Nov 17, 2022 Committee on Persons with Disabilities on 2022-11-17 3:00 PM

There you go. Whenever you're ready, sir. I call to warn the media about it. Then communicate on social media. Make it real quick. I think that I am recording an announcement. Yep. Just a couple of quick announcements. One, Heather, welcome. And we've got, of course, membership turnover, as always happens usually in the fall. So as a board, we are, as a committee, we stand at 11 members in the enabling ordinance. We're currently sitting at seven. So we're just waiting on the council to make a few more nominations, appointments, that I hope will happen over the next couple of months so that when we have our first scheduled meeting, if you pass one of these items in January, that we'll be up to full strength and we'll kind of soldier on. Like we did last year, our November meeting is generally kind of an organizing meeting for the next calendar year. So like we did in 2021 to prepare for 2022, today we have a number of items that are just going to kind of set us up so we as staff kind of know how to plan out next year's items for discussion and decision. So it may end up being a relatively quick meeting compared to most of our meetings. But, you know, I think we have a couple of important things, at least for our perspective, to make sure that we get your clear direction so that we can start planning for 2023 planning right. So, and of course, if anytime you guys have any questions, Tammy's around, I'm around, and we're always happy to answer any questions you might have. Thank you, Joe. What? That was it. Yeah. Are any new members coming? Do we have any new members coming? Are any other members coming? No. Nope, nope. We are a full deck right now, so we're seeing that seven members solidly can't make it today. So everyone else is present and counting for it. Oh no. Do we have any public comment? We do not, no sir. We have no public comment. We don't have any public comment. We don't have any public comment. We don't have any public comment. I have no comment. We don't have any public comment. I have no comment. We don't have any public comment. So this item is just, you received the minutes in your packet from the last meeting. So if you have any edits, you can make a motion to approve with a certain edit. Otherwise, we can just have a motion to approve and then Joe, you can call that vote. I call the vote, but we have to make an edit. I want to make an edit. We need to make no motion to approve. So is that a motion to approve? In a second. Okay. Actually, you do have to take the vote, though. So it's all in favor. All in favor. Aye. Aye. [inaudible] So a few of you may have been with us when we did this last year. So we, at the end of every year, we always elect a chair and vice chair for the next year. Our current chair, Beth, won't be continuing on into the next year with us. She's not here right now. Joe, our vice chair for 2022, has been stepping in a fair amount this year. So the chair will be the one to call the meetings to order. They are kind of the mayor of the meeting. They make sure that we roll through our agenda items in a way that is effective, efficient, and that there's good discussion facilitated. And, of course, the vice chair will serve in the absence of the chair. So the way we typically do this is that if anyone would like to make a nomination, just simply raise your hand. Joe, as the presiding officer of the meeting, will call on people as he sees those hands raised. You can make the nomination, and we'll ask if that person agrees to be nominated. And then once all the nominations are in, we will vote on each one in the order that they receive. So if Person A gets nominated first, we'll hold a vote on that person. And the first person to receive the majority of votes will be the chair, and then we'll take that same process for the vice chair. It's not as complicated as I just made it out to be, but that's the way we do it. And so you can open the floor for nominations. How will we open the floor for nominations? Can I nominate Mr. Rivas? I'm sorry. Joe for chair. Can I nominate? Any other nominations for chair? Okay. So you could call a vote for the chair. All in favor of Joe Rivas would probably be the best way. I nominate Joe Rivas. Aye, aye, aye. I'm on chair. And then so we can do the same thing for vice chair. I have to nominate Raul. That's right, yes. Raul has to nominate Joe. Um, do we have the vote? Are there any other nominations for vice chair? No? Okay. You can call for a vote. I can't vote. I have to vote. Okay. That's good. We have a chair and vice chair. Thank you. Thank you. All right. So I'll leave just to give a bit of background for this one. Somewhere in here I actually have the dates. Here they are. Let me make this bigger for everybody. So for the last maybe two years, we've adopted a every other month schedule for these meetings. I don't know that we've had any issues with it. Of course it's really the body's decision about how often they want to meet. And so if we've plotted out the schedule for 2023, generally we are on the third Thursday every other month at 3 p.m. right here. If this body would like to continue with that schedule for 2023 meeting every other month, we can do that. We can modify that if the body would like to do that. You're not necessarily married to this. We don't want to deviate it too much just for your schedules. But, you know, there have been occasions here or there where we've called a special meeting or I don't think it happened with this one. But when the winter weather gets bad, we have at the city had to cancel meetings if it was just too treacherous to get out on the road. And so I'll leave this to you guys to discuss. But I did want to give you a starting place as far as your 2023 meeting schedule. That should read 2023, not draft 2022. I think it looks great. Do you need a vote on that? This one, let me double check how we posted it. Yes, yes, we would vote on it. I don't have a vote on it. I think everybody okay with it. You may have to take a formal vote on this one. I would recommend that we take a vote on all the improvements that I think need to be made. We. I'm sorry. I'll get you the next item right there. You know, I think there's a lot of support on this one. You can put it in the community. So I do have a presentation for this one, and this one is something that, again, kind of allowing staff to plan out the year. We talked about this at our last meeting, and Heather, you weren't there for that, I don't know why. So what we typically do or we try to do is to outline our issue priorities, what this board wants to hear and talk about over the ensuing year, knowing that that will evolve and change over time. This is all the background you saw last time around, just generally the scope of the committee, you know, generally advising on disability concerns, accessibility and accommodation. With respect to city projects and services and activities. Here's a little bit more detail about what what the body can discuss. One thing that I don't know if this mouse works. There it is. Improving, improving operations of other entities. So that's an area where there's been a lot of interest lately, particularly with maybe our transit authority elections. I believe came up as a discussion point, we'll get to that in a minute. Most of these city staff have some level of authority to make changes, usually with other entities. We bring them in to give them input and feedback and then, you know, we may not see much out of that, depending on their ability to make that change. But it is something within the scope of the committee, so if you wanted to have some other, you know, Denton County or the school district, whoever come in because you want to know and provide input on some topic that affects our community, that is within the scope of this committee. So it doesn't just have to be city services, although that is one area where we absolutely do appreciate and value your input. So I did list our areas of interest from 2022, the bold ones are the ones that we were able to bring forward to the committee. There were two that we were not. Sheltering during emergencies, while we did talk about emergencies, we didn't really have anything specific on sheltering. And then the 311 system, that project is just a little bit more delayed, so right now we just don't have much to bring to you until we're a little bit further along with the implementation of that project and how that would or would not affect persons with disabilities and the accessibility concerns. So we're still pretty early in the implementation of that. So we talked about the discussion we had last time and what we want to do today is just, I took really good notes or what I hope are really good notes from that discussion last time. And this is what came up in terms of this committee's priorities for 2023. And what I heard was definitely want to discuss D.C.T.A. at the earliest opportunity, want to discuss elections at the earliest opportunity, I'm sure preferably before our next May elections. So that we can, they can talk about how they work with people with disabilities and some of the things they go through regarding accessibility. Disaster planning is always seems to be a great theme here in Denton, but I think specific to that I know I heard pretty resoundly that sheltering was one thing that y'all want to specific focus on with disaster. So there were a couple other items, so we might, as time allows, have Bob come in on several different meetings just to provide different topic areas because emergency management, disasters, it's incredibly broad. You just can't squeeze it into one discussion or presentation. Adaptive recreation, and this is probably an area where we would have at least two just updates as a matter of course they can update this group on the program, what they've done. And then special events was one that we had a discussion, staff was going to develop a policy, and you guys wanted to, once that policy was developed, y'all wanted that to come back to be federal by this committee. So that's what was discussed last time. We went in and we added a couple of additional things that we thought would be helpful for the committee so you can let us know what you think. One is an update on the ADA transition plan. So as you know we have an ADA transition plan that includes streets, facilities, and just kind of where we're at on those projects. And we also had previously with this committee brought in a discussion on volunteer opportunities, and I think it's probably a good idea to bring that back. That was about three years ago I think that we did that. And so just providing more information on how we organize volunteer opportunities in the city and to what extent we are making it very clear that these are roles that folks who have a disability that we're going to make accessible to them. Construction design input. That's certainly one where we always come in when when there's input to be given. And that's really project driven. So these are projects that are from start to finish take three years so we kind of get in there and the 30% design phase so just kind of when that comes up, we'll bring it up. I think the emphasis there would certainly be on the pedestrian, the pedestrian aspects of that project. Of course if it's a facility that's open to the public that as well. For instance, we had some good feedback on some of our, our police headquarters, and that was going through. We had some facilities come down the line, potentially. I don't know if this will happen in 2023, but as we come to a decision on how to use City Hall West, which I think we're going to rebrand historic City Hall. If we get to the point where we are doing mockups and design elements there. I'd like to bring that in front of the committee because that is certainly intended to be a community use space in some way or another. We have a shelter, which is about to open here in December. And that that came before the committee. That might have been in 2021, but it's about to open so once it's open, I'd like to bring that back and ask our daily bread if they would come in to talk about how when people needing shelter or people needing transitional housing, whatever it may be, but they also, you know, are working with some level of disability, how Luke 288 staff and how their programs make their services accessible and how they, how they work with folks who may have different needs. And so I like once they get up and running, I'd like to bring them in and see if they can talk about that for us. So, on the left is what the committee mentioned on the right is just simply what staff added more things will come up throughout the year I'm sure. But I think, you know, if the committee you guys can add or change anything that's on the screen. And we're happy to add that in. And we just want to make sure that we're bringing you items and issues that you want to talk about. And I will stop talking right now. I do have a question and I don't know if you can respond, or you can find out for us on 288 shelter is it exclusively run by our daily bread for the city have any participation in it at all. So the city is is we own the property we own the facility and we have an operating agreement with them so it we're not going to be running the operations of it, although we have, I would say we have a great partnership with them work very well so you know there's you know any area where we need to collaborate to solve a problem, you know both sides have always shown a willingness to be creative with that so so maybe transferring their all of their supports that are currently on Oak Street over to. Yes, so, our daily bread operations and then also they've merged with KOC. Those will and there's a sequence to it. So, when this opens on the ninth of December. Both of those operations and sheltering operations and then the our daily bread operations will be located and operating out of the 288 building, along with other wraparound services so social workers will be in there. The goal is to create kind of a one stop shop for folks who need shelter housing, other social work, mental health services, they can all get it there and the great thing about that facility is that it's open 24 hours so of course right now if you're experiencing homelessness, you sleep in KOC, you eat it, our daily bread and you have to go up about back and forth, and that's, you know, especially when the weather is either really hot or really cold that's a that's a that's a really tough thing to do. Very difficult to do. And it, when people come in and we can get them in the shelter, and they don't have to leave. That's more opportunity to get them plugged into services that they may need. Did that answer your question? It did. Thank you, and I just have one more. Okay, because it sounds like the model that served didn't use utilizing is with the wraparound services under one roof. Is that kind of what they're looking at. It's similar. Yeah, you know, ideally you know we have all of our particular homelessness, we have all of our homelessness services scattered about. You don't just need shelter, you don't just need this, you need a couple of different services but if they're all operating on a place. And that facility offered a lot of potential. We're not having to do a lot of reconstruction. Yes, and we double our beds in the city. And in an emergency we can go even higher with temporary events so say there's a big snowstorm, there's a URI, we can household. Which facility are they using? So, I don't know what it was before. It's right off of Loop 280A. It used to be Denton Development Center. It's kind of across from where the old driver's license is. There's a substation right there right next to it. But yeah, so that building was purchased with the intent. City funded, county put in some funding to just really have a one stop shop all day long because, you know, it was great to have the services that we did have here but we just, we had to kind of involve it and meet the needs and we're hoping that this will do. I've been hoping that if it's something like this for years, it seems like it's been a lost opportunity so I'm really glad that this is great. If you're free on the 9th of December, 1 o'clock, that's when the ribbon cutting is and then we'll be doing tours. It's open to anybody. At what time? 1 o'clock. Yes. So does it have a name or is that Loop 280A Shelter? Right now it's kind of a Loop 280A Shelter. I think they're going to give it a good name that will go good on the sign up fund soon. Thank you. Danny's got my back. I lost my pen. Do we have a flotter sauce in there? I have just a question. Are there any particular organizations that we're going to bring in for the volunteer opportunities or that would be considered? No, no, that's all right. What I was thinking about and if I could squeeze them into one discussion, I will if I need to spread them out. Obviously, the high touch point volunteer opportunities is typically sustainability. Libraries and parks are kind of the big three. And then we have other smaller opportunities but those are the ones that really kind of drive volunteers in the city. And so my thought was if I could get all of them together to host a discussion, that'd be great. If not, I'll see if you know if they're discussion points are really similar. I don't want to split them up because you'll be talking about the same thing three different times. But probably some combination of those three. But if there's if there's an area where you want to know specifically about, I will bring them in. So, you know, if it's something very, hey, we want to know about volunteer opportunities for this thing, we'll just bring them in. Yeah, to talk to the library people. She's an old friend. That's all I can buy out. I like this. As a group, you can vote on just to you could say I approve the, the issue priorities for next year based on what's shown on the screen, you just reference that that'd be fine. That'd be something that that we always like you guys to kind of bless as we go forward. I'm going to prevent. All in favor. That is. Too many windows. Here we go. So I did want to draw your attention to as part of your packet today. The library, they, we spoke to them, I think, in July, July, July, and they took a lot of the feedback that you guys gave them based on their facilities, and they wanted to come just give you guys an update and so they wrote a memo kind of what how they're going to be using the information input that you guys gave them in July and kind of improve the accessibility around their libraries, of course, you know, fixed structures that takes time, but anything that can be modified that's not part of a wall or attached to something. They, they, they're moving to kind of roll that out. So I think they got a lot of great information from that discussion. And I think, you know, normally the one we still, you know, we will keep reporting on grievances or request for accommodations. These are these are ones that come through our official website process. Oftentimes we get lots of questions that are just, hey, if I needed to do this, can I do that, or if I wanted to. Yeah, I'm in a wheelchair and I want to do this. Can I? Those come in quite often to the main city line to different departments, parks gets quite a bit. Those aren't reflected here. These are just formal requests for combinations of formal grievances. So we'll continue to report on those. If there's anything that you'd like regular reporting on here, just mention it to me and we can add it as kind of a standing item to the staff update. And of course, since y'all did approve our schedule, our next meeting is on January 19th at 3 PM. I have a question on the grievances and request for accommodations. Individuals employed with the City of Denton who may have needs, do they have access to services and supports? That runs a different route through our human resources if they're employed. The one that I'm referencing here is our public one. Okay, just to know that the staff also have. Yes, in fact, if you want to, it needs to be formatted and made pretty. But we do have an ADA policy that not only speaks to our public requirements, but also to substantially speaks to how we work with employees who need accommodations. So it's out there. I can point you to it if you ever want to see it. That was our last item. So you can give me a concluding item. So that was our last one. Oh, Joe showed me he made a flag for and I will pull it up here on this computer and a flag for kind of moralizing the students of evolving. And I'll pull it up. It's beautiful. If you want to come take a look, I remember that you do. I think you said you really get it out of them before too long whenever you can, I think. So pulling that up, I just attended a senior event at the American Legion Hall and the chairs over there. I don't want to say horrible, but they're not good. OK, and not for elderly people and many of them with some kind of regulatory concerns. Was it in that big room? Yes. OK. Just. So how do I address that? Do I go through grievances or? You can go through the grievance. I can I can run that down for you. It's an information. So grievance is usually for accommodation. But tell me more about you and get with me after this and tell me more about that. I'm doing that at my church, too. And that's why we love you. They have stuff in our church that's not good for the elderly. So I just told my pastor Sunday, I think I told you what I have to say. And I'll add concluded. You can kind of read the fine print, but generally that's for if you'd like to make any type of announcement or, you know. Anything you'd like to say that's not necessarily business of the committee, but you think it's worth mentioning of interest of the committee, business of the committee that's worth mentioning. So it can be something of personal nature. You know, I have a birthday to my daughter to you were talking about right there to to, you know, event announcements. So like if there was a community events that you just want to bring more attention to or let your peers on the committee know about, that's time to do it. We have that every meeting. Yeah. Thank you. I have two things, if that's OK. The first thing is, I would like to personally welcome Heather. She's absolutely wonderful. And I've been working with her for a long time, and she's a part of our group. And this is tied together. She works. She's a co-founder of a beautiful school in Denton called The Cone School. We will have our 10 year anniversary coming up on the first Saturday of January. What's the name of the school? The Cone School. C-O-H-E-N. K-O-A-N. Oh, I've seen it. I'm going to talk to you about that in a minute. It is a fully inclusive private school. How about you? It's on a farm. Yeah, it's amazing. But I'm not there right now. I'm finishing my dissertation at UNT. I started my PhD in 2010 and they're like ready for me to leave. But anyway, I just wanted to let you guys all know that that is an amazing school. And we are doing our first Saturday of January, it's in your party and we're inviting the public and it's open to the public. This age? All ages. And it's going to be really wonderful. And it's a really, really, really neat school. I don't know what you talk. You did it. There's donkeys. That's a pretty big selling point in my household. Yeah, donkeys, chickens, this would be wonderful things for the kids, a little scavenger hunt. It's going to be really great. So please come. Where is it at? At the school? On campus. Where is that located? Oh my gosh, what's the address? 6441 Fishtrap Road. 6441 Fishtrap Road. Yes. And we are opening two new buildings. We just opened one new building. And we just are finishing our second one, so we'll get to tour that. It'll be absolutely wonderful. And we've been working on really hard for the accessibility of the building. Just all kinds of really great things. That's amazing. Like Ali, I haven't been there in like a year. I know. It's great though. It is a really special place, but I need to go back out there. I miss my donkeys. It's right on the website. 15 acres, three donkeys, 12 chickens, one dog. Oh, the dog is at my house right now. The dog is a senior dog, so it's okay. Yeah, he retired from farm life formally a couple of months ago after an injury. So we'll have to recruit the next youngster, yes, to take over. Yeah, that's all I have. That's great. That's good. That's what Conclude Nouns are for. Okay, great. Any other announcements? Thank you all for having me. I'm really excited to be here so that I can add something to the conversation. It sounds like y'all have done a lot. We're happy to be here. Thank you for joining. Good to see you all. I know that they were Conclude Nouns. They really are coming and putting in a lot of effort. I think you can, this one I actually don't have to take a vote. You can just adjourn the meeting. All right, I'll adjourn the meeting. All right. Thank you so much. This might be our fastest meeting. It was the fastest meeting.