A resolution amending the Denver City Council Rules of Procedure. A resolution amending the Denver City Council Rules of Procedure which adds a Land Acknowledgement to follow the Pledge of Allegiance. The Committee approved filing this item at its meeting on 10-20-20.
So I last saw Commander John Shillington, Governor John Evans and Major Edward Wynkoop for peace talks. The tribe believing they had reached and complied with peace with the U.S. Army, set up camp at Sand Creek near Fort Lyon. Only two months later, John Sherrington would carry out the Sand Creek massacre. This work is important. It's relevant not only to know our own city's history, but how it was built and how we improve upon that past. I will continue to work with the Denver American Indian Commission and the Native community over the long term to ensure the content of the land. Acknowledgment remains up to date and relevant, and I appreciate the support of my colleagues on this resolution. Thank you, council member Torres, for your leadership on this and happy to support it. The next item up is Resolution 1080. Councilmember CdeBaca, please go ahead with your questions on Resolution 1080. Thank you, Madam Chair. I really just wanted an overview on how Head Start here at Montessori has been recalibrating during COVID. We've had a couple of constituent calls and I want to understand what is happening with funding right now during COVID. How are we allocating it when we're not able to accept kids at in-person? All right. We've got Mr. Al Martinez up to answer your question. Thank you, Councilwoman. So funding has continued uninterrupted and will continue uninterrupted for the foreseeable future. We are in the process of awarding amendments to the base contracts that were funded as of July 1st. But you're absolutely right. Services have been interrupted. Interrupted. We have many programs that are operating under the strenuous conditions. We have some programs that operate in in-person learning, some that operate a hybrid model, which is a combination of in-person and virtual learning. Some are doing 100% at home learning, and so it varies across the seven delegate agencies that we fund. But funding has not been interrupted at all. We have a bill that another set of amendments that will be coming through that will be awarding Head Start COVID funding, which will support some summer operations that were funded just a few months ago, that took place a few months ago, when most as our programs are not open, they were allowed to request funds to open under COVID, and we gave them that permission and now we're going to give them the money that was associated with opening. So it varies really across the agencies that we fund. We also have vendors that are providing services, whether in health, mental health. Some of these services are being provided remotely because with the rise in cases we are vendors are not allowed to go into the Centers for the Health Department role. So I think under the circumstances we are doing a very tremendous job in meeting the needs of the families that we serve in Headstart. Is it possible? And thank you for those answers. Is it possible to see a breakdown of the 321 children that this is paying for, what kind of service they're getting, if it's the in-person, the hybrid or the virtual? Sure. It would just take it would take me a little bit of time to do that, because they're the mile high. Early learning has children all across Denver. They're in multiple neighborhoods and in zip codes. And so but I could surely put that together and give you a good idea of how many are in need or two or five at which center, how many are in need of two. One nine, you know, just throughout their primarily though in northeast Denver and southwest Denver that's out there traditionally where they have been located. But I could do that. I just need a little bit of time. Thank you. That would be really helpful just because I anticipate our modes of providing services changing. And I would love to just have an accurate count of who's getting what and what there's a gap for or what we need to be putting in place. So thank you very much, Mr. Martinez. That's it for my questions on that one. Madam President. All right. Thank you, Councilwoman. The next item up is resolution 1111. Councilmember CdeBaca. Go ahead with your questions on that resolution. Thank you, Madam President. Same situation here with Save Your House. They used to provide respite care, housing, and I'm wondering if the contract is exclusively the caseworker in the caseworker services or if housing is included and how caseworkers are doing their work right now during COVID. All right. I believe we have Rachel Goldberg here ready to answer or Erin Hall. I would direct that call to Erin Hall. She's the program administrator over that contract. You might have to mute Aaron. Yes, you're right. Go ahead. Oh, sorry about that. And actually, I might defer to Erin streaming, who is another. Person that can speak more globally because it's not just specific to the screen. It sounds like you want to know more about caseworkers and how they're doing their work. Nope. Specifically on Savio House, it doesn't have a number of how many kids you're serving here, so that would be helpful too. How many kids are you serving? How are you guys pivoting during COVID? For the caseworker caseworkers? And is this including respite care? Thank you. I can answer that question. First of all, Savio House, just to kind of give an overview, they have two branches overall. They do have their treatment side, which the treatment side did use to operate a residential treatment center. The contract that this money is through is with their physical fiscal agent side, which is the Saville Management Group. And so this money actually funnels through Savio House, through our Denver Collaborative Partnership Program, which is actually Denver County's CSP, which is Collaborative Management Program, which is funded primarily through House Bill 1451 that was created like 15 years ago. So that's the structure. So Savio House actually doesn't provide the services there, the fiscal agent for DCP, so that the money through this this grant through the feds, federal government comes through the state and then through the county, and then we give it to Savio House to manage. They do not provide respite care through this money. They provide intensive case management and family advocacy that could include services in the community, that could include possibly sometimes rental assistance. That also could include some of the impacts that cognitive has had on families. It's really needs based on family to family. There is a lot of flexibility on what we can and cannot provide under this program. And that was part of the motivation to have it go through DCP, because we can have access to provide services to families outside of the child welfare system. So how many families is it serving this year right now? It's 35 families, right. Currently this year. So and the the grant is anywhere from 20 to 40 is how it was written from the federal government. And is there a way, since Sabio is just the fiscal aid, is there a way to get the report from the direct service provider on what the funds are being used for? Yes. Yes. Yeah, we do have a budget. I can follow up with them to get a breakdown of how the funds are spent. Some. Thank you. That's it on that one from. All right. Great. Thank you. The next item up is Bill. 1110. Councilmember CdeBaca. Go ahead with your questions on Bill 1110. Thank you, Madam President. I mean, there's a lot of good stuff on here tonight. And I was a former youth provider, so having been a provider for summer youth employment and right in the middle of their shift to DPS being the prime contractor, essentially, I'm curious about how DPS with partners was able to recalibrate during the COVID summer and how these dollars were paid out to youth. I know we're extending it, so I imagine there were some complications, but I really would just like to know how we recalibrated. Where did the money go and how many youth were served? Thank you. Thank you. Councilman CdeBaca, this is Tony Anderson. I get to be the director of Workforce Services for Denver Economic Development, an opportunity. Really appreciate the questions and the call out in the opportunity to talk about summer youth employment program this year. As you would all imagine, it was an interesting summer and we are really proud of what we were able to do in partnership with Denver Public Schools. I have Eric to be adored here joining me and will look to him to talk a little bit more about the program, specifics and total number of serve. But essentially, we're here today for tonight asking for an extension of this contract for two reasons. First reason being to extend the amount of time that the youth have to actually complete the virtual job readiness training. I'll talk about what a normal summer looks like and provide a little context to this. But essentially reason one is to give the youth more time to complete those virtual job readiness assignments. And then the second main reason was the major change. The contract is to allow a bit more proration to pay the stipends to the youth based on the exact amount of time that they completed of the virtual job readiness training . And so going into this summer, we had a $1,000 stipends available for up to 325 youth to complete this virtual job readiness training, which was done through the Google platform, through Denver Public Schools. And essentially what we wrote in the contract is they could get 50% of that that stipend if they completed 50% of the training. There was kind of a 1 to 1 portion and then a202 portion that they could get the additional $500 giving that $4,000 in their hand for completion. And what we found is we had to use that completed 75%, and we had some youth that completed 25%. And rather than give them zero or give them just 500, instead of that 750, you know, the the spirit of the program this year was to get us get the full 325 youth enrolled and get as much of the dollars in their hands as possible. And so, you know, for us, a normal summer looks like in, you know, January, February, March, it's heavy recruitment of the youth and the employers for the placement. You know, April, maybe comes that time where we're matching up the youth with those employment opportunities and those work experience typically start in June and run June, July, August, giving us September for kind of final invoicing and then October for a final report. And as you would imagine, COVID 19 and the timing of that, which hit right in March, left us scrambling a bit. And as we saw other cities really canceling their summer youth employment program, we were determined not to do that. And so we spent that kind of March and April period trying to figure it out and landed on what I think was a really fair and equitable solution across the board for folks. And what that did is and it sent us back into recruitment mode into that May and June and enrollment time period. And so youth just got a later start. Youth were starting in July and August and you know, just to allow more flexibility, which again was the entire spirit of our summer youth employment program. That's why we're coming forth with this extension request. And I'll pause there and hopefully Eris can jump in and talk about where we are today. Otherwise, I can definitely give an update. Yeah, sure. Absolutely echo the challenges that we face in terms of designing all the contract negotiations that took place as a result and then just the implementation. And I think it was a lot for us to expect our participants to continue to move into the virtual space and have all that screen time, etc.. But they're doing it right. Most of our youth onboarded in July. They just haven't completed the pace that we expected. So we're currently serving. Yeah. WhatsApp is looking for the numbers. How many students are currently in the process of receiving their dollars? That's 106. 106. Awesome. Awesome. Well, I will touch base with you guys when you start administering the rest of those to find out completion percentages and what was more or most common? Where did they stop at? Just because, you know, I still am engaged in the youth development world and very curious to see how we continue with this. So thank you. That's it for my questions on this one. Madam President. All right. Thank you, Councilman. And thank you, gentlemen, for joining us and answering those questions. The next item up is Bill 1106. Councilmember Torres, will you please put council Bill 1106 on the floor for publication?