I will call the meeting to order. This is interview committee a for Bloomington Transit for it is August
19 307 p.m. I am Kate Rosenbarger City Council district to help each else for district three Jennifer
cross Lee clerk's office Okay, so
Is it okay to call you Perry? It's totally okay to call me Kate. Thank you for coming today. Well, thank
you for having me because I was flying back home on Thursdays. It's always a lot to wrinkle with interviews.
So we pretty much have a set of questions that we ask all the candidates to try to keep everything the
same, but we veer a little bit, of course, just as like you say something that we might have a follow
up question about.
We will just kind of head that direction. Our first question is about minority groups that we have just
asked everybody. So I will pick us off. Have you ever been part of a commission council or board that
focused on the betterment and wellness of a specific community, particularly a minority group? If so,
what was your role and what impact did it have? So on a commission or board? Well, I was the chair of
the Commission on Transportation Disadvantage for the state of Florida.
I was appointed by Governor Martinez. I served as chair two terms. And our focus was on disabled, lower
income people. And it was quite the experience. I just thoroughly enjoyed doing that. And I got that
role because in Brevard,
Florida they have each county has a transportation disadvantaged coordinator that coordinates all the
various social service transportation and public transportation. So each county has that and so it was
quite the working with all of the various groups really neat.
Well, good. So, yes, sorry. Yeah. Long answer. And you said it wasn't a long answer. No, it was not.
If you said each county then had a coordinator for social services, transportation, and public. Yeah.
Typically, it was one and the same. Yeah. If you were transfer director for the county, you were also
the CTC for the county. There were some instances where the public transit agency wasn't interested
in it. That wasn't the case in most counties. Got it. So interesting.
What do you want me to do? Want me to continue? No, I'm good. You're good. I got it all. I listened
at the same time as I did some copying and pasting. So the next question is what inspired you to apply
for this position on the Public Transportation Board of Directors? What draws you to the work and the
mission of the board? Well, I know a background in that besides that, I guess, like you're here, you're you're
I'm assuming retired. So like, why do you want to? I retired back in 2018 at IU and I was the director
of campus muster house. So I spent 12 years in the same building, uh, with Wilmington transit and their
staff and board members. So, um, I would go to board meetings and, uh, so my understanding was there
was going to be an old thing. And so I said, okay, I can do this. Uh, and I've been in this, I,
actually worked for Bloomington Transit while I was in school back in 1973 when it was still a city
department before it became its own public transportation corporation. So I think about it, if I stayed,
I would have been like number one on the seniority list. Everything is done by seniority with the union
contract. So, you know, with my background in public transportation,
and I continued to stay up with it. I teach a class over at O'Neill just in the fall semester because
I tell people if I did it both semesters, it'd be a job. That's true. I finally got them down from the
height of 47 students down to 30, and I have a nine-person waiting list. Popular. Yeah. What is the
class? Public transportation management. It's just called public transportation management.
Great. You mentioned that so when you used to share the building with them, you would interact with
board members. I would go to board meetings. You would go to board meetings. How have you interacted
with the board since then? Are you up to speed on what's been going on? How much do you track? No, I
would not say I'm completely up to speed. I read the v-squared articles when they come out and I haven't
been to a board meeting since I
retired. Great. I have a question. How do you understand this board to operate? In a way, it's just
a question of what do you think their role is in terms of Bloomington Transit?
And I think I would just add on to that as another question that's, do you think anything is missing
representation wise from the current board? And if so, what do you bring skills and to like an experience
to fill those gaps? Well, I have a lot of experience in public transportation and I, you know, I was
on a board.
statewide board, but I also worked with boards and elected officials because in, you know,
over the years, you know, you could have your own board like this. I had one in Brevard County and then
we were taken over by the county and I became the first county transit director and it was the city
of the Brevard Transportation Authority, which actually was the city of Melbourne. So you have to work
with your board members, right, and
as a staff person, but then as a board person, you have to work with the rest of the board, right? And
it's very important that you have good relations with everybody when you're on the board. And my whole
theory on this, having worked for boards and city and county commissions, you're there to make things happen.
right for that they're the elected officials or the appointed officials or even in the case of working
with the union they're elected president of that union i'm not elected as the manager of the transit
system so you've got to be able to work together with everybody in all kinds of different and i'll give
you an example so in florida each
five years, they're required to have a transit development plan. It's like a strategic plan, it's state
law. And so you have to take it to the county commission. And so when I took mine and we made
our presentation, well, the consultant made the presentation, I was there. And I had two people with
me, the chair of our citizens advisory board, which was appointed by there were seven county commissioners
and each commissioner appointed one member. And then on the other side was the president of the union.
And they both,
said the exact same thing supporting what we wanted to do. Oh, and by the way, the chair of the Citizens
Advisory Board was also the chair of the Republican Party in Palm Beach County. And the county commission
chair came up to me after the meeting and was blown away that both the union president and the chair
of the Citizens Advisory Board and chair of the Republican Party could both support what we were trying to do.
So I think that's what I always try to keep in mind is you may be disagreeing with somebody today, but
you need them to vote with you tomorrow when you're on a board. And that's how we ran the Commission
on Transportation Disadvantaged had like 15 members. It was from all over the state. So you had people
from Miami and Pensacola, and you were trying to get things done.
And you have to get things done with just about everybody when it comes to doing things in the public.
Because if somebody goes off, there can be issues, right? So that's my sort of personal philosophy on
how you work in the public sector. You've got to have support. And you've got to be able to work with
everybody. And they need to know you will work with them.
Kind of on that theme, limiting transit serves people with very different transportation needs. And
how should the board think about serving all of those things? I just found out I had a, I took the bus
here from the route from Kroger over and you know, the students are back. The last time I was on, there
weren't that many students, but we've also got a lot of issues. You know, there were people with
and all health issues, and the driver had to say to the fellow, you've got to put a shirt on before
you come on the bus. So, you know, we have, I think back to Lincoln in the 70s, when I first got here
as a freshman in 1970, how it's changed. But, you know, I've lived in big states. I lived in Miami,
I lived in West Palm Beach. You know, you have issues, and you've got to work with them.
and the people and the issues you can't just walk away from. So since you just said that you took the
bus here, do you ride bus frequently? I wouldn't say since I have been retired, but I do take it into
campus, you know, because especially next Monday, you know, you don't want your car at a parking lot,
right? Because people are still thinking they can park anywhere, right?
When I lived downtown and worked at the garage on Grimes, I would take the bus from the old where the
buses met there at Washington and 4th Street on the corner. That was the old transfer center before
the new one was built. When I would take the bus into campus, because the 7 would go right by on Walnut and
I could take it in instead of driving. And so that's what you do now, like when you teach your class
in the fall? I won't say every day, right? But that's like, it's not infrequent. No, yeah. It's like
one of your kind of normal options. Well, because I'm asking the students to, one of their projects
will be, give me a write-up on your experience commuting into campus, whether it's bicycling, a park
and ride to the stadium, or taking a
BT bus, so. OK. So then you also consider your commutes onto campus. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Thank you. I want
to follow up on the different needs question. Do you think Bloomington Transit is currently meeting
the needs of its riders? It seems so. I mean, I think the routes, there's been restructuring over the
last few years.
Like the seven is no longer is the one, right? You know, so I mean, I haven't really studied it in depth,
but it seems to me that, you know, the feedback I get from the students and over the years, I've had
hundreds of them and they've all done this project since 2018. So it's good, you know, but you have
to understand that many people come here and this is the first time they've ever used public transit
if they're from Indiana.
Even Indianapolis, you know, people in Carmel and Fishers, they've never been on public transit. So
it's neat to have out of state or out of the country students because they are users of public transit.
And given me a lot of insights, like how the best way to get to the freest way to get to New York City,
take the Staten Island ferry, because it's free and it runs 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
So, um, so I, you know, I can't really, you know, Say, I know everything about what's going on. That
would be perfect. Great. Same for me to say that. So, right. Go back to because I skipped. I know we're
kind of jumping around. Yeah. Um, here's, here's a question.
Here's an interesting one to hear from you about. What ideas do you have to create impactful private
and or public partnerships, initiatives that can address challenges to Bloomington Transit? And of course,
since you were with IU for a number of years. Well, you know, I think that partnership has been great.
I always reckoned it as having a roommate. You can share all your expenses. Right? You know, the power bill,
you know, the cleaning, whatever it is. And I think that relationship is the most important. And having
worked at Gainesville, Florida, where it was the city operation and there was no campus service owned
or operated by the university. But when I first got there, my first, second day of the job meeting with
people at UF, they basically said, if you guys
don't clean up public transit from the city of Gainesville, we're going to start our own service. And
I asked them to give me a year, and they did. And to this day, and that was 1996, so it's still operated
by the city of Gainesville by a person that I hired, who's been there all those years since. But so that city
town, gown, city, university relations. That's the first one. I've also done a lot in private sector
contracting. That was a big, we'll go back to the first Bush administration. That's how far back and
really even into the end of the Reagan administration where there were a lot of initiatives by USDOT
and the Florida Federal Transit Administration to have private public partnerships.
So we, one of the things we did in Brevard County, we contracted out the maintenance of all the buses.
And to this day, it's still going on. The contract has been renewed and put out for bid. So I have gone
through those kinds of things. In Palm Beach County, we had a huge, huge contract for paratransit services.
Because in Florida, it's a big deal to have door-to-door services. It's a huge market because
with older population. Florida is now is what the rest of the country will be like in 30 or 40 years,
as far as the number of disabled people and senior citizens. So it was a huge contract. And so we had
to do that in the private sector. So I'm familiar with that kind of stuff. So, okay. We'll go back to
the IU and the Lincoln Transit relationship again, because I know one of the things that we've talked about
generally over the years is those two systems merging and they're just being one transit system and
what's your perspective on that? I think there are a lot of pluses for it. Federal funding, there is
funding on the table that we're not getting for intensive use systems aimed mostly at university communities.
There's state funding that's on the table. And if you think about, I'm dated on the, because ridership
has gone down since COVID all across public transit. And unlike airlines, it hasn't come back yet. Certain
metropolitan areas are getting close. LA, for instance, is almost to where it was. It just, it's been
a long haul to get people, most of it, a lot of it is just people not going back to work.
in a big city, right? In Denver, it's been oral to get ridership back. And they're, you know, much lower.
But anyhow, off on a tangent there, but there's the ridership at BTE or at Campus Bus is about three
million a year. And I think Wilmington Transit's four or five million a year, something like that.
Well, if that's my last information. We're down above 2 million. And we're at 3.5. OK, that was, yeah.
Campus bus is at 3 million a year. Well, it was. I'm sure it's down from what it was, but my information
is dated. But nationwide, ridership is down. But there's still ridership there, and it's not being counted
in any state or federal formula. And those are important.
I understand. Are you, have you with that? Yes. Yes. Line of questioning. Okay. I, because that's something
you said too, I wanted to jump to paratransit and AT access like we have here. And I guess, you know,
kind of to the best of your ability, how you see balancing paratransit with fixed route buses and maybe
Yeah, where do you see that going in the future here? Well, I'm a big advocate for, because based on
my experience, for people with disabilities having access to door-to-door services. You know, I saw
the industry over the years fight that. I mean, I was at conferences where people in wheelchairs were
chaining themselves to the front bumpers of a bus in protest that there weren't
wheelchair lifts. And then we got the ADA. We're really happy to get the ADA because in Brevard County,
we did not, I got there in 83, we did not have lifts on any of our buses. And I said to the board, okay,
we need to retrofit and we need to buy all of our new buses with lifts. And we did that before 1991.
And so, and the paratransit services, the door to door,
You know, again, an example from Brevard County, we would do the Space Coast Symphony, always did a
holiday at one of the mega churches, a free concert. And we ran all the buses on a Sunday from all the
nursing homes. And we had county commissioners, there were five, not three like here, but coming to help
and saying, wow, this is the best thing. And I think it really, I mean, having gotten the calls from
people who had issues using paratransit and trying to help them get through it, it's really important
that, you know, they don't have alternatives for the most part, right? And we're that alternative. And
I think we got to keep that in mind first
priority are for people who really have no alternatives. And, you know, we did a lot of stuff in Florida.
For instance, one of the things we did was instead of having Medicaid pay for paratransit trips, because
Medicaid is just a low income medical, right? It's not about being disabled now. Oh, people are disabled
on Medicaid. But so by giving them a monthly bus pass, they were able to go anywhere.
And it was transferable within the family. So instead of just going to a doctor's appointment once a
month, they had access to countywide public transit. I think it's important to work within the system
that's set up. But we have to have that as the highest priority. I really don't see anything else higher
than that. What about the microtransit?
So in the past couple of years, Bloomington Transit has really expanded their microtransit, not just
the access, but microtransit for everybody. Well, I think that's a great new concept. And I think it's
sort of new, so new at this point. It'd be hard to evaluate its effectiveness because it's only been
a couple of years. So it's a tool in the toolbox.
It's just like, you know, we now have bus trackers. I was standing there at the right time and going,
oh, okay, I took it out and it was delayed a few minutes coming around from, well, I'm sure at the mall
because it, you don't want to go to Target, right? So yeah, it was fine. So it was fine. But those are
great. You know, it's great to have real time information instead of looking at a schedule that was
put together months ago, right?
didn't know there was a snowstorm going to be there that day, right? So I think technologically, we
have done a lot in public transit over the last 50 years in changing things. And so I think microtransit
is just one of those new tools that we now have that we couldn't have done 20 years ago. To change gears again.
What is one thing that you can name that you might identify as the largest problem? What is transit
and how would you work to change that as a board member? Well, if you go back historically, public transit
and urban development, right? The biggest challenge we have in public transit is making sure that they're
aligned together.
And why does public transit work in a town like this? Well, think about the campus, right? It's walkable,
parking is scarce, or it's over at the stadium. And you've got people choosing to use the service, even
though they could, a lot of students can afford a car and they would like to park everywhere, you know,
out of campus everywhere, right? And they do.
Like at the Kelly Garage, that's the cash cow for parking operations hourly rates. But so it's, I think
we've got to kind of go back to our roots of if we have a community that's walkable, that's pleasant
to be in without a car, that you don't need a car. And I think that's where, if you look around the
nation, you know,
New York has bounced back, okay, from COVID. Denver, yeah, there's pockets, you know, Boulder is a beautiful,
you know, college town, right? And you love going down Pearl Street Mall and, you know, downtown Denver,
but it's spread out over, what, seven counties or something, the metro area, and it hasn't come back
to the level of ridership it had before COVID. And a lot of it you've got to look at as,
is it based on the development pattern of, they're spread out, way spread out, right? And so, you know,
I think Bloomington has a lot going for it when it comes to having a walkable community that's, you
don't have to, you know, you can do part once kind of thing and walk around, you know, or take the bus
to campus and downtown. So,
It wasn't a bad walk to walk over from the transfer station here. That's almost academic, isn't it?
Getting ready for class. In the built environment, make sure there's room for buses. Yes, it has to
be part of it, just as it was at the turn of the last century.
They were building streetcar suburbs, Shaker Heights outside of Cleveland, Coral Gables outside of Miami.
They were doing it the same. It wasn't just an add-on or an extra thought. It was part and parcel of
what they were trying to do. And we got away from that. We just have gotten away from it. But in college
towns, we really have
a step up above just an ordinary town of 50 or 60,000 people would have. That's why we'd like living
here, right? That's why I came back. I knew I didn't want to stay in Florida.
It's good, huh? Too bad. I think this is the question we asked a couple that we could ask to Perry.
the chat about so the the BT board is five members and it could be seven and so I think with your history
with campus bus in BT. What do you think that do you think five serves ET well? Or do you think seven
with? I mean, it does give you a chance to add on other people.
You know, I don't think 547 is a saver kind of number, but certainly seven isn't so huge that it would
be out of control. You know, Denver just, they reformed their elected board. They had a 15 member board
for the RTD and the legislature just changed that to everybody appointed by the governor. Sounds kind
of familiar, but. So they went away from the electing,
board members from 15 districts that they had from the beginning since like 1969. So, you know, that's
I think really the purview of the City Council to make that decision as to size the board, whether it's
five or seven or nine. I've worked with big boards.
I think for me that is not a the most question. Yeah, I think that I'm good too. Is there anything else
that you want us to know or anything that you just want to add to or things that you wanted to make
sure to say? Well, one thing I would is that if I were appointed, I would try to work with everyone.
And I know that that's very important, getting things moving to keep things moving. You know, you cannot,
you know, sort of, you know,
Like I said earlier, you may disagree, but you can't be disagreeable and disagreeing. And you've got
to know that later on, you may need their support. You want their vote on something else. So my mind
is you've got to be able to work with everybody. Now, that's not going to be easy. But I think that's
got to be what you have to keep in mind.
on something like this because, you know, you're appointed by city council or the mayor. You're going
to have that relationship, right? But you're going to have your own judgment because that was what the
appointment was all about, right? You were appointed because the appointing body felt like you could
do the job. So that's always been how I felt about working with boards or being on a board.
Great. I think I even managed to keep my notes in order. I don't have an order. The only thing that
I was going to say from the clerk's office perspective is that
Council committee will deliberate, and then once they figure out who they recommend, that's a good word.
They have to do that in a public meeting. They'll have to do that at a regular session in city council
meeting. Of course, right now they're in budget cycle. Whatever the decision is to be made, they'll
hear from me either way. I just want to let you know that as well. Thank you.
Yeah, and our next regular session meeting is until September. So that's the earliest. Yeah. And make
that recommendation. Well, thank you. Great. Thank you. Yes. Yeah. Great. Thank you for coming. Yeah.
Thank you. You are welcome. And you can catch the rest of us on Zoom or in person. Okay. Great.
Thank you. Thanks, Jim. I just realized that I do not have my notes totally in order. So I think our
orders were to talk about our candidates and
recommend someone that would then be discussed at City Council. I'm okay with that. I do wish ESAF was
here, but it's okay. I think we had a good discussion last time too. I think this is a pretty important
board and council members might have questions and we can just talk more about the process here and
the candidates, I think, a little bit.
in our next regular session where we recommend someone. We're just kind of messing something up. As
long as I fix it right after we get out of this. One of our considerations last week ended on what happened
at the BTD last night. It was just delayed.
Yes. So they did not vote on anything. And their next meeting is until September 15th. Great. So I think
with that, I know, I think too we could use, I mean,
that into consideration either way. I think we could say we could wait until after that meeting. We
could also recommend someone without considering that meeting. It's not that we need to. Yeah, I think
that at this point I'm not sure that I want to push it off. I'm just always, it's all in my hair. Your
hair looks beautiful. It's just like an animal.
Luffy is having problems today, but whatever. Um, so I'm, I'm okay getting into it, but I think I'm
kind of all in the same space as our last meeting. Uh, when he sock was here too, I think, and I mean,
I have thought about this more, you know, the first thing is I think these four candidates are excellent.
I think it's rare that we have.
So many good candidates for one board position. Really interesting. And they all bring. Some overlapping
skills and experiences and some that are different. Last meeting. I would say I leaned toward mixing
things up a little bit on the board because.
I get the impression that things are not working well, not working super well right now. And so I, I,
I would say I favor like the kind of a fresh perspective and like data driven decision making that Zach
brings with an added bonus of a transit rider.
I'm thinking really hard right now. For those of you who can't be out in the world, I'm thinking really
hard right now. I guess I'm conflicted, you can say, between the experience and what you just said,
Zach, in terms of the data-driven stuff. I really think that
I may be strongly convinced that we need to expand this board to seven. We, of course, can't do that
until the CCP meeting because I think that both of those voices will be good on it. Harry is very interesting
because he has a lot of experience, but it's most recently from the IU perspective, which is really
different, I think, and is
is also kind of interesting. And I can't, and one of the things about this board per state code is there
has to be a split, a political split. So we can't have anybody of just one party or another and that
they have to have to be split. And so I think one of the things that I wrote in my notes last time was,
well, we should look into that with our candidates to see if
like what political parties they do identify with and in terms of expanding that to seven, that might
be problematic to try to keep the balance per state code that's required. But I would be very interested
in that because I do feel like, I mean, I feel like all four of them could make
slightly different but very valuable contributions. One thing that we said about Hank last time was
like, well, maybe he should be attending these anyway sometimes as part of his role in the city. That
could be a way to get his perspective and voice in that space a little bit more and some of the data
that he brings to that. But even with the other three, I guess I'm
most tied, I think, between Zach and Kent in terms of Kent and Perry having similar experience, but
Kent's is more BT versus Perry's is more IU focused at this point. Yeah, I think the same and I think too,
I do think policy-wise and priorities-wise for Bloomington Transit, I do like where Zach and Kent and
Hank land on increasing frequency and convenience and predictability that was
lessening resources, decreasing resources, you know, we have to kind of decide sometimes and what that
looks like for micro transit versus fixed routes. I tend to agree, I guess, with that approach. All
three of them were pretty negative about micro transit and Perry was more neutral about it. Or, I mean,
they were saying we need it
we do it and we can continue to look at how to innovate that or you know reach more people but that
our bus system needs more frequency. They all said that overall to get people riding and choosing it
and I really liked that. I find it interesting that Perry brought up that that idea of the university
may be concerned that
that the city transit system wouldn't support their students enough because that was something that
I don't remember which applicants said that because he thought, you know, about that. Like,
what do you think? I use resistance to that was I think it was Ken. I think it was to that. And he was
like, well, make sure that we serve their student. I want to give up the role of order. No, I think
that was the control was somebody else. I think Kent was
One of them, and I think it was Ken, was they want to make sure that their students are served very
well and that there would be fear that their students wouldn't be as prioritized if it was all under
BT. It's interesting because Perry has that experience from being the municipal transit person, ensuring
that the university and the town did
like their students did end up being served by the system. So I find that really interesting because
that's another theme that comes through here. But this is such a hard choice right now. I think there
are two, yes, two hard choices, who and then when. And I think I was just looking at something about
paratransit that scaling up paratransit does not see the same ROI as scaling up fixed routes and the
microtransit fills in those gaps. And I like that.
So right, I think it is because we're in the 90 days of our time to a point or a point. I'm I'm struggling
on the timeline, so I just I want to think about it for a second. What do you mean? We want to not make
a decision today.
I'm on board with not making a decision today. It does look like the 90 days for Ken can go through
October. I think that's better. Open door law rules, we can talk one-on-one to fellow council members.
I'm happy to talk at a regular session about it even before we all meet again because this feels like
a pretty important decision and all we're doing is recommending
So it can change on council day, who we vote for. It's probably less dramatic if it doesn't. If we have
colleagues that are. That's okay. I don't think there is a harm in waiting. Especially since we can't
make a decision until September. Our next council meeting isn't until September.
I find it unfortunate that they postponed that piece of action yesterday because that could potentially
make our decision a little bit easier depending on what they do there in terms of our applicants and
their continued interest and service. I also am interested to hear thinking of the seven versus five.
That is something that I was going to bring up at the CCP meeting and that is not until the end of this month.
I think it's the 31st. That's just what the next meeting is. I want to at least know from my three colleagues
there what their thoughts on that are, but that could also be something that gets prefaced that we also
speak with our colleagues about, and especially with the stuff going on in BT right now. This might
And I mean, clearly it's engaging more people because we actually have members of the public. And an
entertainment interview in three years. Yes. And so I think it's really important to do as much due
diligence as we can for this. And yes, I was going to say it doesn't look like they necessarily like
delayed it. I think state law was like because it has with a contract.
Um, it looks like they have to introduce it. It was like a first read-in yesterday would have technically
been the first reading. Okay. And so the next meeting, which is in September, is their second, where
they would be able to vote. I don't think anybody. Yeah. No, like, I mean, even if they had to lay that
right. Right. Sometimes big decisions need to get right. Right. Yeah. I think too, I just like the context
of all this is unique right now in this time, this timeline. And I think.
I do lean mixing things up and I just liked a lot of like what Zach said about the role of the board
to like push priorities like in a very professional way and I really like that. I think too having a
current board member and I totally understand all this serving a very long time which is super awesome
and also kind of being done if a
happens a certain way. We have that. I think I I think that is OK and I think. I think it is just like
right serving for so long and feeling like maybe you know you'd be like hey, I just feel over it in
some way where again that just kind of. I don't think that's the wrong feeling, but it does also kind
of make me lean.
new blood in there too. Yeah. And I think maybe that's another one of my things though, because with
only five members, it's like, whenever, like a single new person, I'm not sure how long any of the rest
of them have been serving. But depending on that, it could also be like, wow, but like, we've suddenly
lost institutional memory because, you know, I mean, yeah, so
with only five members, it definitely feels like that's a little bit easier to do just in any group,
anywhere. And that also makes this decision a little bit harder too. Once again, goes back to the, I
think that Seben might be better for- It's a tiny board, really. Yeah. Her BT. Well, and especially
for how important it is. Right. And how much they are responsible for. I know. Like, that's- Right. Yeah.
Okay, so today we'll say no action and we'll schedule another meeting. And I assume everyone watching
now is excited about that. And I think we just need to get with Esau then to figure out when he might
be able to zoom in or be here in person, especially if we wait until after the meeting.
I guess we need to decide right now if we want to wait until after the BT meeting. Okay. We don't have
to engage with public, but I did just see public comment that folks were like, well, let's wait. Yeah,
I think in some ways waiting would be good and other ways. The other thing I was just looking through
and thinking about any other business that we might have as a board as we do, I think have that vacancy on
Yes, our committee. Sorry. There's no current applications for that. Maybe because I know that he's
not just traveling right now, so maybe we can give scheduling another meeting like a week or something.
You thought it's supposed to be back next week, correct? I'm not. I'm pretty sure because he said he
was not going to be there for this week's budget hearings. There was an implication that he would be
here for next week's budget hearings. I believe that he will be
back next week and we can cross our fingers that maybe by then there'll be some applicants for commission
status of black males and so then we can have those to consider. Hey, out there if anybody is interested
in serving on the mission of status of black males, there's a vacancy there, please apply. Yeah. I think
we're no action and then we're pushing a decision on when to have a next meeting until at least next week.
And then, okay, yeah. Okay, because then we can look at our availability via email and schedule something.
Right. And then we can also know if we have any applicants for sessions as blackmailers. There was the
press release that just went out, I want to say last week. So hopefully we can get some
type of traction also have been in communication with since students are coming back. There's an emoji
day that's happening. Oh yeah. And so I think I might go just to see if we can generate some interest
with students with boards and commissions because when I've gone last year to talk to various groups,
we have had some students that have applied that have actually been appointed.
to a couple of the board's animations. So that might be something that we could get to. Great. And then
I just want to highlight this comment that was just made. A potential new person is unlikely to change
the vote, but waiting is not bad either. I don't have a strong opinion on that. It's all. It's all realistic. Okay.
That's our plan. Anything else? I think the other thing is I can do maybe like a poll and figure out
when everybody is back and then we can get everything scheduled so you can deliberate again. Thank you.
Yeah, of course. Thank you to the members of the public who have come to engage and interview committee
meetings. So excited. Thanks everybody. See you tonight.
You have to.