them. And so we had a really great conversation around you know, how to, you know, how do we invite them to informal gatherings? How do we partner with the chamber to ensure that we can meet with them? How do we make sure that the work of nonprofits is is really elevated during like, the State of the City type of events, so that the whole, the whole city can see, in fact, we talked about potentially using the city line to share stories from our funded agencies, Christina. So that’s something that we can look into. Talked about op eds talked about. And then we talked about how folks really appreciated this bill gathering and how having these type of gathering between nonprofits to be to share information with each other to network and to grow their networks is important too. And I said, you know, I know the Chamber’s do a really great job of their before and after ours. And in particular, who we can talk to some of our local nonprofit groups like the same range Community Council, how do we how do we do that with us, and I also love to invite our business community partners as well as like, Hey, we’re having this after hours, specifically for Nebraska, we’d love to have business business folks there as well. So a lot of talk about sharing with, you know, we are all in the government and nonprofits are kind of in our own about a caught a bubble that we’re in, in our spaces, right where we live. And we want to make sure that the larger community knows about, we’re doing great stuff, we’re saving people’s lives, we’re getting people house, we’re changing people’s lives, you know, how do we get the rest of the community and how about that so that in that’s a summary of the two groups have met any new thoughts or ideas that despite any ideas from from either group, on, on, on on what we talked about?
Speaker 8 14:43
It just brings up to me also what you just said about businesses, but the legislation having the people that are drafting the bills and the things we’re trying to vote one, I think that’s part of it because people are going to try to pass legislation and We need to know the long term impacts of that. So that someone who’s going to vote isn’t just reading it and thinking what it says it is.
Speaker 5 15:12
So in engaging with our with our legislators,
Speaker 2 15:17
so was that square the city council so we’re here to give you give it to you and they go to city council. I think Council it gives it to legislation to represent Lamacq. Are that is that?
Speaker 5 15:26
Well, I mean that anybody can go to city council, you get three minutes, right? Anybody gets to go to city council and share something? I don’t know about how you share with state legislators. All right. That’s,
Speaker 7 15:40
yeah, like, I know, like I just came back from there’s a Latino Latina advocacy day, right. And I mean, that’s a specific set of issues. But maybe there’s like a wider like nonprofit advocacy day, we could do something to go down and speak with legislators, because they’re the same thing. They have to meet with us. Right, you can pull them off the floor if you need to. But you know, we can plan that before. Like,
Unknown Speaker 16:03
is there like a portable housing day down there?
Speaker 1 16:07
That’s awesome. In the city, one of our assistant city manager, Sandy cedar tracks all of the bills that could impact to the business. And then we we give as department heads, we give feedback on those bills. And so if there is a specific bill that is coming up, that could impact a nonprofit business, we need to know about that. Chances are that Sandy’s already tracking that but I think that’s important information to get from our nonprofits, hey, keep an eye out for this bill. And this is what I would recommend based on my on my business practice. And so I think that’s an opportunity that just needs to get out there that at the municipal level, we have we have that?
Speaker 4 17:00
Yeah. Is there any coordination between like, city and county, like, I know, there’s some policy stuff that we do that because at work, I’m just wondering if there’s as far as bills,
Speaker 1 17:10
um, I think in different ways, in different it may not be commenting on certain, but certain bills that are coming down the pike. But if we look at how we’re, for example, leveraging our opioid dollars, there’s collaboration there, across the city, when you look at some of the unhoused work, there’s, you know, collaboration across city and county, so I think it depends. But maybe that’s something that could be more formalized.
Speaker 2 17:44
Looking at, okay, there’s a bill. I mean, I looked online, there’s a lot of holes in there. I mean, it’s in the bill 23 dash in it for like, Okay, did you get to look into it to read about a nonprofit has another business? Or do they trace down that bill? Did they get to do that? Or did someone else can help them with that, or if somebody nonprofit said, Here’s what I what I do, and I’m gonna need some more money to someone look it up and say, Okay, this is a bill you need to look at or the nonprofit have to chase down that Bill and present it. When
Speaker 1 18:17
I’ve been on boards of prior to this job. I was on several nonprofit boards, and we would get emails from executive director saying this bill is coming down, please call your your legislator, please, you know, support in any way that you can. This is how it would impact us if it if it passed or failed. And so I’m wondering if EDS if CEOs are doing that already, but we could share that information. That might
Speaker 4 18:49
be good. Yeah, that’s a good point. Like who does that? Because that’s they’re hard to read.
Speaker 8 18:57
And do it on purpose? Well, that’s what we when I was explaining the Latino coalition we partner with they are the ones that are looking at the bills. So they’ll mass, email all of us, we’ll all jump on the call. We’ll start talking cheesing through awareness, it’s affecting nonprofit legislative. So it really got to come from the top because we’re also writing grants. Yeah, we can talk to Sandy about.
Speaker 5 19:24
This came up with this meeting, I guess. Again, that’s what we were looking for solution. We’re looking for ideas. And so we can, we can definitely talk to Sandy cedar as she is our legislative experts here in the city. We are lobbyists. Yeah. So all right. Any other thoughts or ideas?
Speaker 4 19:44
Well, you mentioned the economic impact study. I’m thinking maybe we should try to
Speaker 5 19:50
do that. 10 year old Jack and I were trying to figure we were when we did that. When did you because you’re also been around for a long time. What When do we do that? Yeah.
Speaker 9 20:01
Was it 2017 When he was at
Unknown Speaker 20:06
SBCC and HSA work six years ago?
Speaker 9 20:10
I was gonna throw it on the housing side, there’s been a significant amount of collaboration between city and county, with one be passing from one to 23. At the state level that a lot of conversations Yeah.
Unknown Speaker 20:22
Yeah. Depending on the topic, yeah.
Unknown Speaker 20:27
Yeah. So it’s been a bit. It’s been a bit,
Speaker 5 20:29
we could definitely, one, we’ll find it. Who has it? Yes. And then share it with folks. And is it time to, to redo it? So? Well, all right. Thank you for sharing that. Because you don’t close us out.
Speaker 1 20:49
So we’re going to do several of these engagement sessions to, you know, capture as many nonprofit as much nonprofit participation that we can do. And then similar to what we did last year, we’ll put forward kind of everything. We heard that in our report, and disseminate that.
Speaker 9 21:15
Leader, right, right, right. But with all this great content that’s being shared, I just wanted to recognize I really appreciate the city that you’re stepping out and engaging us in conversations regularly and when you’re out there and very visible in different groups and meet and greets and things like that. So I recognize that appreciate that kind of statement.
Speaker 1 21:41
This is the fun part of this is what I love doing as an expert that at all things, funding and data and so just to have a great partner to work on this. Amazing Alright, thank you so much. Did a little early you have some
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