Good evening everyone and welcome to the Chaza Human Rights Commission meeting for Thursday March 27th 2025. Uh usually we begin with our roll call. So please would you be so kind to do that? Commissioner here. here. Commissioner H here. Commissioner me here. Commissioner Sanderson. Commissioner Hamza. Commissioner, Commissioner Dy, Commissioner Duffy, Chair Carlson here. Thank you so much. We have an agenda that um was distributed to all of us. Um I think you've had a chance to chance to take a look at it. Um, are there any changes, additions that need to be made? If not, may I have a motion to adopt? So move. Second. Okay. A motion made by Brit, seconded by Jennifer. If there's no questions, all in favor signify by saying I. I. Oppose. Eyes carry. Thank you. So tonight we have a special guest with us. We have with us tonight Bridget and her mother Katie Rotunda. Now what's so special about Bridget is that she participated in our Dr. King art contest. And so her uh coloring was selected for our category of age four and under. And so we want to have a special presentation to uh Bridget and uh so uh commission members if you'll join me in front and we can do a photo. Um I would say that she has received a gift certificate uh from Little Ruse here in Chasa and I think she's made some selections there too. So if you don't mind joining me So, where would you be? Why don't we I'll go there and I'll move the um drawing closer there. So, Bridget, do you want to come up and join us with your mom? I wonder if she'll do it all by herself. She might be in the picture too if you want. Mommy, [Music] I can use your Okay. Can you see us? Yeah, stand up. Say cheese. Put your chin down for just Okay. So Katie, you have to be specific. All of us are All right. One, two, three. Monkey. Okay. I'm going to Can I do one photo real quick? Can I do one photo with you? Yeah. One more. Can you do one? Cheese. Say peanut butter and jelly. Peanut butter jelly. Yeah. Okay, we're good. Thank you guys. Thank you so much. You're very welcome. Thank you for coming to the Dr. King uh event and for doing your wonderful coloring. Thank you so much. We really appreciate all you have birthday princess birthday. Thank you so much. [Music] Thank you. Well, thank you commissioners for for helping celebrate yet another piece of our Dr. King event. Um, it's been fun and I don't know Hana is going to be joining us later. Um, I think she's on the road, but what a great idea that she offered to the Dr. King celebration. Really a great great hit. Um, so, okay. U, moving right along. Uh, next up is our approval of minutes. And if you had a chance to take a look at them, I noted one correction that has to be made. Um, on page three of five, item number eight, um, Jubie in the last sentence, um, Commissioner Gandhi noted that this year they have decided to celebrate India. That was actually in 2024 we celebrated India. Are there any other corrections to the minute or any other things that you spotted? Having heard none, may I have a motion to approve that correction? So, thank you, Kevin. Is there a second? Second. Are there any further questions? If none, all in favor, please signify by saying I. I. opposed eyes carry. So the treasures report so you're always kind enough to provide this information to us and keep a tally of our funds. How do we look? Uh chair calls and commissioners. You'll see in February there was one uh new expense added to your list here and that was for new commissioner name Duffy and other than that you sit at just over $5600. Any questions? Um, we usually ask for a motion to approve the treasury report. So, thank you, Jen. Is there a second? Second. Thank you, Brit. There's been a motion made by Jennifer, seconded by Brit um to approve the March 27, 2025 treasures report. All in favor signify by saying I. Opposed? Eyes carried. Great. So, our reports and updates tonight, um, pretty extensive list, although we may not have updates on some of these events tonight. Um, I'll start off with the human rights celebration. As as indicated, we celebrated one last piece of the Dr. King uh event tonight with having um Bridget and her mom here with us tonight. U so I'm going to jump to uh and I don't have any updates. So moving right along to women's appreciation. I think that is Brit and Judy. Julie is not with us tonight, but Brit, do you have a hand? Uh no, we do not. Great. Okay. Pride celebration. Hello. Uh Pride Celebration. I think Um, let's see. Jen, Kevin, and Judy. So, who will give the report? I can They can jump in though anytime. Um, we had a meeting last week, was it? And, um, just kind of did some beginning stage planning for our June 21st Pride celebration. Um, just kind of talking about things that we're brainstorming about right now. Um, but some of the things that we did talk about are that um, we wanted to have music again. Um, and so we talked about a DJ and found out that um, Zack Sardis, he was our DJ a couple years ago. um a dad from the community here and he helped us out when things fell through with our other DJ and he came in and was DJ middle-aged dad and he was a big hit. So um he reached out and said that he would love to support us again and he's willing to do that. Um, we also discussed that Kichi, who's our new commissioner, um, was interested or said she could do the DJing. We discussed it and thought maybe she should attend it first so she knows kind of what it's like, you know, and so then we can call on her when we meet her for sure. Um, but as long as we have someone that also reached out about it, then this would be a great thing. And, um, Zach has confirmed that he will do this. So, um we're really excited that he's going to come back and make it, I don't know, more exciting that way. Um we have talked about some organizations that we like to collaborate with and have been great supporters in the past. Um parks and recreation, the high school, and the chess library. Um and So, you know, we're talking with them about ways that we can work together on this. Um, Parks and Wreck has offered to help us find um, food trucks and so we have requested two, which are nautical bowls and something like the coffee cart which is like a snack type thing. They had like walking tacos and something else that were they're kind of late meals, but you know, fun food to have at a fair kind of thing. And hopefully those will work out. We are going to be having this at McNight Park again this year and that seems to be really conducive with having the the food trucks right near the action. So, that's kind of nice because people don't have to walk across to find fun find food trucks, too. Um, we're planning to keep tie-dye and yoga as parts of the of the day again because those are both big hits, as well as ice cream. Um, and um, we're not sure yet how we're going to do the t-shirts this year. Last year we did sponsors, which was great, but we have some 30 leftover t-shirts from last year. So, we're not sure how it's going to go from year to year having different sponsors. We're talking about different ways that we can maybe highlight the sponsors instead of out t-shirts and we haven't come to conclusions yet about that. So if anyone has ideas, let us know. Um I reached out to Cassie um Burnhard at the Chesa High School. She's the art teacher and she's always helped us with the community art project and so hopefully we'll get some other great ideas from her so that we can do that again. Um we we talked a little bit about vendors, but we're not sure if we're going to invite vendors or not this year. Um that's to be determined, I guess. the we're going to have yard games again. Um hopefully have face painting again. We'll reach out to the the same person who's done it every year. That's been a lot of a big it with people and then Elise was going to reach out to the library to see if they want to participate. Did you get a chance to talk to them? Okay. But they've been a big supporter in the past. I'm sure they'll have something to do with us. And [Music] um so that's kind of a summary of what we've talked about so far, unless you have something else. Kevin, just a budget request. Yeah. So then um that was the main thing that we wanted to do tonight is that we thought that um we would request $2,000 for this event. That's what we requested last year. Um we came in a little bit under budget, but that was because we also had the $700 from t-shirt sponsors. And so basically it worked out to about $2,000. So we're thinking we could stick with that this year and if we get sponsors then we can give some back to the to the pot questions. I have a couple questions. um for pride for the event. What date is that? June 21st. Thanks. At 3 to 6:00 p.m. at Big Lake Park. Great. Um would we be purchasing like a flat amount with the food truck so that if the person who was doing the visiting the event would go and get a snack? I don't believe we've paid for them. Typically in the past um they just buy their own. Okay. And um we don't usually pay a fee for them to come but we talk about people typically show up that sort of thing. Okay. Uh has the committee considered inviting the Harvard County Pride event folks. They were we participated in their event last year. Um I don't know if there's been there hasn't been discussion about that, but that is certainly a group that we can reach out to to see if they'd like to be involved in some way. Anybody else have any questions? We doing a parade. We're not doing a hurry. Not this year. Is there any way you can track attendance this year? So we can plan next year at least and try to use that. That's a good question. We'll think about ways that we could do that because is a good idea for planning purposes to park and direct. They usually have good estimates of how many people have their events and so I'll follow up with them and see how they maybe getting a ticket to get ice cream and then when we get ice cream we just collect the tickets. That might be, but parks and probably has lots of ideas, but that could be. Sure. So, the subcommittee is asking the commission for up to $2,000 um to be set aside for the pride event. Is is that a clear understanding of your motion? Yes. Okay. What are you using money for? There you go. We're using the money for um t-shirts, supplies for the different projects, the art projects and things like that. Um the ice cream. We won't need money this year for NDJ because he's offered to contribute this for free, which is great. Um, looking through my list, see what else? But where the other costs that you know, so for last year, you had about $200 in just supplies. Um, some of that was art supplies, um, tie-dye supplies, bowls for ice cream, that sort of thing. The DJ, your t-shirts were made your expense at $1,200. Ice cream at about $225. And I think with the t-shirts, I mean, that is a big expense, but that is one of the really big things that we've received feedback about from people. They really enjoy it participating in it, look forward to it each year. I know the first and maybe the second year, we did not have t-shirts. We told people to bring their own. We supplied some handkerchiefs that did not hold the ink very well. Um, and that's just not the same as them going home with the t-shirt. And I think that that's a really a nice way to kind of display your chest of pride is to be able to go home with the [Music] t-shirt. I believe that the person that we has offered to be our DJ, I believe that we gave an honor to that individual. That was two years ago. I think it was two years ago. I think we offered it and I think he did. Okay. I remembered something about that. Okay. Martin, did that answer your question? I'm sorry. Zone out for just a second. We thought about advertising outside of Facebook. We have not yet. We I mean we've just had our initial meeting. So these are things though that we should definitely talk about. How many leftover t-shirts? 30 something. How many did we buy? Say it was about 100, right? So it might be slightly cheaper this year or Right. and we plan to bring the t-shirts that we have left over. Um, but we're thinking that either we want to just have blank t-shirts or have some generic chest comp, you know, graphic on there that can carry over from year to year so that we don't have to worry about, oh, that was last year's design or something. Um, because we'd like to continue giving a chance for people to take home. Would you leave the year off? Yeah, that's what we plan on doing now. It did rain last year. Yes, they did. But then the clouds opened with the sunshine at 3:10. Yeah. And it and stayed rainless for I think the rest of the time. Did you see anything that impacted the tendencies? flooded. I felt like it was flooding. This the setup time was pouring. So, um, yeah, it was probably flooded by the time the event started. Yeah, I remember the grassy area being quite wet for yoga. So, could I'm just throwing this out there. I'm not on the committee and I'm not working. So, no food. Could you use take your part of your um we call it fund raise money because I can't think of right um your sponsorships and put that towards advertising out so you can increase attendance and if you use that attendance numbers for next year might help you increase sponsorships for next year and then maybe have a level or something okay advertisements $50. So if we do that or you suggest we say they're going to advertising so they may listen because I'm kind of struggling with other places right now that I'm thinking about where you know are widely seen in this area. Are we able to buy a portion of utility bills we can insert be? We could. A lot of people are going um paperless in online billing, but that that's an option. If that is something the committee would like to do, we can certainly include an answer. Our news our new uh Carver County News um is offering advertising space. If you haven't signed up for that free subscription um you can. Yeah, we can look into the advertising rates, right? They because they are I think advertising for or they're asking if you're interested in advertising to contact somebody at Carter County. Probably Christa or Kevin in our communications department. Nobody know the answers to that. For the sponsorships, one idea is they could like if we're having the art and the ice cream or whatever, like people would sponsor different pieces of that ice cream or whatever. Yeah. And we could have signs by each one, right? Sure. Like proud. Yeah. I mean, one nice thing about the sponsors, I think, is that it demonstrates support for the community. That's what I really like. is that even with the t-shirts, it showed there are businesses and organizations in town that are behind this and they're really supporting the the celebration that we're having. So, to go back, there is a motion made u for the commission to authorize up to $2,000 for expenses associated with the pride event for June 21st at Mcnite Park. Is there a second I'll second. Thank you. Yeah. Are there any additional questions or comments? I didn't know one of the the items or advertising kind of mechanisms we had discussed last year was potentially having outdoor signage and or around um like like the Home Depot. Yeah. But without being that potentially we could create some signage that is adaptable or it's just I mean because that we'd obviously want to put the date on there um and potentially the location or URL for more information or something like that. So I didn't know that was something that we still wanted to consider. just because it's such a hight traffic area. Yeah, these are all great ideas that we can talk. We have another meeting planned coming up in like a week or so, I think. So, we'll definitely discuss things more. You know, this is just like an initial meeting to kind of think about how this is going to go. But um you know there's some things that it's really good you guys brought them up because they are things that we need to talk about. Well, thanks Kevin and Jen and Judy who's not with us tonight for working on this and getting some getting the ball rolling for our annual event. So uh going back we have a motion by Jennifer. It was seconded by Brit. Uh one more last call for any discussion. Any additional discussion or questions? If not, all in favor of the motion, please signify by saying I. I opposed. Great. Thank you guys. Um River City Days. Um Ren and Kichi are not here this evening. Um but I think we are going to register ourselves to get a booth or table or location. Great. Thank you. Um and we'll come we'll circle back to River City days. Um cultural heritage month. That's Brit, Sarah, and Ren. And we haven't had a meeting yet, but could we ask you to try to coordinate a meeting? Yeah, I will. Kevin is the staff on for that one, so I'll talk to him about on a date. Um I did have the opportunity to go to um the program at um the cultural fest at Shakabe High School on March 14th. They produced a program um they had an incredible amount of food that was available that was distributed by tickets. Um and then they had presentations by a host of um dancers and cultural representatives and I was very impressed. Um many many people were there. Um and I got some good ideas. So hopefully I can bring that forward. Um, and we got a great list of restaurants serving uh appropriately cultured food depending upon what culture we do if or maybe not. But certainly some great suggestions of locations for restaurants that catered food for their event. Put that on. Um, actually it's a an assortment of people that included but it's done by the leaders in education and diversity and they partner with Nikasa um with various events celebrating diversity within the school and the broader community. So lots of student representation were there um right down to uh people in clothing from their their um heritage, greeting people at the door. So, like I said, it was quite an event and so glad that I it popped up on um something and I thought, "Wow, this is good. I think I'll try to go over there and do that." And I was just I was amazed. Really amazed. So, um indigenous people's recognition. Um, I'll look to you, but I don't know if you had an opportunity to Okay. Yes. Yeah. Okay. Martin and Bren, you're down for veterans acknowledgement. Any any opportunities there yet? No. Okay, great. We have an idea. Excellent. Excellent. Um, let's see. Community outreach. Um, the three of you are there. Here we are. I'll exchanging knowing nothing. Okay, great. Um, all kinds of things that uh we want to talk about in future months. I have a question. Yes, please. For these types of subcommittees where there's not an event, can do we still need a representative present? I would highly encourage that you have a staff representative there just uh help you be able to put things together. Just make sure it's in the city's review. Okay. And then I know you sent out the email about everything that's out. Was there a staff representative assigned this? Yeah. for uh community outreach. Yeah, Kevin. Okay, perfect. Do we have any new business to discuss this evening? [Music] Any announcements, Kevin. Okay. Well, our belonging message this month is um about neural diversity and Um each of you have um kind of just a kind of a word cl word cloud but something that has lots of words there and um I guess the the message is that neurodeiversity describes a concept where differences in our brain wiring or neurological makeup are considered and respected just as kind of a variation in humans. We're all different. You know, all of our brains are a little bit different. Uh Dr. Thomas Armstrong in his book entitled Neurodeiversity writes this about neurodeiversity. Instead of pretending that there is a normal brain to which all other brains must be compared, we need to admit that there is no such brain and that in fact diversity among brains is just as wonderfully enriching as biodiversity and the diversity among cultures and race. So foods for thought. Um, next meeting will be in April, April 24th. Um, it we'll get some meetings in between with various committees and have some more information for us to consider in April. And again, thanks for all of your hard work that you've put in so far committee. We'll get going on our other work and we'll see you all in April if not before. Motion to adjourn. So, so concluded.