[Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] do [Music] session of the aurora city council for monday by january 3rd 2022 uh is called the order uh with the clerk please call the wrong mayor kaufman mayor pro-tem bergen councilmember coombs council member coombs president council member gardner councilmember jorinsky councilmember jorinsky councilmember lawson here councilmember marcano councilmember medina council member mario council member mario councilmember sunberg here councilmember zavonik here there's a quorum uh an announcement uh for the public call online thank you for joining tonight's aurora city council study session if you are listening on the phone please note public comments are not taken during study sessions the phone line is in listen only mode the city council welcomes comments from residents at regular council meetings on both matters appearing on the agenda and during public invited to be heard the phone line opens for sign up on those evenings at 6 00 pm thank you and do we have a spanish version no mayor okay there's no issue uh updates mayor this is councilmember lawson yes i just wanted to ask a question um usually i think our first meeting our first study session we usually have a list where we talk about our outside committees and i didn't see that in the back up i just wanted to know are we going to have a discussion of this at the next study session but we usually do it at the first study session okay katie uh that i think we usually do it pretty early in the year yeah we can do it now during the issue update or you can put it on the next cap the next study session however you'd like to proceed no i think i'd like to put on the next study session the reason why is because i need the entire list before me this is pretty extensive in terms of uh and who's on it now so unfortunately i'm not prepared to do it right now but i think you raised an excellent point councilman lawson and we'll do it on the next regular study session the next study session um our consent calendar um items 2a through 2d any is there any objection to moving the consent calendar forward items 2a through 2d mayor this is councilmember lawson i'm sorry i do um i do have a question on 2a that i would like to ask before i for before moving that one forward very the question then is uh moving the consent calendar forward item number 2b through 2d is there any objection to moving the consent calendar forward item to b through 2d i'm sorry it was 2a i'm sorry councilmember lost to it and i think council remember combs had a question as well she might want to pull something that's wrong mine is also on 2a oh very well okay is there any objection to moving item 2b through 2d forward seeing none then item 2b through 2d will move forward can we have a brief staff presentation on item number two a mayor i can uh give a brief update for item two um item two is uh appointing five members to the new civic engagement commission uh the the ordinance to create this commission went through policy committee in july of 2020 and it was approved by ordinance number 2020 43 um in october 19th 2020 by council uh at the backup material and the ordinance states that this commission consists of 15 members with five members appointed each year to staggered three-year terms so these are the first five members to be appointed to this to this commission and um there were 18 applications or 18 applicants interviewed and the backup has the five that are being recommended for appointment and they were interviewed by a cross departmental team in september and october of 2021. uh questions on [Music] um i have two questions on this you had 18 applicants but we only seen five um me personally i would like to see who all the 18 are because i may not there may be others in that 18 that i may see that might be qualified um it seems like you decided these five but there's no backup of the other other people who applied and so i i would like to probably see before me moving this forward or if it does move forward that we have all 18 so council can look at them you know everyone to see you know if we may have a different choice or a different opinion than what city staff had on these particular recommendations councilmember lawson this is roberto yes uh we apology for the admission we had a communication last week with councilmember coombs and i think that's why she was raising her question as well we intended to include that in the backup in terms of all 18 applications and all their interviews and summaries and it was inadvertently omitted so we will include that and if it's okay we can table this to the next study session with all those packet with all those interview applications included so that you can review them prior to uh either accepting the five recommended from the staff or taking one out or putting one in whatever the council's choice is these were only recommendations after the interview process but it was an omission not to include those in the packet and so we will include those in the packet and re-submit this for the studies for the next study session okay well i will i won't be supporting two-way because i would like to see the other applicants okay uh councilman mccombs um yeah the just the requests which roberto covered to have all the information in the back up um covers most of it the only other comment i would make is that um at several points um staff had communicated that this would that there would be an update on this provided at the pr plus committee and that never did occur um which we can do it at full study session with the whole council that's fine but i do want to make sure that at the very least we have the full information while we're doing that but um i mean i'm at this point in time council is open to um councilmember combs as the author of this particular proposal what do you want to do um just have staff bring all the provide all the information at the next and hear this at the next study session is there any objection to uh having staff provide information on all 18 applicants since the next study session see no objection then that's that's the direction to staff mayor um i'm sorry remember i just wanted to say i am here i had a little difficult difficulty getting on thank you um [Music] i'm number three a resolution adopting the 2021 hazard um hazard mitigation plan uh presentation by stash good evening everyone uh just quickly to those that that i haven't met yet my name is matt chapman and i am a uh rank of battalion chief in the fire department but for the last 12 years 11 years full time been assigned as the emergency manager for the city and responsible for the the day-to-day operation of the emergency management office and tonight let me see if i can share content and share my screen i'm not sure i can all right is everybody seeing that yes yes okay all right so just a quick background on the hazard mitigation plan and this is the update of the 2016 complaint excuse me and really what the the purpose of the plan is we have to we're required by fema to redo this every five years and update it and provide additional analysis to our natural hazards and we're an all hazards office so we we do focus on any large-scale disaster emergency whether that be human-caused or natural this particular plan focuses just on natural natural hazards and then specific to our geography here in aurora some of the ones we may face more often uh biggest thing with this is we're required for eligibility to apply for mitigation grant programs which there is quite a bit of funding that fema is putting towards mitigation grants and we'll get into that here in just a second also provides us a chance as city staff to collaborate across departments so we're planning together and coordinating mitigation projects and infrastructure projects and then again compliance with with our local state and federal requirements for funding that's just a graph a graphic that the state likes to likes to put up shows some of the uh phases of planning and as far as emergency management how mitigation is interwoven across all these phases and also the the duration of a disaster so you have the response we have short-term recovery short-term unmet needs and then the long-term recovery things that we know are gonna be taking a while for us to to put back together and build back to something hopefully stronger their infrastructure and that's where the mitigation part comes in and the disaster recovery but it is for consistency woven throughout the emergency preparedness planning the mitigation projects across the city whether it's water public works uh recovery plan and then the comprehensive planning and preparedness ahead of a disaster a major emergency these are just some examples of the grant programs that are out there the bric grant the building resilient infrastructure communities is a big one right now that again fema is investing a lot of money on the front end of the disaster knowing that it saves money the in the recovery process this is just another benefit of having this this is more in line with our water department folks but it also gives us credit i'm just having this plan in the in the community rating system which provides residents business owners with reduced insurance costs in the national flood insurance program so just an additional benefit aside from the grant funding that is available for us an example here of from about 2000 2011 to 2018 so this is snapshot of the different grant programs you can see at the top it's the money that has been been funded to these across the state in that time period and we had the wildfire mitigation fuels reduction flood you know landslide a lot of things that were included in the plan and analysis that were that was in the plan if everybody remembers this around in 2013 this was a section of peoria during our flooding event so this is a stat female likes to put out now to to kind of bolster that the the money on the front end is worth more than the money in recovery so they said that every dollar spent on mitigation ultimately saves three to six dollars in disaster response and recovery when you rebuild and another example of a mitigation project post disasters when we build this road back the mitigation in this is we want to build it back stronger so that it takes a greater event to cause this much destruction again so history and timeline of the plan this began around 2005. many jurisdictions were included in denver in the doctor cog plan very small section not much analysis done about 2010 females declared that that would not be enough analysis for most jurisdictions anymore in the state also in conversations with with their folks in 2014 they recommended aurora have our own hazard mitigation plan done and analysis done rather than adopt three county plans where the counties were required to put one together so 2016 was our first city of aurora mitigation plan again these are on five-year cycles 2021 we were due for the update this was pushed a little bit based on the 2020 activity around covid and our response to coven and the things that were delayed because of that response again another example of just the integrated planning across the city so that all of these plans that you see listed here is just a snapshot of a few of them definitely not comprehensive um but this is an example of all the departments have to be pulled in this is an example of all the conversations that have to be brought in just so that we are on the same page across all of these plans with with our mitigation efforts and get a snapshot of the different jurisdictions and agencies that are also brought into this planning process from outside the city this this really just lays out what we've done over the past year the involvement the different steps and the involvement of everybody that has gone through this planning process and the public as well the public that was involved in being able to see this plan and being able to add comment to the plan our steps to approval so there's a few steps to go through here we are half post the fema first review so fema has approved this plan to move forward for formal adoption by council once that happens then it will go back to fema for their final approval seeing the council acceptance and adoption of the plan and in line with this so there's one disclaimer that we spoke to legal about so when this was in committee councilmember gruber suggested and recommended which we agreed with we think it's a good recommendation that in section six of this plan that we're talking about other plans that this integrates with and he recommended that we add language of how this integrates and references how we do our after action reports in the city so in speaking with legal we we have not added that language yet so this becomes a living document once fema approves it for the next five years so we can we can add whatever we want we can add projects we can revise it we can adopt it and change it so instead of changing the version that fema approved in the state saw and reviewed we're going through with this one knowing we're going to add the after action language once this becomes adopted in a living document so we wanted to make sure that got put out there since that was recommendation in committee and with that that is a short background on the hazard medication plan if there are questions questions i have a question sunburg uh councilmember sunburn thank you battalion chief chapman uh your presentation seems very timely and thank you for the importance of what you're taking on i know reading through this aurora has unique vulnerabilities with disasters i think winter storms hail lightning is high fortunately tornadoes are low but for those citizens listening who might be concerned i've we've got some emails about grass fires brush fires wildfires uh could you touch briefly on that for our citizens and any mitigation techniques such as controlled burns sure and there is a presentation i know the fire is putting together for next next month's study session on our wildfire capability and components and in fighting wildfires but to touch on some of the mitigation portion we we do have a section in the plan that that talks about wildfire the frequency the vulnerability our wildland urban interface and some of those issues uh some of the population numbers that live in that wildland urban interface and really just just some of the risk that's involved we we have talked through you know those areas in the city that are of higher risk and we do have listed in our mitigation projects within the plan several mitigation i guess initiatives that would affect wildfires so evacuation public alert and warning you know if we do need evacuation there's a shelter in place a lot of those that would alert our residents that there is an issue we have um our resource mobilization and getting enough resources on site in a timely manner to to take care of an issue before it grows so we do have mitigation projects that are listed in within the plan clearing vegetation and clearing area around where you live in your spaces if you do live in wildland interface is also listed i believe as one of the projects in there that's associated with wildland and we will have a presentation just to let members of council as well as the public know that on the february 7th study session there will be a presentation on the urban wildland uh interface and in turn by um aurora fire rescue yes mayor uh mayor pretends yeah i and i think we all got some of those emails from constituents that were concerned about what happened in boulder county um so obviously we're having the fire chief do the presentation february 7th i think you just said um but just for matt um you know i'm reading in the huge back back up i don't know how many hundreds of hundreds of pages it is but there's a section on wildfires and it has the maps with probability of areas that might have wildfire so when chief gray does his presentation are you part of that or is his strictly on the fire response because you mentioned communication to alert um you know residents of evacuation procedures and so forth so is that something that the chief is going to address or or would you be part of that presentation well i think we've yet to finalize it completely but it one kind of leads to another right so we talk about the wildland response and the wildland resources that we have and then if we do have a large scale event then how do those other plans integrate so then we do have to start implementing the public alert and warning we do have to start implementing those other plans that come into place i think they all kind of are meant to come complement each other and flow so from the time of the response and the wildland tactics to what else do we need to implement during this this emergency we also work with public works because um my area backs up to a lot of open space my ward um and some of the roads you know are already congested so is there a plan in terms of traffic mitigation as well if some such an event happened well we look at the area for sure and we have talked through scenarios where what does evacuation look like in this particular area of town and then do we there there's certain like the snow and ice plan we've used that before as these are arterials these need to be the main roads for evacuation in this area and those kind of concepts so we have talked evacuation we would work with public works especially on the recovery end just with clearing debris and heavy equipment so we do like i said it's multiple plans that are all integrated into each other from evacuation public alert into recovery where now we're trying to figure out how do we clear these areas what do we do with debris just the damage assessment is another plan our damage assessment plan that's in place and then is like you've seen in boulder right now with disaster recovery centers and disaster assistance centers so that's all part of our recovery plan so we really do from start to finish to recovery we have plans that that flow together thank you further questions all right councilman combs um yes so in 2021 we did have a grass fire in cherry creek state park that moved really quickly and the response was also equally quick to prevent those homes um immediately near the area from having any fires um but one of the things in the aftermath of that was a conversation about how the landscaping and other kind of fencing and other things in the area could help mitigate or potentially increase the impact of that fire and the potential for it to get to the homes so i know there's clearing out you know dead vegetation but for those areas that are currently at higher risk is that same approach that same kind of prevention approach being taken to help those folks determine what could reduce their risk of actually having a structured fire um when they're that close to the grasslands yeah and i think that's part of our public messaging and education right if you do live in those wildland urban interfaces what kind of education can we get out there or can we do more of to for those folks in those areas of this is what step you can take to prevent you know loss of property or destruction so that is that's definitely could be one of our mitigation projects i know we do have public information public education for things like hoas and and those kind of citizen groups and that's that's something that we could definitely you know increase i believe it's on there as one of our goals but something we can always increase as far as the education further questions of staff mayor uh with councilman mcconnell thank you sir uh and thank you matt for the presentation i do have a question for you in section 376 we talk about opportunities for enhancement and one of those bullet points that you put in there was become a storm ready certified community but i couldn't find any more information on that in the overall plan so could you give us a quick you know kind of summary of what that means and what that would look like for the city i think that's another education component right where we bring in subject matter experts which we've done in the past anybody from the national weather service that can teach they can come in and just provide education to our residents and community on anything from spotting to just what you need to know to be prepared for especially winter storms which we see on a regular basis that that causes issues in the city mostly with transportation and stranded motorists and those kind of things but i think that is another education component that we can increase our productivity in i have a question oh sorry good uh sunberg i apologize for interrupting uh matt uh what you mentioned winter storms in that preparation and getting stranded motorists rescued are there any pieces of equipment like a snow cat or proper vehicles that are in the city is in need of well i think we have addressed that from years past so i know the uh the police department has special equipment they went out and looked at and actually i believe ordered so i don't think the city has received it yet but i believe it has has been ordered and it's it's just awaiting arrival so i know we've we've taken steps to address that so some of our our vehicles in the past were not quite adequate for some of the deeper snow on the east side of town that's been supplemented by a fleet with some more capable four-wheel drives in the past for for pd vehicles and now they're getting these these atv type vehicles that are that they've gone out they've seen other police departments that run them i think they went to vail to to see them demonstrated so it is in an area where the resources are being addressed now i think we always have the ability of doing a natural emergency to make a request for the governor for the national guard to augment our capability is that correct that is correct yeah we we do have plans in place we've seen it in the last couple years we've utilized it for pandemic in the snow of emergency declarations disaster declarations within which then opens up some additional resources they usually take a little while to arrive but that does open up some additional options for us okay for other questions of staff mayor uh castro mcconnell thank you sir on that same note matt um does aurora fire rescue currently have any kind of vehicle that can navigate snow that's actually something i've heard from a couple of our firefighters in the past that we're in need of one i'm just wondering if that has changed something like a snow cat has been looked at for by fire i think they are they're in the process of evaluating which type of vehicle which would complement their operations better so suddenly the ones the police are looking at are a little bit smaller more maneuverable smaller more maneuverable fire was looking at something that they may be able like a snowgat could do some patient care you know while they're transporting so they're in the process of evaluating what would be the best vehicle for their their needs right now we have several four-wheel drives uh more capable four-wheel drive pickups there's a four-wheel drive engine that's utilized but as far as snow specific that that's being researched right now further questions of the staff are saying none is there any objection to moving item number three a forward i see no rejection i'm number three we'll move forward thank you matt thank you rob number three brothers redevelopment inc agreement um jessica good evening mayor and council this agreement is with brothers redevelopment for single-family housing rehabilitation program this program works with folks that own their homes and income qualify to provide needed rehabilitation on their program on their houses energy efficiency and helps people stay in their homes longer this is really a continuation of an agreement that we already have with brothers redevelopment we started in 2020 that agreement was not spent all the way down just due to covid and you know having a harder time with coordinating um in-home repairs in people's homes so this would continue the agreement that we started with which was two hundred thousand dollars this agreement's for 165 thousand dollars utilizing community development block grant money through hud that we receive each year so this is just a continuation it's a restructuring of the type of agreement that we have with them so that's why it's coming before you this evening happy to take any questions another question mayor um uh just one so i and i understand during cove but they couldn't um get to all the homes that they that needed um repair um i think in the backup it said that so they were considered a contractor and now they're going to be a subcontractor so is there a contractor so i know it's confusing it's really just the hud mumbo jumbo so the the contractor piece um was that they were functioning essentially as a contractor on our behalf of the city now they're a sub-recipient so they essentially get the funding from us to then implement the program on our behalf so um if that makes sense we have other sub-recipients where we essentially give them the funding and then they have to follow all of the hud guidelines as well um and this it just it makes more sense from a auditing and reporting standpoint to have them be a subrecipient and have to follow those guidelines up front so it's really just kind of a minor change they're still interfacing with the you know customers and homeowners and then they provide us reports we have satisfaction surveys and you know administer anything from an emergency repair where someone's sewer line or furnace isn't working all the way to up to about a forty thousand dollar loan program where they're rehabbing windows and you know roofs and things that cost additional dollars but that's really the only change there is just the way the agreement is set up and how they're reporting to it and then just real quick on communication like who's a who qualifies for this do we how do people know about it yeah so we um obviously have uh information on our website a lot of it is word of mouth we have a lot of seniors that take advantage of the program we have done water bill stuffers we have outreached through our active adult center through the faith-based community so we every probably about twice a year we do sort of outreach to the community just generally on the program um we also refer people through code enforcement so when we're out and we you know see a problem with the home or the yard or things like that and folks say i can't afford that repair then we get referrals that way as well okay that's a good idea okay thank you now for other questions i see none is there any objection uh to moving item 3b forward saying no objection item number three b will move forward item number three c aurora mobile uh response team pilot update outcomes need and evaluation services uh courtney towson hello council thank you for having me here tonight tonight i will be presenting on the preliminary outcomes of the aurora noble response team pilot i want to begin by saying thank you to council for sponsoring this program and getting its implementation up and running i also want to say that the collateral you received in the one pager has been updated for this presentation so information and numbers on that one pager will not line up with this presentation and then let me share my screen for you all so for those who may be unaware or new to counsel the aurora mobile response team is a crisis intervention team that pairs a paramedic from south rocky mountain with a licensed mental health professional from the aurora mental health center the team currently operates wednesday through saturday 10 am to 7 p.m and they are in their pilot phase until march of 2022 it's currently one team that is staffed they are operating within police district one in the nest aurora area the team is responding to low intensity active mental health calls that come through the city of aurora dispatch this team is unarmed it does not fulfill any law enforcement duties and does not respond and will not respond to any calls that have a mention of weapons or component of active violence to sell others or property and as mentioned before they are dispatched through city of aurora's public safety communications dispatch on the police department side just some historical information to kind of look at what the implementation process looks like city council approved the allocation of funds in november of 2020 to make an alternative response program that is similar to the cahoots program and eugene orion and the denver star program in december of 2020 agreements were signed with the city of aurora falc rocky mountain and the aurora mental health center to allocate staff to serve as the licensed mental health professional and the paramedic for this alternative response program on october on august 2nd the program manager's official start date began and at this point the development of policies logistics of operation and memorandums of understandings began throughout august second to the 25th female response team received various trainings from public safety services communications support section proper release radios and motorcycle computers and then on august 25th the team began with their soft launch and this allowed the team to familiarize the results can you hold just for a second you're coming in broken um kitty is there any way we can fix that courtney you might want to turn your video off is that better you're still a little broken up yeah unfortunately not i apologize i'm not too sure i just checked my wife i'm just afraid you're in audible right now um if staff has any ideas please put them forward otherwise you'll have to reschedule atlanta can you take over yeah i can take over the uh presentation courtney if you'd like well i don't have the presentation up um i was thinking she could maybe log off and log back on um but i'll just take over the presentation from here and then hopefully we can get her reconnected so thank you mayor my name is lana dalton i'm the homelessness programs manager and i also oversee the mobile response team as courtney was saying our official start date was uh september 8th of 2021 um we fully launched at that point in time and began operations within the northwest aurora area um and the team had some significant media coverage during that time courtney can you go to the next slide um so during this process we wanted to make sure that this team received a lot of training particularly because it was new and because we find it really important for folks to have an understanding of the population that they're serving as well as to make sure that safety is number one for them so they sat with this batch for quite some time went through different operations there made sure that we have protocols and things in place with them um we've gone through uh harm reduction efforts we've done mental health first aid for first responders for both the clinician as well as the um the paramedic that is um on staff through falc uh we've talked through human trafficking scene safety and situational awareness so we've had them sit with uh aurora police departments swat sergeant go through different scenarios uh to ensure scene safety and things of that nature and then we've also gone through some specific lgbtq plus affirming care and best practices with some outside agencies that have specialties in that area next slide as far as safety considerations are concerned amrt has been very cautious in regards to making sure that this team is safe both through a standard operating procedures that we've put into place through apd afr as well as dispatch aurora mental health center and falc we've all sat down done best practices and have a specific policies and procedures that are in place we also use bulletproof vests police radios and motor doc and mdt or motordoc technology within the van itself to make sure that we have access to all of the different necessities that are needed if a safety becomes of concern so people can call in and they have protection on them as well we've done trainings with our folks we've fostered collaboration amongst public safety partners so i think this is really important we attend briefings with police departments we distribute our amrt procedures via email to our partners to make sure that everybody is aware of what those policies and procedures are and then while we're on scene we make sure that um individuals are building those relationships with our police officers as well as our fire uh firefighters as well to make sure that we're connecting with them and to alleviate alleviate any sort of on-scene issues that they may see and then we also have quality assurance checks meaning that um courtney will go out on scene she's especially trained in these types of things to make sure that she's reviewing the outcomes of calls getting pointers and assisting the existing amrt that's responding to calls on a regular basis with those safety porters and things of that nature right now we are in the process of collecting data and program evaluation we have subcontracted with the aurora research institute to collect specific data points to show everybody at the end of this pilot period we have client demographics where calls have been located whether or not the individuals are experiencing homelessness et cetera and we've been collecting this since the start so we're hoping to provide you a comprehensive report at the end of the six months in you will find some of those data points on your one pager that you received in your backup also some of the current stats that we have so far as of 1 1 of this year the total calls for service that this team has been dispatched to is 152. we've diverted 11 individuals from the emergency room providing a cost savings about forty four thousand dollars to our hospital community um we have had zero calls where police has been needed so we have never had to call for backup from police due to safety or any of that due to i think all the safety measures and policies and procedures and trainings that this team has had and then the cost savings that we've had by alleviating calls from the police department is about 7 500 so that's savings and actual officer time on the road and providing and getting them back up into the field to respond to more appropriate calls for them some of the breakdown of the calls and the call types that you see lots of welfare checks so that's those are checks for individuals where other individuals are concerned for people in the community maybe there's somebody that's on the corner that someone is worried about that individual so they call in and they would like a welfare check or they're concerned about a family member we've responded to 15 suicidal parties behavioral calls very much related to i would say behavioral health type of assistance and calls and resources for service throughout this process we've worked with our dispatch partners to make sure that we are not only tracking the calls for service in the area that the amrt team is responding to but also throughout the entire city to get a better picture for where the needs are throughout and what we've seen so far since the launch of the pilot is that we there's 719 calls for service that have been identified as appropriate for the amrt to respond to across the city now obviously there's no way for one team to respond to all of those but we want to make sure that we're collecting that data to show those specific hot spots for future need if we were to go that route some of the feedback we've received and i would say that coming from my perspective very positive feedback from both community members as well as our police and other public safety partners one of the things that we hear quite a bit is i wish there were more of you that which is really nice to hear courtney and the team has done an amazing job in the field i would like to just point out that our police department district 1 sergeant has been very impressed with this team because that's where they are primarily focused out of and they have done a really good job and he um he actually reached out and just uh gave us some um props for all of the service and support and has uh immense support for the program um you can go to the next slide the next one is from a mother of an amrt client um just helping a mother that has a daughter that has submental health challenges to comply and get into the ambulance to be taken to the hospital as a hospital for stabilization that's a lot of that i would say social work type skill that you're going to see from a specialized team like this getting people to de-escalate and get the getting them in to to comply with different things that may be seen as a need by others but maybe not themselves and so um the mother was very pleased and would recommend this for others in the community as well these are just some more uh positive encounters that the amrt team has had um they've done some amazing work with our homeless services department in regards to assisting folks that had a broken down car who were out of gas just you know would typically call 9-1-1 but um they were able to go out and assist in these types of situations um as well as a client that was experiencing some domestic violence in the home they were helping that person get connected to services and ongoing services in the community these are just some of the links to our the media coverage that has been covered so far i will say it has been a very popular program uh thus far in the community particularly um after the launch of star and this program here in aurora these are some of the most i would say sought after programs throughout the nation at this point in time when it comes to a public safety response so we are very lucky in aurora to have this and to be able to execute that here so um if you have any additional questions courtney um is obviously the amrt program manager um and hopefully her audio is working well again and we're happy to take any questions that you might have sunburned hello thank you for the presentation so um have the two of you been on the in the field since did you say september of 2021 or earlier can you guys hear me okay okay um thank you for that question councilmember yes our official start date began september 8th of 2021 i have sat along and done a ride along with the team my past experience i worked with the aurora police department's crisis response team so i'm very familiar with this work as well as this demographic specifically within this area so yes we've done multiple quality assurance checks by riding along with the team okay and then also in your work with this are you finding a good number of the same callers uh that you're responding to from time to time or frequently missing people great question so there is quite an overlap between the crisis response team and the aurora mobile response team what's been very successful is that we're able to provide an individual with a trauma-informed response regardless of their current situation so for example we had one individual who was known to crt as someone who was rather dangerous and has um just had significant encounters that involved weapons and then this person called in just stating i just need support and we did all of our you know preliminary triaging making sure there were no weapons involved and the emrt was able to respond to this individual and it was actually a very successful outcome so we're creating this kind of spectrum of care that's worked really well and on the behavioral request side of things can you just give a few examples again of the types of calls they're responding to behaviorally absolutely so we've had any calls ranging from a child in a group home who was struggling just with behavioral outbursts the staff wasn't able to really calm them down so the team with the paramedic and the clinician were able to go and de-escalate create a safety plan not only for the child but for the staff another example is an individual who police had actually requested amrt to respond and assist on the call it was an individual who's experiencing suicidal ideation police they did a really good job of trying to de-escalate that individual and it just kind of exceeded their point of scope so they requested amrt and amrt was able to successfully get that person to the walk-in crisis center okay here's my question is the amrt is that team scheduled uh does it have a different schedule than the crt team because there it feels like there's a lot of overlap between the two so currently the amrt is scheduled wednesday through saturday now the crt is scheduled every day of the week so they are seven days of the week and they operate 8 a.m to i believe 10 p.m so there is some overlap on the end half of the week currently the crt i believe has minimal staffing as well just based on all the staffing issues and shortages that we're seeing across the nation within public safety but also within our community mental health agencies so there is overlap but with the staffing shortages we've definitely been able to assist and alleviate some of the calls off of them so that they're able to respond to those higher intensity and potentially more dangerous calls for the questions of staff that's um so on that staffing issue i saw that there was kind of a estimate of costs if we were to staff this city-wide um so first i think it's just a question in general would it be possible to find enough clinicians and kind of what would we need to do to attract the right clinicians in order to do that and second would we need to or would it be advantageous to um perhaps try to contract folks not through aurora mental health but independently in order to make tires if we were to increase the size of this team thank you for that council member combs um to speak to that just the staffing shortage in general i do believe a lot of people are passionate in this work um just having been on my experience with the crisis response team here a lot of people are interested it's just a matter of teachability and coach ability it takes a very specific person to do this kind of work i do believe that it would be possible to staff something like this as the denver star program has had immense success with getting their explanations staffed fully i believe they're up to like 30 clinicians and don't quote me on that i'm not positive there as far as contracting um i really can't speak to that i'm not sure i think there are probably many options out there i will say aurora mental health is currently staffing our crisis response team as well but as far as whether that's the best route to continue taking i'm not entirely sure obviously within the mental health field as a whole pay is just a really big part of it it's not a very well paying field especially when you're paying 100 grand for a master's degree so i think that's just something to take into account you know as a community and as a nation as a whole but i hope that answers your question a little bit but as far as future contracting i'll kind of leave that to upper management and what they feel is best further questions on 3c yes mainly um and then council member lawson oh thank you um so in terms of i i i was going to ask the same question on the um that the mayor did on the time because it's wednesday through saturday and then you said that the crt program is every day do you get this is there any um information or data on getting the same callers for both programs do you guys work together we do so we have collaborative staff meetings in which we operate and we talk about the different clients that we're seeing we're also talking about high utilizers of the programs that come about and what we do is we inform all of the other staff of the different safety plans that have been put in place to individuals so say there's a safety concern for an individual that pops up on a call for an individual that crt responded to they'll relay that information to the amrt so that they can be aware and we're also working collaboratively to make sure that that spectrum of care that i talked about earlier is being appropriately established within the community we don't want to i apologize my dog is barking we don't want to delay our response to someone just because of their past history so say crt has been on someone many times in the past and their current situation is more appropriate for amrt we don't want to limit that person to their response something that was very important to me when starting this program was a collaborative approach because people deserve a trauma-informed response regardless of their situation okay so if the person is continually calling the same person 11 individuals were assisted or diverted from from i guess going emergency room right the ones that are the repeat callers are they actually getting help or they are you know i mean if you're just talking to them and you you know calm them down but you're not really i guess my question is getting to the core issue and getting them the true help that they need then that it's just going to continue we're just going to continue getting those calls so do they do does aurora mental health actually like put them in a program so i can speak to that from both sides from amrt and my experience with crt so within crt and amrt this collaborative approach has been able to safety plan together and get individuals connected to the aurora mental health center so i'll give a specific example we had one individual who's calling about 60 times per month and through the collaboration of resource referrals working very collaboratively with their care team at aurora mental health and anytime they called in to dispatch what the team would do is they would call the individual via phone rather than sending resources out to that person's address just community relationship building and being able to work collaboratively with that care team brought the clients calls down to three for a six month period so i think that's pretty significant when you look at it also we have the fire community health program high utilizer program as well and amrt is hoping to work collaboratively with them as well okay and then my last question is on whether because the county uh the counties are responsible for health and human services and so this kind of goes between the city and the county in terms of providing services does the county um fund your program at all currently the program is just funded through city of aurora general funds okay and it's 265 000 dollars right now for the for the year yes correct i believe it was duplicated from the six month pilot period they just allocated the same amount for 2022. okay and then um mayor may i ask a question to christmas to um i guess to maybe to jason batchelor or roberto or whoever's on the call um so this is a pilot program correct mayor pro-tem it is a six-month pilot program so this is just kind of an interim update once we get through those six months we'll be working with the evaluator um as mentioned previously and we'll be coming back with the full data and any recommendations for continuation of the program based on the data and what we've seen thus far in the pilot so this is just kind of a check-in and then we'll be back in a couple months okay great thank you further questions of staff thank you oh i'm sorry councilman lawson thank you um courtney thank you for the presentation just a quick question a little bit deeper dive into the calls with amrt the 152 that you addressed so this is kind of going along with what council mayor pro tem was talking about i'm in the data set um you do have 152 calls in that data set is that just per call it how do you i mean i think it's kind of important to to actually have the duplication as well um because you're seeing 152 individual calls which is helpful even if the person calling 50 times i'm just saying in the data though it would be interesting to see how many of those within this program are duplications um because i see that as significant i know that's the question at the very end of this but i think that that's significant to see if these are duplications and then how that is reference and how you guys are helping those individuals because 100 you can have 500 calls but someone could be calling 100 times so sometimes i think there's a deep for me the deeper dive in the number would be really important in terms of i know the program is successful but in terms of really how you're really navigating this program and and who's being helped and who's not possibly absolutely thank you for that council member that's actually a really great point so something that we are tracking through the aurora research institute is duplication of services to the same individual as well as their connection to services i will say in this current data set for the aurora mobile response team we've only had one individual that's called in twice and that is the extent of duplication for the aurora mobile response team any other information regarding high utilizers comes from my experience just working within this population under the law enforcement correspondent model but thank you for asking i do think that's a really important thing to capture when we're doing that full um evaluation at the end of this uh further further questions mayor zabonick our councilmember mr yeah um courtney question so and you talked a little bit about the determinations or the factors that are used to determine whether or not the clinician is going out with a paramedic or they're going out with a law enforcement officer through the two programs can you dive into that a little bit more and i i just the re the the context for me asking this question is that my one of my biggest fears with this program is and i've said it to a number of people that is that there's going to be a time my fear is there could be a time where we send a clinician out with a paramedic and we don't know that there's a weapon and it ends up becoming where somebody a situation where somebody gets hurt or worse and i think at that point there's going to be people looking at us saying what were you thinking um and so i just i'd like to know a little bit more about what are those determining factors that you do to determine or that you take to determine whether you're sending a law enforcement officer or a paramedic absolutely and thank you for that question because working within the crt and within a law enforcement model safety was my primary concern and our utmost priority when it came to establishing this program now that experience greatly influenced the kind of safety protocols we put into place so we really focused on triaging and the identification safety considerations within the call notes that came through the city of aurora dispatch so by utilizing the swat sergeant by utilizing the crt sergeant and crt clinicians as well as fire command staff we were able to identify some criteria of what would be appropriate and not appropriate for mrt response so if in that call note it says that weapons are unknown meaning we have no clue if they have a weapon the amrt is not allowed to respond it is only after it's been specifically identified that there are no weapons on scene now i'm also not ignorant to the fact that some people don't give all of the information i've been working in this specific field for quite some time and i've definitely seen situations go from very low intensity to high intensity something that we've also trained our team in is retreating sometimes you're not the best response maybe you start off being the best response but part of your competency is being able to evaluate a situation and determine you know what this is out of my scope they've also been trained on how to request police officers and request cover again we're very thankful that that has not happened but as far as specific criteria and determining what is appropriate anything with a weapon anything with current active violence towards self others or property that comes through in our call notes and that's why that motor doctor computer is so important for this team they're able to look at all of these call notes coming through in real time which has been immensely helpful with the success of this program and that's something that the denver star program actually did not have and whenever they heard that we had this kind of technology within the van to monitor what's truly happening in the call they thought that was a great idea so i hope that answers your question a little bit we really focused on identifying safety considerations just practically speaking so if somebody calls in and dispatch takes it they'll make that determination using all those different factors and say this we're going to send the crt team versus the mobile response team and so my follow-up um is that you talked about the um in the notes there's 11 diversions and you mentioned that a lot of times you're able to through um you know experience with with somebody that we're dealing with in the community just have conversations with them how many of the diversions were made as a result of not actually having to send the mobile response team or the critical response team but actually somebody would follow and you're able to identify that they had you know existing care with or mental health or where so whenever thank you for that question so whenever we're determining a diversion it's someone who from the call notes maybe would have met criteria for emergency mental health commitment so the diversion is defined as when an amrt responds they're able to keep that individual from being admitted into the emergency department and then able to be remain in the community or utilize a lower level of care now when we look at diversion from police so most of our calls we haven't had any kind of police contact they've been able to self-dispatch themselves so they're going in lieu of police now about 34 of our calls police are requesting the team so just for the verification diversion there and i'm sorry could you repeat the second part of your question the diversion from the emergency room diversion were there are other examples in there and maybe there's not where the diversion was made without actually having to send people there without having to send a team to whoever was calling it so as far as that i'm not entirely sure whenever it comes to that i don't know that we necessarily have a way of capturing that within our current data production but that's something that i definitely want to look into i think that's a very good point currently it's only marked as a diversion if it receives an actual response and and so the the pilot the six-month pilot that was the same 285 or 265 000 that's what will have been spent in the first six months um and when that expires in march-ish is that right correct um so the pilot period ends in march of 2022 now we have been reallocated 265 or 268 000 for the entire 2022 year currently no further questions uh councilmember mcconnell thank you sir uh and i want to thank you courtney for the presentation um and what i think is honestly really good news when we approve this program the pilot i think honestly y'all have over performed my expectations in terms of what i am reading here and i just want to get some you know confirmation from you the updated numbers that are not in our backup you said that you there you've identified over 700 calls that could have been handled by the amrt correct but only had the capacity to handle 152 correct okay and those are calls that are currently being then fielded by afr or apd or both depending on the call correct or also the crt right okay so what i'm seeing here is that there's a huge potential for cost savings for emergency department uses and for better utilizing apd's time if we could grow the program okay and that's good that's more or less what i'm expecting the uh y'all the case that you're going to be making in a couple of months here i think just based off of the way things are going and the information in the backup absolutely all right wonderful so i just want to thank all of you for your great work like i said i think this is actually exceeding my expectations uh from when we set up the pilot and i look forward to the final report in a couple months thank you councilmember marcona for other questions mayor jarrinsky oh councilmember we're joining yeah thank you as well for the presentation courtney i think i just want to kind of follow up with uh what dustin's what council members of onyx uh concerns are you had said at one point that they can call uh for help if they need help uh from from the police but i think i also heard you say that they're equipped with actual radios i just want to make sure that these are are they equipped with radios they are equipped with radios and i apologize i should have clarified when i say call for help i mean they are communicating via radio through dispatch and officers are these the radios are these the same police radios that they would be able to put themselves under duress if they need to if they if they if the situation was so severe so extreme that fast that the push of a button places them under dress instead of calling on the radio correct yes and they have received extensive training on how to do that and when it is appropriate to do that okay okay um and they've been given dress training correct please depart okay okay and then i also uh i also wanted to know um i didn't i couldn't see it you guys are only doing this pilot program in northwest aurora right now the crt is available um you know to to all of aurora i believe is are you guys at the end of this pilot program in the in march is that when talks of expanding it throughout the city will be or what are we waiting on staffing you know more staffing for this program when will it be available to the entire city what does that timeline look like as far as specific timeline i can't speak to that but i will say after our six month pilot is completed we will have a formal analysis done by the aurora research institute that will determine the kind of need peak hours peak times what days of the week are needed the most and the idea is 24 7 coverage citywide now obviously this crisis response team is not 24 7 either and we will make do with whatever kind of expansion is seen fit by the city by council and by the office institute further questions i was saying none uh is there any objection uh to moving uh item number this i'm sorry is there a question yeah i'm sorry i had one more oh man i'm sorry go ahead so um in terms since it's a pilot program for the northern part of the city um does the co what is the crt program correspondent does that that's that's anywhere in the city correct correct yes they are city-wide at this time okay and so we don't know the cost right now it's 265 000 for that particular part of the city so i guess we would extrapolate that out to maybe six times that amount possibly i think the evaluation from ari will be very helpful in determining what's an appropriate level of cost when it comes to fully staffing a program like this i've seen some very preliminary data from them and preliminary results from them as well and they've got a really good handle on what they think is going to be considered full staffing for this program so i'm excited to show you guys that at the end of the day and then a question for um do we have a deputy city manager on roberto or jason or i'm here on i'm on yeah can you can you uh how much are we spending with the co-responder program uh let me get an answer for you on the the co-responder budget here just give me just a minute okay i just wanna make sure we're not duplicating mayor pro tem i think that program is approximately eight hundred thousand um but the city a large portion of that is funded by grant grant funding oh okay would this would this other program be eligible for grant funding mayor pro tem this is jessica abe would be and we're actually pursuing some applications for that there's a possibility of doing some joint applications for crt and amrt and as courtney mentioned there's a lot of folks that are looking to fund these types of programs and kind of the innovation and really reducing you know the impact on law enforcement just so law enforcement can get to those other types of calls okay thank you very much i would also like to put that many of these grant applications are really liking the spectrum of care that we're providing by incorporating both a correspondent model and an alternative response similar to denver further uh questions mayor can i just ask a quick question please um so i just so i just want to just make sure wanted to ask so this program is going to kind of coexist with the with the other program we're not trying to are we trying to get rid of the crt program you know the resp we're not trying to do that right we're just trying to coexist these programs so we can kind of leverage both you know some things off of the police department as well as having this other one that's more civilian-like is that how i'm interpreting this or are we looking at something in the future to not have the co-responder program i have to answer that question sorry support me if you want to thank you too speaking of spina dalton from um services i think it's imperative from i've also have experience with the co-responder model and the paramedic mental health responder model in a different city i think it's imperative to have both because you have the high intensity call as well as low intensity call and you need a different response for each and it's really important to have both of those so if you need a police officer with you when you are responding to those high intensity calls that they are available whereas if it's more of a behavioral health thing that doesn't really doesn't rise to the level of that high intensity you have that other type of response as well available and i would like to add especially when we're looking at the safety considerations that many of the other council members have brought to council today this helps alleviate those potential situations and that helps to prevent these potential safety issues within these kind of programs by allowing for multiple responses and just to echo lana everyone deserves a trauma-informed response whether they have a gun whether they are just in need of support that day for other questions i'm seeing none is there any objection to moving item number three forward see no objection item number three c will move forward what does that mean because they said moving forward oh i'm sorry i stand corrected this is uh transformation only there is no uh um there's no action required on item number three c i'm staying corrected our number three three d ease violence prevention program follow good evening up uh if i can share my screen please thank you okay do you all see my screen okay all right good evening uh today's presentation is a follow-up from the december 13 study session in the back of documentation that your while we're provided you'll have a lot more detailed information to support the information that i'm going to be presenting to you all today so during the initial year the program most of our efforts really did focus on the prevention side of things and so moving forward and into this year the 2022 calendar year the program is going to take a more balanced approach to ensure that we're implementing both intervention and prevention efforts and are being developed we're developing those efforts simultaneously to ensure that this is possible the rest of the program staff that have been funded will be hired and that will help us ensure that we can develop the programming um and having those intervention and prevention efforts going on at the same time by having additional staff we'll be able to develop our critical incident responses expand on our referral process to serve at risk and high-risk youth and look to release the notice of funding opportunity to contract with community-based organizations to further the intervention response needed to address the current impacts of youth violence so today we are seeking approval from council to move forward with the following notice of funding opportunity budget a total of 57.4 percent of the funding would support the intervention efforts and a combined 42.59 will fund secondary and primary prevention efforts a more detailed funding overview is available in your backup documentation that provides a more comprehensive description of each of the budget line items under the intervention budget line items we are looking to fund three efforts that include the use of violence interrupters to provide direct outreach after a violent incident in the community has occurred to reduce the likelihood of retaliatory behaviors and work directly with those connected to their groups actively involved in some of that violent crime we're also seeking to fund a hospital-based intervention response that is made up of a multi-disciplinary approach that combines the efforts of medical staff and a community-based organization to provide safety planning services time informed care to violent violently injured patients and also engage those patients while at the hospital since the recovery time is a critical opportunity to ensure that we're looking to reduce retaliatory behaviors or any recidivism rates for actually going back the third bucket on the intervention side would go towards funding an or a specific stakeholder to provide three different therapeutic supports to those individuals exhibiting the most high-risk behaviors to ensure that there is a behavior change behavior stabilization but also reduce some of those antisocial behaviors that we may be seeing the three therapies that we're looking to find are fft mst and emdr which are specialized therapies that have proven to support that behavior change that we are seeking to see in some of our youth for the secondary category we're looking to fund organizations to provide a one-time immediate support funding support until that youth or family can connect to long-term supports we know that when some of our youth and or families have an emergency need it takes time to be able to secure some of those funding supports or emergency accesses that we need to ensure that they have and so what we have seen in other cities is that when families and youth have access to immediate funding supports there is a higher likelihood that they will they will engage in a case plan or whatever treatment is in place to reduce some of that violent crime so we are seeking to fund some of that crisis services funds for our rural community we're also looking to fund an organization to facilitate the strengthening families curriculum which is an evidence-based family skills training for high risk and general population families and it's recognized nationally and internationally and how this works is families and the youth would both attend weekly skills classes where parents will learn parenting skills and then the youth will really focus on developing some of those life skills some of those refusal skills to ensure that they're moving away from those at-risk behaviors lastly the third category will support the efforts that will impact the larger community and will seek to reduce some of those community risk factors and provide protective factors overall so funds will go towards funding daily and annual recreation passes for youth we have continuously heard from you that the paying for the daily admission or the annual admission to our rec centers continues to be a barrier so this will help remove that barrier of some of the youth that we're connecting with provide funding to support the development of a youth specific area and a library that will help provide the community a space specifically where youth can have access to skill building efforts we'll also look to fund very specific schools that are outlined in your packet that are currently experiencing high levels of youth violence related behaviors and also partner with a law enforcement agency within aurora to implement the gang resistance education and training curriculum which is a great curriculum it is an evidence-based natural national curriculum that has replaced their that is meant to be implemented in elementary and middle schools by a law enforcement entity to ensure that we're moving those youth away from some of those at-risk behaviors to include gang violence substance use bullying um teen dating and other risk factors that we know are coming up in our community we will also seek to fund a faith-based organization to facilitate the implementation of a safe haven program where faith faith-based organizations and community organizations will work together to respond to critical incidents of being and gun violence um and then fund very specific programming that comes out of those organizations that are actively part of the yvp community mobilization team that includes pop-up events youth programming safe passages just to name a few we'll also look to continue to fund the quarterly service projects that are led by by our youth advisory council in an effort to address an identified risk factor and increase the community's resiliency and quality of life applicant requirements include the following which will support the ybpp program follows the city of aurora requirements ensure that there is some level of transparency and indication of accountability we also want to make sure that the funded organizations have the ability to leverage resources and support the overall overall strategic mission and these requirements are part of your backup packet so you can review those a little bit further more in detail if you would like so what we will do is we will put together diverse panels to be able to come together to review and score the applications we will review as a group the organization's narrative their timeline metrics their ability to serve the diverse communities of aurora and ensure that again they're supportive of the overall ydpp mission the panel representation will include members of apd other internal stakeholders as well as external partners that can offer their expertise around intervention and prevention efforts and that way we can ensure that we're identifying the most qualifier or the best applications that we do receive for funding included in your backup documentation you will find documents that funded organizations are required to submit for us to review that includes an agreement a scope of work as well as their payment reimbursement form that includes some data collection efforts okay um during the december study session council did request some of this information so i wanted to follow up and and provide more detailed information on our pop-up event series there is a report in the backup documentation as well that you can review more in detail so what you see here is a report that includes the name of the organizations that were funded the awarded amount and the reimbursement amount description and number of events and number of attendees per um organization so as a total you will see that we hosted 49 events where over um 2 400 participants were able to attend and you'll see the the funding that was put aside for the series and the total amount that was actually reimbursed for some of these organizations in addition to funding the pop-up event series the ybp program did fund three other stakeholders that did offer other programming in the community these organizations were community-based entities or partnered with us and are actively part of the community mobilization team so the first effort that you see here was led by our youth advisory council who partnered with the hinckley high school youth leadership team mosaic church and east middle school where all those youth were able to identify 141 families who were provided turkeys canned food and other resources that incident did happen the day after the english shooting and it was very very successful the second effort supported the youth led youth forum that was led by a promising future um the ybpp program was able to provide funding to support um gift card distribution to over 70 youth that did attend a youth led forum where they were able to provide direct input around youth programming that they want to see in the city of aurora but also provide input on other ideas that they have to reduce youth violence within the city the third effort was the most recent and was in support of an administration of the survey that happened during the recharger batteries recreation center winter break programming that really allowed us opportunity to gather input from attendees on how we can improve access to our rec centers the recharger battery series was successful and it allowed an average of 74 youth per day to attend central rec and an average of 29 youth to attend moorhead recreation center there the winter break was held between december 20th through the 23rd and then december 27th through 30th from 2 to 8 pm and it allowed youth between the ages of 12 to 17 to have access at no cost to support recreation centers and this supports that prevention strategy and that we want to ensure that youth have access to safe spaces but also positive adult figures this was a true collaboration between ybp apd libraries and pros so very much appreciate all the support and collaboration what you see here are um some of the the 2021 prevention efforts that the program implemented that we will seek to continue to implement in this upcoming year um but we'll also continue to expand on some of our prevention efforts through collaborations with other city of aurora departments and through the novel funding we want to ensure that we also continue to mobilize our community mobilization team to develop for example public awareness campaigns and other efforts okay so with the current infrastructure that we do have as part of the program currently the program can move forward with the development of an intervention response through the intervention work group to have a multi-disciplinary team this team is made up of both internal and external partners that offer a very specific expertise and access to services and resources to their organizations whether it's departments of human services some of our criminal justice partners law enforcement some of our regional partners to ensure that as we're identifying those youth that are at risk and high risk and we're bringing them to the team to review their their their situation that we can refer out and connect them to the resources that they need immediately and for a long term so this team will help leverage resources and help create that wraparound support that the youth and the family needs as we start looking to serve at risk and high-risk youth it's critical that we do have that wraparound support to ensure that we're also supporting the immediate family because we know that if a youth goes back to a home that's unstable that's going to impact their success rate and so we want to ensure that we're providing that comprehensive response the ydpp would take the lead on coordinating this multidisciplinary team maintaining nodes case plans um supporting the referral process to outside immediate and long-term supports and also overseeing some of the information sharing and data collection efforts to include some of the recidivism rates to ensure that we can come back to council and share some of the successes that we hope to see out of this effort this is the 2022 program timeline that will focus on implementing the public health approach that again really will focus on a balanced approach that includes intervention and prevention efforts and also continue to expand on the infrastructure that we need for this program to be successful part of the backup documentation that you did receive includes preliminary suggested program infrastructures that we'll continue to explore the continued review of the infrastructure is definitely needed because what we're trying to develop is complex and so we will require ongoing conversations around the budget the staffing the policies the support that the overall city will have to provide to be able to develop that and that infrastructure that we are proposing the points that you will see on this slide are preliminary findings of some of the gap analysis that we have seen so it includes lack of understanding around how to respond to youth violence to having a case management for the the the um the program to having the legal support to ensure that we're in compliance with some of these legal requirements such as hipaa the program staff and its leadership will continue to look into ways to address some of these gaps into 2022 and again continue to explore the needed program infrastructure to ensure that the future success of this program what you see here is a four-year timeline as you can see here the ybp program received its its funding in 2021 in 2022 it was the preliminary year where we look to develop and implement some of the initial efforts in 2022 we will seek to continue to expand on some of our current efforts best start again that exploration of what is the department creation the needed budget the staffing patterns that we need to have the organizational structure to support that direct service and response to address youth violence and then in 2023 the goal will be to create and secure funding to be able to hire and expand this the the needed program infrastructure um so the question that we have today for council is if you all will approve they're releasing the notice of funding for 2022 in support of the intervention and prevention strategies that we've identified the questions of staff mayor um uh thank you for the presentation i i'm actually overwhelmed there was a lot in the back up like a ton um which i do appreciate but i thought i thought we were gonna be a little bit more prescriptive on on from what we talked about last time like this has completely blown up into it's like a massive program i feel like federal government program um and we're as a city um you know i appreciate that we're trying to tackle this issue but what i just saw it looks like a massive program so my first question is have you met with the county any accounting departments officials yes so we have representation from adams and arapahoe county on our work groups that includes department of human services and criminal justice partners and have they told you what programs they have in place yes and are we don't have any of that in our backups so what i'd like to know what programs does the county have that we could be utilizing rather than spending more money that we could just refer people to um have you met with school officials from this weekend aps have they had what resources they have yes and right now our schools and other departments do not have the programming in place to address youth violence in the way that this program is trying to address it i do know that the schools have received a lot of money um through you know the arbor funds and so forth and as we heard i can't remember the gentleman's name that spoke to us at the one presentation from from the school district um he talked about how many therapists they have how many psychologists they have how many counselors and yet i mean i'm kind of blown away about this hospital-based intervention response 129 000 for three full-time positions specialized mental health treatment 157 000 full-time position technical support so forth so on i thought when we funded the youth violence prevention program last year or whatever it was for 1.1 million dollars that we were looking at a few outreach coordinators and then we were going to develop programs that really worked to identify at risk this this is like i don't know why would why would we go into trying to create this gigantic program that really is the responsibility a lot of it of counties and organ mental health and other organizations not the city government um and i i appreciate everything that you have done so far but honestly the the pop-up events i don't understand how they're helping at risk so can you tell me how do you identify if someone is at risk or it's just you know a kid wanting to attend one of the events yeah so that's a really good question if we follow that public health approach that public health approach requires a response that's inclusive of three different cat or four different categories primary prevention secondary prevention intervention and then the re-entry response okay so the the primary prevention really looks at how can we serve the overall community how can we ensure that overall community has access to safe spaces has access to pro-social activities has the ability to make connections to others within their community and really start shifting the norm of the community around the environment that they live in part of what we know comes with a lot of the youth violence is that specifically in the hot spots is that a lot of the community residents don't feel safe walking or leaving their home and so by funding these pop-up events we're essentially creating a safe space for anyone within the community to be able to go and have a safe space be able to offer the community a way for them to take back some of those hot spots be able to offer the community a way to connect with some of these service providers that they would enough if these pop-up events wouldn't have have been offered so it's a primary prevention effort where it's it's serving the overall community the at-risk population and the high-risk population that's where our collaborative collaboration with our partners is critical for example aurora police where police is in place to provide an investigative public safety response and so if a detective if an officer is coming across a youth that's at risk or is high risk then our program would serve as that entity that would take on some of the work of their workload to ensure that we're addressing those at risk or higher risk behaviors and connecting them to the services that are in place a lot of the youth are not really in place yet for the intervention part no and that's why we're wanting to fund or have this release of funding to ensure that we're we're developing and increasing the capacity of aurora specific providers to provide those services in the backup sorry in the back up where's the rfp because we talked about last time we didn't want to release the funding and we want to go through an rfp process but i maybe i missed it there was a lot in the backup but i didn't see anything as far as an rfp you know form form what like what's gonna be what's going out for rfp what what are the questions being asked so it's gonna it it's gonna look very different depending on the category because we are funding intervention secondary prevention and then primary prevention so the questions that we're asking an organization going after the mental health funding will look very different as compared to those organizations going after the pop-up event funding right and so the specific questions were not included what was included was a funding strategy overview that gave you very specific numbers and a description of of the programs that we do seek to fund yes but what i would like to see is actually the rfp that that is segmented by the i understand that you've got different needs but um i'd like to know what's on the rfp like who's who is going to be qualified you know do they need to have a business license how many years of um have they served the community do they have um do they have any kind of reports of successes rather than us just this money going out um but anyway i i appreciate everything you're doing i i i have a real issue with how all this that came today because i think we are we need to take baby steps with this and it's like we just are creating this gigantic program and we don't even know what's going to be really the most effective i would rather see this go much more slowly and pick one thing to focus on do it well track it get the metrics then move on to a next step but i also would like to see us look for partners with the county and the schools and they should be helping us fund this not not just the city but anyway thank you i want to take up more time with everybody else further questions i'm sorry let me have christina respond yeah if i can add um we we followed a very specific process um to ensure that we were capturing a lot of the information that's in your backup plan so we did complete a community assessment that was inclusive of the 600 plus surveys the 60 plus individuals that participated in the focus groups that included county representation school representation faith-based parents youth to ensure that we were capturing what is it that we need to do within the city of aurora to develop the aurora model and so that's what you do have in front of you some of that preliminary data i am working with rocky mountain partnerships to have a final strategic review um and strategy that includes the metrics that will present um to to you all but that's where a lot of that information came is through that community assessment um that was completed over the summer um councilman uh thank you mayor and i oh sorry do you want to go first comes i mean i think the mayor called on me and then we went back so if i can just ask a couple of clarifying questions so christina correct me if i'm wrong it seemed like when you did the year by year kind of layout the purpose of having this notice of funding opportunity is so that in 2022 we can really get some things done while staff are in the process of developing the city specific program that will then lead to using the funds to hire people next year so this is kind of the notice of funding opportunity is kind of an intermediate step is that correct correct yeah so really that the notice of funding will allow us the opportunity to fund community-based organizations to do the intervention work that we're that you know council and others are asking for to address the immediate violent rates that are happening within the community and it will also support some of the prevention efforts and then in 2022 we'll just continue to expand and explore what is that internal infrastructure that we want to have in place okay thank you because yeah i think it's really important that we do something now that we don't keep saying oh we'll do this later and maybe we just need to do less when what the community is saying is we need you to do more now not keep waiting and only do a little bit we can do more now and be building a sustainable program into the future um so then the uh the next question that i have is with respect to the ten thousand dollars each for pros and libraries and cultural services what would be the approach if that ten thousand dollars each is not adequate for the demand from the community for those types of services um the the ten thousand for pros would be used to support the daily wreck passes and it's it's a an effort that we're looking to expand it's it's an effort that we started in 2021 and we were able to have over 100 youth it was over 112 youth i believe that were able to access recreation passes the 10 000 would just look to fund an expansion of that effort it would be sufficient for the year in order for us to really look at partnering with community-based organizations providing those daily recreation passes and ensure that youth have access with um the the partnership with the library i am working with aura partners for thriving youth and exploring the possibility of then matching the funds so they would essentially look to potentially match the ten thousand dollars to um expand on on what we're trying to do with in partnership with with one of the libraries okay um yeah my concern there is just that we often ask our libraries and rec centers to do a lot um and we don't necessarily give them adequate support to do what we're asking them to do in the community and so if the demand for passes was more than ten thousand dollars worth of passes would we be able to fund more if needed and similarly i'm glad to hear that a community organization is potentially looking to match for the libraries but you know there's a lot that falls on our library staff and that has been exacerbated during the pandemic so my concern is just that we're actually adequately funding that so that we're really compensating and not overburdening our staff um and then finally with respect to libraries and cultural services i know there's a process kind of getting underway now of um identifying a new poet laureate for the city so has there been any discussion of what role that person might be able to play in terms of kind of arts type programming with youth um to kind of help help those youth for whom it's programming would be beneficial yeah that's a really good question and thank you for for the feedback and the libraries are actually the ones that approached us with the idea of partnering with them on on expanding on some of the youth programming and so they're very open and definitely have the capability but also expertise and already existing um connection with the community to be able to to support you know the expansion of youth specific programming um and i haven't had any connections with them around the what the deploy would have as far as partnerships with the program so it's something that i can follow up with thank you for further further questions discussion uh councillor thank you sir uh and christina thank you so much for the presentation um first i want to ask i didn't see in the back up maybe it's lumped into one of the categories here but the lock in on new year's do you know how many folks ended up attending that i don't have the data for that yet okay yeah i didn't see it included here but from what i'm reading though we've served about 2 400 over 2 400 youth right with uh safe zones since he's such another program right great and since uh a comment was made about what you know what the point of these is i'll just talk a little bit about from my own lived experience uh these to me seem to provide what um you know a kind of structure or even escape from a let's say troubling or problematic living experience at home or with folks in your community when you are home um it's kind of similar to me the role that baseball uh played in my life uh when i was growing up um you know i i and a lot of the folks i grew up with um we weren't always let's say um you know straight a students and you know acting well but the introduction of the structure of you know some kind of diversionary activities like that and the community building that came as a result really is something that sticks with people especially with our youth especially in their formative year um orchestra so playing the viola and playing baseball did those things for me uh and eventually some of the other hobbies i was able to get into as my parents socioeconomic status changed and these aren't you know end-all be-all solutions these are very much reactive you know um short-term kind of approaches but getting out of a hostile environment for an evening or for several evenings even um in a year can make a big difference in the life of our youth and that's you know the way i look at that number that's 2400 kids that were able to get out of a bad situation or a let's say less than ideal situation throughout the course of a year um again that doesn't solve the issue i think we need to be looking at a lot of the things that christina has already presented to us uh at our policy committee meetings and in previous study sessions i would actually argue that doing things like raising the minimum wage and providing affordable housing or public housing even our you know public safety measures because a lot of these issues derive from bad socioeconomic circumstances that we have the ability to fix if we actually care to do so um but you know we're choosing to be reactive we have the council that we have so we're working with the program that we have but i just want to you know ensure that folks don't think that these safe zones are you know touchy-feely or not necessary they actually do provide a really great short-term stop gap we need to be looking at longer term things and i see that we have you know rec center support here library support here things where we can actually set up longer term and more sustainable programming for our youth and one of the things i really like to see us look at and i see that it's you know kind of mentioned in the backup already but i'd like to see what we can do to actually make our rec centers free for our youth period as opposed to having you know a certain amount of free passes or doing it for a certain amount of time uh it's you know what is it a ounce of prevention's worth a pound of cure allowing kids to get into clubs and have activities like this adds that structure adds that support that i think a lot of people are missing um some of our home lives might have been very different from the ones that a lot of our youth are experiencing today and whatever we're able to do to provide a safe environment for our youth we should be doing that's our responsibility it's frankly it's not the counties or you know the states even i don't think they have programs that deal with this kind of stuff and our residents our constituents are asking us to deal with the problem right that was a huge issue this last election cycle so let's do something about the problem so thank you again christina for the presentation and you have my support with what you're doing further questions of sam mayor yes a couple things this to me is is a great uh presentation but i i feel like if we continue to to talk about this as a youth violence problem and and not address it as a gang violence problem um then i think we're already we're already losing this and i think that this presentation um adds to council member lawson's point that this needs to be under public safety this is a public safety issue so i just want to throw that out there and and to council member mcconnell you're right some of us uh do come from from backgrounds where we could have been faced with a very different life maybe one maybe one decision away from it you're right and and to that point um i would just like to say we could discuss maybe getting a job uh maybe youth uh job fairs i would love to see that um in the community and and and have uh business owners come forward i got my first job in the city of aurora at 14 years old i had to go to my school counselor to get a special permit to work at that age i was told those permits already been offered at 14. so i don't know whether that's true or not i would like to see jobs offered it's going to be a really hard sell for me with um uh 5 000 for a coat drive something that a community would would literally do for free uh you know a co-drive five thousand dollars of funding in that and i understand that sometimes you know people with their home lives uh you know if they don't have food and and they're wondering where their next meal is going to come from i understand that that can you know lead down a dirty and a dark uh scary path for them but when you have a gang member in your face saying i can offer you this we can sell these things uh you know you need to come with us we're your family we can be your friend and we're sitting here talking about a thousand dollar coat drive in in and gathering turkeys i am a hard sell for anything in this presentation or that or that again it needs to be addressed as gang violence so i am also a hard sell that uh these gang members are are going to yoga or finding out when the next poet is going to be speaking i i'm a hard sell i'm not saying i don't want these things in the community but but if we are talking about gang violence first we need to call it that let's talk about it i am a hard sell for any of this and in this present this entire uh gang violence uh prevention needs to be under public safety and i'm a hard sell for any of this for the questions of staff could i speak or thank you sir a couple things having worked in northwest aurora in moorhead and to speak about gangs and to label people especially all youth that all violence is related to gangs is is asinine at the very least having been there having seen that have an understanding of that having worked with police on that and the gang unit get some information correct because what you're doing is creating an opportunity that every every youth that does violence is gang related that's not a fact that's not true i know having worked there i can tell you that programs work at moorhead a 5 000 square foot facility when i was working there attracting 200 and some youth there we created a lot of opportunities for youth there that got people out of issues that they were in and i can tell you that 90 of those youth were not gang members it was just home life they had issues as a coach i can tell you that as well there's tons of kids that would love to participate in activities but the fees are too costly the schools charge 85 just to participate in one activity that doesn't include anything else if you need equipment and things of that nature so i do a lot of that myself i subsidize many of my kids to keep them out of that opportunity of the street right the street is not a good place to raise kids but we need to give kids opportunities and you know we can argue about this all day long but until you do it and actually live it have a better understanding because i do not like to label everybody as that because then we have a youth that think that hey all adults think about us is we're all corrupt we're all gang members we all just want to be destructive and that's not true what they need is an opportunity to see another avenue somebody else a caring adult who shows them a different path that they can do and certainly i agree with you we can do more about jobs getting people connected i'm all for that and and that's basically all i got one other thing for christina are you looking for staffing to be at any of these rec centers of your staff to be at the rec centers because for me it's about also building trust in the community and if you're going to be out there working in community i think you need to be embedded someplace where that people can build those relationships with you and and your you know your staff yeah definitely and and um during the the recharger battery series um i only have one outreach specialist but he was he um went back and forth between both rec centers and was there um pretty much uh for the full two weeks and we also had our youth advisors there on site to ensure that we're building we're increasing awareness around um this topic um and then i just wanted to add gang violence is part of the high risk response and so gang and gun violence is part of that category under the intervention category so it's not um missing from the the plan it's it's uh considered in that category so if you look at the intervention secondary prevention and prevention again that is your comprehensive response to address all the different levels to include um the nexus to gangs gang violence and gun violence further questions mayor yeah i would like to respond to that uh since i felt like that was directed at me so when i'm talking about gang violence i am talking about i'm talking about gangs or as the chief uh talked to about or and referred to it as in the last meeting they can call themselves a clique they can call themselves a group a gang what whatever it is and she said they are operating with a gang mentality so when we are talking about youth violence that is what i'm talking about the rest of this uh council member medina i don't want to take it away from our community i'm not saying that that we we shouldn't you know if people are interested in poetry we shouldn't talk about you know poetry i'm not saying about it in a but a five thousand dollar coke drive that a community would put on for free for free i mean you have business owners like myself that would host a co-drive i i'm not i i'm just a hard sell to find where these costs are so so i just want to separate i want to separate the two there there could be that we could talk about at-risk youth that yes i i would like to you know offer them some some things some help um you know if it's poetry they're interested whatever's interested but if you want to talk about youth violence if you want to talk about what we are dealing with the chief was asked in these situations are they linked to gangs these shootings 16 teenagers shot in in aurora in november are they linked to gangs she said well gangs groups clicks whatever they're calling themselves nowadays that is what we are talking about that is what we are talking about so so you have to separate the two i'm not generalizing all children all you that that's that's not what i'm doing here but if we want to solve a problem then a let's call it what it is and and b let's talk about how we're going to solve that and that's not a coat drive and gathering turkeys and yoga in the parking lot that's not that further questions of staff mayor here okay you know i'm going to um i'm gonna get a sense of the council pretty soon and we're gonna move forward but uh i'll allow a few more questions um uh councilman mcconnell thank you sir uh christina um something was brought up though that i actually do have a question about with regards to schools number one we are partnering with aps and creek in your work correct correct great thank you that's what i thought so number two do you know if these districts still have what i know as a co-op program so that was basically i want to say my junior year of high school i was able to since i was doing okay on my credits i was able to uh still earn credits but i actually go seek part-time work to earn an income so i was doing that and as i mentioned before playing baseball and i was also an orchestra so that's kind of what kept me busy and kind of you know helped me build the discipline and things like that that needed to be successful and got me out and away from some negative influences right is that something that still occurs i believe it is depending on what school the team is attending um as well as work grades um we are also partnering with arapahoe douglas works and they have they're doing a ton around employment job readiness training job placement um so they're at the table as well all right thank you and just a final comment on that and then i'll let the other folks speak the um the connection here between you know these the arts um athletics uh ensure um you know actual gainful employment i can't really understate how important it is to be able to provide these opportunities and to demonstrate to our youth that these are things you could be doing aside from potentially hooking up with a clicker or whatever and getting up to no good the it was through the co-op program uh that i was actually able that i discovered that i really loved games and decided that i wanted to go to school to be a game designer i wanted to go do what they call level creation basically and that didn't work out and ended up in architecture but it's things like that they give you hope and hope is one of the really big things that i think we haven't really talked about at all but i'm sure christina you can get into a lot a lot of our youth feel like they don't have a future that they're worried about a lot of things they're going through a lot of things at home they don't know if the you know our society's gonna be able to support them if they're gonna be able to find a gainful job if they're not gonna end up you know basically shackled a student debt whatever the case may be and having all these opportunities addresses those issues gives people hope and sets them on a path a trajectory hopefully that will lead to you know a much better outcome for them than they otherwise would have had so all of this really matters all interconnected and again thank you for your work christina okay further questions of staff there here okay um councilman lawson okay thank you um thank you christina for the presentation so i do have some questions and then i'll follow up with my comments because i think it's pretty well known how i feel about this whole situation so the question that i have that i want to get a follow-up on from the last meeting is um council had asked about the outreach workers what is the status of those outreach workers in terms of getting them hired and and what's going on with that can you just give me a summary of that yes um so currently i have one full-time staff member in place what i have one person scheduled to start on january 18th and i'm working with hr on recruiting for the rest of the positions um so that posting should be out currently and if it's not it should be going out this week okay when you say the rest of the positions are you talking about the other outreach workers or when you're talking about because i i have real issues with getting 344 thousand dollars i i really like the violence interrupter i think that that's a good position these other things i have i mean this is my deal with this um and over the holiday i was out talking to organizations and i'm looking at the organizations that you guys have provided funding for which i know that they are people that we know friends of council members we know who some of these people are on these organizations i reached out to organizations and i just don't think and some of these i've actually tried to connect with you um to get information because they're trying to figure out how is it this an equitable process to submit their proposal because they're doing things in the community that are really effective and impactful and it just seems like the people that we have here or the list i'm not saying they're not doing good work but it just doesn't seem like to me the process is equitable and fair um and i really have a real issue with that because i went out even over the holidays and talked to people organizations and people who are trying to get funding or try to at least be considered and no response from your department no idea about how to do the funding um in all these individuals here i pretty much know who are who are people in these into in these things and to me it looks like it's not a fair process so i really have an issue with that and how you address that i hope you do because with this rfp process and that's why i would like to see how you're going to do that because i see and who's going to be on that sitting on that committee and who's going to be determining who gets the funding and who's influencing who because i think everybody should have a fair shot at trying to get funding who's doing the work in the community so i guess my question is to you um you know when i envisioned this program and like i said other council members you know have a thought i was this looks like we're hiring people we're doing ftes i thought we were going to do what we said we were going to do and basically use the rest of the funding for programming programming to help these kids and these youth and there's so many different programs like i know a program that helps girls i know programs that help different people i mean it just seems like we're not utilizing this funding in a way that's fair and equitable to me and so when i'm looking at your primary prevention programs the aurora library youth programming efforts okay the youth that i talk to high-risk youth they're not going to go to the library so are you i mean some of these things the great curriculum um you know i know understand that's for families the event series the same passages i think it takes a lot of different perspectives but this here to me is funding ftes and not funding what programs we need to have teas but we also need the programs and there's a lot of different programs out there besides the ones that you have listed here that you are giving funding to um that are doing things and i think that i don't know what your process is but it just doesn't seem like it's fair and equitable so i personally think this is a mess in terms of funding i think that we need to put a pause on it and um i'm not moving forward i'm just being very blunt with you i think you're doing an excellent job but this needs to be worked out a little bit for me because there's some real issues and gaps in this funding and i think we need to look at the resources the gaps that need we we have a lot of people doing a lot of different things i think we need to look at where those gaps are who's doing what what you know who can contribute to what instead of just giving out funding and saying oh we need to do this i understand it's a public health what you're saying a public health approach but also agree with councilmember jorinsky and what the chief said it's a gang problem it's youth just getting in trouble not knowing what to do youth also facing different issues and circumstances it's a lot of different things that our council members have talked about but just to me this here is just i mean it's not what i it's not basically and i'm only one person it's not what i thought that we should be doing programming you know and i'm sure you've got to have ftes but you're funding ftes i mean for just the specialized mental health treatment person one person 157 000 this is taxpayer dollars taxpayers are coming up to me because i sponsor this asking me what are you doing with this money and i've and i i you know i tell them i don't really know what we're doing so i i guess for me i appreciate what you're doing i appreciate the road that you're going again i do not agree with this program that it should be in where it's at but i also believe that there needs to be a pause on this funding until we see how this rfp process is going for for um for the pop-ups for programs and and organizations that want to apply and to be able to give them a fair shot everybody is equitable on a spare playing field because these people these individuals here they're doing good work but i know people that know people that know them so there seems like to me there's some influence so um that's my thought on this um i will not be supporting moving this funding available for early 2022. um i would like for you to maybe come back with something that's a little bit more like what are these programs going to do if you were going to hire these ftes what specifically programs are they going to be doing to help if this hospital-based intervention i read the backup but what specifically what specific programs um and i don't think this for me gets it so that's my two cents on this and i appreciate all your work i do appreciate you um i do think that there's some other things that are kind of keeping you from maybe expanding what you really want to do but i said that in my last comments but again um we need to put a pause on this because there's questions out there in the community about how we're allocating funding and to who and to who into what kind of programs councilmember lawson i just wanted to try to address this a little bit in terms of funding buckets and so we're not going to know the specifics until we put out some of these requests so what we heard at the last study session is that we really wanted to focus more on the intervention and not just the pop-up events and prevention and so the kind of percentages of funding reflect that we're very open to taking feedback on having you know it be 50 50 of intervention and prevention we can certainly bring back what the applications would look like but i think what we're going to need to do to be able to get to the specificity that you're suggesting is actually put out the notice and see what the programs are that people are suggesting we we're these are very preliminary numbers they're estimates and so it's really a placeholder for additional mental health funding violence interrupters it doesn't mean the city is not hiring those people as ftes just to clarify that and then we really need to hear from those you know partner agencies and organizations in the community what their proposals are and then we can bring those back to council but at this point they're kind of general funding buckets that we're looking to put out to the community to see what their great innovative ideas are and then be able to bring those back for council to make decisions from there mayor yeah i i have a question on there's a lot of organizations that we don't need to give funding to and i don't see them um junior achievement they are a great organization that works with at-risk uh youth and help them with jobs that we talked about jobs tonight um and and get them that skills training and so forth and get them on the right path um there are i don't first of all there's some churches on here that are getting funding i never heard of churches getting government funding i thought it was separation of church and state um churches that i know of in my area high point church eastern hills they don't they don't come to us for government funding you know what they do they offer volunteers they actually get people to donate things food clothing whatever they're happy to help us if we i mean gene roncone pastor ryan cohn was the pastor of high point church he did boots um for kids one year and i i helped on that to fundraise and to get monies from different corporations and so forth we raised enough money that we could supply boots to every child at crawford elementary school usually churches are are doing charity work and i don't understand giving money to to those organizations so my point is have we even looked at organizations that are willing to mentor for free volunteer for free uh do you know do donation drives and and those type of things rather than go rfp and here's all the money that you know the city of aurora has who wants money without i don't think we have a good idea of what we actually need and we're just like throwing it out there like who who who wants to help us and who wants our money versus being very deliberate and specific on this is what we need right now and let's go for that and then let's see how successful whatever that is and then break it up into pieces and then you know stage two well we we do something else i just don't feel like we're taking advantage of all the resources that actually exist out there whether they're county resources the schools and the the volunteer organizations so this process has been very very deliberate and it's been very deliberate in that a pretty extensive community assessment was completed we reviewed national models local models best practices so the funding recommendations that you all have are coming directly from from that community assessment and so we do have a pretty good understanding of what are the gaps um and those are the gaps we know that within the aurora community we don't have providers that can provide a lot of the the services that we're looking to fund and so that's one of the reasons why we're wanting to fund these very specific specific strategies are to build the capacity of world-specific community-based organizations to provide that direct service have you gone out have you talked to people that are willing to do things offer services for free so right now a lot of these organizations do not have the funding we know that community-based organizations lack not just the funding but that you know there are people that are willing to volunteer their time and their and give their money not ask for funding but literally help fund raise give money i i feel like we're not even trying that aspect of it like we're just you know here's our money that we have a pot of money for everyone to just come apply our community mobilization team is made up of over a 40 community-based organizations that include faith-based leaders we are looking at leveraging resources we do have for example encounter church is a really good example where we did partner with them for the faith and blue event to provide that co-drive and other resources um can i i'm sorry to interrupt but you know councilmember jorensky made a good point who needs money to do a coat drive you know or a back-to-school drive i raised ten thousand dollars for colfax community network by doing a fundraiser you don't i didn't need money no one had to give me money to go and do a fundraiser to do a back to school drive i just think some of some of these programs i'm sorry i think people took advantage of us the the code drive is a really good example where the 5 000 was not even 50 percent of the funding that went towards the faith and blue event the blue events were a larger initiative and our the funding that we provided were a very small um funding stream to support the larger effort and so what this program is seeking to do is how do we overall leverage resources with faith-based with community-based organizations how do we expand how do we support families that may not have those direct services we know that a lot of our families don't have transportation they don't have the knowledge base to be able to access some of these faith-based organizations or other services and a lot of the services that are in place that provide a very specific service that we're looking for to address some of that violent behavior aren't in aurora and so that automatically it limits the services that our community can access and so how do we bring some of these services internally is what we're trying to do how do we ensure that our community has access in their neighborhood to some of these services so we don't have to deal with the transportation issue with the language issue so we don't have to deal with the lack of understanding of how divers our community is and ensure that we have a direct service to serve our diverse community yeah and i appreciate that i understand that obviously we have unique needs and and certainly i'm not saying i'm you know opposed to a lot of your programs i think some of some of the ideas are really good i just i just i think we need to take it slowly there excellent thank you christina for uh sitting here tonight and the work that you're doing uh i think all of us here have a heart for youth and where whether it's coaching or raising money volunteering mentoring we all have a heart for youth but i want to kind of put you on the hot seat here and ask you a question and to be honest if you don't mind and you may feel uncomfortable but in your role as a director here and i know that's important of a steering committee and a board and whatnot but do you feel as a director to craft and and put this program in the right direction do you feel you have autonomy or enough autonomy to do your job um i'm not a director i'm a program manager um and so i i report to a division manager who then reports to a department director what i have found being within the city of aurora is that it this conversation is very new it's very new and not just internally but also externally and so it's taking the overall leadership and network a lot longer to understand why certain practices are the best practices why certain programming should be in place and so that's the struggle that i'm i guess experiencing is just a lack of understanding of how to serve at-risk youth and high-risk youth and how not just to specifically focus on one risk factor for example gangs but how do we look at it from a larger comprehensive response and how do we ensure that we're partnering with community but also system-based to include county partners to implement this comprehensive response that we need to just from an outside perspective it seems like we're there's a little paralysis by analysis so to speak within the scope of everything and also i know that with the material that you provided to us i saw another scenario right and how to structure this whole thing it almost looked a little more bureaucratic i know it was more lateral help with some programs but it looked as if the youth violence prevention program in that scenario would take on more of an approach towards gangs and guns did i observe that correctly correct okay and um do you feel that is a type more of a priority in structuring it that way or the the recommended structure wouldn't prioritize being in gun violence it would just allow the youth violence prevention program under that structure to specifically focus on gun and gang violence while taking some of the other approach away from that program and giving it to the municipal division program giving it to the coordinator that would oversee that community engagement and primary prevention effort and so it would allow for more of a specialized response in the three bucket programming areas that were outlined okay thank you christina question and you may not have the answer to this but um were any of the individuals that were involved in the shootings in the last couple of months um had had they been identified as high risk before the shootings yes some of some of them were and some of [Music] the families of the the gnome park and the kinkley shooting were actually directly served either through pop-up events or through some of the other prevention efforts so they were served prior to the shootings and prior and after what was the where was the the disconnect and being able to prevent the tragedies i would say especially in speaking to our schools and the school staff that were had a direct connection with those youth is to some of the youth is being able to have the access to the programming that we're trying to fund that wraparound service no further questions mayor all right counselor um so i just had a couple of clarifying questions um with respect to the intervention programming um does that particularly tend to serve youth that are involved in or at risk for involvement in gangs yes yes so the intervention is more specifically geared towards those youth involved in gangs or that have a nexus tickings whether it's having been involved in gun violence so that's specifically addressed through the bonds interrupters through the the hospital-based interventions the the specialized mental health so that will be very specifically geared towards those youth um directly involved in gangs and gun shootings okay and that's more than 50 of the funding recommended correct correct okay and then with respect to the prevention activities which is the remainder of the funding um is that shown to kind of keep people from getting onto that path or moving along the path to being connected to gangs it would support the prevention efforts would support both it would support preventing kids from going down that path and they would support identifying kids starting to exhibit some behavioral concern whether it's at home or in school and giving them the tools they need to keep them from getting to that point okay and then finally with respect to whomever has already received funding versus who might be eligible for funding when this notice of funding opportunity goes out is there any preference given to people that have already received funding and is there any reason that organizations that are newly identified and newly applied through this notice of funding opportunity would not be able to access the funds most of the organizations that have already received funding for the pop-up event series wouldn't don't have the capability necessarily to provide the intervention response that we're looking to fund and so with that said a lot of the organizations that we would seek to fund would probably be new organizations that have a specialty or have the capability to provide a service that hasn't been seen in aurora or is being provided but it's being provided by denver based organizations that's all my questions thank you are there any further questions who are you uh councilman hi thank you mayor uh thank you christina for your presentation um i think this is incredibly thorough uh sorry appreciate your work on just knowledge of the all the stakeholders you have done is specifically written right that kind of philosophy of um informed um decision making is i think critical i said on our juvenile justice delegacy prevention board for the state of colorado and that is a best practice and i'm seeing a lot of best practice based on local national data i think generally i appreciate the direction of where this is going it sounds like you've probably received um a full spectrum of opinions today so i i hope that's not confusing um moving forward i i too was a little confused just because this was an informational only item and then there was direction requested of counsel so again i'm sorry like that that's a lot to get through behind myself and kind of you know marks all over the place um i so just just wanted to state that i appreciate what you're doing what i'm hearing from you is a lot of the feedback that i hear from organizations in my district and not just in my district other organizations that um say we're not moving fast enough and then i'm hearing feedback that we're moving too quickly and maybe the answer is somewhere in between so i hope that you will take that um for what it is and really try to navigate um the really strong opinions that you're going to have to get approved from to make some of the spending move forward because i do think that we're going to continue to invest in our youth my question is um you had the gaps analysis and then you talked a little bit about some barriers do you have any other barriers as a result of doing that gap analysis that um you think that you can address in the near future um i would say a barrier that i'm seeing especially around the funding is um i mean i i to some extent do agree with councilman lawson where um specific organizations have continued to receive a lot of the funding and part of the process that i did follow for the pop-up event um funding was to open it up to organizations that have not gotten funding and so i think that's an ask that i do have for council is that we are open to funding new organizations and not just new organizations but organizations that have the capacity to do this work and have the the capacity to leverage resources with the program and support the overall mission um i i do think that's part of of the the issue that i am seeing is that organizations have been provided funding and it's a one-time fund or a one-time effort but we really do need to ensure that we're building capacity and we're looking to fund long-term efforts that can truly have an impact and increase the capacity of our community further questions mayor just a quick cancer memory thank you mayor um thank you for that um feedback um my my question i think you know i don't know where every individual organization is at in terms of capacity just generally passing in this really difficult time etc um is there anything that maybe not you or the the department that you're under um has in terms of resources to help organizations build capacity you know i think we're talking about issues and struggles with aurora-based organizations one of the biggest biggest feedback that i get from these you know community-based organizations is they do really good work they have really great outcomes but they can't scale there's very little opportunity um for them to transfer you know learn from other organizations that have been around a lot longer who have you know anyone we're talking about the same organizations doing the same thing getting the same funding to me that seems like kind of a need as well if you want to address that concern are you aware of these german capacity building efforts that we can help get you know more online to support our efforts yeah i um i think there are several opportunities one is we are going to be offering a professional development series i'm working with courtney and lana on on offering that and it's something that i hope to offer both internally and externally to be able to build capacity of our stakeholders i think organizations also being part of our work groups is crucial that's another barrier that i would ask council to consider in that there's organizations that are truly engaged in the work and are wanting to learn are wanting to support the overall effort of the program and each other's efforts and we have organizations that just want the funding and not be part of the overall work and so i would say that's another really good opportunity is for organizations to get involved in the community mobilization team and be part of the ongoing conversation where we are identifying other activities that aren't funded by us and training opportunities and they're connecting and building capacity on their own without us being involved and i would say that's another important you know thing to consider is that the youth forum was something that the community decided to do on their own after being involved in our community mobilization team so how can organizations actively participate in those conversations to be able to support the aurora community led efforts so uh supporting um uh as council supporter of the next steps outlined and releasing a notice of funding availability in early 2022 um i think it's going to be fairly close so let me go down the list councilmember lawson no i will not be supporting this at this time hey councilman gardner [Music] unfortunately and so i'm not sure if he was able to stay with us uh council members of annika no councilmember jordinsky no customer romero yes customer sunburg no not at this time all right councilmember medina yes customer mercano yes councilman combs yes uh mayor partoon not at this time no dave um i'm also going to ask that the um uh that the youth violent prevention program come back to us work with some of the members uh that have had reservations on certain parts of the program and obviously the goal is for you to get the majority of support i think it's critical for us to go forward with a program i think that there are elements that are that are that there are some questions on and so um i think that this is critical enough that i'm not going to wait until the next study session we will have a special session a special study session uh you know you've got to remember him um i appreciate that but if if it comes back too soon i don't think we're going to have time to um like you're asking us to try to formulate our thoughts as to what is what needs to what part of this needs to go forward and i agree like there's part of it but if this has to be on the next study session for me personally it's not gonna be enough time yeah it depends how you want that because i personally i'll look and see i i obviously there has to be adequate time and if i don't think that there's going to be adequate time and it does have to go in the next study session then i'll make that determination uh i'll work with christina uh in terms of of her time frame and her ability to work with the members on their specific reservations in order to have majority support can i just say something i'm not against this program at all of course you and i when did a lot of the work for it but what i am i am concerned about how the funding is being allocated and i think for me i would like to see how the rfp our fee process is going to look how they're going to be adapting to this funding piece because that's the critical issue and i don't know what other community members are hearing but that's what i'm hearing so i'm not against this program and trying to stop the program and know where we need this program um i just think that there's a problem with the funding and i think we need to kind of look at where these gaps are where we actually have all these different you know we have different programs we have different people doing different things to me is just not meshing together okay there is not at this time it will not move forward um we will um let's see see round number three um 3d will not move forward at this time uh we will uh if the time is now uh 901 uh castle will stand in recess until 906 cancel the sound recess [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] do [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] okay uh council is back in session lab number three e removal and cleaning of unauthorized encampments uh on colorado department of transportation properties uh lana dalton good evening mayor and councilman i'm wood adult and i'm the homelessness programs manager for the city of aurora per council's request we have been working with our partners at cdot to get to an intergovernmental agreement to expedite cleaning of statements on cdot property that are in the city rule we have come to an agreement on that and on both sides and so what you have in your backup is the actual iga and we are looking for approval of that iga to move forward the discussion the questions of staff mayor all right councilman mcconnell thank you sir uh lana thank you for the brief uh summary and for the backup um i do have a couple of concerns about what's presented to us here um when i originally brought this up with y'all with councilmember coombs we had talked about you know trash and large debris that was often left in the public right of way that we would get a lot of complaints about some of that was associated with unhoused camps some of it was just dumped and what i am seeing what i have read is that basically this is c dot trying to well not trying to but rather allowing us to conduct abatements in their stead but only giving us 75 000 to do it um and i think those are kind of two very different scopes and how much did we spend on abatement last year it was around a quarter million if memory serves right so correct and that did not include c dot abatements we didn't include that in our figure um what i can say to this specifically is that it does include the trash as well so anytime we find anything um trash and otherwise or there is an encampment as well it is covered by this cost there's a specific process involved we have to go take pictures we get that approved through cdot then you know we get to move forward with the abatement if they approve and then we submit them in voices on a monthly basis and they reimburse us for that it not only helps us with the trash issue that we found but also assists with many of the complaints that we receive from constituents in the community regarding encampments that are in dangerous areas so for instance like on i-225 any of those corridors it allows us to kind of move quicker than maybe what cdot has in place and it also allows us to provide additional safety measures for those folks that are experiencing homelessness because really it's unsafe for them to be in that locale but just because of cdot's capacity uh we don't have they don't have the ability to abate as quickly as we would like so and i completely agree that a lot of those areas that you described are exceptionally dangerous and completely unsuitable for any kind of habitation i'm just concerned that the amount for this broad scope is not going to be anywhere near what we would really need to you know handle the load especially is that you know if after things warm up we have we see a resurgence which i think we likely will of our own house population and probably some new additions so yeah sorry uh council member marcono and we started with 75 000. we can increase that amount with them they were amenable to that they just wanted to start at this level and so we can always do an amendment to that and they they were agreeable to that all right and uh mayor can i ask one more follow-up uh mayor i think you're muted great please proceed alright thank you sir um and i guess my last question here is there a way that we can also allocate some of this money not just if we're gonna do this uh just for the cleanup but actually for a place so these folks can actually touch down and because my my biggest concern is that okay we're going to take over abatement responsibilities to some extent from c dot and then we're going to abate let's say 225 in mississippi and then those folks are going to end up back on uh one of the creeks in ward 4. and then we're going to just get a call from you know neighbors back there again we're just going to continue this game of whack-a-mole that i've referenced a million times so if we're going to actually get an intergovernmental partner can we actually get some funding to house these people as well that's a great question that wasn't something that was proposed in the current iga but we're happy to ask that question thank you further discussion questions of staff by councilman mccombs so just to clarify when this says abatement it's not the way we normally talk about abatement as being specifically about encampments but it's also about these complaints that councilmember marcano and i both have received a lot of um regarding trash dumped all along these rights of way that we don't have jurisdiction over that is correct further questions um seeing no further questions is or opposition uh to moving item number three e forward seeing none then i'm the number three will move forward thank you i'm number five a resolution to adopt rules and regulations for lobbyist registration ordinance um councilman lawson thank you mayor um so basically this ordinance came to passed on march 22 2021 this particular ordinance the resolution is complementary to the actual ordinance where the um well it would allow the clerk to actually promulgate rules and regulations um according to the ordinance for lobbyists um so it's just basically to just give the the um the clerk the authority to do so um ensuring that lobbyists follow the rules if there's any type of um any type of anything complaints or anything that comes before that someone has been lobbying that they would be able to conduct a hearing as well so i have um in the back of what you see is what the some of the additions to what the code would look like and also um if there's any questions that you have from the period that this log that this passed we have been giving um we haven't been doing an enforcement we have been doing training and addressing questions from different lobbying um individuals and organizations um so now the first report would be due january 15th of this year so people who are conducting lobbying in our city would have to register and actually complete quarterly reports starting january 15th of 2022. so i would be able to address any questions dan lathers is um on here as well as well as rachel allen for any questions or comments you may have questions uh for um customer lawson and staff well let's see seeing that congratulations i'm sorry well pro tem would have one okay okay i was just going to congratulate you on the on the passage i almost made it but i didn't make it much sorry okay so i don't have problem with the lobbying ordinance my question is just again on the definition of lobbyists um just for clarification so like if you're lobbied by a union do they register do unions register yes dave lather speaking uh rachel allen unfortunately was um he has a conflict this evening she can't appear um yes it it does not matter the provenance of where lobbying comes from okay rather it matters that there is lobbying activity taking place so a union representative could be acting as a lobbyist and an attorney could be acting as a lobbyist a lobbyist could be acting as a lobbyist an industry expert or insider a ceo any of them could be acting as lobbyists so it is the activity rather than how they choose to label themselves okay or hold themselves forward to the public so they would have to register if they conduct lobbying activity within the city they would need to register yes okay thank you further questions of uh the the proposal sponsor or staff mayor all right councilman comes um what about constituents who are members of community organizations like there's a group what the frack arapaho they're not a formal organization they're a group of people that oppose fracking and work together on those issues what they have to register as lobbyists in order to come talk to city council about their issue no councilmember coombs and dale you can look i'm looking at the definition of covered official and they would not be considered a covered official further questions of the proposal sponsor or for staff i say none is there any objection to moving uh item number five a forward i say no objection 5a will move forward uh item number 6a council rules of order and procedures rules e and f uh um city attorney dan brostman good evening uh tonight we're going to do a real brief piece on the council rules starting out council rules under the charter are permitted under uh section 3.6 so council is allowed to adopt procedures those procedures the restriction is can't obviously violate the charter itself uh section 5.1 of the charter actually lists the uh how council actually acts you you act through an ordinance a resolution or emotion so we're going to jump to the actual rules themselves uh on enf of the council rules of order and procedure again the charter allowed council to adopt these rules the rules themselves then adopt uh and the council rules of order and procedure are are on the city's website so everybody can look that up and find that the the the rules then adopt uh o'garfield jones parliamentary procedure at a glance rules to actually um that that's our governoring that instead of robert's rules of orders we use oh garfield instead it's it's a summarized version of the rules um they're really straightforward how to make motions uh and then when it when a second is required when um when a a two-thirds majority rather than a majority is required under the rules uh they're simple they're it's very simple it's very straightforward it's a very nice little guide to follow uh again not formal on robert's rules which is a little bit different than a lot of places um again the rules of old garfield apply if the council rules don't preempt that so one of one of the very first sections is order of business so we follow the council's order of business and that that's been debated on a number of times by this council and previous councils on on what the order of the regular meeting should be and i should clarify we're talking about the regular meeting of council we're not talking about executive sessions we're not talking about study sessions council may not may not uh actually have a motion in executive session you're not to make the decision formally through a motion in executive session you're giving direction in executive session to council appointees in study session you're following a much more informal approach than you are in the regular meeting so these rules are as to the regular meeting and they they list the order that that you do business uh on the agenda they address uh how public comment items are come forward um they address you know simple things of uh how you how the two different pieces one is a regular legislative item how that actually discussion takes place you then move the item that is a very different procedure than the public hearing approach which you open the public hearing their presentations and the motion is made at the beginning of a public hearing so they're a little bit different there's a discussion of use of the consent calendar and what items can be under the consent calendar um there's the nomination pers or or appointment procedure which council has dealt with a number of times recently um section f again goes back to uh the charter section 5.1 everything moving through by ordinance by resolution or by motion again under section 3.2 of the charter the mayor does not vote on ordinances and resolutions except to make or break a tie that's actually in the charter and then it's reaffirmed later in in the rules um there is during the regular meeting the rules are a little bit different as to motions to table an item in o'garfield there that is not debatable under roberts that's not debatable under the aurora council rules that is debatable so you can you can just when a motion is made to table an item you can't have discussion around that up around tabling the item conflicts are addressed as well thai votes again are addressed and that is a different procedure than is in oh garfield on on thai votes coming back to council um and again there is a sixth vote uh that is different than old garfield so these are your procedural differences the motions of themselves whether you're going to continue an item whether you're going to move the item originally whether you want to uh you know close debate on an item again closing debate is very different in study session than it is in formal session so it limiting debate in a formal session actually requires the two-thirds vote of counsel to limit debate of an item study session is information gathering so the mayor has even more of a discretion in how he makes those decisions at study session on keeping the agenda moving and items proceeding uh through through the process again the role starting very going back to really the city attorney is the parliamentarian for council the advice is given to the mayor the mayor's decision is final unless and there is one exception there is an appeal an appeal is in a majority appeal of the mayor's decision and it's simply the mayor makes a decision somebody says i'd like to appeal that if a majority of council wants to appeal it then it is appealed and you move on in that direction if it's if a majority doesn't have that then the item goes as the mayor has has indicated that's i i kept this really brief uh well to make this easy just as sort of a one-on-one on our on our procedures and i'd be happy to take any questions if anybody has any questions to the city manager i mean i'm sorry city attorney ouch questions of the city attorney like the mayor no i'm just kidding yeah appeal appeal of the mayor period okay further uh questions none thank you very much uh uh city attorney uh saying no further business uh before oh i'm sorry yes uh seeing no further business before the city council uh uh study session uh this meeting is adjourned thanks everybody [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] you