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HomeMy WebLinkAboutHuman Relations Commission - Minutes - 08/10/2023 HUMAN RELATIONS COMMISSION REGULAR MEETING Thursday, August 10, 2023 – 5:30 PM City Hall, CIC Conference Room; 300 Laporte Ave 1. CALL TO ORDER: 5:37 PM 2. ROLL CALL a. Board Members Present – Beth Jaeger, Barb Kistler, Coronda Ziegler (joined at 6:07 PM), Teresa Cribelli, Phil Walker, Miho Yoshioka b. Board Members Absent – Masood Ahmad, Kyle Teramoto c. Staff Members Present – Rachael Johnson, (TITLE), Melanie Clark, Executive Assistant d. Guest(s) – N/A Commission Chair, Beth Jaeger announced Fabiola’s resignation from the commission. Fabiola was an incredible and tremendous contributor and will be greatly missed. Rachael Johnson has accepted a new position with First People’s Worldwide and her last full day with the City is August 18th. 3. AGENDA REVIEW 4. APPROVAL OF MINUTES Commission member, Teresa Cribelli motioned to approve the minutes from the July 13, 2023, meeting. Commission Co-chair, Barb Kistler second the motion. Motion passed 5-0. 5. PUBLIC PARTICIPATION: None 6. BUDGET REVIEW HRC was allocated $6,100 at the beginning of the year. $1,500 is allocated to the DEI networking event; $1,500 is allocated to the Unmasking Microagressions training, and $1,500 is allocated to the HRC awards ceremony at the end of the year. This should use the 2023 budget. 7. NEW BUSINESS Commission Co-chair, Barb Kistler explained they have been working on a DEI networking event for entities and organizations that are doing substantial DEIJ work. United Way, The City’s Equity and Economic Health Offices, and Larimer County are confirmed sponsors of the event. United Way planned to host a similar event as part of the CSU Symposium. Once it was realized these events were similar, they decided to formally join forces with HRC for the networking event and CSU will fill their spot at the symposium with another course. HRC, The City, and United Way are fiscal sponsors with each providing $1,500 toward the event. She hopes that Larimer County will also be a formal sponsor. They have come up with a list of 44 organizations to possibly be invited to the event. Commission members were asked to review the list and provide any additional organizations they want to make sure are included. Some of the locations proposed for the event are CSU Student Center, Senior Center, Agave Room at Rio (very expensive and parking is challenging), Lyric Cinema, or Island Grill. Food will be provided as the event will be 2-3 hours long. The content for the event will be provided by Joy Sullivan, Executive Director of United Way and Alma Vigo-Morales, President of Diversity Solutions Group. They will run an interactive asset mapping exercise during the session. Beth and Barb will facilitate a get to know you at the beginning. The hope is this event will help start a robust Northern Colorado directory of all DEI organizations to be able to collaborate and have a central repository of the groups and how to access them. Commission members were asked to provide input on the location for the event. Commission members talked about several locations including CSU Student Center, Agave Room, Island Grill, Lincoln Center, etc. There was some concern regarding the costs of these locations. Northside Aztlan Center was mentioned as being a great space. The Lyric would not be a good space due to them serving alcohol. Senior Center was discussed as being the preferred location due to the size of the space, being able to open the doors and expand out onto the patio, being able to bring in your own caterer, etc. Melanie will check to see if Northside Aztlan Center and Senior Center are available for this event. Barb will check on the availability of the Student Center. Discovery Museum was discussed, but they didn’t want to ask too much of the staff. Barb talked about a resource list for local DEIJ trainers. She asked Commission members to let her know of any others who should be added. The list will be shared with Yvonne Myers with the Chamber of Commerce to share with community members. 8. OLD BUSINESS/COMMISSION MEMBER REPORTS Coronda Ziegler provided an update on the Microaggression training which will take place on Thursday, October 5th, at the Fort Collins Senior Center, from 5:00 – 7:30 p.m. The key piece is the marketing and making sure that the flyer is also in Spanish and getting it sent out to the email list as an invitation and working with CPIO to get the registration form set up. Barb explained that the HRC marketing has mostly been through email. The email list from past programs contains about 400 email addresses who they send invitations to and ask them to also share out. Registration will be handled by the City as well as posting on social media. Melanie offered to do all of the emailing from the hrc@fcgov.com email address. She can send to all email addresses at once. They would like the invite to be sent out on September 5th from the HRC list. Any follow up will be forwarded to Beth and Barb. The flyer will be updated, and Coronda will provide a photo of herself to be added. HRC members will also receive the flyer to share out to their networks. Phil Walker would like to see something mentioned or have something prepared for folks to read ahead of time to learn what microaggressions are before the training. Commission members discussed having a short blurb on the flyer defining what the content of the program is. Barb confirmed that there is already something included. It is free to attend the event, but registration is required. As well, Spanish translation and childcare will be provided upon request. Registration will be limited to 150 knowing that some won’t show. Commission members discussed the HRC Award Ceremony. They would like to kick off the nomination period on September 18th. Nomination categories were reviewed from the previous year. Commission members recalled the difficulty in deciding the public service awards and discussed what public service really meant and what they were hoping to accomplish with the award. Beth Jaeger motioned to eliminate the Public Service Personnel award category and replace with three categories of: Individual, Youth (18 and younger), and organization/Team awards (non-profit or for profit). Barb Kistler second the motion. Motion passed 6-0. It was recommended to change the wording on the website from challenges of the pandemic to fallout of the pandemic. The webpage needs to be updated to indicate that the award ceremony has been occurring for more than 4 decades and not 2. Mijo suggested adding the nominee’s pronouns. It was discussed that a set list of questions be provided to the nominee’s once they are selected to include a request that they provide a photo and short bio. As well, a short description of why the person was awarded will be included on the website. A question was asked if the person needs to be doing this work outside of their job or are they eligible if they are doing it as part of their job. Commission members discussed having not awarded a nominee as the work they were doing was part of their everyday job. It was clarified that others who have gone above and beyond outside of the scope of their work have been awarded. Beth motioned to include language on the website about what the recipient is being recognized for along with their photo. The wording around global pandemic will be changed to the post pandemic fallout. Teresa second the motion. The motion passed 6-0. Beth will get the changes to Melanie to get the updates made. Commission members discussed incorporating a proclamation for International Human Rights Day into the award ceremony as the events coincide. Beth made a motion to include the International Human Rights Day into the HRC Awards Ceremony. Teresa second the motion. The motion passed 6-0. Melanie will submit the proclamation request to the City Clerk’s Office. Melanie and Barb will work together to submit the proclamation. Barb mentioned that the Boards and Commissions Ad Hoc committee gave a presentation at Council last Tuesday. She stated that there is not much that pertains to this commission, but they did mention that the Women’s Advisory Committee will be renamed to Women and gender equity. They talked mostly about the responsibility of the staff liaison and discussed changing the Youth Advisory Board members from 9 to 5. They have not decided whether they are going to put U+2. There are some that want the number of people related to the number of bedrooms. They are talking about putting that on the November ballot. Beth provided an update on the boards chair and co-chair networking event. They would like to bring together other boards that have similar missions. Six boards were invited to a meet and greet. Four boards were represented at the meeting: Affordable Housing, Disability Advisory, Senior Advisory Board and Human Relations Board. They tapped into some energy about boards being curious about each other and wanting to collaborate more. Board members would like to be able to attend other board meetings. There was some frustration about not being able to provide and know all the resources available to the public or knowing how to get it distributed. They would like to have an affordable housing fair and have resources available to the public. Another idea was to have these issues brought up at the Boards and Commissions Super Issues meetings coordinated by Davina to encourage collaboration across all boards. Commission members liked the idea of being able to amplify the issue of affordable housing to the community. Beth and Barb plan to meet with Davina for lunch in September to discuss these issues. Rachael Johnson stated that there is an HRC email address that Claudia and Melanie have access to. There will be a rule set up to have the emails forwarded to Beth and Barb. Right now, the City does not allow volunteers to have a City email address. It could be a possibility to have others added to receive the emails. According to the city’s volunteer policies all volunteers are required to have a badge. Each Commission member needs to submit a photo in a jpg or png format, preferably with a white background. Pronoun stickers and buttons are also available. Please send this information to Melanie within two weeks, by August 24. Disability Employment Month Proclamation. Commission members thought it would be great to collaborate with DAB on having the proclamation read and would like to receive it with DAB. Beth will respond to Melanie’s email stating that HRC would like to collaborate, and Teresa will help with the drafting the Proclamation. Teresa mentioned that Mayor wants to have a proclamation read for Autism. Commission members discussed that this will be done in April and how proclamations are read and the ceremonial procedures. Melanie will email Teresa the last proclamation read. 9. ANNOUNCEMENTS Rabbi Katzir asked Beth and Barb to share with the Commission members a project that the Interfaith Council is working on for 2024 called Visiting Sacred Spaces. They would invite members of the public to come to different faith community spaces. The host community would provide a basic introduction to their tradition either by doing a short lecture or Q&A. Rabbi would like to know if HRC would be interested in participating. Commission members are interested in learning more about the program and think that the concept is interesting. Barb questioned the separation of Church and state and what the parameters are surrounding religious organizations. She questioned if they could co-sponsor something like that if there is a short service. Beth asked for a point person to work with Rabbi Katzir. Coronda volunteered. Teresa made a motion to support the program. Mijo second the motion. The Motion passed 6-0. 10. NEXT STEPS 11. ADJOURNMENT a. 7:24 p.m. Minutes approved by the Chair and a vote of the Board/Commission on 09/14/23 08/10/23– MINUTES Page 1