sitting in january of twenty fifteen is when the board decided to commands on a comprehensive analysis of the thieves affirmative action program or policies a giving us all the information that we need i'm one of the things that we really want to know is that the information was limited because we were experiencing some but just because issues with respect to again understanding our role with their production office and gathering information from there so you know we apologize if we get the report is it conclusive as we wanted to but we had to come up with something based on the information that we had available was written to start off you know our general impression of the city's affirmative action system is really that although there was some aspects of the work being done you know in various departments and services it seemed that something that had been done but it wasn't like we were feeling like yeah this is something that is absolutely important to us this is core to our values here's the information can we go talk to the young and that made it very difficult for the  because as you know voluntary we all have work and so we ended up spending a significant amount of hours after work and on the weekends to try to collect all this information something for the report when we move mean so for all intents and purposes it was a document that was just sitting there without any type of execution and so we we needed to bring that we believed th we recommended there we should be as a board designated to assist in overseeing the plans execution and the reason is we come with you know for the skill sets and experiences that we believe point and fire department and the police department and you know there was a discussion around you know a lot of individuals who possessed the p m t certification and it surprised me because you know while i was in northeast i've been running in here to certification program for the city since two thousand and seven and it's currently still in operation under siege with jennifer lawrence and expanded and  discussing it with jennifer lawrence after the meeting you know she's actually expanding it and we have a number of you know city residents and young adults who are currently working with mohawk who are serving five years of experiences percent of the just that are not related to the fire department or to the police department what those who look like how is it that maybe the city might be able to partner with its current workforce community workforce development agencies like seat like city mission to create special lines workforce training programs using c b g funds which is a focus of the federal funds diversity and that we are and that this is something critical to us and that's not easy to do for an outsider perspective because you know a community of color is going to look at and say but if you are i don't see it and so it's it's more than you know it's going to have to be more than words we're going to have to put some you know some greater effort into that area if we want our constituents to believe that it is important to us to have a diversif employment which i believe it is you know in the world as we shifted over to begin evaluating our in w b and contract compliance is one of the things that we found was a sense of transportation and so forth and so when you when the city looks at truly a preventive action program for procurement it really should be valid reevaluate its current practices and considered expanding it to all the other area s that it purchases or else you're basically taking only a small portion of the potential of n w b e s and your community that could benefit from the city's acumen process  one of the biggest criticisms after it is that they're never aware of what is out there what isn't and that the access to these are rather difficult whether that's true or not i think we all know perception and that's what it's feeling and we need to overcome that by creating more of a structure around how the city departments can engage these businesses who could definitely offer a service and also keep that money locally which i think is the most important thing for a city is to keep its money as little as possible we you know we'll go back and as we move forward around you know how do we go about modeling after great programs like city to extend that contract beyond our local area so be sure recommendations that we found again in the m t b e when we look at the end to discrimination and complaints committee i think really really wasn't fun to look at all we had was really just a doctor and doctor and the best we could do with the facts basically give our recommendations around the language i think what was interesting and is that at least in my review of the recently adopted employment handbook we couldn't even fire i didn't find any reference to this policy that we evaluated and it's a city policy the bigger question for us was  that the leadership would have brought the the important handbook to us prior to adopting it because we would have brought back to your attention because that was some of the things that we were over to grapple around how do critical areas for us that we think that the city should be looking at the most important recommendation that we brought up and came to the pugin was to reestablish here from the action office back in the city of schenectady now the one thing we want to know you know for the city the question really is for us here is that when you look at the responsibilities that are identified in the code the responsibilities and activities that are identif is that those activities require an intimate relationship with the various departments and so here when you look at when you look at the city you've got all the directors here they can talk to each other to give each other figure things out when it comes to affirmative action and you have it in a completely different building outside even of the city of the silly you know employment and so on the the challenge for us was when you look at the population are fully represented by the city and we believe that the the best model would be by incorporating it back to into the city and really really valuating how how well funded it is eight principles that you know business is throughout the world are going to have to be dealing with in the next ten to fifteen years one of them was to diversify population and so  members are looking at it and understanding that how we embrace diversity and how we maximize its human potential is a business priority that we believe is the city that we should  well enclosure you know the board really believes that can actually be the right path to moving towards a twenty percent tree city i think our position is really  great my question for you is has the board now come up with a way to efficiently communicate with the affirmative action office and get the information that you need on a regular basis and fortunately  whether or not the the city has the capacity to to monitor itself when it comes to discrimination complaints and  other cities who are who are who are setting up other documents about how to deal with some of the backshift so none of these are actually our recommendations they're actually an example of what the city could do the way it really doesn't have although we recognize that there are benefits with some contract in the county for the services fact of the matter is that the city has the majority of the significant majority of people of color within the county and the majority of minorities when you own businesses and as a result to then ask the county does not have the same knowledge and experience with our local citizens in our local businesses to then eat this we just really didn't think was in the best interest of the of our constituents and neither our local businesses i mean i don't believe we would give the county full discretion to lead part of economic development why because that's important to us and so the fact the question that we have to ask ourselves is creating a community that embrace this diversity and maximizes our potential is that just as important to this city and if so then  handbook because it's marketing very technical and you know they're just excited about going to work yet i also understood that issues related to human relations discrimination harassment was going to happen in the organization  size and so we made a decision as an organization to go above and beyond what is normal practice to ensure that our staff understood their rights and understood how to to navigate and to   is much more user friendly when it comes to the bidding process and more on you know local business and w p s everyone and it also offers a set of services that is now something people have to pay for for free which is you can sign up to be alerted when a bit is put on the ground trying to get yeah it was i thought that was a really good step forward and i think we're something that was significant on the other hand you know it you know it wasn't the kind of report that we were hoping to produce on the first here bass said you know we understood that this is just the baseline this is basically the report just tells us w time a night of the officer said he has no standing to ask somebody to leave the park until nine o'clock so they can be in there for hours you can see can't really tell and they have to get out legally so i would like and twenty six percent said they don't care and then there was twenty six percent that said town or alcohol so i think we had you know a handful of people that came forward with various street i think you know to even try to make a decision about which of those streets would be better you know it really is is a daunting task and again i i go back to this survey because i think it really shows some about the numbers and not just people who you know came to the rail road again and again i think  street is important and so i think that's another consideration for the council to make as we look at the fact that it's a city street and we will have people coming in determined that there was a need for that type of support and this is the ongoing management p