City of San Jose, CA City Manager, 28 Sep 2021

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From YouTube: 9/28/21 | City Mgr. Jennifer Maguire presents City's COVID-19 & Continuity of Operations Update

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San José City Council September 28, 2021 Meeting, Agenda Item 3.1

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During a presentation. yes., thank you, mayor and city.

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Council.- today, we're gonna give you a cuban 19 update and we have several staff that are coming down., we'll have about a 15 minute presentation and then we'll have some time for any q and a after that.. So I turn it over to lee wilcox to do the introduction. thank you,.

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Jennifer lee wilcox, assistant city manager and I'm gonna, let.

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Our small but mighty team get in place., mayor and council.

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It's been four weeks since our last report to you or update uncovered 19. since that time.

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Because of our local area's high vaccination rate,, our own numbers continue to improve locally., while the rest of the country continues to deal with plunging numbers, dolan will go into this in a bit.. Our emergency operation. Center. next slide continues to support.

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Our emergency operations and the various departments which are you will hear directly from the department directors today..

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We continue to monitor the pandemic. National, state, local.

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Data as well as communicate services to those most vulnerable that are still in need., given where we are with the pandemic locally. Today, you'll hear directly from dolan beckel around what's happening.

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Nationally, at a state level locally from alvin gill laying around our vaccination efforts with the county from autumn young, around communications and outreach. mccain, oh around hybrid work and our facilities and implementing the vaccination mandate for large events from jackie morales for and around our evictions and rental relief, programs. sarah's friday, around advocacy and what we're hearing from the white house around present biden's plans, as well as john psps rally around childcare and food distribution from jill born on.

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Digital equity. and we're gonna continue to use this format to talk to you about what has changed since we last spoke to you., what's new and what's driving this change as we continue to walk through this next slide before I turn it.

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Off the door- and I do want to say this is a summary of what we've heard at a federal and national and local level..

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Obviously, as you drive into work,, listen to the news., this continues to change and evolve quite rapidly. daily and in the case of cdc and fda, sometimes.

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Hourly., so this is our best attempt to summarize what we're hearing. and, what's the most important as we look forward to the next few weeks?. With that I'll hand, it off to our operations, chief. beckel.

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Thanks, lee. good afternoon,, honorable mayor city, council, members of the public and city staff., dolan beckel, here interim deputy director, excuse me., there's the interim deputy city manager all now present the trans and covid 19 data emphasizing the changes since our last cover 19 update on august 17th.. So since our.

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Last update the delta variant, the most serious variant, labeled, a variant of concern remains highly transmissible through most of the united states, as seen in the red shading here on the cdc map., and it remains the dominant variant in the united states, as shown in the orange dotted circle pretty much in the center of the screen.. The bay area counties are faring better with substantial, but not high transmission rate in south america and other regions.. The new variant, less syrian's variant of interest is being watched closely.

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As preliminary data indicates, it is more infectious but fortunately less transmissible than the delta variant.. The overall national vaccine rate for the united states is seventy five point, one percent, far from the 90 percent. We need to be ensured of herd immunity and getting our way out of the corona virus.

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Response.. The good news is.

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That the county, positive cases.

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And deaths are decreasing after a peak during covid, 19 wave four on august 19th.. Of course, neither the city nor the county are isolated islands, and we must remain vigilant to ensure the stability of our public health system and safety of our residents and employees.. One of.

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The primary indicators of the stability of the public health system is intensive care units or icu bed availability. as this graph shows,. While our icu bed availability has been relatively stable during wave four, we remain at only 24 percent of the icu beds available at the beginning of the pandemic. While the situation is currently stable., the county does not have a large contingency to. There would be a more serious variant arise during the winter months and thus requiring a major countywide surge again an icu bed availability., since our.

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Last update both the county and the city, vaccination rates continue to increase.. The city's vaccination rate has moved from eighty five point: seven percent on august 17th to ninety two point: seven percent now to be ninety two point: five percent now or seven percent increase., the county's vaccination rate has moved from eighty point three to eighty eight point: four or an eight percent increase later in today's update., our eoc vaccination branch director, alvin galang, explained the city and the counties continued commitment to the ongoing vaccination drive. It should be noted..

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This data is not inclusive of boosters. Third, nor.

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Additional shots and we will be working with the county to determine the best way to present that data.. It should be.

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Noted that, since we met last, we have accomplished two important things surrounding that covid 19, data. first,. I finally and recently received a point of contact with the county to engage in understanding the underlying data and taking corrective action if appropriate.

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and second, we just recently signed in the point agreement with one of our previous eoc data analysts who will be starting with the city shortly to help us continue our efforts in reporting clear and accurate data., as we move forward with these eoc updates,, we'll endeavor, to point out those areas where we are clarifying the data and are taking any action to correct the data.. There were some questions at our august 17th meeting about the data on this page..

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We did spend quite a bit of time with the county to understanding the underlying data and if anybody would like the painful answers during q and a I'm happy to answer about how we're confident in the accuracy of this data and why there are certain comparison, discrepancies that arise so.

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Our public health efforts continue to pay off.. San nsa has the highest vaccination rate in the nation among the top 10 largest united states cities, which is probably the most important comparison, giving the scale and complexity of the cities.. The source of this data is my eyeballs on the data on the specific web site, so I'm very confident in the data that's being presented to you here.. So this concludes our presentation on the latest covid 19 data and trends. I'll now turn the presentation back to lee wilcox.. I believe we are.

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Handing it off to alvin. great.

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Thank you,, lee., good afternoon., honorable mayor city, council members, members of the public., my name is alvin galang and I am the director of the city's vaccination task force from the city manager's office of emergency management.. As you can see, the numbers that dolan presented numbers wise. We are headed in the right direction..

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Nearly all cities in santa clara county have over 90 percent vaccination rate of 12 and over with at least one dose. and as shown city of san jose's at over ninety two. It's.

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Actually, ninety two point: six percent, as of today., so it is a point one percent. incremental change., but when you take that into consideration that the city of san jose has a population of nearly a million people or over a million people that point, one percent accounts for a thousand folks, right., a thousand potential lives,, a thousand potential livelihood that we've saved since july..

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The vaccination task force has been daily communications with the county's mobile vaccination team, working in tandem to identify locations that continue to experience lower vaccination rates.. This county partnership has been strengthened by the increase in sustained supply of enough vaccine and the refocus of vaccinations from the larger mass vaccination sites to these mobile pop up vaccination, sites. again,, a more hyper focused locations, hyper focused.

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Clinics in these hard to serve areas., so I would like to take an opportunity thank santa clara county public health department, as well as our other providers for their continued support and partnership.. So what's driving the change? as dolan mentioned,, the delta variance is driving the changed.. It started in july.

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it peaked in august and now september it is coming down..

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The variant may have also encouraged more people to get their vaccinations, for instance, countywide. In the month of july., around twenty six hundred daily vaccinations were administered by august.. That number had increased to around 3000 vaccinations and in.

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September, it settled back down to two thousand five hundred vaccinations., so what we're doing is we're monitoring the decisions,, the direction from federal government, from the county on booster doses and, of course, the third slash additional dose doses as well., and so what's new? we had a mid-august peak of around 410.

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Per 100000 and it's currently down to under two hundred per 100000. when talking about the cover 19 rates and our focused communication efforts, which will be covid more death by my colleague autumn young and our continued dedication to serving our most vulnerable populations within the high priority census. Tracks. next slide please.. What.

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You'll see here are numbers again since the changes since august, where nearly across the board we've increased our vaccination rates for white,, black,, latino,, latina latin x.

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And just the asian population has had some minimum minimal increase as well. the city of san jose again is at ninety two point: six percent vaccination rate and we've had increasing in the vaccines delivered with our partners as well as increases in the resident impressions. Digital vaccine outreach next slide, please.

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What you see in front of you are the 13 or the current census, tracts 13 census tract within the city of san jose that have lower vaccination rates as you'll notice and as dolan had pointed out,. There are some discrepancies with particularly alviso.. The same can also be said for the sun neighborhoods and the natalie park neighborhood, specifically the sun neighborhoods and the natalie park neighborhoods..

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Those are neighborhoods that kind of surround san jose state university and so taking into account the large number of college students that live in the area,. That may also be why.

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Again, the sun, neighborhood and aggie park neighborhood is listed as one of our lower vaccination rates or lower census tracts with vaccination rates, but still with the remaining census, tracts.

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Regardless of the alviso sun, negative park. bottom line is that we're not going to lose focus on making sure that we do.

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Outreach and that we do provide vaccinations to these areas within the city of san jose.. So with that, I will now let autumn young speak on how we're reaching our residents with vital information. I don't think.

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I can make is out proud member.

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Of the recovery communications team., you heard alvin talk about our remaining unvaccinated and we understand that there may be not able to get or may not trust the information from mainstream platforms.. So how are we reaching this group?? It really requires a greater investment in relational capital.. That means engaging our trusted messengers to encourage vaccination.. Add that to the.

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Expiration of moratoriums and benefits.- that's really driving needs include recovery information along with our vaccination and isolation and testing information.. So how are we doing that? we're working with our trusted partners or trusted messengers to help get the word out about vaccination recovery., and you see some of those listed on the screen.

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There. specifically, we've been working with our ground team outreach from our cdc partnerships like cam, university and so most mayfair.

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Other partners, like the asian-american center of santa clara county, jaxa and catholic.

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Charities to name a few and.

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We're also amplifying the social media of these trusted partners. Ask our partners that covid 19 black have great content., so we're able to amplify their message and get that out to the communities so that they can hear it.

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and our fabulous integrity partners at the scene as a fire department code designed banner, which you also see on your screen, that will go on all of our 30 fire stations, knowing that those those messengers are really a valuable partner in the community, and then we've got our trusted redeploying our tactics that work are reactivating our spanish language, radio, advertising on four stations, we're doing a direct mail piece that actually includes recovery resources, along with vaccination information out to our priority neighborhoods. and as alvin mentioned,.

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The county has really ramped up their hyper focused clinic, which you can see by the image on the right that that is one slide for two days of vaccination clinic opportunities that we are creating those slides and then in concert. The county is creating social media and flyers that we're able to get out to the community, which is really great benefit.. They didn't. We didn't have that resource before and that takes the load off of our team. slide.

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2, please. next slide. great., we works. We are the wireless.

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Emergency alert system. we send out in spanish and english to our hardest to reach residents., and we believe these are actually residents that wouldn't get the message otherwise, and it works to get vaccine doses in arms.. You can see the quote from sue ellen haggerty of the santa clara county public health department .. She said as part of my role in observation. I asked almost every patient how they heard about the clinic with three exceptions.. This was one hundred and fifty eight vaccinations with three exceptions..

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Everyone else said they got the text alert on their phone., so we're here saying that nearly 100 percent of the patients were directed to their vaccine by the text alert.. We believe the text alert was integral to the successful turnout and also for the clinic at alviso exclamation point exclamation, point., exclamation, point exclamation point., thanks for your leadership and our community., and this is a great tactic, but we really have to use balance when we are are using this.. We know that these alerts turn out the residents, but it also comes with some.

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Concerns about oversaturation and making sure that we aren't over broadcasting.. There is a small glitch in the system that doesn't allow us to hyper focus as much as we we can.. So it goes out to a wider, a wider group and because of that, we've used these these guidelines for selecting the clinics to promote we plan are. We are broadcasts about seven days apart. we select locations that serve the highest priority, census, tracts and neighborhoods and within those highest priority census, tracts in neighborhoods.

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We make sure to consider equitable implementation across council districts., we've deployed 11.

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Notifications to date. the next one up is this: coming this saturday for an event on sunday at the horse carrollton school in district 5., the text alert has another great benefit., and that is that it drives recipients to the city of san jose emergency notification. Web page, where visitors also get additional recovery support information, along with the vaccine clinic details in the language they prefer. an example of that you see on the screen, a snapshot of the safety.

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Alert got a small piece in spanish and then the english longer alert. on the day that that went out, we had over 50 200 recipients, click the english page and that's ten times the usual traffic of our web page and then more than fifteen hundred click to the spanish language. Page. close to 200 visitors went to the vietnamese and chinese page, which is significant, because users actually have to take an additional step to select that language.. So we are works.

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And we are really proud to be able to use that to get shots and arms.. So, in closing, the recovery communications team is continuing to message, vaccination and testing and isolation services and is ready to support what's next for amplifying additional recovery resources, boosters and third doses, as well as andrew tweeted out 12 age group. When approved.

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thank you. now I'll pass it over to matt keno, who will present about city facilities.

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Thank you,, adam., matt, keno,, director of public works that brief presentation on hybrid work facilities and resources.. What has changed? so we have four port four employees who can effectively perform their work from home.. We have delayed, bringing those employees back to the in-person or in-person office work until november 1st..

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We have,, as you are aware,, adopted and implemented a vaccination ordinance for city for events of 50 or more people in city owned facilities and that took effect on september 20th.. Those changes are being driven by the increased increase in cases and risk of covid due to the delta virus and prioritizing the safety of our community..

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A few new things to mention the eoc hadn't moved the activation up from level 4, which was monitor, monitoring to level 3 as the delta variant continued to impact our area and, as you are aware, we're sitting today in a hybrid meeting that is in person and on zoom for city council, meetings. however,. Due to some staffing vacancies and lack of staffing and equipment.

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We are holding off on having hybrid meetings for committees and commissions until until a future date and we'll be at to report more on that as as the month as time goes by and happy to answer any questions on this. later during the discussion and I'll turn over to jackie now for the next part of the update. thank you, matt.

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I'm jackie morales friend and I am the director of housing and I'm here, to discuss both the eviction and rental relief response.. So in terms of what has changed, the state eviction moratorium under hb 832 is going to be ending at the end of this month and what that means for our tenants is that they are going to have to pay full rent. Beginning october, 1st 88 32 does provide some additional protections that continue through march 2022, and the staff will be providing a more detailed report later on in this agenda. and one of the.

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Biggest changes, of course, that came with a eight eight thirty two is that it does prevent the city or counting from taking any further action when it comes from when it comes.

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Regarding eviction protections until april 1st of 2022., we.

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Continue to implement our rental relief program and you can see from the slide the number of different outreach programs we've been working on over the past couple of months in terms of an update locally, we've received fifty eight hundred applications with 65 million dollars worth of funds requested from both the city and county, because it's a combined program, we've paid over close to half of those requests distributing close to 25 million dollars from the state applications.

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I can draw down the city of santa as a only and they have received a little over 5000 applications, which they have funded a little over two thousand. Their funds requested just from the city of santa fe, is over sic 67 million.

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And they've paid over 26 million dollars and so they've spent close to 100 percent of our era. Funds. and, as you know, we are working and moving our area to funds to the state. and with that I'll be available for questions and I'm turning it over to sara for their.

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Interim recess and we'll reconvene in january 20 22., we.

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Did not see statewide vaccine mandate, legislation move forward this year. and, as mentioned by our housing team,. Unfortunately, no additional legislation was put forward or executive order issued to extend the eviction moratorium that expires on september 30th..

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The city led extensive advocacy to amend the state's brown act, laws to allow exceptions for immunocompromised members of boards and commissions.. Thank you again to the council members for submitting letters advocating for legislative amendments.. Although our proposed amendments were not accepted,, our concerns were heard loud and clear by the governor's office and assembly member rivas, who added an urgency clause to hb 3 6 1..

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This bill was signed by the governor and allows more remote meetings to continue under an emergency declaration.. Our city clerk also authored a memo on this item. If you're interested further details. additionally,, we continue to monitor the implementation of the white house path out of that pandemic action plan and any related federal action. At this time we have no further updates on implementation. Beyond the booster updates, you heard from alvin on the budget front.

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California released draft guidelines for financial assistance to residents and businesses for past due water and electricity bills.. We anticipate funding, availability.

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This winter., the governor, also signed omnibus budget bill, sb 155, providing an extension on the moratorium for water service disconnections.. No disconnections can be done for nonpayment until after december 30, 1st 2021. lastly,.

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Recommended adjustments to the community and economic recovery budget will be considered at the november second city council meeting.. Additional information on utility or rearrange programs will also be provided at the november council meeting. and with that I'll turn it over to john. john.

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And joe, thank you. good afternoon. john's israeli director parks, recreation, neighborhood services., I'm going to do a quick update on food distribution and childcare.. In august we provided eight point: seventy five million meals to our community. about half of those were by second harvest.. We are seeing inflation impact, the cost of food, water, milk, gas.

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So that is driving some cost for us.. We are extending contracts with our current providers under some authority we already have from the council previously, through the end of this calendar year.. It's likely we'll be back to extend that even further as part of the november 2nd meeting we're going to have about extending the first quarter of the next year, so that will be january through march.. The that's.

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Expected to be around one point, two million dollars sorry., we are monitoring the insecurity.. Obviously we know that insecurity goes up around the holidays.. That's a concern for us., so that's part of why we're extending the current contracts.

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that wasn't the original plan, but we want to be ready for the uncertainty really just get through the holidays., as dolan will tell you, everything kind of went sideways last year, starting with about halloween and then the holidays., and so we locked back down if you all recall., so we're going to take a wait and see approach and try to be prepared to be reactive if something goes sideways again.

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This year., of course, we're hopeful that it won't., but otherwise food is, is relatively stable. Right now on child care front., we we had over 250.

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Youth that benefited from our community development block grants to the tune of over a half a million dollars of support.. We began 31 after.

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School programs in mid august transitioning from summer camps into schools. we're serving now a little over 11 100 youth on a daily basis.. We are struggling a little bit with you know, obviously, and in these age categories these are kids from kindergarten through sixth primarily.. So these are unvaccinated individuals that our staff are interacting with..

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So sometimes people are getting.

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Exposed. we are seeing some positive cases., even the kids are in their families or even the teachers, and then the kids that were in the teacher's class got exposed.. We have some trouble with the schools sharing health information with minors, as you can imagine., so we're creating a parental consent, form task.. The parents just give us permission that if something comes up the school can talk to us about here's, what we've done and we started to break the. you know,.

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We might have 30 kids in an after school program program or more., so we're trying to keep them a little isolated into smaller groups so that if one of those kids was exposed, only a portion of the larger group has to quarantine or be affected. The rest of the group. and we're keeping six feet or more away., so the exposure is the same.. So that's one of the things we're trying to do to sort of mitigate so that we're not shutting down full classes..

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We did manage to get our teen centers open, so we're serving a little under two hundred teens a day.. So we're happy to see those kids not on the street for at least some hours of the day.. We also, of course, got recreation preschool going.

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we've got 16 classes over 12 locations will do 58 throughout the year., that's in-person. and last, but not least,, of course, we're pursuing a variety of funding sources, both state and federal, both to our friends at icr, but also through the county office of education, who we meet with frequently and I'll pass this on to our city, librarian.

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Good afternoon, mayor and council, joe horn, city librarian, and lead on the digital equity team., I'm happy to report that all work streams are moving forward as planned. the community. Wi-Fi projects are all progressing on. Schedule. construction will start at the independence high school attendance area in november.. We also have 12 hundred new library hotspots that have been ordered, expected arrival and circulation starting in early october..

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Our school hotspot partnership is providing three thousand eight hundred and twenty hot spots to start the school year and we'll be expanding to 60 100 hot spots through the emergency connectivity fund. If awarded.

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and finally chrome books, I've had hot spots and other devices our continued limited availability through our center who's, a public library branches., but this collection is growing all the time.. I just wanted to note that we do have a detailed report on digital inclusion and equity activities coming to both the smart cities and the neighborhood services and education committees within the next month. and I'll pass it to jack from the start of.

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The pandemic, through september, 24th,, isolation and quarantine program has helped nearly one thousand nine hundred and fourteen persons, including persons without a permanent home to isolate or quarantine in hotels.. In addition,, we've provided supportive services over a little over 1 million dollars in groceries and other necessities to help the close to 50 200 households to meet their needs., we've also distributed close to nine and a half million in direct rental and financial assistance. Two to four thousand four hundred: seventy two households.: ninety percent people have been helped in this program.

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Are residents of santa has a we're working with the county, who has requested additional funding until the end of this year.? In order to continue to offer these services all of the county isolation, quarantine staff have been trained to provide assistance on our rental assistance program, including application assistance to residents who are contacted through the hotline..

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The county is also meeting with colleges, including san as a state, to provide puerto rico, public health protocols in isolation and quarantine resources for their students and staff.. So we continue to work to expand the program and to provide additional services as the pandemic continues., and with that I'm turning it over to lee. thank you, jackie.

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Thank you. mayor and council in public. That concludes our presentation were available for questions.. Thank you, everyone for the great work and for the excellent presentation of a lot of work, that's being done across the organization.. Let's 950 00:30:12,015 --> 00:00:00,000 go to public comment. First.