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Home My WebLink About2016-10-13 Human Relations Commission Summary MinutesADA. The City of Palo Alto does not discriminate against individuals with disabilities. To request accommodations, auxiliary aids or services to access City facilities, services or programs, to participate at public meetings, or to learn about the City's compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990, may contact 650-329-2550 (voice), or e-mail ada@cityofpaloalto.org . This agenda is posted in accordance with government code section 54954.2(a) or section 54956. Members of the public are welcome to attend this public meeting. Page 1 of 31 HUMAN RELATIONS COMMISSION Thursday, October 13, 2016 Community Meeting Room Palo Alto Civic Center 250 Hamilton Avenue 7:00 PM REGULAR MEETING ROLL CALL: Chair Stone: Welcome everybody to the October meeting of the Human Relation Commission. Thanks for being here. We’ll start with roll call, Mary. Commissioners Present: Alhassani, Chen, Gordon Gray, O’Nan, Stinger, Savage, Stone Staff: Minka van der Zwaag, Mary Constantino Council Liaison: Council Member Wolbach II. AGENDA CHANGES, REQUESTS, DELETIONS Chair Stone: Any agenda changes, requests, or deletions? Ok. III. ORAL COMMUNICATIONS Chair Stone: We’ll move onto oral communications from the public. We have one speaker card, Ms. Minka van der Zwaag: Go right over there so they can hear you on the microphone, please. My name is Debra Cen. This is the second time I’ve visit with you. Today, I’m at leadership Palo Alto training today and I saw Commissioner Stinger and she invited me to speak. I mentioned to her about two events, Chinese Immigrant Community is going full out this calendar year and she said I should definitely come to talk to you guys. I said that’s a great idea. Anyway, I’ve come to talk today so I will be brief. There are two events, I’d say starting last year, and the Chinese Immigrant Community has been putting out two events for the whole Palo Alto community. One event is called Emergency Preparation Fair and another one is Chinese New Year Fair. Emergency Preparation Fair, this is the third year. It’s going to be next Sunday, next Sunday at Addison Elementary school. I’ll leave these two fliers for you , I’ve come here to invite all of you to attend and these two events we host – our goal is to use this as a community building event and what we would like is to have non-Chinese immigrant people to come. One side says, how come these immigrants don’t show up? Chinese don’t show up but on the other side when there is a Chinese immigrant event, how come the Americans don’t show up? So, we need both sides to work on that. Anyway, this is on Sunday and it’s very popular, you know we have 400 – 500 people last year show up. Another event, we have started planning is Chinese New Year fair which this passing February was the first time we did that. It was phenomenally successful. We ADA. The City of Palo Alto does not discriminate against individuals with disabilities. To request accommodations, auxiliary aids or services to access City facilities, services or programs, to participate at public meetings, or to learn about the City's compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990, may contact 650-329-2550 (voice), or e-mail ada@cityofpaloalto.org . This agenda is posted in accordance with government code section 54954.2(a) or section 54956. Members of the public are welcome to attend this public meeting. Page 2 of 31 had 1,200 people show up. I think majority are Palo Alto people; there are some out of towners. February or was it March – February 22nd or something this year, anyway and we invited the Mayor, and both the Mayor and Superintendent came. The Mayor really enjoyed that. We had performances and Chinese culture expedition. Very successful and also over 20 parents had different teams put out special Chinese New Year finger food. We sold the finger food and I donated all the proceeds, $4,000 to the school district. It was phenomenally successful and we are planning to do it every year now. Now, we have just established a new committee to plan for the next year which is February 11th. We would like to invite all of you to attend and again our goal is to increase non-Chinese immigrant attendance because we need community building and those people to be there right, to build? We are coming up with an idea on how to get people to connect, maybe a little car saying, I am, you know. Can we have coffee time or something? We are brainstorming right now but anyway, so Valerie suggested for me to come and talk to you and we can start thinking about it. We still have some time. That’s it, thank you for your attention. Chair Stone: Great, thank you. Ms. van der Zwaag: Do you have a soft copy so that I could send out… Ms. Cen Yes, I can send that to you. Ms. van der Zwaag: …send it to me and then I can get that to all the members. Ms. Cen Ok, I will do that tonight. Ms. van der Zwaag: We’ll just leave these couple for now but then I’ll send them out. Commissioner Alhassani:: What was the time? Chair Stone: 2-4, October 23rd. Pass that down. Thank you. IV. APPROVAL OF MINUTES Ending Chronic Homelessness-October 2, 2015 Domestic Violence – It Couldn’t Happen Here- Could It? - October 28, 2015 MOTION Chair Stone: We will move onto approval of minutes. Our first is ending the ending chronic homelessness summit. Do I have a motion to approve those minutes? Commissioner Alhassani: I make a motion. Commissioner Gordon Gray: I make a motion. Chair Stone: Alright, I think Commissioner Alhassani beat you to the buzzer. He made the first motion, do you want to second it? ADA. The City of Palo Alto does not discriminate against individuals with disabilities. To request accommodations, auxiliary aids or services to access City facilities, services or programs, to participate at public meetings, or to learn about the City's compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990, may contact 650-329-2550 (voice), or e-mail ada@cityofpaloalto.org . This agenda is posted in accordance with government code section 54954.2(a) or section 54956. Members of the public are welcome to attend this public meeting. Page 3 of 31 Commissioner Gordon Gray: I second it. Chair Stone: We got a second. All who approve the minutes? Commissioner Gordon Gray, Commissioner Alhassani, Commissioner Chen, Vice Chair Stinger, Chair Stone: Aye Chair Stone: Any abstain? Commissioner O’Nan: Aye. MOTION Chair Stone: Ok, Commissioner O’Nan so that will pass. The domestic violence minutes. Do I have a motion to approve that? I’ll make the motion. Anyone that wants to second? Commissioner Alhassani: Second. Chair Stone: Great and all in favor say Aye. Chair Stone, Commissioner O’Nan, Vice Chair Stinger, Commissioner Gordon Gray: Aye Chair Stone: Any abstain: Commissioner Alhassani: I abstain. Commissioner Chen: I abstain. Chair Stone: Ok, so two abstain. Well, still passes with four. Fantastic. V. BUSINESS 1. Mental Health Learning Series – Christine Tam, LCSW, School and Community Based Services Director, Adolescent Counseling Services. Chair Stone: Moving onto our business. Mental health learning series. Minka, you want to make the introductions? Ms. van der Zwaag: I’d like to invite Phillippe and Christine up here to the table. As you know, Adolescent Counseling Services has been a long time partner of the City of Palo Alto. I was looking back at some of our old HSRAP grants and in 1984 we started HSRAP Adolescent Counseling Service was one of the first grantees for that and could have been receiving City funding before. . Philippe Rey is their long-time Executive Director and Christine Tam is the School Community-based Services Director and I work with Christine on the Project Safety Net leadership team as well. Welcome, and you do have to use the microphone so you can share or I think you’ll need to share but welcome. ADA. The City of Palo Alto does not discriminate against individuals with disabilities. To request accommodations, auxiliary aids or services to access City facilities, services or programs, to participate at public meetings, or to learn about the City's compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990, may contact 650-329-2550 (voice), or e-mail ada@cityofpaloalto.org . This agenda is posted in accordance with government code section 54954.2(a) or section 54956. Members of the public are welcome to attend this public meeting. Page 4 of 31 Mr. Philippe Rey: Thank you so much and thank you for having us this evening. Since there are many new members of the HRC, I thought maybe a quick introduction of who we are and just to give you an idea of the leadership of the Adolescent Counseling Services. I’ve been the Executive Director now for 12 years and the thing that I love the most about Adolescent Counseling Services is because it focuses on individuals during a time of their life that, as we know, is the most difficult and that’s adolescence and young adult. I’m sure all of us – it’s easy for all of us to go back to a place and time during our adolescence where we remembered times that were not as fun. Many adolescents are there, currently. From my own experience, I grew up a world away from here. Grew up in French-speaking Switzerland and I experience a burden of an adolescence full blast. When I was a young boy my sister was a teenager at the time started developing a substance abuse problem. For anybody whose grown up in a family where there is substance abuse, you’ll relate to what I’m saying but before I would come home at night, I knew that my sister was either under the influence or had been acting out or had passed out or was somewhere in the house. I had this feeling, even before home, I mean as a young boy knew something was going on. Then I would step into my home and I would know and I knew. It was verified, I felt that and I would watch my parents in silence suffer. I mean they felt guilty. They felt like they were responsible. They were trying – and basically, denial became the rule of the house as well as the code of silence. In my family, we never talked about what was going on with my sister and everybody was suffering. When I was 12 years old and I started questioning my sexuality, I knew that my home was not the place I could go, you know to my parents. These are the people that had born me. I couldn’t go to them and express my feelings. This left me depressed, isolated, anxious, and at times suicidal. Now bringing myself up to the current. The reason why I’m the head of ACS is because I’m pledging to my staff, to the community, I do not want anyone to go through what I went through as a kid and that’s why I’ve been there for 18 years now and 12 years as Executive Director. My passion, my life, I’ve dedicated everything to this organization. Adolescent Counseling Services, a quick overview; for the past 41 years we’ve helped 75,000 lives in the greater community between San Mateo and Santa Clara County. We do that through 4 programs and we do that through comprehensive reporting, education and we also make sure that we provide an environment that’s safe and accepting for our youth in our communities. Just to give you an idea so, comprehensive support -- each year – so last year and our fiscal year is July 1 to June 30th – last year we provided 1 on 1 counseling, continued counseling, physiotherapy to 2, 200 youth in our community as an agency. In terms of our education, we as an organization trained the physiotherapists of the future. We train over 60 clinical interns that we employ each year. For them to be ready for licensing and become the therapists of the future and as you may imagine, there are not that many people who choose to work with adolescents but we are the experts and we pass on all those skills to others. That then we’ll be able to do that for teens. Then through – making sure that we help communities, we make communities safer. Our Outlet Program provides education to over 6,000 people each year in the community so, the school district, organizations, corporations where they go in and educate on how to make their workplace, school place safer for lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgender individuals; a big impacts on organizations. The other thing, in conclusion, is, you all know that in the United States 1 out of 5 youths suffers from a major mental illness and what really and I’m on camera I’ll still say it what really upsets me – I usually use the ‘p’ word – but what really upsets me is that 1 of 5 suffer – only 30% of youth needing help receive treatment in our country and that’s unacceptable because if you compare it to physical health, let’s say if we had kids who suffer from asthma and we would only treat – allow only 30% to be treated, we would all be ADA. The City of Palo Alto does not discriminate against individuals with disabilities. To request accommodations, auxiliary aids or services to access City facilities, services or programs, to participate at public meetings, or to learn about the City's compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990, may contact 650-329-2550 (voice), or e-mail ada@cityofpaloalto.org . This agenda is posted in accordance with government code section 54954.2(a) or section 54956. Members of the public are welcome to attend this public meeting. Page 5 of 31 outraged. We would all be taking it to the street. We would be screaming but, we as a nation, we as a community accept that only 30% of our suffering youth receive any type of treatment. What’s the big impact, the big problem? Stigma. We still live in a community; we live in a society where it’s looked as a weakness for anybody to approach a counselor to seek help. I think what’s – and it’s really sad, I mean it’s part of the human experience. It’s part of life but people are still afraid. Families are still afraid to come out and say we have a problem. Individuals are still afraid and I think what we can all do as a community as individuals, is make sure that 1) We all come out because guess what, we all know somebody. Mental illness affects us all directly and indirectly so for all of us to come out and say you know what, I have a son, I have a father, I have a sister, anybody and just help them get access to mental health. Being here tonight, to raise awareness and helping decrease stigma. In terms of the Palo Alto community and just based on tonight is – there is this myth out in the community that we have moved out of Palo Alto. We have not. What happened in March is that we were operating out of 1717 Embarcadero, where we had both our administrative offices and our counseling offices. They tripled the rent on us, basically going up to $221,000 a year rent. We can’t afford that as a non-profit so what we did was we moved our administrative office and expanded into San Mateo County so we have eight counseling offices in San Mateo County. Then through the generous support of Santa Clara County and Supervisor Simitian who helped us secure 5 counseling offices south of California Avenue. We maintained our services in Palo Alto. When it comes to the numbers, we haven’t seen a difference from year to year. Actually, we are seeing an increase in Palo Alto residents seeking services at our Grant Avenue location because it’s easier to access from public transportation and its right on the Cal. Train and so forth. It actually has been a more positive move for Palo Alto residents for us to be on Grant than when we were on Embarcadero but all that happened is basically an expansion to San Mateo County and then as I said through the generous donation from Santa Clara County , we were able to secure those offices and we have a lease for 0-dollar rent for the next 5 years so, it’s quite amazing. I mean they understood the need for Adolescent Counseling Services to remain in Palo Alto in North Santa Clara County so that’s why they were able to secure those offices for us. We are so grateful and the kids we are seeing there are so grateful. That’s my part. If you want to know just as an idea, out of the offices we – in terms of Palo Alto residents – total at those offices and this is the 5 offices we have there. On average, during a year we see close to 358 clients and out of the 358 close, about 126 are Palo Alto residence only because again we pull from Mountain View and Menlo Park and so forth. That is the total 358, 126 during the year, just Palo Alto zip codes. So far since the beginning of our fiscal year, so July 1, Palo Alto residents we’ve seen 40 at the Grant Avenue location. It fits the trend again; it’s about 1/3rd what we’re seeing there. Christine? Oh yeah, microphone. Ms. Christine Tam: Again my name is Christine; I’m the Director of school-based and community-based services with Adolescent Counseling Services. As many of you probably know, we do contract with the PAUSD District with the secondary school. We provide free on- campus counseling at the three middle schools as well as the two high schools. This year at the high schools we have between 5 to 6 interns being supervised by a full-time licensed person at each of the sights. Then at each of the middle schools, we have between 2 to 3 interns being supervised by a half-time licensed person at each of the sights. Last year we served over 630 individuals through the on-campus counseling program at OCCP in Palo Alto. We provided around 35,000 counseling sessions among all of the different schools, just to talk about the trends that we’ve seen and the kids that we’ve seen: Academic stress, anxiety, and depression are ADA. The City of Palo Alto does not discriminate against individuals with disabilities. To request accommodations, auxiliary aids or services to access City facilities, services or programs, to participate at public meetings, or to learn about the City's compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990, may contact 650-329-2550 (voice), or e-mail ada@cityofpaloalto.org . This agenda is posted in accordance with government code section 54954.2(a) or section 54956. Members of the public are welcome to attend this public meeting. Page 6 of 31 usually ( we track these each year and over the years academic stress is one, depression and college ranking keep on coming up over and over again). Just antidotely and you know interacting with the youth myself and speaking with my staff, those are really – academic stress is really something that is on a lot of our kid’s minds of really feeling the pressure of having to achieve and to succeed. Other issues that we often see are around family relationships. So, families that have divorce relationships or untraditional sort of family structures, kids often times struggle in those situations and then substance use. Interestingly, I would say a lot of – because they don’t usually get referred for substance use but in the course of us working with them, often times is what we realized is that because of the stress and anxiety and the depression, that they are self-medicating using majauna and alcohol are the most common. It seems like prescription drugs are also something that’s been coming up quite a bit lately. In terms of strengths I feel like we, Palo Alto is really lucky to have a really great group of young people in their community - every one of them that I’ve encountered with, they’re bright, articulate, they're motivated, they want to do the right thing in spite of the challenges they may face in trying to achieve that. The one thing that is very touching is that they actually care about their peers a lot. We’ve had youth come to us, donating – these are high school kids who donate money to ACS because they recognize the challenges that their peers are facing around mental health. We get youths taking initiatives. I spoke with a girl who built an app to help kids cope with stress and anxiety. Those are definitely the strengths of our youth community in Palo Alto. As far as what our community can do to support youth and their mental health, I think de-stigmatization is a great, great thing that our community needs to think about how to address. Stigma is still a great challenge and people recognizing mental health issues, also seeking help. So, whether that’s throughout reach events or education programs from the City level. Whatever ways what we can do to de- stigmatize the idea of mental health is really important. The other thing about de-stigmatization and this is the last thing I’ll say is that it is important for the adults in the community to model what mental wellness and self-care is so being able to make mental wellness as important as physical wellness. You know I hear a lot of, sometimes a barrier to access to mental health treatment and it’s like, well a therapy appointment once a week. That’s a lot of driving or for kids, it’s hard to get there and I get that it’s not the funnest thing you have to drive your kid to an appointment every week but then at the same time I think about all the different activities that kids do get driven to. Exactly, so the soccer practice and dance practice or whatnot but we do get a lot of resistance in terms of it’s hard to get them there. In a way, if there is any way for us to make mental wellness as important as academic, as anything else, as physical wellness. The last thing about modeling, it is ok for adults to show that we can ask for help too. That it’s ok for us not to be perfect too. That it’s ok for us to be vulnerable in front of our children. Our kids look up to us. They look up to us in terms of how we handle ourselves. How we handle the pressures we feel ourselves. I feel like they feel that too so in reflecting on how we can as a community of adults model that for our young people are important. Mr. Rey: The last thing I would like to add because I think it’s also important to mention in this economic boom in Silicon Valley. Is that we as a non-profit organization, what we are experiencing is that the rate at which salaries are going up doesn’t match the rate at which fundraising goes up. For example, since 2008, we’ve seen our salaries double and triple yet the fundraising hasn’t followed. Sadly, especially for this fiscal year because we had some vacancy at some of our sites, we were not able to hire at the same rate as we even did last year. We had to significantly increase the salaries but unfortunately the lack of the school to be able to increase ADA. The City of Palo Alto does not discriminate against individuals with disabilities. To request accommodations, auxiliary aids or services to access City facilities, services or programs, to participate at public meetings, or to learn about the City's compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990, may contact 650-329-2550 (voice), or e-mail ada@cityofpaloalto.org . This agenda is posted in accordance with government code section 54954.2(a) or section 54956. Members of the public are welcome to attend this public meeting. Page 7 of 31 the funding that is supporting us as well as the City of Palo Alto, basically, leaves me and my Board to raise, just this year, close to $294,000 to support just the five sites at Palo Alto Unified School District which is a huge amount for a 1.5-million-dollar organization to fundraise. We are willing as an organization to take a $150,000 deficit because we really value the relationship and the services that we provide with Palo Alto Unified School District and the City of Palo Alto but then there is the other $150,000 basically extra I and my Board and Staff have to go out and fundraise. That is something I want all of you to be aware of, that it’s not just our situation. I think it’s a situation of many non-profits for us to be able to attract talent that can do the job and can afford rent; we have to bump our prices. Again, where I think the community can come out, is we accept donations so anybody listening tonight, we’re going to launch a big campaign in November about, specifically the Palo Alto community in terms of fundraising so if anybody can help that would be appreciated. Chair Stone: Great. Thank you so much for what you do for our community. It’s so important and I’ve known so many people in my own life and close personal friends who suffer from mental health and depression. I lost one of my best friends to suicide, and he grew up in Palo Alto himself. I can’t imagine a service more important than the ones that both of you provide so thank you. I’ll open it up to my fellow Commissioners for any questions or comments. Commissioner O’Nan: I have a question. Something that has been of concern to me over the years is that I heard parents say that they know their kid is in trouble. They reach out for help and they are told it’s 6 to 8 weeks to get an appointment with a therapist. Families are desperate. They don’t know where to turn and there aren’t beds for adolescents who need inpatient treatment. Can you talk us through a scenario where maybe a child who’s troubled comes for counseling at school and then if it’s a serious problem. What is the process and how can we improve this process to help the people get help more quickly? Ms. Tam: When a student comes to us, we do see them as soon as we can. I think in the last year; we’ve successfully been able to restructure our program to avoid any waitlist. I could speak for last school year because I was not here before that. For last school year, we didn’t have that problem of having someone needing to wait even two weeks to get into an appointment. We do work hard in terms of the structure of our program, the length of treatment to help and not have the waitlist that you’re talking about. When a student does come to us and we realize that there are more severe mental health needs that we can’t serve in a school setting, we would work with the family to connect them to service providers in the community. So whether that’s being Stanford Hospital or whichever private practice provider their insurance is linked to. We worked to connect them to outside providers to meet the level of care that they need. Commissioner Gordon Gray: I have a question. What is the process by which a student – an adolescent comes to see you? I know for myself, when I had depression as a kid, I didn’t want anyone to know even my parents, so how do you actually connect with them? Ms. Tam: Usually there are some guidance counselors who are our main point of referral for all of the middle and high schools that we work with. What generally happens is that their symptom is being presented in the school setting whether they are missing class a lot, whether they are not doing well in school, if a teacher noticed that they’re withdrawn or upset that teacher may ADA. The City of Palo Alto does not discriminate against individuals with disabilities. To request accommodations, auxiliary aids or services to access City facilities, services or programs, to participate at public meetings, or to learn about the City's compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990, may contact 650-329-2550 (voice), or e-mail ada@cityofpaloalto.org . This agenda is posted in accordance with government code section 54954.2(a) or section 54956. Members of the public are welcome to attend this public meeting. Page 8 of 31 consult with the student and then may consult with a guidance counselor. The guidance counselor may make the decision to make a referral to ACS. Typically, that’s how a student receives services. Commissioner Gordon Gray: Do the students often say, I don’t want anyone to know or does that come up? Ms. Tam: That does come up. That does come up but we try to help the student understand what we share with parents and what we don’t. Confidentiality is extremely important in a therapy relationship so we try to help our students understand that we don’t share everything. We do want your parents to know some general issues that we are working on. When there is a safety concern that trumps everything. We have to get them involved and everyone else who is necessary. We also, because the two high schools have initiated the wellness centers, we’ve gotten more drop-ins than previously so now students are feeling more comfortable in coming by. I don’t know if any of you have visited the wellness centers in the high schools. They are very welcoming; it’s loungy, there are couches, there are snacks. Students will come by on their own and ask for help or if they are upset and they want to talk to somebody. The other thing is that we also get friends that bring their friends by. Those are usually the main way and we have some parents who make direct referrals to us as well. Commissioner Gordon Gray: Thank you. Commissioner Chen: I have a question, what is the most urgent need for your organization? Except for money Mr. Rey: Funding, funding, funding. Ms. Tam: It’s hard to say beyond money because our bread and butter is our clinicians, right? That’s our core. That’s how we do what we do and without our clinicians, there’s no ACS, there're no services. In order to be able to secure the clinicians, it goes back to the money. We don’t need anything fancy. We don’t need a fancy office as long as there are two chairs and 4 walls. Mr. Rey: The manpower. Ms. Tam: Yes, we don’t need much besides the skilled clinicians. Commissioner O’Nan: I wanted to ask. In light of the suicide clusters that have emerged periodically in Palo Alto. Do your clinicians get any special training in recognizing signs or symptoms or grief counseling after for survivors? How has that impacted your practice? Ms. Tam: I can say that we do get – we do train all of our clinicians throughout the year. They have weekly trainings, they have group supervision by a licensed person and then they have individual supervision. There is constant supervision and training. Specifically, around crisis intervention we do training on crisis intervention. Exactly what you were mentioning. How do we recognize signs? How do we do an assessment? What do we do with the results of an ADA. The City of Palo Alto does not discriminate against individuals with disabilities. To request accommodations, auxiliary aids or services to access City facilities, services or programs, to participate at public meetings, or to learn about the City's compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990, may contact 650-329-2550 (voice), or e-mail ada@cityofpaloalto.org . This agenda is posted in accordance with government code section 54954.2(a) or section 54956. Members of the public are welcome to attend this public meeting. Page 9 of 31 assessment? Who do we involve in the process and things along those lines? Vice Chair Stinger: Thank you so much. I’m so impressed with everything you do. I want to follow up on the urgent need question again. Not so much the funding but are there structure things that the school or the City could be doing that would make your job easier? Either reduce the number of issues that come to you or make you feel that you were sending a student out into a safer environment? Ms. Tam: Like I said we need four walls, two chairs and a therapist and the client. The other need would be the four walls and sometimes it is challenging to get that private space and it’s extremely important to get that private space for kids to feel safe to talk about whatever issues they need to talk about. We’ve been extremely lucky in the high schools where we have sufficient space to be able to provide the services that we do. We do have some challenges with the middle school sites where we’re given one office to share among three or four people sometimes. That’s certainly not ideal and not comfortable for us in the setting. Chair Stone: You mentioned now you’re getting free rent at the Palo Alto location for the next 5 years. Have you been able to expand your services – you’re now saving all that money on that rent there. How have you now allocated that to be able to serve more people? If you can give us a little more information on that. Mr. Rey: It’s actually – it’s not really cost saving because we are paying rent at our Redwood location so it’s basically a transferring of the old lease in Palo Alto now to Redwood City location. In terms of our expansion, through the Outlet program, we are doing a lot more education and outreaching in Santa Clara County. In terms of San Mateo County, we are also doing a huge marketing in terms of building up our offices and looking at school sites to be able to expand our own campus counseling program and so forth. Chair Stone: How would you describe the mental health stigma in Palo? Have you seen it improve over the years? Have you seen it get worse? I know you can’t obviously put a number to what stigma is in Palo Alto but can you describe at least your insights? Mr. Rey: Having been in Palo Alto and with Adolescent Counseling Service for the past 18 years. I would say it’s gotten better and a way we measure it is, let’s say seven years ago we would never have had parents contact us or bring their kids to us. It was like a big no no. I think it was the idea not in my family, not in my community was pretty big. I’d say with all the communication because of the suicide clusters putting mental illness, mental health in the forefront. I think a lot of people felt way more comfortable to address issues before they would turn into tragedies. So, we started seeing parents contacting us because they were worried about their kids and so forth. The other thing that is always amazing I think it’s part of the human condition, it’s when there is a tragedy, there’s a lot of focus on to what’s going on; trying to prevent it. Then in six months to a year down the road, if you don’t have a tragedy, the pendulum swings again. We see that each time. Be it suicide. Be it big drama because of substance use that we have saw maybe like six or seven years ago. It just swings back and forth but I would say the community as a whole is becoming more educated, more aware and also a little more hypervigilant. Which we as professionals actually appreciate, that people are asking the ADA. The City of Palo Alto does not discriminate against individuals with disabilities. To request accommodations, auxiliary aids or services to access City facilities, services or programs, to participate at public meetings, or to learn about the City's compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990, may contact 650-329-2550 (voice), or e-mail ada@cityofpaloalto.org . This agenda is posted in accordance with government code section 54954.2(a) or section 54956. Members of the public are welcome to attend this public meeting. Page 10 of 31 questions about, are you feeling suicidal? Do you want to die? Which are complete and ok questions to ask. It actually prevents it. As I said, six to seven years ago we did see that. There was more denial. The community was in more denial than the community is now. It’s good for us to see that. Chair Stone: What can we do as a community or as the City of Palo Alto or as the Human Relations Commission do to continue to improve the stigma? Any suggestions? Ms. Tam: I think awareness campaigns, education workshops, parents even outreaching to parents or churches or to have those kinds of events I think would really be helpful and just community education around mental health. Mr. Rey: You can actually follow us because we are starting a campaign; it’s going to be called #youknowsomebody. It’s basically talking about; we all directly/indirectly know somebody who's affected by mental illness. Chair Stone: That’s very true. Commissioner O’Nan: I did have another question. The demographics in Palo Alto have changed a lot. Especially over the last few years and sometimes people who come from say Asia or Eastern Europe or other parts of the world are not familiar with mental health treatment and may not understand right away that their child needs help or that there are efforts being made in ACS to reach out to these diverse communities? Ms. Tam: Part of our training is making sure that our clinicians are aware of the cultural diversity issues and how mental health looks different in different communities and different cultures. We do build that into our training for our clinicians. In addition, we try to attract diverse staff so we have representation from different ethnicity and cultural groups in both of our clinicians and also our supervisor groups. Mr. Ray: That’s the reason why I did this. Chair Stone: How many languages do you know? Ms. Tam: You know; I should have checked. There are a lot this year. Mr. Rey: There’s like eight. Ms. Tam: …Japanese, Chinese… Mr. Rey: I would say on the average of our organization we provide between eight and ten different languages capacity with our interns and professionals. Chair Stone: Great. Commissioner Gordon Gray: One other question. Do people volunteer at ACS? ADA. The City of Palo Alto does not discriminate against individuals with disabilities. To request accommodations, auxiliary aids or services to access City facilities, services or programs, to participate at public meetings, or to learn about the City's compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990, may contact 650-329-2550 (voice), or e-mail ada@cityofpaloalto.org . This agenda is posted in accordance with government code section 54954.2(a) or section 54956. Members of the public are welcome to attend this public meeting. Page 11 of 31 Mr. Rey: We have the Outlet program, in particular, uses a lot of what we call grown folks. It’s basically adults from the LGBT community who then can come back and serve as role models to the youth as role models. The problem with the volunteers is we have fundraising galas, where you can participate as volunteers. In terms of the office because of the confidentially, we try to keep that to a minimum. We have clerical help and sadly because most people who want to volunteer, want to have access to the kids and hear their stories and we can’t do that. Chair Stone: Alright, well thank you so much for your time. We really appreciate it. 2. Update on Project Safety Net - Mary Gloner, Project Safety Net Executive Director. Ms. Mary Gloner: I want to be respectful of your time. I remember serving on the Commission so do I still have the full 20 minutes? Chair Stone: Yes, you do. We will not cut you short. Thank you so much for being here. Ms. van der Zwaag: I was just going to give a quick introduction to my colleague and relief staff. Thank goodness for Project Safety Net. A cause that is very near and dear to my heart, and I was very glad when we found Mary to come onto staff as our director, who has given new life and energy and synergy and bringing people together and working on what we call internally PSN 2.0. Mary, as she alluded to, was on the Santa Clara County HRC and was Chair of the Commission so she has a deep affinity for the work that you all do. Without further introductions, Mary. Ms. Gloner: Thank you Minka. Maybe I can just sit. Thank you, Chairperson Stone and Commissioners for having me here and also Council men Wolbach. I have a PowerPoin because that’s how I am but then you also have there a copy so you can take notes. I like to always start off with a quote and this quote is, “Courage does not always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, “I will try again tomorrow.” This is a quote that I had recently shared with our leadership team but as Minka shared having known the work that you do, the very important work of really being – advancing the social justice issues and human rights and civil rights for Palo Alto and then being a model for the Bay Area. What this quote also says is we think of courage to be that superhero and invisible and invincible and be fierce but I think there is also that silent strength that’s important in our work in human rights and human relations. Just really – when we are serving the most vulnerable community and it’s that hope and tenacity and patience. It’s really about valuing the journey and not just the outcome. I just wanted to open that up with you and like again, this is a work that is very close to my heart, regardless of what title. I know Minka gave me a lot of good prep. You’re well familiar with Project Safety Net. The Human Relation Commission as a whole is an important partner in its inception and going on. I was fortunate to meet former passed Commissioner Ray Bacchetti when I was a Chair. Just as a reminder, our mission is to develop and implement effective comprehensive based mental health plan for overall youth well-being in Palo Alto. As you know, for those of you who are very passionate about youth wellbeing work, there are different angles, homelessness, dealing with hunger, health, education. When I came on board I said it was important to point out the reason why this collaborate came together it was really in response to suicide prevention and really taking a stand to address this from a very visible point. What I plan ADA. The City of Palo Alto does not discriminate against individuals with disabilities. To request accommodations, auxiliary aids or services to access City facilities, services or programs, to participate at public meetings, or to learn about the City's compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990, may contact 650-329-2550 (voice), or e-mail ada@cityofpaloalto.org . This agenda is posted in accordance with government code section 54954.2(a) or section 54956. Members of the public are welcome to attend this public meeting. Page 12 of 31 to do in the next now 15 minutes and so forth is just give you an update where we are organizationally, highlight some of the activities that have happened in the past 9 months since I joined the organization. Most importantly how to engage you all, you know, and I’m sure you probably have some idea. Hopefully, we’ll close with more of a dialog in discussion. I do want to point out that Adolescent Counseling Service is one of the partners that are part of Project Safety Net. The way I see Project Safety Net, is more of the convener. Really how can we help support all of the organizations and the community advocate to do the important work? ACS being one of them and just the humility and how they share and the impact and serve on our Leadership Team. They help drive our strategic direction. I appreciate them working with the LGBT plus community and really expanding and making a home for them even though they are in San Mateo County now. As you know 1/5 of their budget and their work was started here in Palo Alto so they have a commitment to this community. Moving on, this is our current Leadership Team and Christine Tam being it and these are representatives – youth serving organization, City, as well health providers. We also have working groups, this being a transitional year and I know a lot of the good work that the community partners and with the support of the City of Palo Alto and Minka’s office this year’s really how to look at transitioning the culture of the work that we do. How do we engage individuals, leaders, community members at all levels and really most of us into action? A lot of beautiful work has been done but it’s really how do we put that together for that long-term impact, a lot of the questions that you ask. Many of these work groups were in action when I came on board but some of them are also in response to some of the activities and frankly, I wanted the Leadership Team to be more than just advising and focusing on specific projects that they might have in the wheelhouse. Really, how can we model it by engaging, that it would inspire community partners to want to also engage? In this year, the most active groups are the Communication Work Group, the Epi-Aid Community Survey, and Infrastructure. I’ll talk a little bit more – some activities youth voice and that’s really about raise invisibility and informative face having a discussion about role and where we want to move into as crisis response coordination and means restriction. Later on, you can see how it’s set up. The Chairs are represented by members of the Leadership Team and then staff and then members. These are just organization representatives and as you can see, I’ll talk a little more about how we are engaging the youth. That’s about it. Feel free to interrupt me if you choose to or if not write little notes on the side so then we can use time effectively. When I was hired I know that the Leadership Team and the collaborate did a lot of thinking and planning of what can we hope and expect and charge this new Executive Director to do in the next year. The five primary goals is to establish an executive board, second is to strengthen and shape infrastructure, elevate and integrate youth voice. In other words, it’s not just listening to them but also putting into practice what they’d shared for many years but also how to help and really infuse so they are not seen in Project Safety Net as an ‘us’ or a ‘they’ but they are ‘we’ because if you look at the mission it is all partners. Then evaluate and recommend a fiscal agent. That was another thing that I really admired about the City of Palo Alto. It’s like having been on various coalitions countywide and nationwide. One of the challenges of sustainability is resources. Which you just heard but it said a lot when the City of Palo Alto said, you know we are going to dedicate funds to this important work and contribute to this so the moment doesn’t peter out. Then develop a roadmap based on Collective Impact model. A lot of looking at framework of how you bring collaborations together not just to think about and advise but again what are the changes that we want to make. I am sure Minka and Rob have given the Human Relation Commission a little bit more detail on that. I will say I feel, of course, that we could do much more but based on feedback that I get ADA. The City of Palo Alto does not discriminate against individuals with disabilities. To request accommodations, auxiliary aids or services to access City facilities, services or programs, to participate at public meetings, or to learn about the City's compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990, may contact 650-329-2550 (voice), or e-mail ada@cityofpaloalto.org . This agenda is posted in accordance with government code section 54954.2(a) or section 54956. Members of the public are welcome to attend this public meeting. Page 13 of 31 from the City staff, community partners, even the youth themselves, that I feel we’ve elevated integrating youth voice and I’ll share more about that. I feel that is achieved but there is still more to do. In regards to strengthening and shaping infrastructure, evaluate and recommend fiscal agency and developing that road map, getting a bit 50% or more and establishing an executive board that really needs to come up last depending on how we define infrastructure. Commissioner O’Nan: Mary, can you tell us what you mean by a Collective Impact model? Ms. Gloner: I’ll do this. I have a little – Collective Impact 101. Minka can bring in a little more with the history. About three years ago, after I’d done a lot of strategic planning and looking at infrastructure, I believe there were several partners that saw that this model was quite impressive and effective and one being in East Palo Alto with 1 EPA. There might have been another organization either in San Mateo County and so forth but also through Stanford, through social review institute. The bottom line and this is what I’ve been learning and also trying to educate there are five critical components to Collective Impact. You may hear it as Collective Impact; partnership development collaboration and the framework that’s been in existence for ages that’s been partnerships. There are five primary focuses. It’s developing a common agenda. It’s why we are here, what we want to do, what we want to impact and then a shared measurement. It’s like how do you measure that impact? What is data? What is the rating such like Developmental Assets to children’s health? Some assessments that the City does but how do we share that so effectively it not only makes us accountable but we can measure progress and measure stigma. Ms. van der Zwaag: Also, different partners are using similar measurement tools so you can, across the collaborative; you’re measuring in the same way so that different partners can get to the same end result because you’re measuring the same factors along the way. Ms. Gloner: Thank you for pointing that out. The key is you have to develop those core bench marks or key indicators and of course each will measure things additionally depending on their funding source and reporting; mutually reinforcing activities. For me the way I interpret, it’s like really not working in silos, assessing, asset mapping, redundancies and gaps and leveraging each other’s work which is challenging having been in a non-profit world for most of my career. It gets it tied to chase the money because you want to keep the doors open and also you get competitive with your fellow other community partners because again you want to keep those doors open. Continuous communication is about sharing people’s best practices, our efforts, and so forth. Finally, backbone support has predominantly been the City of Palo Alto but now having a dedicated investment and really looking at being that steward for the collaborative.. There is additional information if you’d like, I’d be happy to send you links, articles and so forth. Going back, I think part is probably what hopefully might really touch your heart, hopefully. There are some highlights for these past months as I mentioned youth engagement. Youth engagement was not necessarily simple; reaching out at community events or inviting them to meetings has been one of the things I’ve been most proud of in which the low hanging fruit was, when we had these community collaborating meetings, we agendaized Youth in Action where it was allowed youth organizations or important programs that have touched youth. For instance, the Outlet Program of ACS, during Pride Month which was not too long after what happened at the Pulse in Orlando. Using that opportunity and talking with the partner; how do you want to take this moment? A transgender youth leader spoke in partnership with a Board Member who are ADA. The City of Palo Alto does not discriminate against individuals with disabilities. To request accommodations, auxiliary aids or services to access City facilities, services or programs, to participate at public meetings, or to learn about the City's compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990, may contact 650-329-2550 (voice), or e-mail ada@cityofpaloalto.org . This agenda is posted in accordance with government code section 54954.2(a) or section 54956. Members of the public are welcome to attend this public meeting. Page 14 of 31 residents in Palo Alto but just really giving them voice but in the context of the programs and also we have started engaging them in our work groups. Not simply giving advice but for instance, in our Communication Work Group, we have six youth; three from Paly and three from Gunn. They are not only going to be helping with the overall activities but marketing and messaging and response to the CDC Epi-Aid which I’ll share a little bit more. They are working on three projects to help us in defining our campaigns and I’ll share about that; working together on developing a curriculum so that other fellow student journalists can understand and also be responsible reporters on the issue of mental illness/wellness and suicide prevention and finally governance. It’s like how to ensure that sustainability and making sure when the youth are part of this activity, they are an active member. We meet once a month and since my tenure, they’ve been averaging about 50 to 60 in attendance. You have people who are parents and youth partners who have been long time supporters and doing this work. As well as individuals who are just very interested. In the last meeting which Chairman Stone attended, we had crisis text line. It’s a new – their branching out more in the west coast. It’s a text media where if some of you who have volunteered in crisis line areas, you know you have the phone but sometimes you might be, as I understand a predicament you can’t talk so having that silence and that security. We also had the YMCA Family Palo Alto highlight their work on Reach to Horizon. They’re looking for mentors so if you’re looking to volunteer, they were highlighting that program. We are also proud to share that working in partnership with Shepard Mullin, which is the law firm here, down just on Lytton and Youth Speaks Out to launch a Silicon Valley arts initiative where they are donating funds so they can decorate their facilities with youth art. That’s one of the things I’m excited – even though it was $5,000 but I look at it as seed money but also sort of the messaging of PSN partnership should be diverse and how do we draw in more of the business partners not only for funding but also raising awareness and stigma and stuff. A few more things, as I mentioned community campaigns; two of the big things that we did where in May the mental health matters and in September the suicide prevention awareness month which just recently happened. In May, if you followed us on Facebook or our Twitter account, we did these 31 stories in 31 days. These were stories of hope, resiliency, and mental advocacy. These were stories that we get just naturally because people share them and we just highlight them. Many of them are from high schoolers, from practitioners, even just individuals living in the community. In September the theme for suicide prevention awareness month was connect, communicate, and care so this is where we really invested a lot of time and try to bring in some presence and try to shift culture that this is one of our cornerstone pieces so in regards to connecting, we want – we formulated a team for the NAOMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness) and we had eight participants and it wasn’t really about fundraising but raising awareness and coming together. I have to say, I was proud to say the majority of my team were youth, and we partnered with the County, just to walk together and so forth. In regards to communication, we do that during our community collaboration meetings to highlight the suicide prevention activity works but also on September 10th which the City of Palo Alto along with Palo Alto Family YMCA co-hosted or sponsored the Community Health Fair which actually was on September 10th which is International World Suicide Prevention Awareness Day. We actually connected with 75 people – and then finally through three trainings, we trained about 50 participants and there was a nice percentage of youth, we offered “To Question”, “Persuasion” and “Referral.” Just curious, how many of you have taken the QPR trainings yet? Later on we are going to talk about how to engage on that one and this was first time really trying to offer more for the broader community. Youth mental health, first aid and partnership with the County of Santa Clara Behavioral Health ADA. The City of Palo Alto does not discriminate against individuals with disabilities. To request accommodations, auxiliary aids or services to access City facilities, services or programs, to participate at public meetings, or to learn about the City's compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990, may contact 650-329-2550 (voice), or e-mail ada@cityofpaloalto.org . This agenda is posted in accordance with government code section 54954.2(a) or section 54956. Members of the public are welcome to attend this public meeting. Page 15 of 31 and it’s really not for individuals to become clinicians and diagnose but just to be comfortable with health issues that youth might face and it was a two-day training. Finally, the CDC, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, the substance abuse and mental health service administration Epi-Aid on youth suicide – how many are familiar with that? Ok good, I will jump into that a little bit more. My understanding and what I’ve learned is that in response to the second cluster of youth suicides that happened in 2014-2015 the school district learned that CDC and SAMHSA went to Fairfax County in Virginia to do similar investigation and asked why can’t we have that here as well? I’ll just go a little bit more into that next but as a nice pause; do you have any questions about the past accomplishments? As I was mentioning the history and purpose of who was to come in and I think during 2015 working with the County Public Health Department and through the state was able to secure the CDC to come here to our county. As you may or may not know, it’s really an Epi-Aid for the whole county of Santa Clara. They’re looking at to really assess age range of 10 – 25 years old. They were – had four primary objectives. It’s to look at the data that’s currently collected. They weren’t here to conduct new studies and collect new data. They were looking at coroner’s reports, mental health data that is collected from the county but also some data that was provided from the school district and other health organizations. They were also looking to do an analysis to see how media covered the reporting on the deaths by suicide. Another third component which is the part that I was really more of a liaison, after the fact, is taking an inventory of all the programs and services that focuses on youth wellbeing and suicide prevention. So, it didn’t have to be the classical mental health service like ACS. It could be the Teen Center or maybe some of your forums that maybe raised awareness. You know how to promote respect and so forth. If you had any data or program that was just collected. The CDC team – and they don’t only just respond to suicide issues, it is any issues that have an impact on public health. Right now I think they are focusing on Zika. The teams are being called into different areas. In February around the time I started, they came and did their field visits. You may have seen all the press. Over ten days they met with nearly 150 committee members who had been involved and stake holders. I think there were representatives of the HRC, as well as county.. During the first meeting was actually Project Safety Net Convening Committee members. By the time it was the last meeting because I was able to sit in several, there was a lot more sharing and so forth. Where they are now, they released preliminary findings, if you saw and you heard, in July and maybe the data that they were analyzing is just like a quarter or a third and the hope is they are continuing to do that. We’ll have the final report and findings in either end of December or January. Commissioner Gordon Gray: Can I ask you a question? Ms. Gloner: Yeah, yeah sure. Go ahead. Commissioner Gordon Gray: That was countywide. Ms. Gloner: Yes, that’s county. Commissioner Gordon Gray: …it wasn’t focused on Palo Alto. It felt like it didn’t really zero in on patterns here and causes. I don’t know if you have anything to say about that. Ms. Gloner: Yeah, so that’s a good segue because the challenge with the Epi-Aid and the ADA. The City of Palo Alto does not discriminate against individuals with disabilities. To request accommodations, auxiliary aids or services to access City facilities, services or programs, to participate at public meetings, or to learn about the City's compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990, may contact 650-329-2550 (voice), or e-mail ada@cityofpaloalto.org . This agenda is posted in accordance with government code section 54954.2(a) or section 54956. Members of the public are welcome to attend this public meeting. Page 16 of 31 following of protocols, they do it for county but to respect that this was driven and requested by this community. We’ve convened an Epi-Aid Coordinating Committee, which is actually Co- Chaired by the County of Public Health Department and Project Safety Net, to honor and respect that this was because of Palo Alto. The primary – Epi-Aide Coordinating Committee – there’s about five jurisdictions or areas of focus and there are committee representatives that represent education, government, healthcare and members at large. Members at large as like parent survivors or alumni and so forth. There’s about 32 individuals and I’d be happy to share their information if you’d like afterward. We saw that it was very important because they could have had it co-chaired by maybe another county-wide community organization but by asking Project Safety Net to do that, it meant a lot in respecting of where it came from ant that is not the primary charge for the Community Coordinating Committee and that was the thing that was admitted. It’s a mobilizing Committee. It’s like how do we react when we review this report, three things will come up. 1) We’ll validate a lot of the good work that’s already happening in the community based on recommendations. Another one will be like, there are gaps. We haven’t really done work in that or we’ve done a little bit. What do we want as a community to do and adjust that? Thirdly, this is probably the one that has been a little bit more controversial. It’s not going to answer all the questions but I think for me coming from public health and a community health educator at heart, it will provide sort of the platform for us to continue to say, what is the additional data that we need to better understand what’s happening here or not only here but maybe happening in other communities? What is some more analysis? The last thing is really communication. How do we take this information and because not everyone can be at the table and of course maybe not the majority of the committee is focusing on youth well-being or suicide prevention. This is such important work, it’s like how do we infuse and share and disseminate in a way that, whether it’s in a business committee or you know someone beyond the school, maybe private schools who have not been normally at the table, and so forth. That’s what we’ve been discussing in these few months and then – any questions before I keep moving on? Commissioner O’Nan: You know I wanted to ask, I’m not sure I am familiar with the term Epi- Aid. Ms. Gloner: …epidemic or epidemiology. It’s really looking at the study of why certain health issues or incidences are happening. Commissioner O’Nan: Ok. Ms. Gloner: It’s a public health lingo, jargon. Commissioner O’Nan: I kept thinking it had something to do with the Epi-Pen. Commissioner Chen: I thought it was epigenetics. Ms. Gloner: Yeah, thank you. That’s a very good question. I like to say epidemiology because it is an investigative study. If you go to the Project Safety Net website, you see the information because we try to keep that information informed. We also, even though the county’s looking at how to address it at the broader level, Project Safety Net, working with Communication Workgroup, is deciding how to tailor it even more which is what I have known and the work that ADA. The City of Palo Alto does not discriminate against individuals with disabilities. To request accommodations, auxiliary aids or services to access City facilities, services or programs, to participate at public meetings, or to learn about the City's compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990, may contact 650-329-2550 (voice), or e-mail ada@cityofpaloalto.org . This agenda is posted in accordance with government code section 54954.2(a) or section 54956. Members of the public are welcome to attend this public meeting. Page 17 of 31 I have done working with different vulnerable communities or geographies. It’s good to have those best practices but how do you tailor it because each community is not exactly the same. Now, if this is a good pause, did you have any questions about we’ve done, PSN, so far? Vice Chair Stinger: Two questions. One very small question: One of your collaborators is the Webster House? Vice Chair Stinger: I wondered if you had a broader charter than just the small group or is there a different… Ms. Gloner: Oh, yes, yes, yes. Ms. van der Zwaag: That was Pat. Ms. Gloner: Yes it is Pat Lau who is a consultant for Project Safety Net. She is currently now at Webster House. Ms. Gloner: I knew of Webster House back in the day. Ms. Gloner: Back when I used to work for the Ageing Service Collaborator for Santa Clara County. Means restriction is a work group that is primarily focusing on lethal arms, means of dying by suicide. The focus in the short term has been primarily on the railway and it’s lead by Dr. Shashank Joshi and what he has done is invited a lot of key leaders, thought leaders, advocates, community members to be on this work group. The first step is really not to tell the city what to do and so forth but really assessing, what are the best practices nationwide. It’s how do you bring that here and just – I see it more like a policy research arm but also the second part from a practical standpoint is when it comes to signage. What is some important messaging and so forth? That’s what this group can do. I will tell you, and frankly, this is one of the groups that is in the formative phase because it’s trying to develop a structure. What is your purpose? Trying to look not only short term but long term even though our clusters are focusing on the deaths by railway. There have been other deaths in this community beyond that and so having not been in suicide prevention work or education, what I’ve learned, it’s like you really look at how to look totality at means restriction but you focus first on what is the majority and then hopefully I’ll move into that. Commissioner Savage: Can I ask one more question? Ms. Gloner: Sure. Yeah, of course. Vice Chair Stinger: Is there – I thought Project Safety Net was a short term project. Is there a long term mission or… Ms. Gloner: I will tell you what I’ve learned in the evolution of Project Safety Net. When they first came together, it was a task force. Commissioner Savage: That’s what I meant. ADA. The City of Palo Alto does not discriminate against individuals with disabilities. To request accommodations, auxiliary aids or services to access City facilities, services or programs, to participate at public meetings, or to learn about the City's compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990, may contact 650-329-2550 (voice), or e-mail ada@cityofpaloalto.org . This agenda is posted in accordance with government code section 54954.2(a) or section 54956. Members of the public are welcome to attend this public meeting. Page 18 of 31 Ms. Gloner: … However, after I had brought in county, Cal Train, United Way, a lot of key groups who are still active here. After developing that first report, it was like, for me as someone who is in community health and having come in – I found it very rich, thoughtful, and thorough and really intervenient multiple levels. Once that was done, the group decided this work is still important and it continues to be needed because you need to look upstream. You know, promoting youth well-being and so forth. When the second cluster happened again it was also a reminder we still need to do this work. Then it transformed into a collaborative. Vice Chair Stinger: Appreciate that. Thank you. Ms. Gloner: You’re welcome. Fast forwarding. This month is National Anti-Bullying Awareness month. It 's not one of our major campaigns as suicide prevention awareness or mental health but I want to bring this to your attention, especially on Wednesday, October 19th. Wear orange and if you follow us we have little tips and so forth. It’s really about how do we come together, which is very critical to the Human Relation Commission. You know about kindness and acceptance and inclusion. Ms. Gloner: They’re actually celebrating their 10th anniversary of National Anti-Bullying Awareness Month. Ms. Gloner: For us, we’re really messaging but you could follow up. I do know we have links on our Facebook and we’ve tweeted. If you go to the organization that’s leading it, that’s the Prevention Bullying Pacer Organization so the National Bullying Prevention Center. They have activities that schools can take on like sign ons. Promoting some kind messages and so forth. I’d be happy for you to look at that and you can decide as a Commission if you want to take on something in various low hanging fruit. Ms. Gloner: The other thing, while we had a mental health matters month, the walk to raise awareness on mental health and mental well-being, on October 23rd, we’re convening another team and this one is really about raising awareness of suicide prevention and supporting the survivors of suicide, whether it’s family as well as an individual and remembering the lost loved ones like your friend. Ours is not about raising money. It’s about coming together and what’s nice, with NAOMI, in the past and I know committee members would do walks but it was up in San Francisco. So it was very hard. This is in San Jose so take Cal-Train. It’s right there, if you get off at the Diridon stop. You just walk a few blocks and you're at the beginning of the walk. As you know there are many committee leaders here who are involved in this as well and I think it gets a message at Project Safety Net and the committee. We just want to be a vehicle to do that. Now, if you want to learn more about Project Safety Net, I’m just going to rush through some of this – I know I passed my 20 minutes but just maybe the last time that Human Relation Commission presented to you, [Tonya] came on board as part time and continues to be part time and one of her efforts, really because of her strengths, is marketing, communication, and education. It’s really finding a way to make it accessible, the work that we do, but also vice a versa, to promote the work of that partnership. This is our website if you have a chance here is some key information I wanted to share with you. It’s like activities and events. We also highlight youth activities and events. If you want to know for your own family member youth or ADA. The City of Palo Alto does not discriminate against individuals with disabilities. To request accommodations, auxiliary aids or services to access City facilities, services or programs, to participate at public meetings, or to learn about the City's compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990, may contact 650-329-2550 (voice), or e-mail ada@cityofpaloalto.org . This agenda is posted in accordance with government code section 54954.2(a) or section 54956. Members of the public are welcome to attend this public meeting. Page 19 of 31 organization, these are a litany of the wonderful programs that are focusing on youth but also driven by youth. Again about us wanting to know who our current partners are – for me right now as we are going through this transition and I know in the past there were MOUs and so forth but it’s like anyone who works on this the work of youth well-being and it comes to whether it’s from the work group presenting to me. Part of our infrastructure development is we’re going to make it more formalized because we want to understand people’s roles and how they can engage. Commissioner Gordon Gray: These are all partners? Ms. Gloner: Yes. Commissioner Gordon Gray: That’s a lot of partners. Ms. Gloner: Some of it is active partners and some have been contributing to the newsletter or participating but like again since this is a transition year, I feel like this is not a place to close the door and make it more inclusive, right because that’s how we can decide whether we want to do it long term. Lastly – well a couple more things I wanted to show you on our Project Safety Net website is – especially that I know that you are going to be working on some mental health forum or campaign. We have here media guidelines for mental health promotion for suicide prevention, and I actually as part of your packet I had put some copies there to pick up. What these media guidelines do is really how to address messaging suicide issues. That it doesn’t increase their risk of vulnerability but really how do you use your language in a way that is empowering and resilient. I think this also came in response because I believe last year or a year and a half ago; PSN hosted a media seminar with Dr. Maddie Gould from Columbia University that really is a national expert on how we message. So, it’s not really the mainstream media but when we’re developing our website or doing flyers or tweets, it’s being mindful. This is just a shorter version but it you go to our website here you can get more information and toolkits. If you're not receiving our newsletters, please sign up and we also have archives. We have our Facebook and this is really the more active one, dynamic. I think we have about 611 likes. Ms. van der Zwaag: I would say just as far as the Facebook page that it used to be something that was very static. That maybe once a month we would do something to and if you haven’t Liked it in the past, I would suggest liking it now. It’s completely dynamic. Tanya probably posts something every day or couple times a day and it’s really either inspiring quotes, its suicide prevention work that we are doing/our partners are doing but other people out in the community or in the country. A lot of it is youth focused and you can go to it and see what youth are doing locally and nationwide to work themselves on mental health issues and stigma. It’s really inspiring. Ms. Gloner: Thank you Minka. Then also you might – don’t be surprised if you see a Facebook posting about the Human Relation Commission like when we are out there and so forth. The Twitter account, I have to say when I first joined we had approximately 13 followers. We keep increasing but we want this to build and make it little bit more dynamic and so forth. I think when I had presented it, once before we were still in the 20s. Commissioner Gordon Gray: I’m told that Instagram is what youth and millennials are using. ADA. The City of Palo Alto does not discriminate against individuals with disabilities. To request accommodations, auxiliary aids or services to access City facilities, services or programs, to participate at public meetings, or to learn about the City's compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990, may contact 650-329-2550 (voice), or e-mail ada@cityofpaloalto.org . This agenda is posted in accordance with government code section 54954.2(a) or section 54956. Members of the public are welcome to attend this public meeting. Page 20 of 31 Ms. Gloner: and SnapChat Ms. Gloner: So that’s why in our Communication Workgroup, one of their activities is really helping us and how do we engage the youth and make it a tool that’s interactive and positive for them. So, they are not feeling left out. In closing – thank you for your patience, I was just going to share that on October 26th, next Wednesday is our next monthly Community Collaborative Meeting. Our Youth-in-Action presentation will be students and facility that launch the two student wellness centers at PAUSD that earlier you heard of from Christine. I think it’s going to be very inspiring to hear the youth saying why they wanted this to happen and then to have it come to happen. The second one is Project Corner Stone especially with anti-bullying prevention awareness month. Then also, if those who still have children in schools and everything, they’re doing their five-year assessment and so I think it’s very important to look at that formative phase. QPR, I know many of you didn’t raise your hand so the City of Palo Alto offers this for free. They are two-hour sessions on a quarterly basis. The next one is on February 7th so don’t have to wait 3 months or so. You can also do it on your own via web based and we have codes. Could either contact PSN or contact Minka and we’ll get it to you or it will just be self-paced. I know I went way over but thank you and hopefully, I brought everyone up to date; something new, something reassuring and maybe questionable - hopefully not. Chair Stone: That was very informative. Thank you so much. Really appreciate it. Ms. Gloner: Thank you. Alright. 3. Discussion on updating the current HRC Mission Statement – Vice Chair Stinger Chair Stone: We will move onto our next item which is a discussion on updating the current HRC mission statement. We started this process at the retreat and Vice Chair Stinger is going to lead us on this discussion. Vice Chair Stinger: Let’s see, do we all have the mission statement sheets that Minka sent us as attachments? Commissioner Gordon Gray: I got them today. Vice Chair Stinger: Well just to start, I’d like to think about what a mission is and just remember that four questions about a mission that might help us as we examine our current mission. Consider whether we want to adjust it or revise it or change it. The mission should tell us what is the activity? For whom it's done. What's the value and what can we do that no one else can do? Why it is specific to our Commission and what added value do we bring? What competitive advantage do we have? If it’s ok as a process, I’m just going to read through our current mission statement and then some comments we have in front of us and some comments from our meeting and then open it up to discussion. The current mission is to address human relations issues, including promotion of awareness, understanding, and resolution of actual or potential conflicts, discrimination, or injustice while encouraging community building and civic engagement. The draft alternative that we developed as a group during our retreat emphasis actively address, facilitate communication and diversity. Those were at least three elements that we did not see in the current mission statement. We’d asked Minka at that point to see if we could get some ideas ADA. The City of Palo Alto does not discriminate against individuals with disabilities. To request accommodations, auxiliary aids or services to access City facilities, services or programs, to participate at public meetings, or to learn about the City's compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990, may contact 650-329-2550 (voice), or e-mail ada@cityofpaloalto.org . This agenda is posted in accordance with government code section 54954.2(a) or section 54956. Members of the public are welcome to attend this public meeting. Page 21 of 31 of what other communities do; thank you Minka for providing us a list. Some of the things that I saw in these mission statements that we might want to consider are in the City of Riverside, an understanding, and respect between people. Which is kind of captured in the words communication? The City of Redlands emphasize an advisory capacity, which is really a definition or a scope of work and perhaps not appropriate for a mission statement but it is an interesting concept. Something that I noticed in the Beverly Hills mission statement was responsible action and establishing our city as a model. Los Angeles County talked about transformative activities which are like our words of saying we want to actively engage? Then we see other city’s using investigative, consulted, cooperative, meditative, educational, promotion and advisory agencies which again is a little bit of a scope of work and not really a mission method but the City of Boylston does a make a point of changing the population to residences of the city and people who are engaged in the city but are non-residence.. Those were some of the options that I saw and I’d like to open it up to hear what people think of our current mission and our draft alternative as it's written. Commissioner Gordon Gray: I have a comment. I guess one thing that strikes me as I read it is it doesn’t quite paint a picture for me. I think some of these other ones do and that makes it a little more compelling Chair Stone: Are you talking about the current one or the draft that we have? Commissioner Gordon Gray: Kind of both, actually. I would say – so that’s one thing and I don’t have the solution but that was one observation and the other one is I don’t really see our Commission as solving problems as opposed to more about shining a light on problems that people can take action but I don’t see us as a resolution body. I had a problem with resolving conflicts. I think we point to them and we address them. I think all those things are true but do we actually come up with the solution. It’s almost like we don’t pass laws. I guess that’s how I see that. Commissioner Chen: It seems to me the City of Redlands HRC serves an advisory body to City Council and that’s exactly what we’re doing. Commissioner Gordon Gray: Yeah, advising, identifying, you know exposing. Vice Chair Stinger: Good observation. Commissioner Savage: I have a couple ideas. First the current statement I was part of the Commission when it was drafted. I didn’t really understand it then and I still don’t understand it. I think what we are doing now is a good thing. It does need to be changed a little and going through all these other cities the two that I think captured our objectives more than others were Beverly Hills and Boylston, Pennsylvania. Commissioner Gordon Gray: Yes, I like those ones too. Commissioner Savage: Especially I like the “establish our city as a model.” I think here in Palo Alto, we would be proud to do that. I think that is something we want to look at. In the Boylston ADA. The City of Palo Alto does not discriminate against individuals with disabilities. To request accommodations, auxiliary aids or services to access City facilities, services or programs, to participate at public meetings, or to learn about the City's compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990, may contact 650-329-2550 (voice), or e-mail ada@cityofpaloalto.org . This agenda is posted in accordance with government code section 54954.2(a) or section 54956. Members of the public are welcome to attend this public meeting. Page 22 of 31 town one, I like that last line as well. “People who live, work, study, worship, travel” – I mean that does it all because it’s not just people who live here. The population doubles every day with all the workers. To make sure that’s inclusive, that would be something we would want to insert as well. Chair Stone: I agree. I really liked Beverly Hills, how they address it. I like the last part of it saying “and promote civil discourse and conduct”. I’d like to see some language like that in our language to promote civil discourse. Chair Stone: I’d like to see that in there some way. I disagree a bit with Commissioner Gordon Gray that I like that were trying to take – even though we don’t resolve conflicts typically but I think we have the ability to do that and I think it is. I like that we take on that challenge and welcome it by saying we are not just going to be a passive Commission but we are actually going to be proactive and I think that is something that we have worked very hard for over the past several years is to take on a more proactive role in the community. I think embracing more action and the willingness to resolve conflicts. I think is a good thing for us. Those would be my two main comments, and I agree with Commissioner Savage that I like that last line of Boylston. I think that’s a good solid ending to the mission statement. Commissioner O’Nan: I have comments on two levels. I think most of you know I am a writer and an editor so my editor hat says most of these mission statements are not formulated as true mission statements. They are actually descriptors and that part of me as an editor doesn’t like that. A mission statement is like on Star Trek, ‘Our 5-year mission is to boldly go’ because you have to start with an infinitive and list – it has to be formulating in a certain way and that’s how Silicon Valley companies typically do it as well. I don’t want to have a flat description like we shall do this and I really want it – I think the original formulation was closer to what a true mission statement is to sound like but on the subevent level I really take a lot of agreement with what Commissioner Savage said. I think it was written in an abstract way where it hardens as Commissioner Gordon Gray said. It's hard to get a clear picture of what some of these words mean. What does it mean to be community building? What does engagement actually mean? I love that the more specific language that some of the other mission statements use because I think they paint a clearer picture of what's meant to work, to play, to promote civil discourse. Those are all concrete things so I think that we should try to stick to a formulation that’s a true mission statement structure but let's get some real content in there that I think makes more sense that what we actually do. Chair Stone: I guess to put on my attorney hat, to counter it because that is one of thing that I was concerned about with the specificity of some of those. Does someone come back to us and say, oh you know you said a, b, and c but right now you are trying to address d. That’s a bit of a conflict there. I like being able to have enough specificity to be able to show what we are trying to accomplish but not so much that it ties us down. I mean of course this isn’t out of charter so we are able to go beyond that but I don’t think it should be too specific. Commissioner O’Nan: We’ve actually had the opposite problem though in the past because we have a very broad mission statement that said for example to address human relation issues and people who show up and say hey that’s a Human Relation issue, where are you? It was ADA. The City of Palo Alto does not discriminate against individuals with disabilities. To request accommodations, auxiliary aids or services to access City facilities, services or programs, to participate at public meetings, or to learn about the City's compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990, may contact 650-329-2550 (voice), or e-mail ada@cityofpaloalto.org . This agenda is posted in accordance with government code section 54954.2(a) or section 54956. Members of the public are welcome to attend this public meeting. Page 23 of 31 something where like we had been told specifically not to get involved by the city attorney or by City Council but because our charter was so broad, people were angry at us for not getting involved. It wasn’t clear and it wasn’t specific enough where and when we would be able to take appropriate action so being more specific might actually be more protective of us than having this broad charter where anybody can come along and insist that we should be taking ownership. Ms. van der Zwaag: I was going to – you have the attorney hat, I have the City employee hat and in consultation with the City clerk’s office, which oversees Commissions. We are the only Commission that has a separate mission statement. They were concerned for a moment before they found out that this was something that did not go to Council. It’s just something that we just use on our letterhead, on our agendas and so forth. They are ok with us doing that just as long as we don’t try to go beyond or have this supersede the authority section that’s in the City’s administrative code. I read that last time but I think the conversation I had with them afterward; we just have to be careful that whatever we do, it’s just something that we realize is – we’ve approved on the Commission level. It’s not going to be approved by the City Council and it doesn’t go beyond an authority that you’re given in the City administrative code. Chair Stone: Like I said, we are not changing the charter. We don’t have that authority… Ms. van der Zwaag: No. Ms. van der Zwaag: You don’t want to make this so radical that people think that maybe this should be approved by the City Council. Commissioner Gordon Gray: Yes. Vice Chair Stinger: I’d like to go back to your comments Jill. That was – when I read these I felt that they were too wordy. They weren’t something I could get my hands around or my head around or my emotions around and they didn’t reflect a typical business mission statement that I am more familiar with. I wonder if it would be useful to take those questions and just say first what the activity is. Can we crystallize in three or four words or half a dozen words? What is our activity and who do we do it for and the idea that we do it for residence and non-residences or use the words that Beverly Hills did? I think we could come up with a mission statement that is both general enough so that we are within city guidelines and legally safe but specific enough to energize us and energize people who might want to join the Commission subsequently. Commissioner Gordon Gray: That’s true. That’s a good point. Vice Chair Stinger: Well, I hate to pass the ball but to me, it’s always hard to compose by – at a table. I just wonder if two or three could be a task force and come back in November with three choices. Commissioner Gordon Gray: That’s a good idea. Commissioner O’Nan: I would take a shot at formulating it. Do you want to work with me, Shelly? Commissioner Gordon Gray and I could work together on this and come up with some – ADA. The City of Palo Alto does not discriminate against individuals with disabilities. To request accommodations, auxiliary aids or services to access City facilities, services or programs, to participate at public meetings, or to learn about the City's compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990, may contact 650-329-2550 (voice), or e-mail ada@cityofpaloalto.org . This agenda is posted in accordance with government code section 54954.2(a) or section 54956. Members of the public are welcome to attend this public meeting. Page 24 of 31 I don’t know Commissioner Savage did you want to maybe because you 're also a fellow writer? Commissioner Savage: Yes, sure. I’ll do it. Chair Stone: Great. Perfect. Ms. van der Zwaag: Well you deferred it. 4. Continued follow-up from the HRC Retreat – Chair Stone Chair Stone: Ok, so moving on. Continuing follow-up from the HRC retreat. Again, which we did a little bit there but again we discussed various events or forums and to keep the momentum going from the past year or two. Right now we are coming to the end of the year and I want to make sure we continue our momentum going into the next year. One thing that we got was wonderful little template. I think Minka, Mary, you – did you find this or was this… Ms. van der Zwaag: I thought of the thing that should include. I looked for example on the web and I did it. Chair Stone: Well, as always Minka went above and beyond and formed this great template for us. Hopefully, this will be able to allow us to come up with the forums that we have already brainstormed, what we would like to accomplish next year and I think our talks was I think leadership meeting was for the Commissioners who have proposed projects to be able to come back to us maybe in November with this template as filled out as you can so we can look at it as a Commission, figure out where are some gaps that maybe we need to address almost like a business plan to come back to the full Commission so that way we can figure out which forums we really want to be able to push going into next year and at that point we can have more Commissioners sign up once we see the full plan. Ms. van der Zwaag: Right and we can get an electronic version out. Chair Stone: That would be great. Ms. van der Zwaag: We wanted Chair Stone to be able to explain it to you and not just include it as an attachment. So then the lines will expand and so forth. Chair Stone: Yes. That’d be nice. Ms. van der Zwaag: I think this would really help in just crystallizing because we all have great ideas but when you go to, it’s like ok, target audience. Really, well the speakers may look different based on the target audience so it kind of helps you crystalize, target audience well and the speakers may look different based on the target audience so it kind of helps you crystallize our thinking a little more. Chair Stone: Anyone have any questions on this? Commissioner O’Nan: One thing I would say is, I see a place for possible speakers but I often ADA. The City of Palo Alto does not discriminate against individuals with disabilities. To request accommodations, auxiliary aids or services to access City facilities, services or programs, to participate at public meetings, or to learn about the City's compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990, may contact 650-329-2550 (voice), or e-mail ada@cityofpaloalto.org . This agenda is posted in accordance with government code section 54954.2(a) or section 54956. Members of the public are welcome to attend this public meeting. Page 25 of 31 have panelists and so I’m just wondering Commissioner Chen: We could put everyone in there. Commissioner O’Nan: …we could make sure that we – cause not all panelists will be speakers per say but they may be participating in some other way… Ms. van der Zwaag: So you want me to add a line for that or just put panelist and speakers? Commissioner O’Nan: Yes, panelists and speakers. Ms. van der Zwaag: Ok. I can do that. Chair Stone: Any other response? Commissioner O’Nan: No, we have location on there so that’s good. Commissioner Alhassani: Do we need resources included – I know obviously most of our things are inexpensive events but… Ms. van der Zwaag: Money. Commissioner Alhassani: … is there a budget issue or not really? Ms. van der Zwaag: Are there what? Commissioner Alhassani: Like budget issues considerations for these. Ms. van der Zwaag: Yes. Budget issues. It could be under promotion strategy you could just say you know graphic skills, printing needs… Commissioner O’Nan: Advertising. Ms. van der Zwaag: …and so forth. Commissioner O’Nan: One other thing we might want to include is event partners because I think in the future we’re going to try to partner with other organizations. Commissioner Chen: Good idea. Commissioner Gordon Gray: So, timeline is basically set the date and then you say we have three months – that’s what you’re talking about there. Ms. van der Zwaag: Right, being able to know what happens in a certain time frame. When is the event going to be, during this… ADA. The City of Palo Alto does not discriminate against individuals with disabilities. To request accommodations, auxiliary aids or services to access City facilities, services or programs, to participate at public meetings, or to learn about the City's compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990, may contact 650-329-2550 (voice), or e-mail ada@cityofpaloalto.org . This agenda is posted in accordance with government code section 54954.2(a) or section 54956. Members of the public are welcome to attend this public meeting. Page 26 of 31 Commissioner Gordon Gray: Back up from there. Ms. van der Zwaag: …back up from there. Commissioner Gordon Gray: This is good. Commissioner O’Nan: I think it’s really helpful planning. Chair Stone: If you did have a forum idea that you’ve purposed in the past or even come up between now and our November meeting. Try your best to fill this out. Reach out to Minka, myself or Vice Chair Stinger. Commissioner Gordon Gray: and do we have a list of events that we purposed? Ms. van der Zwaag: We do. We can send that out. I’ll put a note to send that out because this is meant not just for forums. If you were thinking – even if it’s a smaller group discussion. Ms. van der Zwaag: Really any of the topics that you come up with. I think you could really work through that topic using this document. Ms. van der Zwaag: So I will say send with topic list. Chair Stone: Thank you. Reports from Officials – Chair Stone 1. Commissioner Reports Chair Stone: Ok. Move on to reports from officials. Any Commissioner reports? Vice Chair Stinger: I wanted to comment on September 11th, there was a faith-based peace walk, and we were endorsers of that event and it was just wildly successful. I think we ought to acknowledge and congratulate and thank the organizers for doing that community building event in Palo Alto. Then I just wanted to comment that I’ve been meeting with the Provost at Menlo College who has two initiatives that I think are really interesting. One is Cradle to Grave education initiative. Looking at extending educational opportunities in the Silicon Valley and then also she is starting a Council on Diversity in Silicon Valley. They may overlap with some of our programs. Going beyond just the Menlo College community. Those two things. Chair Stone: Thank you. I went to the Project Safety Net meeting but I won’t go into that because Mary covered it perfectly. 2. Council Liaison Report Chair Stone: Ok, Council Member Wobach has left. 3. Staff Liaison Report Ms. van der Zwaag: I have a couple things. One is just a follow up regarding the HRC mission ADA. The City of Palo Alto does not discriminate against individuals with disabilities. To request accommodations, auxiliary aids or services to access City facilities, services or programs, to participate at public meetings, or to learn about the City's compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990, may contact 650-329-2550 (voice), or e-mail ada@cityofpaloalto.org . This agenda is posted in accordance with government code section 54954.2(a) or section 54956. Members of the public are welcome to attend this public meeting. Page 27 of 31 statement. Are you looking to me to schedule the meeting with the three of you or will you do that on your own? Commissioner O’Nan: I was planning to reach out to my fellow Commissioners to see if we want to independently formulate something and then get together to discuss three versions. Do we want to get together at our building and have Daryl join us or all meet at Pete’s and I’ll buy you all coffee… Commissioner Gordon Gray: all three of us or … Commissioner O’Nan: I think the three of us can figure out whether we want to do this online or in person. Commissioner Gordon Gray: Can we email each other or does that violate the Brown Act? Commissioner O’Nan: No, because there is only three. Ms. van der Zwaag: There are only three of you. Ms. van der Zwaag: I wanted to make sure that – the other thing is that discussion on HSRAP possible additional funds for HSRP that was going to Policy and Service Committee. Technically on October 11th, that meeting was canceled. So, that discussion did not happen. They are pulling for a new date. There was one tentative date and that didn’t happen. So, we’re – I hate to give out a new date until I know but at this point, there might be a date the first week of November but I will let our two representatives know as soon as that comes to pass. The Age Friendly Initiative was something that was brought to you several months ago so a quick update on that is we have met – you know last time I told you as a group of professionals, Aging Service Professionals; they did a focus group together. We had a focus group at Avenidas with seniors in the community. We had a focus group at Senior Friendship Day, which was a good group. It was mostly Asian immigrant participants and one Indian American participant and we are hosting one next week or the week after. I’d have to look at the specific date at the Sheraton because we wanted to have a meeting in South Palo Alto and at a low-income housing complex. So, for those that are on the committee, I will send out those dates regarding when those focus groups will be and then after that happens the professional group gets together again and say what makes sense for some things to suggest as far as a to-do item that Palo Alto can do in order to become age- friendly. Then it goes to Council to sign a resolution that the city wants to become age-friendly and then it goes off to the World Health Organization who looks at our application and accepts us. Then it comes back to us and we start working on these things. So, I wanted to let you know that there has been progression on that. I think I’ll go – I have something for the tentative November agenda but I think I’ll discuss that in a minute. That’s all for my report. VI. TENTATIVE AGENDA FOR NEXT SPECIAL MEETING: November 10, 2016 Chair Stone: Ok, well now we are onto tentative agenda. Ms. van der Zwaag: One of the things I want to have on the next agenda. It’s a HSRP year so HSRP request for proposals (RFP) will go up probably in December or January. As part of that, ADA. The City of Palo Alto does not discriminate against individuals with disabilities. To request accommodations, auxiliary aids or services to access City facilities, services or programs, to participate at public meetings, or to learn about the City's compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990, may contact 650-329-2550 (voice), or e-mail ada@cityofpaloalto.org . This agenda is posted in accordance with government code section 54954.2(a) or section 54956. Members of the public are welcome to attend this public meeting. Page 28 of 31 there is always a priority of needs and the priority needs is the categories or areas of focus that HSRP will accept proposals to help address. This priority of needs has been pretty constant over the years. When we did the big needs assessment in 2012, we made some slight adjustments to it. That was a really large effort by the Human Relation Commission. Incredible effort to assess human needs in the community that involved at least 30 to 40 interviews with individual heads of large organizations probably 15 -20 focus groups… Commissioner O’Nan: Surveys. Ms. van der Zwaag: Surveys out to providers. Surveys out into the community and collated into this 30-page report that Commissioner O’Nan worked on. Some former Commissioners and former Commissioner Ray Bacchetti and it was very well received by the Council. In 2014, we did an amended needs assessment. Basically, some members of the HRC divided up our HSRP grantees and we went out and asked them a series of questions. That subcommittee came together, analyzed the results and shared them with this body. What I have done this time is I wrote a survey, a lot of it based on our 2012 needs assessment. Mary made it into a Survey Monkey for me and I sent it not only our HSRP grantees but to other non-profits in the community. So, I sent it out to at least 42 organizations in the community. To date, I received approximately 23 responses which is 50%... Commissioner O’Nan: Pretty good. Ms. van der Zwaag: …which is a really good response and I’d like to bring those results back to you next month to have a discussion and to really see if there’s any adjustments to the priority of needs because that will need to be included in December in the HSRP RFP that goes out. That is one of the key agenda items I’d like to bring to you next month. Also, I heard from Palo Alto Mediation Program. They have hired or recruited 5 new mediators so if you would like, they can come. I didn’t get the impression they’d bring the actual mediators but they give you an update on what they are doing in… Commissioner O’Nan: We have to approve the new mediators. Ms. van der Zwaag: I think I just got the email so I said, oh I can bring that to tonight's agenda so we have these 5 new mediators so those could be brought to you for your approval at the meeting next month. Commissioner Gordon Gray: The HRC actually approves the new mediators? Commissioner O’Nan: I think we actually have to. I think it's required. Commissioner Savage: I think it's just more formality. Commissioner O’Nan: No but I think they have to submit their application, their bio in advance. Ms. van der Zwaag: You do get that as far as something that you review but I don’t think that any of them are expecting to be not approved. ADA. The City of Palo Alto does not discriminate against individuals with disabilities. To request accommodations, auxiliary aids or services to access City facilities, services or programs, to participate at public meetings, or to learn about the City's compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990, may contact 650-329-2550 (voice), or e-mail ada@cityofpaloalto.org . This agenda is posted in accordance with government code section 54954.2(a) or section 54956. Members of the public are welcome to attend this public meeting. Page 29 of 31 Commissioner O’Nan: No, I think we do have to officially do it. Ms. van der Zwaag: So that’s something that could also be on November agenda. Am I missing something, Mary? Chair Stone: Anyone else have any ideas for the next agenda? Commissioner O’Nan: One thing I do want to follow up on is whatever happened with our study session. Ms. van der Zwaag: Oh yes, I will look into that again. The last time I looked into it I did get a response. They thought it would be fun if we came on October 31st, on Halloween night and I politely without asking you all declined. Chair Stone: Thank you. Ms. van der Zwaag: Since that I have not heard back, but I will ask again but the last time. Commissioner Savage: Well maybe they will want us back on Thanksgiving, then. Commissioner O’Nan: Christmas Eve. Ms. van der Zwaag: Thank you for reminding me but that was just a couple weeks ago when they offered… Commissioner O’Nan: Ok. Got it. Ms. van der Zwaag: … Halloween to us and the Youth Council. They offered the Youth Council to come on Halloween too. Commissioner O’Nan: Unless we get candy, I’m not going. Commissioner Savage: Also, for the agenda, we should talk next month about our traditional holiday party. Which generally means a short meeting followed by dinner. Ms. van der Zwaag: I would assume we are talking about the mission statement again. Vice Chair Stinger: Oh yes. Commissioner O’Nan: Yes. Ms. van der Zwaag: Did you want me to look for another speaker for the mental health series? I could try Officer Green again. He is just too busy. He has turned me down three times but he had a good place to be tonight. I know Commissioner Savage was there. Mary was there before she came here tonight. Try him again or other suggestions that people… ADA. The City of Palo Alto does not discriminate against individuals with disabilities. To request accommodations, auxiliary aids or services to access City facilities, services or programs, to participate at public meetings, or to learn about the City's compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990, may contact 650-329-2550 (voice), or e-mail ada@cityofpaloalto.org . This agenda is posted in accordance with government code section 54954.2(a) or section 54956. Members of the public are welcome to attend this public meeting. Page 30 of 31 Commissioner O’Nan: I was wondering if we could reach out to Dr. Adelsheim I heard him speak at the Stanford conference. Ms. van der Zwaag: He’s doing a special project right now that he’s kind of… I will check. Commissioner O’Nan: Or Dr. Joshi. Ms. van der Zwaag: We can check with one of them. Commissioner O’Nan: I’d love to have someone – the Stanford folks have really been driving a lot of initiatives around mental health in our community and I’d love to partner with them when we do our mental health events so it might be nice to invite them to speak to us first. Ms. van der Zwaag: So you’re not just specifically looking at youth mental health. Commissioner O’Nan: In general. Ms. van der Zwaag: …in general mental health initiatives by Stanford because both of those are adolescent psychologist. Commissioner O’Nan: Right but if they are not available, they may have a colleague. Commissioner O’Nan: …we can just get a Stanford connection going because I think that will be helpful for us to see from their perspective which is a more of a medical perspective. Ms. van der Zwaag: Ok. Commissioner Gordon Gray: Can I say something. Just very quickly, I actually had a conversation with two policemen who were at the scene when someone was causing problems and kept calling 911 and he’d be discharged and then he’d call again. Anyway, I talked to them. It seems like there's not sort of a pathway for the police. Like they come, they address the problem but then what happens. Do they call social services? It doesn’t seem to be a continuum and I think it would be interesting to hear from our police department about – besides going to the person and saying, you know don’t call 911 if you’re not sick or whatever – There’s not a lot of recourse and I just think it would be interesting to find out how that gets addressed. Commissioner Savage: My son addresses that on a daily basis on the tenderloin but… Commissioner Gordon Gray: I’m talking about that right here. Vice Chair Stinger: I did see agent Green today at the Leadership Program and he was the thinking January to present to the HRC. Ms. van der Zwaag: Ok, that’s good to know. January. Agent Green Chair Stone: Alright. Wonderful. With that, we are adjourned. ADA. The City of Palo Alto does not discriminate against individuals with disabilities. To request accommodations, auxiliary aids or services to access City facilities, services or programs, to participate at public meetings, or to learn about the City's compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990, may contact 650-329-2550 (voice), or e-mail ada@cityofpaloalto.org . This agenda is posted in accordance with government code section 54954.2(a) or section 54956. Members of the public are welcome to attend this public meeting. Page 31 of 31 VII. ADJOURNMENT Meeting adjourned at 9:00 p.m.