SPIRIT Council Data Subcommittee Meeting Minutes
SPIRIT Council
Data Sub-committee
Monday, December 28, 2020
6:00 PM – Via Facebook livestream
Minutes
(Completed by Chris Kelly)
- Roll Call
Sub-committee members Rebekah Hatch, Mary Margaret Girgenti, Meg Evans, Chris Kelly and Rick Brush were present. SPIRIT Council members Tenesha Grant, Cheryl Cook, and Nicole Kodak were also present. Sean Askham, liaison from the Board of Selectmen was present
- Pledge of Allegiance
The group completed the Pledge of Allegiance
3. Call to Order
The meeting was called to order at 6:08 PM by Sub-committee Chair Rebekah Hatch.
4. Public Audience/Public Comment
There were no public comments
5. Update from the Chair
Chairperson Rebekah Hatch provided and update on several items.
- Should have received a list from the events sub-committee with events and who are
assigned to them. Want to make sure that we have a representative at each meeting.
- Welcomed Rick Brush to the subcommittee. He has been a help at getting the group
going.
- Rick – 18-year resident of Simsbury
- Wellville – working with five communities on wellbeing – working with teams of people from the communities – focused on closing inequities in health outcomes.
- Had a meeting with representatives from Montgomery Ohio who had created
adversity and inclusion committee a few years ago. We explored their process and
messaging.
They had a significant focus on marketing to the community. The meeting reinforced
how important this effort is to the community.
May meet with them again and if we do we will manage it as a formal sub-committee
meeting.
6. Action Items: Review Scope of Work (Rick Brush Proposal) and Budget Proposal
- Review Budget Proposal
Rebekah started with an update on the budget and the group discussed both the budget process and impact upon their work of the timing of the budget.
- Rebekah had created a budget she submitted to Cheryl and Nicole
- Nicole and Cheryl submitted what was developed by the subcommittee and passed it
to Kristen.
- Cheryl and Nicole will talk to the Board on January 11th
- Sean on process: Town Manager is currently putting together the budget with her
department heads. This is why Kristen needed the budget information. She will
develop a budget based upon the input she receives. The budget proposal will go into
the Social Services budget. The Board will continue to review the budget up to
February. The B.O.F. guideline is 1.25% which will be difficult for the Board to meet.
- After the B.O.S. submits their budget the B.O.F. can make changes.
- Budget is finalized the second week of May. The B.O.F. will hold two public hearings
on the budget.
- Sean pointed out that the SPIRIT Council can probably do a budget presentation
in March.
- Fiscal year starts July 1st. Possibly funding could be found in the current budget
dependent upon circumstances, but this would require excess funds to be available.
The group decided to try and identify a chunk of the work and start, possibly identify resources available now to pay for a piece of the contract?The group discussed this and thought that there was a possibility of being able to do this.
- Review Scope of Work Prepared by Rick Brush
Rick walked the group through the major categories of his proposal which prompted a discussion on next steps the group could take. The discussion included:
- One of the questions is how we move forward with a proposal that is ultimately
dependent upon the consultants we use.
- Need to be careful about the quality of qualitative/perception data in a town
like Simsbury given the small sample sizes.
- There is also an expressed interest in having “perception data” through interviews and
- We can do some of our own work to start narrowing down on the data and
qualitative data.
- There are other towns in Connecticut who are working on this and we can work with
them. We should identify and connect with other communities doing this work
Bloomfield, Colchester, and Windsor are towns that are doing things with this.The following people will reach out Cheryl to Colchester, and Tenesha to Bloomfield and Windsor.
- Do we have data from the original report that can speak to the data and survey
information we need?
- Discussing Data Haven and Health Equity Solutions (and other consultants)
- Could do, key informant interviews of populations you want to monitor – It is hard to do a survey in a town like Simsbury that is statistically accurate – The discussion can be about how do we measure inclusion, and that group could develop the questions. Part of this process entails learning from the conversations.
- Don’t want to spin wheels when in reality we need a consultant driven process.
- Need to remind ourselves that we need to get this process going
- Discussed again that we may want to identify a chunk of the work and start, possibly identify resources available now to pay for a piece of the contract.
- Data Haven may be used to working with groups such as us?
Action Items that the group agreed to are:
- Nicole, Tanesha, and Cheryl will follow up with Kristen and Maria Capriola about an
audit of existing policies and procedures.
- Next step – keep talking to consultant – talk to two to three to identify a next step and
- Health Equity (Karen Segal) is interested in helping communities get to the next step
- Data Haven
- UConn
- Identify a first action step and budget for the February meeting. This could be an
action item with a budget of a few thousand dollars
- Cheryl will contact the DOJ for a list of places that may have done data/survey work
- The following people will reach out Cheryl to Colchester, and Tenesha to
Bloomfield and Windsor.
7. New Business
MLK in CT (mlkinct.org), Monday, January 18, 2021 @ 1:00pm.This will be a virtual event and details will be provided to the group.
7. Old Business
There was no old business discussed.
8. Next Meeting:
Monday, January 25, 2021 @ 6:00pm
- Adjournment
Rick Brush moved and Mary Margaret Girgenti seconded a motion to adjourn the meeting. The motion was approved unanimously at 7:54.