Alachua County Comission/Alachua County Children's Trust Joint Meeting - Jun 11, 2026

Good afternoon. It is 4 o'clock, and we're going to go ahead and call the joint meeting of the Alaska County Board of County Commissioners and the Children's Trust meeting to order. We're not going to have a quorum on the Children's Trust side. We've got some folks that are out of town, out of the country, and sick, but we do have two-and-a-half members, and there's no action by the board on the Trust side. We do have Dr. Hart, who is joining us remotely, so she can certainly participate in the meeting. And so, since the Trust really can't adopt an agenda, we'll just ask the Board of County Commissioners to adopt the agenda. It's identical to what the Trust is going to adopt, and we'll get started. Move adoption. Second. Got a motion and a second to adopt the agenda of the joint meeting. Any discussion? Any public discussion? Back to the board. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? That motion is unanimous. All right. So, I'll just welcome from the County Commission side to the Trust members. It's great to see you back in this building. I know a couple of years ago, while we had a joint meeting here, Commissioner Pincuson has spent 16-plus years in and out of this building, and so it's great to have you all here. I know our staffs have been working hard on many of these items, and we're looking forward to hearing from them and seeing if we can move some stuff forward on the county side. I know we met on the Trust side on Monday, and I shared some of that information with my colleagues on Tuesday at our board meeting. Terry? Glad to be here. I'm sorry that we have not as many participants on our side, but they were all at a workshop and board meeting last week, so we're looking forward to the conversation today. The good news about that is, while the board members of the Trust aren't here, we are fully staffed. I think almost the entire Children's Trust staff are here, and so they are certainly able to answer questions and talk about what we've been working on. In other words, you've got the important people here. The important people are here. That is correct. All right, so the first item is the Alaska County Reads Initiative Monthly Update, and I think we've got Dr. Heidi Keegan, we've got Dr. Beachy, and Marsha. Who else? As well as the Executive Director, Leon and Leon. And Leon. Okay, so a couple of ways to do this. I think it's probably easiest if you just come to the table. We do have a podium up here, but I think it's better for just a general discussion. If you find an empty microphone and grab a seat, the cameras will find you once you start talking, and we look forward to your presentation. Dr. Keegan, welcome. First, I want to thank my team, Mrs. Amber Hatchbush, as well as Ms. Savannah Butler, for their contribution to today's presentation. And then when it comes to some of the data to speak to peak literacy, we have the Executive Director, Leah Gagliling, who will give us the updates on that portion. Okay, so here we go. So we have a dual charge from the initial needs assessment that occurred last year, where we're looking at direct community literacy needs, as well as system infrastructure. And so we've set the goals collaboratively to look at kindergarten readiness, third-grade reading proficiency, reducing disparities, and adult literacy access to families. Our system infrastructure needs are to centralize communication and coordination across these efforts. We know that in the past that so many hands have tried to do great things to make improvements, but now as a collaborative, collective effort, all in, we really want to move the needle. We want to strengthen the engagement and go ahead and make those improvements from ages zero to 99. Next. So since we last met, there's a refined implementation model that we'll talk about, the coordination arm and the programming arm. We like to say it's one initiative with two arms organizing the four core functions. I can speak to the coordination arm first. Under C&E, the Center for Nonprofit Appearance, we are organizing a community advisory council and the coordination of services and strategic communication. So we will serve as the administrative resourcing for coordinating these efforts. And under the programming arm, we are going to be looking to the experts when we deal with primary reading intervention and remediation. We'll be speaking with PEAK. And primary readiness and instructional support in our early learning centers, VPKs, and ACPS will come through UFLY, University of Florida, literacy institute. They'll be working on the design, training, and evaluation, implementation, and partnership support with those measurable outcomes. First, I'd like to say thank you to Mary Chance for coordinating the meeting with Helios, which occurred this March. We learned about the project and the successes that have occurred in Pinellas, Hillsboro, and Indian River. With that meeting, we came to these four priorities that we have focused on together. First is foundational early learning readiness and prevention to catch them early so that we don't have those gaps. We have gained our scope of work from UFLY, and we have a contract meeting tomorrow at 9 a.m., as a matter of fact, to close that, which is exciting. Take your start. Yes. So that focus with UFLY and our early learning centers, partnered with Anita Zucker Center, is going to be looking at VPK early learning centers and those young ages before we get to school. Next, we want to look at instructional support that is happening. UFLY, in collaboration with ACPS in the school system and the Education Foundation, we're going to focus on the K-3 readiness. When we talk about that, we're going to talk about being able to access all elementary schools for Tier 1 training for the educators in that K-3 space, and then focus targeted coaching in the schools that now have lower performance and could use that support. So we'll be providing the professional learning to them with evidence-based programming. The intervention and remediation comes through the experts in PEAK Catalyst Initiative, as well as working with our Alachua Library District for adult learning purposes, and we will be providing targeted support for the striving readers and adults that still need those supports. And the coordination and community awareness comes under C&E, where we're going to be building that infrastructure that sustains and scales the work over time, so that it is not an initial and breakaway, but that continuing support of the successes, looking at those resources and coordinating through what is actually needed. And this will come through the living logic model that's informed through the work group and advisory council. When we met with Helios, we found successful Florida literacy initiatives, and of course we want to go ahead and build on what research and successes are already in place, but we also want to make sure that they fit our community specifically and our organizations. So some of those highlights you'll see there is the district commitment, the administrative engagement, professional development and coaching, pre-K literacy awareness, and early learning provider coaching. So, for example, we've already met with ACPS, with Heather Harber, as well as Kelly McClure, and Amanda Shirk, and they, after we met with them initially, came back with priorities of how they believe they can move the needle. For example, their priority is actually supporting school administrators, having them trained in those foundational pieces from UFLY so that they may be able to go around and do the look-fors and evaluate their teacher's use of the tool. Okay? So some of the data that we'd like to base on is looking at Pinellas, who's now in their fifth year of implementation, and Hillsboro, who by year three, the data is here, to see how some of those scores have improved, and it has taken some time. But we know that we can build on those existing successful readiness and look to support with the needs in our community, with the experts who are here already doing the work and who can expand those efforts into other places. See? Next slide. Yes, I can. Is that better? She'll let you know, right? There you go. So after we met and were able to learn from the Helios Project, we were able to find a good place to start, foundation. And so you'll notice that in the targeted areas for early learning, we want to identify six early learning centers or DPKs in our community who are ready with readiness to go ahead and implement the UFLY, who currently are actually working in Duval Early Learning Center, piloting a national program eventually they'd like to go, and we'd love for them to replicate and expand that. We will have ACPS, through data, identify six high-need schools that receive the initial additional support and coaching later to be replicated and expanded in other schools or areas of need, and then two community sites that are ready for implementation to work with them in the community. So you'll notice some of the scope of components right here, those readiness activities, instructional support for Tier 1, that means all K-3 teachers in ACPS. So we'll have, for example, what we can do is have training that occurs, all kindergarten teachers go to a training at one particular school and all first-grade teachers at another training, and or we're ready to provide funding to also provide substitutes so that we can get trainings in the schools with teams during the instructional day so that they're not far to move away. And then, of course, our evaluation planning, which includes the pre-screening implementation and individual achievement. We are contracting with UFLY and their excellence in measurable outcomes and evaluation. And then community awareness, which you'll hear a little bit more about some media release exciting things coming up. So this is just an overview of PEAK, the Catalyst, Model, and Role in ACR. You'll notice those headings, but I'm going to, in just a moment, allow the executive director to come and speak to their progress already. But we are looking to make sure that it is an evidence-based model, that high-dosage tutoring, having flexible delivery according to student needs identified by those experts, quality data practices with measurable outcomes, accountability, and reporting. And the Catalyst cohort role would be to assess the readiness and capacity. Leah, I'm sure, will tell you a little bit about the cohort that she's already come together with and how she wants to expand that and move on to others. So PEAK is the perfect systems partner for the needs assessment priorities. They have an extensive cohort network, and we're looking forward to everything that they have to offer. Next slide. When we submitted this presentation, we provided only a snapshot up through February here in this data, but we believe that the best understanding of program success comes directly from the provider that works with those children. So at this time, we'd love to have PEAK Executive Director Leah. She's here to provide some highlights of their successful progress. Thank you for being here. Good afternoon, everyone. Yes. So we are really excited. We finished last month with our initial work of scope of work that the county tasked us with. And our just started summer programming, so just on Monday. But just a little bit of metrics. So we had 11 sites that we gave services to from October through April. We have two additional providers that we're working with this summer. There were a total of 311 kids added to our program. So we have the 65 children funded by the trust, and these were additional children that were added to our program. In addition, CAP also funds a group of children that is not included in these totals. And so over the course of that time, we delivered 25,000 individual lessons that were completed. And let me find my paper here. I got it. Sorry. 25,000 lessons were delivered over the course of that. We also met with a provider cohort that was the group of after-school providers. This is made up of some trust-funded partners, some neighborhood leaders, some low-income housing leaders. And some of you came and visited those sites. So thank you so much for doing that. And we've been meeting for about eight months, working together as a team, identifying what are shared needs among all of us that we see, working on more cohesiveness between all of us to really tackle in a meaningful way the literacy gaps in our county. We are very, very excited about an expanded scope for next year to expand our work. We have committed to work with 600 kids next year, in addition to the children from the trust and cap. These will be 600. And they will not just be children. We just today started at release re-entry. We have an MOU with CareerSource. So we're well on our way with expanded literacy, adult literacy. We're applying for a federal grant due Friday to expand resources there. So bringing some of these outside resources. And the cohort together is working on some grant funding together to expand our work. So we're very, very excited and could not have done this without the investment. And so we thank you so much, so, so much for believing in us and letting us do the work that we've been wanting to do for a long, long time. Thank you so much. Commissioner Alford. Can I ask you a question? Are there any activities going on over the summer to sort of bridge the school years? Yeah, so we are continuing our high-dosage tutoring model over the summer at, Ashley, how many sites? Nine sites. There are some sites that kind of only do like a couple weeks here and there, and it just doesn't make sense for the, you know, those particular programs. So we have nine sites that are currently going in addition to release re-entry and whatever we end up doing. We're working with DJJ to work with the eight boys and eight girls at the detention center. So that's our next task underway. But so that's what we're just continuing with the high-dosage tutoring model and then preparing for fall and adding additional partner sites. It takes about three months to add a new site to figure out what's going to work for that particular site and figure out with their team what is needed. So. Well, thank you. I admire your model so much. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you, Leah. Okay, so a quick look at the starting assets and those that have contributed, the county and SeaTac investment. Of course, we looked at the survey needs assessment priorities. We've spoken with local providers and schools. We have garnered UF literacy expertise and the community need and momentum. And we'll talk a little bit more about that on the next slide. But coordinating those strategic operations is now making sure our workgroup gets together again for the release of all things great that are about to happen. Coordinating between SeaTac and county and peak and UFLY and ACPS and other providers in the community all together. Now we've redefined that design, which will be shared again with the workgroup, all those documents. And the scope of development, which is a build out. We'll start initially in this school year and then, of course, build out over time. So when we look for that building infrastructure for sustainability, we know that it's not a quick fix. We've tried several times that it takes consistent support from all places to build and work together. I'm excited. I'm looking at Leah across the room. I really am about the wonderful things that we have. So we'll talk a little bit more. On July 15th, it says here June 30th, but we wanted to make sure that all key players were engaged in the workgroup. So it'll be on July 15th, our workgroup will reconvene to unveil project progress and chart the next steps together. You'll look for an announcement for the public release of the Virtual Literacy Hub on August 1st, AlachuaCountyReads.org. And here in the systems capacity that is created, this is really all about that transparency and us working together. So some of the community awareness and access infrastructure we want to talk about is having that public-facing access point so that families, providers, funders, and partners can all find and use some literacy supports, and that has been in Build That Progress. So first is the Virtual Hub, which we'll be releasing on August 1st. You'll see that. And the Awareness Campaign that we are actually building through the support of UF College of Education Consulting Project. There'll be a media release that includes videos, social media, radio, and all great things to let everybody know about the collective effort of Alachua County Reads. The physical hubs will include some resources at the Partnership for Strong Families, as well as Elite Training Center. And we're very happy and excited to report on the summer literacy fun tubs that have occurred. So just last week... And Monday. And Monday, for those that opened just Monday, we actually were able to, through the Great Level 4 Camping Reading, helped us to assemble the tubs, which were purchased with funding from SeaTac, to deliver 24 literacy tubs to multiple organizations in the community to motivate and engage children and youth through the entire summer in literacy. So visits included drop-off at Deeper Purvis, Boys and Girls Clubs, let's see, Girls Place, the Summer Bridge programs in Gainesville, as well as Highlands and Martin Rochelle, some of our children with special needs at Limitless Adventures. What else do I have here? The longest trip was Mirror Image, which is three cubicles down from the chamber, which was wonderful. These resources go to support over 900 children in summer programs, and I can tell you how excited they were to receive them. So items in the tub went from, of course, developmentally appropriate board books for our young children and big pointer fingers with sight word identification and bingo to more advanced vocabulary games and comprehensive with both inductive and deductive reasoning. I mean, which teenager doesn't want to play the meme game, you know, with the pictures? So now that those tubs have been delivered, I actually will be reaching out to those organizations to come and demonstrate different ways to use those games to engage students and some of their higher order thinking and reasoning. But the fact that we have these children working together with those program directors to have literacy-infused activities that are fun and engaging is a great start to keep them. So just talking about how the Kismet works, so I actually got contacted a few months ago by Camp Silver, which is a camp for trans kids, and they do pop-up services throughout the year, and I'm actually doing their board retreat on Saturday, and they work with youth from 11 to 17, and so we have an immediate, an intermediate age group tub left over, so we're actually going to be able to give them literacy work as well and kind of bring them into this process. So it's nice to see how all the coordination is happening to these, again, populations that we would not necessarily have even thought about as being engaged in literacy. I'm also excited to report that I've just had a conversation with Yolanda from Gainesville Thrives, who has asked us to coordinate and assemble some literacy bins for families for children from ages zero to four as well. So looking at infancy and toddler engagement in those early literacy, and we said we would love that opportunity with the remaining funds we have, and then look to the future to work with those young children and families, my engagement. Next slide. So what the investment has produced thus far, there's a coordinated strategy instead of those isolated efforts, and we're very excited about that. There are clear implementation pathways with experts and evidence-based programming with outcomes that are measurable. There are immediate programmatic reach, funding cohort requests for identified needs and moving forward as those needs change. Shared access infrastructure across the county, not in just one isolated area, but making sure we are reaching all pockets of those because we are trying to close those disparities for access and achievement gaps. And a foundation for accountability and scale that all programs and vendors will have measurable evaluative outcomes so that you can see where the funding is going and the successes that are coming from it. Our next steps. Our timeline here was the approval and launch, which actually will be July 15th to ensure that all stakeholders are engaged, so we'll be able to report out from that. In the summer and fall of this particular year, we're going to implement and finalize with UFLY and ACPS their scope and target sites. So we'll be providing the dates of trainings and places so that you're aware of those and invited to come. We'll open the hub for program submissions and resource updates on August 1st and begin that capacity building investments with the providers. This school year, 26-27, we'll measure and improve by tracking the participation and reach and who we're actually accessing and who has taken, has participated in that training and will expand the physical hub access and advisory. The long-term targets for scale and sustainability include conversations such as PEAK now working with Cohort 1, we'll be building out and preparing for Cohort 2. more organizations and they'll share with those as they expand. We hope to add centers and schools, those early learning centers, as well as schools and bring them on for the targeted coaching. And our consultant project through the COE at UF, the College of Education, will expand to give other programmatic supports to help. This is simple. Thank you. We say together we're building a county-wide literacy system that helps children, families, and adults access support they need to read, learn, work, and participate fully in community life. And we like to say that we're building that literacy for life together. That's the county reads and your support. So we thank you. Thank you, Dr. Keegan. Okay. Commissioners. Questions? Commissioner Alford? I made a crazy suggestion a few weeks ago that county commissioners and maybe the sheriff and, you know, our fire chiefs and other folks all read the Dolly Parton books as they come out and put that on. The Imagination Library. Yes. Because every kid gets the same book every month, right? Right. So I really want to see that happen. I think that would be a kind of a nice way to push our efforts in literacy and do something fun. And I think the kids would get a kick out of it, especially seeing, you know, a firefighter reading a book and a sheriff's deputy reading a book. Yeah. They might not care about a county commission. Yeah. They might not care about us. You wouldn't believe it. In uniform. You wouldn't believe it. But in the actual presentation of the summer literacy recommendations, that's exactly the the pictures that we have as firefighters and police officers reading to those young children, getting familiar with those faces, and being part of the community. So we will take that suggestion. But we could do it, you know, with Mark and maybe put it on YouTube or something. That'd be fantastic. Absolutely. Okay. Thank you. Commissioner Pizzou. Yeah. Thank you so much. I'm really excited to see the kind of, you know, sort of, I'll call it a pivot, you know, also really focusing on that early childhood literacy and readiness and then in collaboration with PEAK to bring in the remediation for the middle ages and the adults so they can get up to speed and be able to meet their kids where they are once we get them all reading on grade level. A very exciting new set of directions and organizational structure. So thank you all for, I know that was a lot of work, really quickly. You know, I am also really excited to hear the outcomes of July 15th and how the community receives this and sort of like what next steps are. I won't be able to be there, but I'll really look forward to hearing from you all how that goes. Great. Perfect. I had a couple of questions and then a comment that I wanted to share. Questions were, with regards to the hub, the virtual hub, how are we going to be tracking usage of that in terms of, you know, not just like visits, but downloads and getting feedback on the materials and the resources that are there, you know, sort of a closed loop referral system, if you will, as much as we can. Absolutely. So one of the things David Tories and I have been working with and Savannah and Amber have been very engaged in this is making sure that the metrics do look at how many people interact with it in various ways. So there's going to be a language button so you can have the entire site read to you. It has different languages. It also has an allowable cookie that you can say, this is where I'm at, use my location to then show me where all of the things are. All of that on the back side will be trackable. So we'll be able to see how those interactions occur and then as well as how many clicks and interactions there are directly in the age groups as well as the resources. So one of the things that the team has been really hard at work on is making sure that it's navigated in a way that is the most intuitive. So we know that hopefully families that really need these resources are the ones that are going to be accessing it. So David has used a lot of iconography that makes it really easy to see that this is an audio button and you don't need to have a language skill to click that and then get the audio response. So the other thing is, is that the site is going to have a portal where any of the providers in the community can update their own information. So we're not going to have to be reaching out to people like we've done with, you know, the social services groups and Claudia knows this with the street card. Just trying to get it updated is a, you know, a slog in and of itself. So this is going to have a portal where the providers can upload their own information. And then once it comes in, we'll be able to say, yes, this looks good. Let's go ahead and get it on the site. So it'll have a dynamic and we can track that as well. And on that front, will you all be able to, like, I guess, to some extent, like, use the virtual hub for pointing families in the right direction? Like, is that the idea? That is the whole idea. And it's actually going to have three different access points. So for families, for providers and for teachers. Okay. And will you be field testing this before it launches in August? Yes, we're kind of doing a little bit of, you know, here and there. We've got our Google Workspace, which took an amazing amount of work to get set up. So that we'll have our individual domain emails and all of that. So once that gets set up, then he can make it live kind of with a small group. And then we'll be able to start doing the testing. Okay, great. And then the other question that I have is, or a comment that I have is, actually, somebody brought this up to us today in an email. The head of our emergency services division, actually, Jen Grice. In addition to being an amazing leader for our emergency services, she also has a passion for literacy. And she brought up the idea of coordinating with our hospitals to get Dolly Parton Imagination Library books in the hands of parents as they leave the hospital. So get them signed up before they even leave when they're, you know, and it may not be right then when they have a baby. They might be overwhelmed with all the other things they have to decide. But before they leave the hospital, getting them at least the information on how to register and the possibility of working with Dr. Adutola and the OBGYN mobile bus that they have going out to connect the dots with the early literacy resources that we have and making sure that they're on those buses that are moving around the community. That's a fantastic idea. And it's funny that you say that because one of the things that's happening with our move out of the chamber is that the space that we are going to be moving into, Gainesville Thrives, is coming with us. And so we're going to have a lot of interaction with Yolanda, and so we'll make sure that that gets passed along and see how we can coordinate that. Awesome. That's great. Great news. And Topeak, I know you were looking for a piece of paper, but I was interested to know, are the 311 plus the 65, are any of those kids that aren't in the nine summer programs continuing high-dosage tutoring over the summer? Come on up. Microphone. Okay. Ashley? Yeah, you can sit right here, Ashley. Thanks for being here. Yeah. No problem. What was your question? I was just wondering if the children that had been enrolled throughout the year, especially the ones that are doing the tutoring, high-dosage tutoring virtually, if they were continuing through the summer. Yes, we have 65 of our online students continuing through the summer. That's fantastic. Thank you. Thank you very much. Well, kudos to everyone for pulling this together. I know it's been a bit of a slog, but I really appreciate all the work, and I'm excited to see the ongoing results as we roll into the school year this fall, and we'll look forward to hearing how July 15th goes. Thank you. And I can't say enough about thank you to Heidi and coming on. Commissioner Wheeler? Full-time. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Don't go anywhere. I would ask, too, that my daughter-in-law teaches third grade over in Clay County, and one of the things that I've heard not only from her but from other teachers, when they're getting ready to take that test, they can't write their names. So I'm wondering if you all could, when you have the one-on-one with the kids that you could teach, and the adults as well, to teach them how to not only print their name for the little ones, but to write their name in cursive. Just focus on writing your name in cursive. You know, it's a big confidence booster for someone who is trying to communicate, I think, to be able to write in cursive. So even if they just write their name that way. I have to say your request is very timely because it was just passed in legislation that there will be mandatory cursive handwriting taught in grades 3 through 5. Yes, I saw that, and I've taught it my whole life, but, you know, it takes practice. It does. And if you all, even if you just have the kids write their name to finish out the section, to practice, you know, so that it's written well. Perhaps those are some resources we can share this summer even with those communities that we're working with to go ahead and have some initial access and practice. And for adults, too, adults, too, because I know. Thank you, Commissioner. Thank you, Chair. Okay, I just have a couple questions. The six targeted BPK early learning centers, have they been identified? Not yet. We will be looking at data. The schools will come through ACPS data, and then we'll also look at data found through United Way and the grade level four campaign data in those areas, and look to feeder schools as well because those early learning centers that are located near those schools. That could have increased performance often feed right to that community. So the six high-need Alaska County Public Elementary schools have also not been identified? They will be identified through ACPS. They just finished their PM3 testing with the end of the school year. So as their school grades and data come in and we meet with them at the table, they will identify those six schools. When? Well, our next meeting with them is right after our UFLY contract. So once we get the contract with UFLY and they have a readiness scale and assessment that they're going to be bringing forward as well, so. By July 15th? Hopefully. I'd love to do that, but I would love to. I'd love a commitment for that. I'd love to hear you all tell the community by a date. I think it's important. Yeah. I would agree with that. And then my last question, Marsha, since you're coming up, are who are the two community sites and when are they going to be identified? I think same thing. All of this is a work in progress. If we could tell you definitively July 15th, we would, but we, without knowing what the district is going to do, it's all the partners, right? So I think the commitment from us is we hear you. We hear what you would like. We can certainly share that with the district and ask them if we can make that happen by that date, but I don't think we can commit because that's not within our control. Okay. Well, there's two members of the Children's Trust that are part of the district, the superintendent and the school board member, and this is an important thing, and I don't want to get into the next school year without identifying that. So that has a hard date. No, no. Yes. Yes. August 10th. Okay. Yes. Yeah. So my only other comment really is to peak. Thank goodness. Thank goodness that you are diving in because we are starting to see outcomes. We started this process a couple of years ago. So I'm ready for outcomes this time next year. I'm hoping to see we've done a lot of infrastructure building, but here's some real movement of outcomes because we're finishing the end of year two of our three-year moonshot, and we need outcomes. So thank you for all that you are doing and for the providers that are participating. I'm all about outcomes. So appreciate that. Great. Any other comments from this board? I'll just say, you know, if the July 15th date isn't a target, then August 1, when that virtual hub goes live, should be because the list of those schools, where the 24 hubs went, where the early learning coalitions are, where the community sites are, should all be on that website so people know if their school is a part of the groups and can identify who the right people are to make sure that they're in the right places in those schools to get the services that they want and need. Awesome. Chair? I'm super excited to see the UFLY work going forward. And the Latra's version of Peli, Teli, we're going to have to come up with a cute name because in Pinellas, they do Peli parties every year when grades come out, and they celebrate the success and the gains of that year. I did want to suggest that or, you know, encourage everybody to, the training is great, to come witness the training, but also once it's in place and underway, if there's observation opportunities, it's pretty amazing. And to watch this in action, the teacher working with kids. And I think it makes a lot of sense. I'm impressed that the district thought through training administrators because if you don't know what you're looking for in a classroom observation, it will fall flat. Suggestions with UF, obviously the College of Education is involved, but I want to make sure New World's Reading Initiative specifically is their materials. And then some of their work, besides the enrollment for eligible students and their book delivery program, I think they still have programs through IFAS, like Cooks and Books, and so a lot of interactive literacy things that could complement and be part of the hub. I would also, I don't know if you've engaged with WFT TV, but they have had outreach opportunities with, you know, early childhood programming and books. And no offense to the firefighters, but UF athletes reading books is also a good job. Now we have to pay them, though, from NIL. I'm sure we can get some. We can get some that don't require fans. And coaches, too. They don't have to be paid for volunteer service. But congratulations on the progress. Just since March, it's been pretty tremendous. We hope to visit, please visit the Alachua County Reads Facebook page. Already you can see some of the great shares and pictures of the delivery, and we'll have more information to come out that you'll see that goes to families as well. Some summer tips. Commissioner Alpert, and then, Commissioners, we've got four big items here. We've got folks in the, do you mind if we take public comment for each of them afterwards? Okay, so, Commissioner Alpert, and then we'll move the public comment for people that are here for this item. Just briefly, I was just in a meeting with some folks from all over the country, and one county talked about the fact that they do a literacy summer camp every year, which I thought was such a great idea. But it's, I mean, we're not quite there yet, but in terms of a long-term goal, they had some really good statistics. Okay, thank you, Commissioner. All right, anyone that's here for this item that wants us to address these two boards, come on up. We've got two places. We've got a pudding here and a desk over here. You'll just introduce yourself. You'll see a clock. Green means go. Yellow means 30 seconds. Red means next person's turn. You can sit at the table or either of the parties. Just introduce yourself. Mr. Blunt? I just want to encourage the literacy efforts. I wish that we would focus more on the number one prime learning time in life is birth to five. The next prime learning time is six to 25, but by 20s, you're busy with daily life. You're learning. So there has to be some effort to support lap time for infants and books. That means supporting families. That might mean getting an early learning coalition that gets you into home daycares and get more lap time with books there. But if you don't start early, it's really harder. I was at the bus stop this morning, and I saw a mom hand her child a book instead of a screen, and I said, ah, they're still home. That's great. Thank you, Kelly. Next speaker, please. Come on up. Hello. I'm going to sit at the table because I just like being in a room where it happens. That's Alexander Hamilton says. But I just wanted to introduce myself. I'm the new director of Aces in Motion, Dr. Vincent Miller from Polk County. So I appreciate everything everybody was doing. And as I'm listening because I'm learning a lot, I would just encourage access is so important. So I sit on a lot of boards in Polk County, and I'm an advocate for black and brown. I'm just going to put that out there. And so access to me is so important to make sure that we are reaching out to our clergy in those access areas to make sure that they are at the table when we're having these conversations so that they know and our students know how to get access to these opportunities. So as we are creating and building, please make sure that we're reaching out to our clergy as well. And again, PEAK has been amazing, amazing, amazing. So I wanted to say thank you. I have sat at the table with about three or four principals. And again, we always have that 40% that we have to reach. And the biggest conversation actually out of the meeting today at a middle school is that access. So thank you so much. Thank you, Dr. Miller. Thanks for being at the Trust on Monday as well. Appreciate you. Welcome to Lafla County. Anyone else? Yep. Come on up. Hey, y'all. I'm Christy Arrington, Girls Place. Happy summer camp to everybody. I just really want to day – four days, only four days. I really appreciate the efforts on behalf of our children in this community. I like the collaboration. Literacy is such a heavy lift. We at Girls Place have been really fortunate to work with America Reads, with Reading Pals, with United Way, and with PEAK. And really grateful that PEAK is stepping in this summer and didn't blink when we said yes, please. The only disconnect, I feel, is when are the schools going to help us make that bridge? So the community is investing in us and our kids, and I appreciate that. Without that link to the school system, that concerns me a little bit. And we love our literacy bins, and we're grateful for those, too. Thank you. Thank you, Christy. And thank you for also making the time to always be here. Anyone else? Okay. All right. Dr. Keegan, thank you. Great presentation. Thank you. We're going to move on to our next item, if that's okay, Madam Chair. All right. We've got family eviction, housing civility convening, and we've got Ms. Goldwire, and then from the continuum of care, we've got our director, Ms. Tuck, and Christy, you're going to take us off? Yep. All right. You're recognized, Christy. Thank you. I am going to pass around. And just real quick, so county commissioners, this is what I talked about at the last board meeting on Tuesday. The trust board did take some action. Christy will go over that, but there is an ask on this one. Yes. And so I am passing the recommendation around, because what you have in your packet is a little different than the final recommendation that was approved at the board meeting on Monday. So we did host our family eviction and housing civility convening. What I'm going to do today is go over the presentation, the key points, recommendations, and just provide a little bit more information. And at the end, I will also turn it over to Dr. Hart in case she has some additional information that she'd like to provide. Next slide. For our eviction convening, we did have two moderators, Frank Wells and Tracy Blue from the Bright Community Trust. There were a variety of community organizations represented at the convening. We have family resource centers, the school district, county social services staff, family promise was there, as well as county and city of Gainesville commission. Next slide. We did have a full house. Our purpose was to ensure that we understood the challenges that families were facing. We wanted to ensure that we understood the gaps and the services and what was available, what were the largest gaps in our areas. And we wanted to make sure that we had actionable solutions that we could present back to the Children's Trust Board, as well as bringing them to Alachua County Commission. Our convening did include guided discussion points that were used to determine, again, what was available, what was effective, and really looking at the opportunities, especially for organizational collaboration. We thought that was extremely important, as we have lots of organizations here working with families on multiple different levels. Next slide. We learned a lot. We learned a little bit of what we know. We learned some new things that are those who were in participation and collaborating with us. A few of those that stood out the most, wage insufficiency, of course, jobs paying $15 to $17 an hour cannot cover current housing costs. And even when we have a family that is successful in securing a job, making $25 an hour, they lose their benefits, which is also called the benefits clip. So they lose their benefits, and then they find themselves back in the situation that they were before they were able to successfully identify a job making $25 an hour. Also, the eviction record impact. What we know is that when someone has an eviction record on their file, they cannot apply for a subsidized housing. And so those types of challenges, those are what our families are facing every day. They also experience very high move-in costs, first, last, deposit, requiring them to have $3,000 to $5,000 just to identify an additional place to live. There are application barriers, some of them costing $50 to $100 every time you apply to live somewhere. And then we have the late fee trap. Even if you've identified the dollars to pay your rental fee that's late, then there's an additional $200 and $300 on top of that late fee, as well as substandard housing conditions. Next slide. When we thought about the service gaps, those participating in the convening, they identified insufficient case management. Many of our providers lack adequate managers to provide stability support. And so when we think about expanding the funds required for increasing case management, let's think about the entire organization. What does that mean? If we add staff, what does that mean for those who are supporting those staff? Another service gap is limited rental assistance. Most of our organizations allow a family to apply for rental assistance once. And if you have, if you're experiencing financial instability, you need help more than once. And so really looking at the gap that that is creating and considering changing procedures and policies within your organizations that allow a family to come back for assistance if needed. We also thought about long-term intervention funding. We know that many families are struggling with generational poverty. And how do we pull them out of that? And one-time $800 award does not pull them out of generational poverty. Next slide. Lots of key findings. I will not go through all of them. But I will say within your packet, you do have the supporting documentation that goes into detail about each key finding. I would love for us to really start thinking about ensuring that families have the opportunity to request the type of help that they need in a way that they're comfortable, in a way where it doesn't feel, they don't feel embarrassed to ask for the support. And really making sure that the support is available to them. Next slide. Here you have your recommendations. And I gave away mine as well. So may I follow one? Thank you. So in front of you, not on the screen, but in front of you, what the board agreed to, the Children's Trust is going to fund two case managers at Family Promise in the amount of $118,000 annually for two years. Which will only serve families with children. And the ask is that the city and the county match the case manager funding as well. The second recommendation is to request the Alastair County Board of County Commissioners and each of the municipalities where there's a family resource center and ask them for additional funding for those centers to expand support for emergency needs, including emergency rental assistance for eviction prevention. And I'll turn it back over to you, Mr. Chair. Okay. Thank you, Ms. Goldwire. And before I go to Commissioner Pritzia and then Commissioner Alford, I just want to kind of frame this. And I know Dr. Hart also wants to speak. So this whole discussion, I believe, really started a couple of years ago with Mary and Dr. Hart and an amazing group of women that were meeting about homeless families. Dr. Hart has been talking to the trust for two years about this and the need to invest on the front end to prevent evictions and then obviously to deal with evictions. We received at the county commission and the city received a group of citizens over a month ago that resulted in a chair letter from us and from the city. And so this convening is where this recommendation came out. There's obviously an ask and I'll turn it now over to my colleagues to comment. So Commissioner Pritzia and then Commissioner Alford. I guess I did want to offer the chance for Nancy to say something and she wanted to do. Yeah, Dr. Hart, are you available to kind of start this discussion? I know she may have something she wants to say. Yes. And I really thank you for the sake of the audience. I think everybody at the table knows I've been working on this for two years. But for the sake of the audience, I learned so much. And one of the things I want to point out is that Alachua County should be very proud of all the success that we've had housing adults. Grace Marketplace has been wildly successful. We've reduced the number of people in the pit counts by over 60 percent over the years. The Grace Marketplace has been active. But the fact of the matter is there's really nothing that Grace offers for families. So you know me. I'm always thinking about mothers and babies and what's going on in their lives. And that's why we decided after we got the Children's Trust, we decided our next project would be working on homeless children. So congratulations on the success. But oops, we were unable to really help families as much as we wanted to because HUD doesn't define family homelessness the same way it does single person homelessness. And families are very reluctant to come forward and say, gee, I am living in my car behind Walmart because they're afraid that their children will be taken. So a lot of these families are hidden underground. And the only person that really knows about them is Pam Marsham at the McKinney-Vento program. And she doesn't even know about all of them. So we have our resource centers, which started, you know, shortly before the SWAG initiative. We started with our first partnership resource center. And now we have a bunch of them. But what I learned about those wonderful organizations and the wonderful resources they provide to families is that they do not do long-term case management. So that means if someone comes into a resource center and says, you know, if you could just help me get new tires on my car, I could get back to work and I'll be okay. Or if you could just help me pay this one bill, I'll be okay. Or if you could just help me with one month's rent, I'll be okay. Well, the fact of the matter is that of the families in crisis, only 20% of them will be just fine after that sort of short intervention. The other 80% need long-term support in order to be stably housed and remain so. So what we found out is that even the family resource centers refer those people to Family Promise. And as you know, Family Promise stepped up and was able to take the people who were still at St. Francis House and Arbor House and find them a place to live. But they have a really limited staff. So our suggestion to the Children's Trust was let's see what we can do to beef up the staff who can do the long-term case management through Family Promise. And so that's why the trust really would like city and county to help as well, not only with some case manager positions through Family Promise, but also help the partnerships have some cash so that they can do these 20% short-term interventions. And that's really all I have to say is that we need Family Promise because it's really basically the only game in town. Thank you, Dr. Hart. Okay. Commissioner Priscia and then Commissioner Alford. Yeah. First, I want to say thank you to Commissioner Alford and Nancy and the others who've been leading the charge to think about this and bring it forward. And thank you to the trust for organizing the convening. I was able to attend the convening, and it was sobering. I think it's one of those things that, you know, I work on several issues that touch this issue, and so it was like reiterating things that I know, but thinking about them in the context of children really brings a new light to some of these issues. I'm going to try to get through this without crying. I think that I love these, and I'm happy to move those, but I do have some other things I think that we should do based on the convening, and that is, number one, I think that this presentation needs to come to the Affordable Housing Advisory Committee because our staff have already actually put forward additional eviction funding and rental assistance funding. They heard it, and they brought it, and we've already moved it and brought it to the board, and so it's already kind of happening, but I think one of the things that we tried, they tried to express, and I don't think it was like grasped by that board, was that flexible funds for several months are really important to these families. These families aren't just experiencing challenges with paying the rent. They're also experiencing challenge with getting to work. They're also experiencing challenges with child care. And sometimes having flexible funding support allows them to fix one small thing that can free up more cash to do much bigger things on their own. And when we restrict that funding specifically like it's only rental assistance funding or it's only for transportation assistance, what we're doing is essentially handicapping those case managers from helping those families with the thing they need most so that they can free up benefits or supports that they might have in other places and limiting that funding to only being used for this thing at this short time. And so I would love for our AHAC and for our board to consider the idea of freeing up some of the funding that we're allocating to our family resource centers to be flexible funding that allows, can be dedicated specifically to families with children, but allowing it to be flexible so that they can support whatever the needs are of that family and seeing them to get through the struggle that they're getting through. So that's one thing to I would love to add is that we refer this to AHAC and or to our board for consideration of making that funding, the funding to the family resource centers more flexible than just rent and eviction assistance. And I don't know how Nancy feels about that, so I'd love to hear her response to that suggestion. I think the other thing that I heard really loud and clear, and it's something I want to say to my board is that transportation is the number one thing that I continue to hear as a problem for families. And we hear it about every single population that we deal with. Every single time we have a conversation about any issue in social services, transportation comes up again and again. We have to get this RTS thing figured out. We have to get reasonable transportation options for people that are real time, that deal with real life happening in this community. And I know it's not going to be easy and it's not going to be cheap, but we've got to get it figured out. And we need to push the TPO to do it soon. Like not, oh, we're going to do this study and, oh, we're going to talk about it. Oh, in 10 years we're going to have a regional transit authority. But like we need solutions now. And with the cuts that are happening to our bus service, it's getting worse, not better. So we really need to come up with some ideas. So I'd like to add that we push our board and the TPO to be a part of this conversation as well. And last but not least, they didn't bring it up because I know it's too expensive and it's too big an ask or a task to think about. But we need two things to really solve this problem. We need roofs over people's heads and we need jobs so people can afford those roofs over their heads. And so, you know, doing real economic development and working with CareerSource to make it more accessible. I mean, what I heard in that room about how inaccessible CareerSource is, about how difficult it is to get through the paperwork processes and all the trainings and how many times you have to come back and how many forms you have to fill out in triplicate. And that's not CareerSource's fault. That's the federal government's fault and that's the state's fault. Like it's bureaucracy's fault, right? But we have to come up with some better strategies for how we help people who need jobs connect to jobs and how we begin to build a better job system in our community. So I know these are all really big issues and we have one small moment here, but I just wanted to highlight them because there was a lot of people in that room with a lot of vision and a lot of opportunity. And I know they're listening today even though they might not be in the audience. And I know that Mary and Nancy and others have been wrestling with this for a lot longer than I have in particular, but I really do think we need to take serious action on this. And if nothing inspires people more than children, then great. Like let's do it for the kids. So I just want to add to the motion or add to their recommendation, if you all are okay, to refer more flexible funding and to refer the idea of like finding real transportation solutions for families. To the TPO, which we're meeting on Monday. And the presentation to AHAC. And the presentation to AHAC. And to have a conversation with CareerSource and our other economic development departments and agencies about the ways in which we can create more approachable strategies for job skills, training, job hunting, and retooling people for good quality jobs. So are we ready for a second on that motion? Second. Okay, we've got a second from Kutcher Chestnut. So this motion would be matching the funding, and much of it is kind of right in line with number two on the Career Resource site. Okay, and we've got a motion and a second. Mary? I wanted to point out a couple of things. Under request number two about the municipalities being asked to allocate additional funding, I know you guys recognize that not all municipalities can do that. That's plenty. Well, they don't. Yeah. They did. Yeah. I mean, some can. It's request. Yeah. I just don't want to, you know, they're struggling to just make regular expenses right now. So some of them are. The idea here, if I could just address that before you get on to your next point, was that we recognize the Children's Trust's commitment to funding resource centers. And we recognize that they're not in every city, but they're in certain cities. And those cities that they're in are largely because the cities have stepped up, but the community around those cities have stepped up and said, let us take this banner. And so we kind of want to support our resource centers with our municipalities that this is an important thing in your city. And it's their citizens. No, I think it's a good point to make. And a letter coming from the trust instead of the county commission kind of cuts a little differently. And so it's going to be a chair letter from Mary to that. Agreed. I wanted to say, when we do have that conversation with CareerSource, one of the things that I think is lacking at CareerSource is childcare. And I know that's outside of the model, but the two times I've been in CareerSource and watched, you know, women come in trying to haul kids and do all of those things and trying to, you know, once someone is employed, they don't get a paycheck for a while, and they have to figure out that whole childcare thing. So if we had some sort of gap childcare program in there, I think it would help a lot. But I know we're getting way outside of the scope of what we were talking about. But we're not. I mean, no, but we're not. I mean, I think that's the thing is, like, this is such a big thing to put on an agenda. It's like, I mean, it's deserving of a whole set of conversations. It really is. And I think... CareerSource is now six counties, and that is our CareerSource representative. And if so, it's great that you're going to be able to bring this directly to them. Yeah. Yeah, and I, you know, and this problem with transportation is why I made that motion about a transportation authority, and I totally believe that we need to make that happen sooner rather than later. And I know that everybody wants to talk about it for a long time, and that Gainesville has their issues, but... That's what we're talking about on Monday. We will. Okay. That's all I had to say. Thank you, Commissioner Outworth. Commissioner Pinkison, and then we'll go to Commissioner Wheeler, and then we'll circle back around. Commissioner Pinkison. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I just wanted to thank a few people first, and I want to thank the Executive Director Piner as well as the wonderful staff from the Children's Trust because they were put in charge of coming up with convening this whole conversation, and they've done an excellent job. But I also want to thank Dr. Hart for being the champion for this because things, unfortunately, don't always happen unless there's a champion, and she really has dedicated a good portion of her life to making this issue known as well as all the issues at the SWAG area. So she's a wonderful complement to the county, and we sure are lucky to have them. And so when we discussed this the other day, there were a couple things. You know, we definitely feel that this is a very, very important issue because obviously it affects children. And one of the things that we recognized from on the time on the commission was it seems that most of the efforts were directed at single individuals and not necessarily to families. So during our conversation, and while the motion that Ken put forth the other day has it in there, it doesn't fully capture the intensity of what we would like, which is we would like it to the county and whenever this conversation takes place, to prioritize the family, to make a bigger deal about the family because that is when you help the individual, it's a wonderful thing. But if you help a family, you're helping, you know, three, four, five, you know, a number of individuals. Secondly, the other thing that came up was the limited options that we have. I think way back when there was the Interfaith Hospitality Network as well, and they helped families. But I think when COVID hit, that pretty much ended. So our option now, thank goodness, is the Family Promise. And in our conversation with them, because the trust recognized that this is a huge issue, the unfortunate thing is the trust funds and revenues, you know, are very limited. And as a result, what we wanted to do is we wanted to show that we do feel very much that this is important. So we would like to put some seed money out and to actually fund those two positions for two years, and hopefully after two years because of the yeoman's job that the county has done with the homelessness situation and the city to a certain extent as well, that they take over that because, you know, y'all are more familiar with this, and it would be best if it was handled, you know, in one entity or two entities. But the other thing that came up was that because Family Promises, the way their operation works, they felt that they could handle the two people that the trust is going to fund in their operation. And as a result, we said that was fine. However, and I'm not real sure whether I had this right, so I'm sure they can correct me if I'm wrong, they may not be able to house all of the – if the county is good enough to fund this and the city is good enough to fund it, that they may not be able to house the other advisors as well. And it may need to be located at the resource centers. I was – yeah, you finished, but I was actually going to suggest. And the resource center, we felt like this would be the trust contribution because, you know, our budget is, you know, we get about $10 million from Avaloran taxes, which obviously could change. But we dedicate like $1.7 million of our budget to the resource center. So it's a major contribution to make those happen. And so we would like to offer that, you know, that they have a place to stay. If the managers need a place to stay, we would be happy to have them there. The other thing that I didn't hear mentioned, and I'll shut up because I promised our chair that I wouldn't say as much as I did on Monday. The other thing is it's not just when they're homeless. If you can reach them before they become homeless so that they know that they could go to Family Promise or the resource center and say, you know, things aren't going so well, and it looks like if things don't turn around, we are going to have difficulty in being homeless, that number two comes into effect. And so if we can somehow incorporate that into the conversation, that would be very important. And the last thing, and I will shut up, is on number two, I think that's going to be the, you know, that's where there's probably going to be more money that has to be spent to address the problem because having the availability of funding so that they can pay their rent or they can pay their electricity bill or they can pay for transportation or they can pay for some health care that, you know, traumatic event that took care. That's, you know, that's where the, you know, and quite frankly, we recognize the problem. And I know everybody says, well, let the county fund it or let the city fund it. You know, unfortunately, we don't have the revenues to incorporate that into our budget. But we do want to definitely make our commitment, which is number one, funding the two managers for two years. And then number two, if y'all need the resource centers, you know, they're there for you at your disposal. So thank you very much, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Commissioner. We've got Commissioner Wheeler and then we're going to do Chair Chance and then back to Alfred and Prizia. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I feel like I've not been effective in getting the information to all of you all about what Community Action Agency is able to do. I've been working with that group a long time. And we can keep people in their homes. There's money that has to be spent every month. They can't have a balance left. That money that comes in from the government has to be spent. And so if there are people who are not taking advantage of that, then, you know, we have, we're looking for places to get money. So please, and Dr. Ruff-Looney just gotten her Ph.D. Her research was on homeless children. And this is her experience and this is her background. So this is her heart. And so just please take advantage of what they have to offer. There's money that's coming in and it's got to go out. And I've used them to help keep people in their apartments in dire situations. Add that for a motion. Yes. So please, there's resources. That's another place where money's coming in from the federal government that needs to be spent. It's in three counties. It's in Madison and, I mean, Marion and Madison. Marion, Levy, and Alachua. Okay. Those are those three counties. That's great. Excellent. Commissioner Chichens. You mentioned the heart of that organization. And I was watching our heart, Dr. Hart, take a note there. So I think she wants to make that connection as well. Yes, it's Dr. Caroline Ruff-Looney at Community Action. My comment is much like with the literacy effort on the side of improving instruction, we're learning from other communities who've had some success with the model and adapting that for our community. I know nothing about transportation, but I do hear of creative solutions in the education field. And just as a, for instance, there's a technical arts high school placing students in paid internships in theater and the entertainment sector in Orlando. There are no bus routes that run at 11 at night, and so they did, I guess, enterprise Uber accounts to get people to and from. So I'm just wondering about, I understand transportation and buses are very complicated, but is there a way or a network to reach out to other communities who have come up with creative solutions that might not be so long-term to implement? Especially if you're... It's a standing direction, but it hasn't happened yet. I'm going to bring it up again. Dr. Hart brought it up. All right, good. Good point. Excellent. Can you complete? I am. Yeah, excellent. Okay, now Mary and then Anna. It was brought up in our meeting that Nancy Hart and I were in earlier today that recognition that on July 1st and then again, I think on January 1st, there are going to be new rules about employment for beneficiaries of SNAP and other government aid, and that's going to really change things in terms of the load on career source and all of these other things. So I just think we need to be aware of that as we're thinking about where we put resources. I think that's just something to keep in mind. Good point. Yeah, that's a really, really great point. Like a lot of people are, I mean, are really scared because they are having trouble already navigating those systems and now they're going to have to do it in order to keep the benefits that they need, that they use to survive. And if we end up facing budget cuts as well, then there's going to be even less resources to go around. So I do, I am really concerned. I think what I wanted to say is that the other thing that I wanted to add, I'm hoping, I'm hoping that the seconder is okay if we just add to the motion as well, is to make sure that all of the organizations in our community, particularly at least our county and the SeaTac and others, that have funding available, that it's not reliant on them to have an eviction in order to access that funding because there are a lot of situations where that is the case and if they've already been evicted, then it's already on their record and it's too late, right? I mean, that's the key of your flexible funding. Right. We want to get upstream of it. So I just want to be clear that that's part of why that flexible funding is so critical because they can work with them ahead of time. Can we add that we coordinate another part with the community action agency? Sure. That we reach out to the community action. And the other thing that I wanted to bring up is I'm really excited to hear that you all are planning to potentially place some of those case managers at the community resource or the family resource centers. It's something that we talked about several years ago when the family resource centers was just starting, the idea that we needed navigators or community health workers on site there that could serve as longer term case managers that could kind of track families and help families follow up with them. And I don't know where that program stands, but it is something that we talked about back in the day. We now have a community health worker program. And I know that, you know, we are just getting that going. But as we continue to think about how that program works and expands, it may be that complementing the family resource centers that don't have these case managers with a community health worker or at least some kind of a navigator position that can do follow-up with families, maybe something worth thinking about. And last but not least, I know it's kind of the elephant in the room, but all of these families, if they do end up facing homelessness, need shelter. And we don't have a shelter that currently supports families at all in this community. So it's something that I think we all need to take seriously. And I know we have a letter that we sent to the school board about the possibility of their facilities. I know that wasn't very well received. But I'm hopeful that we can still have that conversation and continue to push the envelope on that. So I would also love to add to the motion that we begin a conversation with all of the institutions in our community about what we're going to do about sheltering for family homelessness. So I've got seven parts to your motion. Do you want me to try to summarize it or do you want to try? You can go for it. One, to mirror the motion that Sea Tech did, which is that the county dedicate. Oh, and I wanted to let you know that we have dedicated $300,000 of, right now it's rent and eviction funding for the family resource centers. That was something that the board recommended or that the AHAC recommended to the board. And it was in the, I believe it was in our last meeting. So we've adopted that. So there is $300,000 funding right now. It's for family resource centers to use for rental assistance and eviction funding. Right now it's restricted to that. But if we have the conversation with AHAC, maybe we could. So let me try to summarize. So one, that we'll match, the board kind of commissioners will match. Two, that we'll join in the request to the cities. I think we've kind of already done that. Three, that we make our rent assistance more flexible and that we refer that to AHAC and to the board and take recommendations from community support with regards to that, recognizing that we have allocated an extra $300,000. Four, that we make a referral to the TPO. We're meeting on Monday. We really try to figure out the transportation issues, specifically with families and innovative solutions that are done in other counties. There's 67 of them. So someone may have figured this out. Four, that we refer to career source, the importance of jobs, and trying to streamline that process for folks that are suffering from unemployment. Six, that we make a referral to the Community Action Agency and connect Dr. Caroline ruffling with this movement. And seven, what was the last thing you said? We begin to explore sheltering for family homelessness. And we continue the discussion about facilities that the city and the county have initiated with school work. The only thing that is a change to that is that under the jobs and economic development side of things, I think we need to expand it beyond just career source. I think we need to get the other, like the chamber, we need to get our economic development department, the city's economic development department. Like we need to get the economic development agencies together to come up with a better solution than career source. Career source is a piece of the pie, but I think we're leaning too heavily on career source. So we ask for a committee? Yeah. Okay, does the second or check agree? Yeah, agree. All right, so we got a seven-part motion. This reminds me of somebody else in the room. Commission long motions. All right, we've got a motion on the floor. We're going to open it up now to the public to come speak to us about the motion on the floor. Anyone wish to speak to us? Yes. Kelly, you are recognized. Thank you. And thank you. I am looking forward to that AHAC meeting next Wednesday. As for the school board, now that the legislature is telling them that any space they leave vacant, any charter can move in, and the school board must maintain facility logistics, they should be anxious to have you come in and utilize that space and support yourselves instead of making them carry everything. As for career source, you were very generous to say it's the Fed's problem. Nah, it's career source. Remember, I spent years on the career source board, even all the way back to the wages board, where they would do everything by subcontractors and let those contractors self-evaluate. The original promise way back of welfare reform was transportation, child care, and training-slash-employment. They never got that together well. And now, career source, you go in career source and all the employees are rigidly siloed. Career source has become the spouse of the Chamber of Commerce. It's not doing what welfare reform was intended to, but that's welfare reform is what funded the wages board and a later career source, but they're not fulfilling that mission. As for the overall problem, though, with housing is affordable units, getting more units, and housing that's affordable and also safe and decent, not affordable because the building is leaning. You know, it needs to be actual good housing. And I'm glad that y'all have taken the step. You've talked about inclusionary zoning, whatever labels you want to call it, workforce housing, affordable housing. But I want to urge you to push, really push hard at your colleagues across the street on the city commission. And I know you have tremendous influence. Bobby Summer would be jealous of your relationship with the city commission. So push them, please, that their form of this same measure, inclusionary zoning is weak in all its parameters. If the percentage is set aside, the area median income they want to accommodate, there's no ownership component, period, and a short continuation of affordability aspect, you know, how long that housing has to remain affordable. And they tell me, well, be happy. At least we did something. We'll tweak it later. But you know that if one-party rule continues in Tallahassee, the preemptions are going to roll, like, well, what did Dr. King do? Roll down like water from a mountain. Yeah. And they won't have that power to tweak it. So they need to get something good from it while they have it. And the preemptions will continue if we continue one-party rule, and your meetings will be nothing but ceremonial. Thank you, Mr. Ball. Next speaker, Claudia. Good afternoon, Claudia Tuck. I'm the director of Alachua County Community Support Services, and I also serve as the chair for the Homeless Continuum of Care. With me is Jacob Torner, who is the vice president of programs for Task Force for Ending Homelessness. They're the lead agency for our local Homeless Continuum of Care. I know many of you are very familiar with the term Homeless Continuum of Care, but just to make sure everybody knows, I thought I would talk a little bit about that, and we're happy to be part of the conversation to add to what is out there. Homeless Continuums of Care are required by HUD for any community to receive homeless federal funding. They are required to be the local planning body to coordinate housing and services funding for homeless individuals as well as families. And they do that by promoting community-wide commitment to ending homelessness, funding providers to quickly replace, rehouse individuals experiencing homelessness, increase access to mainstream resources such as what you were just talking about, employment, health care, SNAP benefits, TANF, and to support self-sufficiency through programs and services. The way they do that through our Continuum of Care is a coordinated entry system where they use data. It's a data-driven system and with outreach services across the spectrum. So I wanted to just go a little bit into, you have a handout in front of you that I put earlier. We have two focuses within the Homeless Continuum of Care. One is, as you talked about, prevention, because, of course, that's our objective as well as the trust. We want to keep people housed. It's much easier to keep someone housed than it is to rehouse them. So some of the actions that have been taken by the Families Homeless Prevention Committee, which, by the way, is chaired by Soraya Cabrera, who is our social services director in the room with her hand raised. They are getting ready to begin some training for teachers and school resource officers to improve early identification of housing instability and then connect with available resources. Working with court administration, we tried to do some of that during ERAP with the eviction prevention funds that we had, and we want to continue to raise that discussion. We've had some initial conversations and so far it's been received. We are piloting a state-of-the-art homeless prevention request. I think Soraya has been working on this for five years, seven years. But finally coming up with a platform that is working and usable, and it will be housed on the website for the continuum of care, and the goal is to streamline assistance and service delivery for individuals needing prevention assistance. Is that just in housing, or will it streamline social services supports across the board? The focus to start with is homeless prevention. It's been a big lift to get it going. But we could certainly can, you know, if it works, if it works, then we could expand the scope. Exactly. Thank you, Commissioner. We also, through the COC, have added a Housing Partnership Manager position, and the focus of that position is to recruit new landlords, as well as to intervene to hopefully prevent evictions where possible. And finally, we just approved grants that will become effective July 1st, totaling $205,000, and those are sourced from state and federal funds, and they target homeless prevention to three agencies. Then current actions for families who are experiencing homelessness. We did hold a family summit March 30th. Many of you were there. We developed a lot of strategies from that. Some I listed above, and some are detailed below. And I won't go into the great detail because you have it in front of you again, but just to mention some. We have invested federal resources that come to us through the state through the continuum of care in rapid rehousing, over $800,000, and those go into effect July 1, and that's being awarded to five organizations locally. And just one point to note, our continuum of care does not just serve Alachua County. We serve Alachua County and six surrounding counties. The COC just released a letter of intent and made available $342,000, and it is specifically targeting faith-based or providers who would like to operate a family shelter. It's, again, looking at the need. Our Housing Action Committee is reviewing a host home, which is a national model program for single mothers and infants, again, to try and utilize available bedrooms across the community, almost like a modified ADU concept. Also, we have a proposal that we've been working through the continuum of care to try to get a currently non-operational family homeless shelter as a beginning to be operational again. So we are in current discussions with that board, but not prepared to discuss it yet, but know that we are working on it. We are also working on a landlord incentive program, working with the VA to end unsheltered homelessness. We hope to reach functional zero, but not sure we're going to quite make that this year. And that means, basically, you don't have any more people coming into your system than you're able to place in a month. We are... That would be amazing. That functional zero, yes. We have the vouchers. We just need the landlords. So... We are hosting a family resource event, and that is for families who can directly come in and access resources. That's on June 12th at the United Way. There's more than a dozen partners identified there. We are facilitating, hopefully, all will attend that are invited. So far, we have one party that I don't think has accepted yet. Partial. Partial, okay. June 16th, and that will be the meeting to evaluate underused public facilities, and I believe Commissioner Alford is representing you on that meeting. Has the whole board committed to coming to that? That's the partial. That's the partial commitment. We have the city, the county. Mr. Jacob Torner, Task Force Rending, almost as Mr. Chair. We've received communication from a school board employee supervisor who indicated that they may be in attendance, pending the superintendent's approval that they were working through logistics for attendance. Okay. Thank you. Churches? Churches? No? This is... The focus is on public facilities right now for this one piece. School board. I think you mentioned Takachali earlier, which got me curious. Would they be included? Should be invited. It didn't matter. We can certainly let the state know, Mr. Chair, that this is going on and we would like them to be there and if they can't make it by this Tuesday, we'd be happy to have another discussion with them about that. That would make Mary Helen very, very happy. She's been talking about it for five years. Yeah. Six. Eight. Eight. Sorry. We have also implemented an online homeless assistance tool, which I think many of you will be happy to know about, that is going to route requests for unsheltered outreach so that you can submit a request when you see someone who's homeless in need of assistance online on the task force website. So, and they will then be sent directly to the outreach provider that serves that population. Finally, this year's grant award from HUD for the homeless continuum of care, we continue to increase the funds that we're drawing down. We currently are getting $1.3 million. If you know, you remember maybe 10 years ago, we were only getting $600,000, so that is more than double what we were getting 10 years ago. We also hope to be able to tap into additional funds with this new upcoming NOFA. And then you see a list of other grant opportunities that have been released recently. Most of the federal HUD funds that are available that relate to homeless have to be submitted through the homeless continuum of care. They cannot be directly applied for. That's our presentation. That's been pretty good. Okay. Is there anyone else from the public before I get back to the board? Lots of things that are in the motion we can already... Yep. Come on up. Let me just do public comment and then you come up next. Yep. Can you introduce yourself? Give us your call. Hi. Yeah, Jerome McIntyre, City Councilman of Waldo. So, I'm listening to what you guys are saying and most of what you're saying is short-term housing. I'm not correct. That's like apartments and rentals. Are we doing anything with this initiative to spur on, like long-term housing, like debt, credit counseling, financial training, anything like that because we're noticing that one money or income is, you know, lack thereof of income but also misspending plays a lot of this eviction process as well. And, of course, when we're saying, when we're talking about apartments and rentals, we're leaving out the homeowners that are also coming up on tax problems, foreclosure, and, of course, missing payments or whatever, are we doing anything for the homeowners? And then, of course, lastly, I'm thinking, I'm looking at, you know, the businesses. You know, we're looking at jobs. I think Ms. Prezier spoke on, mentioned briefly about how the income or cost of living, the COLA is pretty, not even close to living for the average individual. Are we doing anything for business education, I mean, entrepreneurial support? Are we supporting the business owners and incentivizing them to actually pay more or recruit more or, you know, what, what, or, like, say, for instance, Waldo. We're, we're pretty, we're, we're, we're looking for new businesses to come here. So, is there anything we could do to try to get some housing and, you know, apartments and, you know, in our rural neighborhoods and communities like Hawthorne, Waldo, Archer? What are we doing for the rural communities? Gainesville got plenty of housing. You know, and I work with housing and I know that we've just built several new developments here but are we doing anything in Waldo, Archer, Monte O, Fairbanks, you know, the rest of the underrepresented people that are not in here right now. I think that was it. Thank you guys for your time. I just want to put something on you to give you a think about because I'm going to be begging for your money for Waldo. Next speaker, please. Hi, I'm Stacey Merritt with Partnership for Strong Families. We have Swag Family Resource Center and Library Partnership Resource Center along with the Community Resource Navigation Program that does serve some of the more rural areas of Alachua County. Really just wanted to say thank you for listening. I appreciated the convening and appreciate that the feedback and the recommendations from that are being shared today. I agree with Commissioner Prizia. I think really almost everything I wanted to say has already been said as part of the motion but I just wanted to kind of reinforce if we were able to do more flexible spending that that doesn't come lightly for the staff at the resource centers. There are assessment processes. We're really looking at the whole picture. If a family only needs one month of rent to get them back on their feet maybe they had a car repair and it is literally a one-time need then that's what we would be doing but we would appreciate the flexibility and the trust to be able to offer more when we need to and I know when we talk about housing we're usually thinking about rent but that also a lot of times does include the utilities so just kind of keeping that in mind as well. Again we're just very grateful. We're excited to work with St. Francis and the case managers and I do think it's an amazing idea to have case managers that are placed at the resource centers. We're happy to be part of that conversation. We may be the right sites or it may be some of the other resource centers that are in the county but we're happy to be part of those conversations to make sure that we have them in the right place and also I mentioned community resource navigation they're at different sites different days of the week so that may be something to consider to get more bang for our buck you know maybe they're not at the same resource center every day but they have a regular schedule at different sites so again we just appreciate being part of the discussion and we're open to future conversations as well. Thank you. Thank you Ms. Barrett. Can I ask her a question how many navigators do you have across the six resource centers? So we it's actually just partnership for strong families we have two community resource navigators they're not actually tied in with the resource centers they serve a total of six communities so some of those communities they're in two days a week and some just one day a week but we have two community resource navigators and they provide family support services throughout so a little bit of a different concept but they're providing those services in more rural areas of the Lachua County. Okay. Anyone else from the public? All right. Christy come on up. Christy Eric, the executive director of Girls Place just for some perspective we are grateful partners with the Children's Trust in providing direct scholarships to 75 girls this summer and when we're processing paperwork and we have 1040s and W-2s a family of four making $60,000 like I want to shout for joy because they're making so much money and it's not but the reality is that so many of those families are in the 20,000s in the 30,000s with two to four children and so it just I think there's a cliff too so I don't know how many hundreds of children thousands of children are being served by the trust throughout the summer but I should be excited that a family is making $60,000 with a family of four. All right. Let's bring it back to the board. Any other discussion to the motion on the floor? I do just want to point out one thing that I think is worth everyone just exploring for a mind experiment we have a really amazing organization in our community that does economic justice work and a guaranteed income program and they've had amazing success and there are cities and counties and communities all over the country that are also looking at guaranteed income programs that are having amazing success and what that does is put the financial decision making and the financial independence in the hands of the families rather than the hands of all these organizations that have to then navigate all these paperwork and everything like that and I know it's way bigger than today so I wasn't even going to put I don't want to put it in the motion right now I just want everyone to sort of explore it I just ask that each of you take the time and energy to really dive into what a guaranteed income program looks like there's a whole organization that's cities for guaranteed income and they're working on and I'll send it to the staff so they can forward it on to all of you but there are a number of really really amazing successful programs that with minor investments of like $500 a month of guaranteed income for the period of a year or two can change the trajectory of a family forever and with that added with a bit of case management and financial counseling to the gentleman from Waldo has made the difference in countless families' lives and it might be that we could take small amounts of money relatively small amounts of money and make those kinds of investments in a place where we can't control the minimum wage any longer and have a much bigger impact than we might with all of these various programs and how much money we end up spending in administration and paperwork and coordination and all of that if we just put the money right in the hands of the people who need it the most. Thank you, Commissioner. Any other comments on the motion? Commissioner Alper? So when Claudio was up here and talking about the continuum of care stuff it occurred to me just like Sarah Stacy said that a lot of families do struggle with utility bills and so when you is the continuum of care when you are connecting with landlords do you talk to them about the landlord energy efficiency program? Do you refer them to places like the rebuilding together and the COC I'm just curious I was curious how you are navigating that side of it. Mr. Chair the case managers work with the individual clients and identify resources and landlords I'm not sure that all the landlords are participating but they can tell the landlords about it. Yeah I'm hoping that they're telling the landlords about it because not only is that helping increase energy efficiency of the home it's guaranteeing that that home stays as affordable housing for a period of time so I just wanted to make sure that that was being connected somehow. Thank you. Thank you commissioner. Okay any other discussion county commission all those in favor of the seven part motion say aye any opposed that motion is unanimous told you trust they would come through right yeah great work guys thank you all right next up is the emergency assistant and family resource center we've got miss Kiner good afternoon Belita James I'm director of programs for the children trust of Alachua county and I just wanted to give you a brief update on the emergency food distribution that we participated in in response to the snap benefits disruption on January 20th 2026 the regional food bank decided went into a contract with us in November I'm sorry November 29th but then on January 20th 2026 they decided to not request any additional funds from the CTAC emergency allocation and initiated termination of the agreement the reason that they gave for this was that the demand for the second distribution cycle was limited and also the slow production and the cease of the snap benefit disruption in your packet you do have the number that we gave to our family resource centers which each family resource center initially started out with 150 boxes and then after that it followed up about four out of the six requested additional 50 boxes and I don't I don't think those 50 boxes went out so bread of the mighty then reported back to us that it was only 150 boxes that went out initially also I just wanted to give I'm sorry I wanted to give an update on our family resource centers along with supporting partnership for strong families family resource centers we have partnered to establish these additional centers in Micanope Willie May Stokes we started we initiated that in 2025 East Gainesville one community that was in 2025 as well and in 2026 we have added deeper purpose in High Springs City of Harthorn as well as City of Newberry is currently under contract review to start in 2026 as well that is the update good work okay any questions I guess I just want to iterate the emergency food assistance you know I just want to congratulate our staff because I think you know we put some money to the food banks as well as but we also put money into our local food system and to our local businesses and we invested in buying from our local farmers and getting coolers and then fresh food to our local family resource centers and while it was logistically challenging and it was a heavy lift I think they did an amazing job both our team and the family resource centers of figuring out those logistics so that we could help our families and now we have a system in place that is continuing and some of those resource centers are still ordering from those local farms and some of them have set up gleaning programs or free resource programs where they're getting more fresh fruits and vegetables from some of those farms so I just wanted to say thank you to all of you who really stepped up to try to do the hard work of figuring out how to fill that gap and to recognize that that gap still exists even though SNAP was reinstated it was reinstated with a lot of additional barriers associated with it and the cuts to the program and the increased requirements to the program continue to be added and I think come 2026 November December January of 2027 we're going to have additional ones so I just want to applaud all of you and say that the needs continues even though the crisis is over and just like housing food assistance is a real challenge and it's one of the number one things that we see in our communities whenever there's a food drive people line up around the block and there's real capacity being built at each of these different centers you know when we when this started three four years ago I mean it was it was tape and and you know and I'm seeing actually real real capacity being built with all the staff so thank you for that yeah thank you so much for your work Mary I think that we're going to see that crisis rise again with these changes in rules with SNAP and also with what's the other one WIC PANF and WIC okay emergency anyone from the public wish to speak to this item before we get to our last item all right back to the board the last item is the nonprofit life cycle oh I'm sorry Satori I'm sorry don't forget Satori I apologize Lee's over here screaming at me about it's getting close to six so I just remember those days but Satori I'm sorry go ahead welcome back yeah welcome back good evening everyone I am Satori days community stabilization program manager with the department of community support services and I'm here just to provide a very brief update regarding our community resource centers as a recap December 2024 we received a motion to begin a conversation about community resource centers to address community resource center needs next slide a part of the conversation was to define what community resource centers or CRCs are in our community as a public location for a community to gather for activities support and information centers can also be affiliated with faith-based organizations or government entities such as youth services youth centers or senior centers next slide to start our team prepared a criteria to identify what CRCs are in our community as a one-stop hub that provides services beyond one single need and we also acknowledge that there are other organizations in our community that are doing great things but for this particular pilot program is more so working with those who are a one-stop stop one-stop hub with the BOC approval next slide we identified 12 of our community resource centers were identified and were surveyed to ask what their needs were what their programs and services were what their target populations were as well as partners that they work with CRCs are represented throughout our community especially in our rural community next slide so only five on that list aren't family resource centers at this point right yes awesome this is just a brief chart highlighting some of the services that the CRCs provide in our community from after school programs transportation clothing housing and food next slide so as a follow-up to the survey we received an additional motion to provide various technical support as well as collaborate with CTAC and community foundation to develop recommendations to support resource centers next slide in our meetings with CTAC we learned that six of our CRCs either receive funding or are designated as a family resource center those designated as a family resource center has specific training towards a national model and just a correction the city of Hawthorne receives the funding and the Hawthorne area resource center acts as a collaborator with CTAC next slide and just a brave very brief recap of our support to our CRCs in response to the snap delays we partnered with the six CRCs as listed on the slide to provide two hundred thousand dollars to provide weekly fresh produce to food insecure residents most of these CRCs they do have the capacity to do the weekly food distribution so that was a very big win and impact for our community and also we provided the commercial refrigeration to three of the CRCs to address food insecure residents to assist in the weekly food distributions as well as food throughout the week often families and households may not can make that weekly distribution but they can come in the day before or day after to receive those fundings or as they visit the centers asking for one thing they may leave with bag of groceries as well just to have that on on standby for them and our final slide we are continuing to provide technical assistance to the CRCs through the county's online grant portal as well as sending out grant opportunities and funding opportunities to email to all of our CRCs and through the county's affordable housing trust fund we will provide three hundred thousand dollars to the six of the CRCs that are designated as FRC or collaborators via social services to provide rent and utility assistance through referrals to help communities and housing stability and speaking with some of the CRCs they don't have the capacity or applications or staffing to provide that service so they will collaborate with our social services team in regards to that good work that's really good work and just to update we'll be adding the city of Newberry to this also just to update excellent thank you candy okay any questions commissioner great update okay so Tori thank you so much all right now that leads us to item four nonprofit lifecycle pilot program I think I mentioned to this that the trust was going through this even though we are not a nonprofit we are an institution so we deal with many many many nonprofits and so correct director kinder you're recognized yes sir thank you mr. chair so I just wanted to make you all aware that the trust completed a strategic plan we began we kicked it off in July of last year we adopted it in the beginning of March of this year and it's going to take us through 2030 when we will go back out for reaffirmation here in our community and hopefully we will be around forever right and so during that process we started talking about building capacity if we want our partner organizations to be sustainable if we want them to continue to do the great work that they've been doing then we want to help them build their capacity and so we began looking at this process called the life cycle thank you for to run the nonprofit life cycles institute we had a facilitator come in and work with the trust we went through the self-assessment as a trust staff and the trust board to figure out what our strengths and what our weaknesses were and we decided that this is something we want every funded partner to do and so in the upcoming fiscal year every partner that works with the trust will go through this process they will complete a selfie that's what it's called a self-assessment they will then determine based on the information that they get back what their plan for the year will be what actionable item or professional training that they feel will help them build their capacity and they will be able to initially they will work with the facilitator who will take them through that process and then they will work with the center for non-profit excellence on building out their process again the with the goal being to strengthen their capacity and so we thought we would kick off this process this summer our after-school providers are great partners with us and so we asked them them if they would come in this summer to go through the process to give us some feedback on the process in hopes that by the time we get to October 1st and we kick it off in the new fiscal year if there's some kinks or some things we need to tweak we will be able to do that so we just wanted to share that with BOCC that this is a part of the process for the trust moving forward our goals goals didn't really change in our strategic plan except for goal 4 which is building the capacity not just of the trust but of our trust providers Mr. Chair or Ms. Chair so this was a concept that as you get to know me I have a problem with if I learn something in one part of my world I have I have to share it with others who I think it might be helpful and I hope this is helpful but the organization that I led up until a year ago that's statewide organization for education foundations we went from a $7 million organization doing a well-established menu of work to a $27 million organization with a whole other way of working with a federal grant and drawdown funds getting it out to 67 school district education foundations around the state and we were chugging along really great but then this new opportunity came so we were up here at maturity as a 20 plus year old organization and suddenly we had a choice of either our systems were going to fail and our operations weren't going to be strong or we needed to regenerate and go back and so we went through this as an organization it helped me see where we needed to reboot in order to change and with the growth that had come at us so rapidly and you know as we talked with providers every month and drawing down funds you know sometimes these are new opportunities coming to them that they need to be ready for and ready to sustain so the theory is that you know your programs are where everybody's passionate about but if their business model their governance their systems their management is not stable if one of those legs is wobbly it can pull the whole thing down and I'm sure you've seen that in non nonprofits but other organizations as well so I think it's a wise investment in both the providers and the trust to take this long view to help them strengthen to be able to continue to carry out their programs and grow okay great overview commissioners any questions I guess I have two questions one is are they defining their own like itself so they're defining their own level of comfort with their governance and their management so it's not like this is what governance should look like or this is what management it's sort of like what do you think your needs are and what do you okay that's great because I think you know I've seen this model a lot and I and I really appreciate it but I think one of the things that I struggle with is that it it can get into this sort of very corporate like this is what government should look like this is what management should look like and I think we have a lot of organizations that are very non-traditional in our community or take approaches that are built from other cultures or other ways of doing that work and I would hate for us to sort of impose well right but I would say if there's things on their 990 that they have to say oh they do like I don't know CEO compensation review or whatever like that they right whistleblower yeah exactly but some people who start as well-intended volunteer organizations don't know what they don't know I didn't know what I didn't know when I moved from for-profit to nonprofit leadership so bringing them along and giving them a safe place to learn that and improve before there's a problem I think is an important thing to do yeah absolutely 100% I guess my only other question was how does it how does this impact like once they've done it does it impact their funding at all like or their ability to access capacity funding like is no the goal is for them to to grow and evolve so the hope is if they are also seeking additional funds they would be able to yeah be able to scale this is all about helping our providers be sustainable you all know we don't know what's going to happen after November and if the resolution passes and our funding is reduced then everyone that we work with will need to be able to scale and go out there and seek additional funding from a myriad of sources we're hoping that this process will give them the tools to do just that and hopefully also collaborate with one another even more well I would be very interested to understand what comes out of it in terms of like what are the organ are there common themes in terms of the organizational needs or capacity like do we find that yes that could be a place we've talked a lot about capacity building for organizations and I think we've tried to think about how do you fund that but without understanding it better and what the different mixes are of needs in our organization it's hard to know so I'll look forward to hearing this next year with what you found yeah absolutely okay thank you commissioner anybody else anyone from the public on this side hey Sherry hi there Sherry Kitchens president CEO of the child advocacy center I was planning to be here just to listen and learn today but we were fortunate to have the opportunity to work with Teresa Beachy and the center for not-for-profit excellence with this life not-for-profit life cycles project and our board and our staff went through this this process in April and May and it's been really really amazing not only as a systems organization that works within several systems it allowed us to take a look at what we need to do internally to get stronger and how our board plays into that and can help us and how that and it's impacted and improved our board staff relationships which just makes us all better so to me it's been a really wonderful opportunity it's also a different way to do your strategic planning how many of us have gone through hours and hours and hours of strategic planning only to wonder what the plan is at the end this was very succinct and spoke to a lot of us who do systems work and community systems change as our the way we function so we really benefited from it I hope to seek to reap the rewards later as we look for additional funding sources as you all know this is going to be a really tough time so thank you all so much thank you miss kitchens next speaker anybody else yeah come on up um marcia i just a question before i made my comments were you going to go over the the strategic plan for the next couple years it was just a part of the presentation no that's it no it was just the backup to okay explain to them why we were okay so my name is jeff parker i'm i'm sorry to cut you off my my name is jeff parker i'm the executive director from igb education um i just i wanted to come and i've you know i've i've tried to think succinctly how i want to put this there's so many things that i want to touch on but i appreciate this the capacity building for for partners here um first of all i want to thank the the board of county commissioners for what you do we're funded by you for the gun violence prevention program i want to thank you for that the children's trust has been phenomenal with us they funded our mentoring program our enrichment program a summer program we have we have 45 scholarship students that's going on out at newberry right now and we want to thank you for that um but i i'm i'm trying to figure out i spoke at the uh the children's trust board meeting on monday because you know i'm sitting here now and i'm listening to this meeting and i'm hearing that that we're you know we're going to give two hundred thousand dollars or two hundred thousand dollars or more to fund the literacy issue in our county and it's going to go to something affiliated with our school system um you know just just looking at the budget around 600 million dollars was appropriated for our school board this year why are we giving more public taxpayer money to something that's affiliated with our school board that's already failing our children to to to direct literacy i i don't that that's the definition of insanity we keep trying to do the same thing over and over again and expect a different result and i'm not and please i worked for the school board for 11 years i had a great experience there i had a great time at east side high school as a dean i was a special ed teacher for 11 years in north carolina before i came to to florida so i i i understand the the the issues within the school system and in the confines of where it is and and and i'm no way am i trying to attack any person or any any individual in this i know everybody this is this is a thankless job we all have but i'm sitting here as a small organization we we we did we served over you know 460 kids last year and we're going to say we're giving two hundred thousand plus dollars to the school board for literacy programming and come september 1st we're not having an rfp for enrichment which which was the contract i had so now i don't have that coming up i can't answer another rfp for that mentoring we were told that that would be done for this year it's not being done and then we have so the only thing we have left the contract was a one-year contract for gun violence so essentially all we have now is we have a contract for the summer program and we'll do our best to deliver that programming but but we're taking money we're taking taxpayer money and we're giving it to a already state-funded entity that has failed and i and i i i i know this not directly to them okay i'm not i i know it's but essentially it's still going into it's going in the same area we have programs there's programs that work there's i got the right legally you can't but there there's there's programs that work that we can do that are look at what peak has done and they've done a great job there are people in the community that can do great things but we're not having an opportunity now to address these things because we're using money and we're not having rfps so now we have a program that we're not going to be able to fund and essentially i'm not going to be able to serve over 400 students and i'm going to have to tell myself and my employees that hey i don't have any money to pay you until next summer because we have no other we have no other contracts available because there's no rfps thank you thank you thank you for your time thank you for your time next speaker okay uh let's bring it back to the board anything else on the life cycle missed that comment probably on the first round but okay let's go ahead and move on to the next round all right thank you marcia all right this is our opportunity now for the public to come to us on anything that has not been discussed that you'd like to address to public i want to thank the uh children's trust for what they're doing together with gainsville housing authority it's been announced through this week on public radio about the children's dental i think that is amazing uh as a nurse i appreciate our worry about how people don't understand that dental problems can lead to incredible health issues even you know cardiac infections and it's it's really important uh however whenever you get helpers like wuft announcing this on the radio please make sure you do it well their announcement says that the uh the dental thing is going to be north of eastwood meadows high school there's no such thing because they're so they're mixing together the names of two large campuses i envision somebody getting off the city bus over that way and wandering around these two huge areas searching for that they don't give a contact number or website they don't tell what time so the announcement is happening but it's it's sloppy output so make sure your helpers help you well i hate to think of somebody getting off the bus over there with kids and wandering around both those places trying to find this and they have no one that they have they don't know who to call or who that so they should have had contact info in there they should have had an actual location instead of this fictional yeah eastwood meadows high school and uh i actually called the station this morning and pointed this out i got a recording and i've had i've heard that revolving announcement two times since then uncorrected so make them do it right thank you all right anyone else public comment all right we'll close public comment that moves us now to commission comment mayor helen you on anything i just have a question um about what the gentleman was asking about no rfps does does that mean programs like his can't ask for grants from the children's trust i don't know how that works yes that is exactly what that means so when we have funding opportunities we we release an rfp for a specific activity or program um we've decided not to release any rfps until after uh we know what happens in november because that will impact our funding and it might impact our priorities so um that's what happened thank you and there there are some changes in according to the strategic plan as well so you might not remember that commissioner coming i brought up last year that we were funding 16 million of programs with 10 and a half million of ad valorem and that next year we were gonna make really tough decisions that next year is here so are there other programs that could the gun violence program it has its own separate funding doesn't it it did for uh this year for the year that we're currently in so we gave money to the county and money to the city but we will not be funding uh that project in 2026 2027. okay okay so that was through you all yeah all of those funds came through and from the trust okay thank you and you might want to tell them about the hundred thousand dollars for enrichment yeah so um since we uh this is the end of our uh two-year enrichment uh to the tune of almost a million dollars we were funding enrichment uh providers who could go throughout the county um as we looked at our strategic plan and looked at how we were going to uh begin to fund with intention uh all of our programs for high impact uh we didn't like it but you you you have to do it um we decided that uh we would not refund uh the 16 enrichment uh programs but we would set aside a hundred thousand dollars so that our after school programs uh and potentially our summer programs programs for next summer would be able to draw down those funds and they would be able to reach out to any enrichment provider that they've already developed a relationship with and they know that their programming really work for their for their children for their demographic did that include because you all were doing the music program correct we had 16 of them okay yes so was that gonna be cut yeah all of them all of them well their contracts ended it's not so much that they were cut gotcha i understand they ended and with our uh new priorities um and really trying to be intentional with the funding we said we would put aside a hundred thousand dollars so someone could go out to those music programs and bring them into their after schools or to their summer program okay thank you thank you ma'am it's a classic example of um you know under the allows for county reeds program it's certain funds that's available for certain things you know we hear all the time why aren't you paving my roads but you're building a park it's those funds are designated differently how how much was in the enrichment bucket that's no longer in existence do you so it was almost about nine hundred thousand dollars and we shifted that to to a hundred thousand we reduced it to a hundred but we are shifting we're we re reallocated funding to other places so we now are building capacity we're going to help programs become sustainable so how how it it looks different um but it it will it'll all come together in the end so if things play out in such a way that there aren't property tax reforms or cuts um and don't get be clear this is me and my own personal opinion it isn't just a reform it is a cut and it is a long-term deep cut in communities ability to support themselves um what would would you consider expanding that that enrichment bucket so that those organizations could not enrichment but we would be releasing the prevention uh rfp that we've been talking about that would have some component of the mentoring and all of those other things will move forward okay just didn't feel that we could do that right now until we know you know okay so it's not a no it's a wait and see gotcha okay do you conclude any other comments yes i do thank you yeah you got anything um i just i i'm gonna bring this up at the commission meeting but i wanted the children's trust to hear it too um you know we did we did the forward focus program we've been looking at uh the needs in our eastern alachua county um this is true across our entire county but it was particularly true there that health care came up a lot for families like access to health care because there aren't any clinics and there aren't any uh there aren't a lot of clinics of any out there and so they really rely on our mobile clinics um i since just recently met with our mobile outreach clinic um and the ob-gyn clinic mobile ob-gyn clinic that just got started last year and a half ago or two years ago and um both of them are facing major cuts to the federal grants that they receive to be able to operate and they um they have maxed out the support and the in-kind services that uf health is able to provide um so they are struggling to meet their ends meet and i'll be bringing some potential opportunities for us to collaborate with them and look at how a partnership with them could look so that we can answer the needs of rural health care in our community to the county but i wanted the trust to hear that too because i know health is a part of your overall goals mission and strategic plan and i just wanted you to know that the mobile clinics that are serving our children and now ob-gyn are are looking for in total i think about five hundred thousand dollars in funding to be able to continue to support the services they've been supporting and expand where they've been having demand and needs and haven't been able to expand yet okay thank you thanks for bringing that up chuck do you have anything i didn't want to say anything but it's important that our citizens and folks realize that this tax proposal is bad and i hope uh people are actually paying attention to it and really studying this issue so they can make a decision on how they're going to vote on this issue uh it's going to cut a lot of programs it's going to hurt a lot of people and it's not good you know and i think that i think i stated to uh commissioner a few minutes ago that one of the things a lot to account is really missing is industry if we don't get any industry we're not going to be able to get the jobs that people can make a living wage in our community and if we don't begin to get serious about trying to get industry in our community uh it's going to get worse before it gets better and look man i've been in politics a while now and that's the major thing that's missing in our community it's like industry it can be clean industry i don't want any dirty industry but but it can be clean and it will be beneficial to the people in this community in terms of creating jobs and economic uh mobility upward and i think that that's the problem in our community right now uh folks are really struggling in this community because it's not really that amount of income in our community uh to go around to help folks and folks to give when they have extra it's not things are going to get tight it's going to get worse and i just wanted to say that that will solve some of our problems in a lot of what can we begin to work toward because if we don't get it we're going to be like we are now struggling so that's all my comment okay thank you commissioner uh commissioner albert uh yeah i just wanted to share real briefly the um uh program that i'm working on with the health department with the support from the de beaumont foundation and the national association of counties i was uh our team was picked to um be part of this national cohort that is um doing a public health project our public health project has to do with um vaccinations in school-aged children and what we are doing is we're mapping we're starting out by mapping the vaccination rates across the county overlaying that map with a map of um increased hospitalizations for flu-like illnesses and finding the hot spots and then taking a community uh approach to each of those hot spots to try to increase the vaccination rates um i would like at some point possibly to present this information to the children's trust when we uh get that analysis done because at that point we will be looking for some small amounts of money not large amounts of money to do this uh community outreach because we we know it's not just vaccine hesitancy uh given the fact that so many children are unhoused or underhoused parents are overwhelmed we need um some real specific ways to outreach uh for certain population for instance maybe setting up tables at wick clinics and things like that so um i just want to share that because i feel like it falls underneath uh some of the children's trust goals for the next year i will mention to you i did i i someone that i was talking with one of the pastors that i was talking with heard that the other day when you were talking about it mentioned how much they enjoyed and appreciated working with the health department and our county teams when covid was happening around vaccines and was happening around vaccines in the community to reduce that hesitancy and be a place so they may be good yeah we're looking yeah we're looking at faith-based organizations as a partner yep thank you mary thank you for your leadership with naco uh dr hart do you have anything no commissioner peckerson just want to say thank you all very much for having us and um helping us with children in lots of county we really do appreciate it you have anything mary no i echo that as well i do have one thing for my county commissioner so um i got an emergency request to sign uh we had a fire at the transportation and apparently there's a big piece of equipment that needs to be replaced it's 413 000. normally that would be like on a consent agenda but because we're not meeting for another 10 days the chair was asked to sign it as an emergency order since we're meeting i'd love for you all to authorize that move to approve 400 and some odd thousand 413 890 okay thank you so we've got a motion to approve the request steve i told you i could get the board to approve it um any public comment back to the board all those in favor please say aye aye aye it was unanimous and now the chair does not make that decision anybody heard out there anybody heard was it is it it happened a couple weeks ago and so they are able to get that piece of equipment and i don't think they were able to have it in time for the meeting that we had on tuesday so i was i was signing stuff this morning i was like i don't remember this one yeah um okay so i think that concludes our business as a pretty heavy agenda to the staff that prepared on the trust side and the county side thank you for the good work you're doing we appreciate you and we are adjourned