NYS Independent Living Council, Inc.

NYSILC Full Council Meeting

September 20, 2007

Present:

Brad Williams, Chris Zachmeyer, Sharon Shapiro, Mike Smith, Bruce Darling, Michael Orzel, Agnes McCray, Anne Shearer, Doug Usiak, Randy Black, Lauren LeFebvre, Sharon Flom, Edith Prentiss, Kieran McGovern, Mike Godino, Bob Gumson, Sue Cohen, Patty Black, Joe Adler, Dennis Boyd

Reviewed previous minutes – needed changes.

Chris Z: Corrections for minutes – I found a couple. On page one, after the call to order where it talks about our new member Kieran, I believe there was a motion accepting Kieran as a member to the NYSILC. But what got put into the minutes was just the fact that a motion was made and seconded and passed and we will need to include what the motion was in the minutes. Bob Gaffney is not here; he made the motion. Randy is here; you seconded it – do you remember what it was and would you like to restate it for the minutes?

Randy: I make a motion that Kieran McGovern be moved to NYSILC as a member – motion clarified – (will be added to minutes).

Edith: I make a motion to include the treasurer’s report.

Chris Z.: Ok, we will include that when we approve the minutes as amended.

Chris: Under the executive committee report, Pratik Patel made a motion to accept the executive committee report – he is not with us today. Randy, you seconded it - could you recall and restate it?

Randy: I make a motion to approve the executive committee report.

Sharon: I would like to make a correction under the CBVH report – one correction – it is actually the “Office of the Commission of Children and Family Services,” not CBVH – what made it was the establishment of the executive board, with a number of duties and criteria, etc. Could that be reflected more clearly in the minutes?

Chris: How would you like that stated in the minutes, Sharon?

Lauren: Can we add in: reported on a proposal.

Sharon: There was a proposal for an executive board and that is what was established.

Chris: How about we do this: Since there are several changes that need to be made to the minutes, lets work on them between now and our next meeting. Lets work it out, is that agreeable?

Doug: That’s exactly what I was going to suggest Chris. We table the minutes to be re-edited for a solution at the next meeting.

Chris: Would you like to make a motion?

Doug: I make a motion to table it, sure.

Chris: Ok, Bob Gumson you had your hand up?

Bob: As long as we are tabling this, the section for VESID’s report also has a number of things that are not exactly stated accurately from the minutes. Come to me also and we will work on revising the VESID report.

Edith: I would like to make two corrections on Emergency Preparedness.

Chris: We made a motion to table the minutes. We ask everyone who has changes, additions, deletions, subtractions, etc. to please contact Lauren within the next couple of weeks so that she can make those changes. Let’s say be October 5^th.

Chris: So we run the motion and second to table approval of the main minutes – is there any further discussion on the issue? All those in favor –

Group: Aye (no oppositions or abstentions)

Chris: One of our items we need to talk about today is replacing a member of the executive committee – Sharon Shapiro has served for a number of years and at the end of this year, her term will expire. Thank you for your support as a member of the executive committee and as a member at large.

Chris: We do want to identify some folks who are interested in being a member at large – we would like to take some nominations and give folks time to vote at elections at our November meeting since Sharon will still be part of the council and part of the executive committee until the end of the calendar year. I pulled the duties of the member at large from our by-laws and I want to go over them with folks so that anyone that will accept the nomination would know what they are getting themselves into. A member at large needs to be a member of the executive committee, they need to ensure that all committees and task forces are holding regular meetings and meeting their goals and obligations, need to ensure in absence of secretary that minutes are taken, etc. Are there any questions about those duties?

Doug Usiak: I nominate me.

Chris: Doug Usiak would like to nominate Doug Usiak.

Randy: I second that motion.

Chris: Thank you Randy.

Dennis Boyd: I would like to nominate Pratik Patel.

Chris: Ok Dennis. Would anyone like to second Pratik’s nomination?

Mike Godino: I will second it.

Chris: Thank you Mike. Are there any other nominations?

Mike Godino: I move to close nominations.

Kieran: I second that.

Chris: Thank you Kieran. All those in favor –

Group: Aye (no oppositions)

Chris: I will turn meeting over to Brad for Executive Director’s report.

Brad: Thank you. The first thing is the quarterly activity report – I would just characterize as standard activity in the quarter between April, May and June. Just very straight forward with meetings with election reform and voter education – a lot of activity related to consumer satisfaction or related to a lot of the surveys that we did related to statewide housing and technology surveys. We are working on needs assessment as well – we even worked on some United We Ride DOT. We worked on a variety of different fronts. The report is pretty straightforward. There isn’t anything that stands out significantly – just routine business. That is what I would present for the quarterly activity report. In terms of the SPIL update, we finally have been moving along with approval of our State Plans. This is for years 2008, 2009, 2010. To give you a little better perspective, we did submit it by July 1. Across the country, the RSA has been doing reviews. Fortunately for us, they needed clarification issues to be worked out and addressed. It was time – consuming. For other states, that wasn’t the case. They had flat out challenges in substantive areas of their State Plans. These areas were key components to some of their major initiatives. We received a final approval on our clarifications. We will get back a finalized state plan any day. Bob?

Bob: They insisted that we include not just the dollars the state gives that add on to the federal centers, but adding all the dollars that VESID provides to state only funded centers for IL. Our RSA regional reps for all previous years would tell us that if we added those dollars in, we became accountable for making sure that our state funded centers (who don’t receive a dollar of federal funds) would be responsible for all federal standards of indicators. These RSA folks say this was a misinterpretation all along. In best written confirmation of their position, they insist they want us to put money in because our State funds support the SPIL (I don’t see the connection) and they also said they expect the centers would be working towards meeting the federal standards. The money is in the SPIL, we hope this does not come back to haunt.

Brad: These people are obsessed with the financial chart. In the narrative, we put in very direct language that said in the State IL funds this amount applies to the federally funded centers that also receive state funds. The remaining part applies to only state funded centers. These centers do not receive federal funds and as a result are not required to follow federal standards. That language is in our SPIL as protection. And that is the only reason we agreed to put that money in the chart – they agreed to this. The state funded centers do not have to apply to federal standards – period.

Sharon: Question regarding centers and Part B funds. Inaudible.

Doug: If the centers receive Part B funds, they are receiving federal money. The question is, because it was project specific and not to support the administration of an ILC, then therefore the center did not have to follow the 704 standards. There has been an interpretive difference that if it is project specific, the concern is if it goes to infrastructure of the center. The greater concern, some of the longer range issues that I see with the manipulation of RSA is that if they can say “Look, federal administration look at all the state money, look at all the other money going to support independent living, we can continue to pull back in some of these funds and not to grow because the network is growing without the use of federal assistance. But my concern is even though the centers specifically identified that these centers do not have to meet the mandates of the 704 requirements. My real concern is does that then put the operations of the SILC to be impacted by the state funded centers? Whereas if you put it into the state plan, do the state centers need to follow the state plan?

Bob: I have to say that is not what I was going to answer to the Part B question about SSA. I will get to that in a second. One of my concerns was how they play around with interpretations. You get such a major league deviation from past interpretations – I can’t feel totally comfortable trusting it.

Doug: I have seen in the states I have worked with that when it came to the allocation of state funds into the support of the network that centers have to come into mind because they said this is the state match to it. It doesn’t matter because even if you allocate funds only for the provision of independent living services which are different than for the operations of an ILC, those entities which are administering independent living services may or may not have to follow. It may be dependent on how you lined all that up. So maybe the proviso where CBVH administers independent living funds through Part B and they don’t have to set their operations up, these funds are being used for IL services by these other community consumer run programs to step away from calling them ILC’s in the State Plan.

Bob: That was the angle we always took before. Federal funds for community based organizations. We did go further with this plan and this is what we have so and we will have to hope it doesn’t come back to haunt us. On that Part B question the word you mentioned was operation funds. Part B is a project of the SPIL – it lasts as long as the SPIL. It is not intrinsic to running or operating a CIL – it is an additional project of the CIL – that is how RSA does interpret it even though it is federal funds. Receipt of that funding does not tie a center to federal requirements.

Brad: The other thing is we have no idea why they are doing this – we have no idea what their objectives are. We were very fortunate in the way they treated us vs. the way other states were treated. It was very obvious they were fixated on financial chart – we know there is an excess of a 2 trillion dollar deficit at the federal level. We know there is going to be an administration change in the next year or so, and we will see what happens. We will see how this transpires but we are going to have a State Plan. It will be an excellent plan with some fantastic initiatives that we will sink our teeth into.

Chris: Thanks Brad. What RSA is asking for is troubling and we definitely need to keep on top of where they might be going. It is something we need to keep in the back of our minds but Brad is right; we have an exciting SPIL that is going to take us through the next 3 years. Are there any questions for Brad on the upcoming State plan?

Brad: I am going to go through our deliverables – we have objectives in our State plan for every given year. First objective in ever year is to work in cooperation with our state plan partners and cooperative agencies and groups. What we do is we keep track of the cooperative efforts and then at year end, for our annual 704 report, we have to report to them. We do a lot of group work and this will be no different this year. The quarterly report that I noted shows several items where we work cooperatively on a series of different fronts. The second objective is to maintain support for a statewide systems advocacy network with NYAIL during the 3 year time period where we meet the goals for statewide systems changes for the benefit of people with disabilities. Melanie, you have until October or November to due this current year’s report but would just rattle off a few.

Melanie: Just in the last session, there were some major successes. One was getting Title 3 of the ADA incorporated into state law long predates my tenure. A very important bill was the bill around the Schaefer Supreme Court decision – the education aspect and shifting the burden of proof onto States, school district in disputes between parents and school districts over special education matters. We also got a housing subsidy for the nursing facility transition and diversion waiver that is about to be implemented. That was a major win. Another bill we have been working on for a couple of years was the SHU bill, avoiding the use of special housing in prison for folks who have psychiatric disabilities. That is what came immediately to mind and that was actually just this year.

Chris: If I could just take a moment to say, the SAN along with NYAIL and NYSILC and ADAPT and some individual centers across the state have been exceedingly successful in seeing a lot of legislation passed or in blocking a lot of legislation that would have been a detriment to people with disabilities. I just can’t say enough for the network that was established and how it’s run – I think we really don’t have any idea how much an impact IL makes in the legislative process.

Melanie: Thanks Chris, I just want to add – one of the things that happens quite regularly in the legislative sessions with the amount of other works we work with who came to me and say “the network is incredibly powerful.” They ask for our assistance in their own efforts and they know that having that us as their partners is a very substantial key to their own success. Without it our efforts in the community would be diminished.

Brad: I knew that this past year there were a lot of significant outcomes – so very good.

Sharon: Inaudible

Bob Gumson: We have to go forward into October 1^st with the State plan based on these highlighted results or findings. What special projects do we fund?

Bob: We kept on deferring that we had a process in place, we had a needs assessment, we had it being analyzed and we had the recommendations. So we don’t have a lot of time left but we have to go forward into October 1 of the next year based on these highlighted results of the findings of this research. What does this mean? Are there special projects that we fund or not and in what order? That has always been a very sticky subject; it has a lot of implications. It obviously has implications for our State Plan without a doubt, publishing that and making that available to RSA and having the fact they now look at all the resources belonging to the SPIL for supporting it with state money. How is this going to drive the future of IL in the state both state and federal? I say for VESID’s point of view, there is no jury out on this at all. Once NYSILC develops this research and makes recommendations, what will VESID do with that as we go forward looking for state dollars and how to use them? So all this is what needs to be resolved pretty soon.

Doug: I totally agree with Bob. I am very, very upset with what was done. When did we get the information from Syracuse, Brad?

Brad: We got it in April – and they said they were going to do it in 30 days.

Doug: They gave us a county by county comparison; it was really difficult to go through those 200 pages to see if there was any statewide information.

Edith: Living in a section of Manhattan that is extremely young, immigrant based Dominicans, I agree with you. The occurrence of disability is really overwhelming – there was a Measles epidemic; there are so many young Deaf. There are so many ambulatory – it is really incredible. I think we need to look at why we are saying we need more IL’s working with existing IL’s to expand their base. I know when I was looking for IL service I was directed to Sydney. I was directed to jump over Harlem, which is closer to 186^th St. than 14^th St. So I think there is some confusion there as to inclusion of individual areas into existing programs. The question is how to expand their base and integrate the population.

Doug: You are absolutely right; those are tough questions – do we continue to look at expansion or do we look at growth within the network – and those are some hard decisions that this counsel is going to have to make in the future. I can’t agree with you more.

Brad: The other thing too is some of this is part of the confusion of the federal’s use of terminology – they call it new center competitions when in fact they put it out to RFP. It may mean that a new center that does not have IL funding could compete and actually get the money or that an existing IL could go after money and actually open up a new location or another location or even a third location. So it’s an open RFP process it’s just that when the federal money comes down people competing for it so an existing IL could just literally do satellite whether they call it new center competitions.

Edith: Excuse me; I do think the issue is not waiting for there to be new money because until there is new money we are looking at communities that are not being served. I think that the existing centers become acculturated in serving their population and really do not possibly see other populations. Maybe they need to be told they are serving more than just such and such.

Doug: Well, there are a couple things here. One is the ex – officio relationship to people in this council that the representation of the other state agencies in the past. For example, OMRDD by their working with this council early on in the 90’s opened up a lot of opportunities for centers. We used to have a representative from the SUNY citizen services and that’s one way of building additional resources, but at the same time, I think it is very critical to think yes – we are empowered by the federal government to put together the State Plan as it relates to the federally funded centers. But Bob also opened up that caveat that if we do a good job does the state plan give VESID guidance as to how they will put additional resources into the non-federally funded centers. We have a foot in both camps; it’s a good foot because the state aspect isn’t tied to a lot of the bureaucratic nonsense that the federal government wants and tends to be more flexible; we see that two centers that were funded out of state funds this year – that whole process is a lot easier than the process we have to deal with the federal government and NYS in the last two years has seen a shrinkage of our federal dollars because of population and other elements that impact the funding of the federal money to IL. I think we have to look both ways – we want to look what we put to the state plan and look towards VESID and giving them guidance and guidelines on how their network should grow.

Agnes McCray: I just want to say that a lot of things have not been touched on today – transportation is one very important thing – and we can’t get them to come to us. Also, there is the fact that we have to be very careful when we point out the certain routes because we don’t want any discrimination – we have to know how we are going to target that. Transportation is a very big thing, especially for the areas you touch on and that is something that we must look if we want our centers to communicate with out consumers.

Bob: I will respond to what you said first Agnes, even though that is why my hand was not raised. We have watched rural ILC’s use a variety of creative ways to get out and reach people. I don’t know what is right for a particular center – it is really up to the board and the staff to put their heads together and solve that. We see people served in rural communities, whether it is the center coming to them, whether it’s the center getting them to the center by some other means of transportation (their own van), whether its going to community sites that are more accessible like libraries or town halls or here or there so they can bring IL to different communities and not waiting for people to get to them. There are lots of different ways to do that – it depends on what fits and suits the center best. In addition to what you said to Doug about opening opportunities for OMH and OMRDD for fee and Medicaid related type services – it’s always been my contention that just because VESID gets a block of money for the operation of center’s for IL the agencies that serve specific disability populations and need to meet their independent living needs as well really need to be challenged to figure out ways of contributing operating money to centers for IL for more people. We serve over 30% of our customer base of IL and people with mental health disabilities. OMH gives us no money to operate centers for IL. OMRDD we serve about 10% of people with DD, maybe even more if you group together certain groups that would fall under the DD banner, yet we get nothing from OMRDD for operating centers for IL. Yes, we may get Medicaid reimbursement dollars and HCBS waiver dollars but that is not the same as operating centers. If we are just going to count on VESID and the IL community just bringing operating dollars with the legislature each time to meet the demands for serving up to 1.75 or 2.75 million people, it’s never going to happen. Densely populated areas of NYC, we need two or three or four centers, sometimes throughout the boroughs of Brooklyn, Bronx, Manhattan and Queens. Two in Manhattan is a good thing in my opinion – centers are sites. They are points of access – as long as there are points of access. Points of access for communities of culture too – different cultural communities to access the center.

Dennis: I was looking at a variety of considerations – I was kind of broadly thinking of ways in which the report might lead towards where to concentrate the money. Also to support the agency for each request for additional funding for the center. From most obviously OMRDD and OMH – but I think that’s an important impetus that we might draw out of the data the report comes up with. I think we have to think about ways in which those numbers could be crunched in a way to put use to that sort of dialogue with agency heads in the first instance. Perhaps think about doing some lobbying to increase budgets through OMH and OMRDD specifically for IL support. This might be a possible second step. Maybe having VESID meets up with some of the commissioners in some of the agencies. Broadly speaking, I was thinking about a couple of things. The Bronx has almost as many people as Manhattan living in it and Kings and Queens have more. Obviously there are questions about the way services have been delivered in the last 5 or 6 years within those counties; I think there is clearly a need for potentially another center in those two counties. If we want to provide regional services, we need to take to heart from the census data both in terms of where the populations are and where the underserved are. With regard to the 19 centers, counties that are not being served: is it that they aren’t being served, or is it they do not have centers in them?

Doug: They don’t have centers in them.

Dennis: I was just thinking we should look at geographically what conclusions we can logically reach in terms of how effectively some of the centers are and what their capacity is. Do we develop satellite offices or outright new offices? We should think how service delivery might reach some of those rural counties that don’t have services in them already. Those are just a few things the committee and NYSILC should be thinking about in terms of organization.

Doug: I couldn’t agree more with Dennis.

Chris: We will look forward to some firm recommendations from the committee by the next meeting. Dennis has mentioned a lot of good points – this is an issue we have been struggling with at least as long as I have been involved in IL. We rely on what we can accomplish given our constraints with the SPIL. We look forward to your recommendations.

Edith: I am now intimately aware of every county in NYS because what I did – (I did this in two formats; one by county and one by center) I have spent my summer talking to ever center in the state (which is pretty cool). This grew out of a conversation with a FEMA rep where I introduced her to many individuals in the council and explained what ILC’s do because basically FEMA had no clue of disability services at all. I explained about the wonderful things called CIL’s – we moved them to discussing integrating centers with their individual county Emergency long term recovery committees. They are basically the on ground group that will step in with FEMA and work with them when there is a disaster. It is good because there are a lot of centers having problems dealing with EP at their county level and learning things about a Red Cross program that when asked to have an ASL for staff training simply closed down the program, saying it’s the counties responsibility. Basically I explained to FEMA what ILC’s are and the roles of ILC’s and we developed a list of all the centers of the counties. It’s been very interesting explaining to FEMA the different programs and the different agencies and also how to tap into county programs. There is a need to develop management services. I would like to enter an appeal for members; we are down to Christina Curry and me.

Chris: Edith, I am going to appoint one of my staff to the committee. We have had some experience with that.

Edith: I would really be thankful – and I think it’s important for this group in raising the visibility of IL’s within their community. That is a real concern. It’s hard to figure out where all of us fit together on the same page. One of the issues comes down to where to select a group home situation, the responsibility of the state agencies for those because they are living in a group home facility so they are not our responsibility. They are the responsibility of the non-profit. These are the responsibility of the individual vendor who holds that contract. It gets very interesting when you look to see who is planning for what.

Mike: There are a couple of people I would like to get involved because we had a chance meeting with the Nassau County commissioner of EP and when he was just local within my village he discussed with us that he had 6000 meals ready to eat in storage in a local village of 3600 homes and not a speck of dog food. I think we need some representation among the blind community and among the service animal community.

Edith: I agree with you. I think we also have to acknowledge that none of these people have plans for adult diapers, oxygen, special or kosher diets, etc. I think we are not really high up on the planning scheme. The purpose of this project was simply to create links and directories so we would all at least be at the table.

Chris: Thank you Edith. We will break and re-convene at 1:00. The next thing will be our youth committee report.

Brad: But Bob Gaffney is not here. He has finished three years; considered another three. He had a lot of work and home obligations so he declined to come back on. He didn’t give any additional report.

Chris: We do need a new chair for the youth leadership committee. Kieran is obviously our new youth representative; we would love to see him on committee. Perhaps it is a question we can re-visit in November. We will go on to voter education sub-committee. Mike Godino?

Mike: The committee has not met but in full conversation with one another. We have all been very busy working on individual issues as far as voting education is concerned. Last year we did a great deal in voter education with regard to the pollsters and that was reported on a little bit this morning. This is a local election coming up for 2007; the committee members have been working within their communities so they really have yet to discuss much of that. NYSILC had been working through Sue Cohen to put together voter education awareness day that was very successful and did spawn many sub-committees that are doing a great deal of work right now. I am going to let Brad tell us a little about what they are doing.

Brad: I think I will give a brief summary. What you have is around 60 people who attended that event and you have 20 plus different organizations that are participating in terms of this loose coalition in terms of a voter education front. This is in terms of disability education in NYS. You have sub-committees working in various areas: public education, polling place accessibility, transportation to polls, poll worker training, voting machine accessibility – there are other issues that could blend over into several of those other committees. They have been meeting actively and working on issues. They have been sustaining themselves quite well since June. This is something very positive. In this case the committee’s have been working away month after month and have good momentum. Sue will give more comprehensive update at a later meeting.

Mike: I am hoping we can get this committee back together and functioning and hoping we can get Sue into it and how we can set our goals and taking this throughout the state. I’m looking forward to getting the committee established and getting it doing some work for the remainder of this year and into the next.

Brad: I would see just going into next year, just generally the coalition and the sub-committees we have a documentary to complete and we have an appointee (Bruce Darling) to the State BOE advisory board. This board will be meeting quarterly on the certification and standards of voting machines – we need to be able to support him as he moves forward. Also, when the State does fairly soon reach an agreement with the federal judge on its HAVA compliance plan; we need to make sure the State keeps its word with the HAVA compliance plan. I think the committee can basically monitor those things.

Chris: Any comments or questions for Mike? Ok, moving right along – VESID report from Bob.

Bob: Just a few things. One is that we have awarded the establishment of IL centers for Niagara County to the Western NY IL Project and Queens to the CIDNY. Beginning November 1, they will be officially operating those centers with a five year agreement. Because they were the only applicants, we are still required to once again appease the Office of State Comptroller by doing another Request for Inquiry to see if anybody else is before we can give them single source exemption for five years. They have it for one year. The SSAN – we have 24 applicants for up to 19 awards; we have had 3 different review teams review each of the proposals. There were a number of reviewers for technical incompleteness. They did not fill out according to the requirements of the comptroller. Each reviewer has to do any changes on their own forms and so on. We are still anticipating there will be a November 1 start date as was stated in the RFP, and we are hoping that next week award notices can go out from State Ed’s Bureau of Fiscal Management. All we are required to do at VESID is make sure the reviews are completed. We are not allowed to compile and average the scores. There are 5 folks who will not be able to be funded out of the 24 – the other big thing going on is this. Thanks to all the centers that came out to talk to VESID during two forums we had in August about what kind of services could support the future unified contract services of VESID. Thanks to Melanie for crunching that input and working with centers and getting us a comprehensive set of recommendations. What kinds of services IL centers in NY would include VESID – if they choose to put them in the RFP for unified, contracted services. I do agree fully monumentally alter and change a pretty static VR outcome – it could offer us the opportunity to make changes and help get more people employed. VESID will have an RFP out next year and hopefully it will reflect a lot of these recommendations. Those are the main things we were working on aside from getting our contracts out this year under incredible pressure to get them out on time. Any questions?

Chris: Bob, you mentioned that you thought an RFP was going to go out next year. Do you have any feel for when?

Bob: VESID would like to enter October 1 of next year providing the new services under UCS so if it backs that process down and is able to stick to a timeline, we should have an RFP out somewhere between January and March.

T.K.: I have a question about the SSAN; it is set to begin November 1 – has there been an explanation of their contract (inaudible)

Bob: That is absolutely true; there was no way to extend the existing contract because we were working off of funds from a three year state plan that ends September 30. Our new state plan couldn’t renew until we have the results of the RFP. So going into the RFP we knew that month’s gap exists; the best we were able to do to compensate for that was to be prepared to provide the full amount of funding available for the 11 month period of that year. But it is true that October is a gap month, and I don’t know the best ways for centers– because there will be some centers that are subject to losing funding possibly as we can’t fund everyone that is currently funded and all I can say at our end is this. The IL unit prepared that RFP with input from the state plan committee and NYSILC well in advance of the timeline we needed to see it out to have an October 1 start date and it got stuck in the machinations of SED and our own bureau of fiscal management and within VESID’S own targeting those priority RFP’s that needed attention. Early on, the leadership did not promote our RFP to go to the top of the pile; VESID has many different RFP’s for many different reasons and it was not taken as seriously with the time constraints. Mike Peluso and I were the voices that got it attention it needed. More often happens; a lot of attention goes to much bigger projects than IL projects.

Doug: The letter of opposition expressing the concerns that have been expressed here today and forwarded in time to be included in the hearings testimony and expressing the concerns in the council.

Chris: We didn’t do open forum this morning; I will now open it up for anything folks wanted to share.

Edith: I would like to say that the 504 Democratic Club is honoring Brad on October 28^th with the Justin Dart Award for Public Advocacy. Also honored will be Tom O’Clair, Timothy’s father, with the new Howie the Harp award for mental health advocacy, and an award for the woman in the department of finance who solves parking permit problems. I have a draft of the invitation for anyone who is interested; I really felt that Brad had been the strongest advocate and needed to be entered.

Chris: That’s wonderful. Anyone else.

Meeting adjourned