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can reach out to him and see if that is still his role or someone else in his Department. I will check <br /> on both of those appointments. <br /> Ms. White stated, I think the first (P5 goal is to get the Board up to full strength so that everyone <br /> is ready to move forward. There are a lot of exciting initiatives taking place within the City and <br /> we want to make sure we are aware of in our understanding the level of engagement needed to <br /> support the efforts of the City. <br /> Ms. White continued, Under New Business we have an update from Christina. <br /> Ms. Brooks stated, I wanted to give everyone an update on the actual Disparity Study in terms of <br /> where we are with that. We currently have the Disparity Study website up and running and it is <br /> successful. You can either access it through a separate link or go to the new City of South Bend <br /> website under the Mayor's Office. Diversity Inclusion is on the very bottom of that webpage and <br /> there is a link directly to the site. That site gives and overview of the study and methodology that <br /> is being employed to create the final recommendation report. It also allows people in the <br /> community to submit questions that they have specifically about the study or data that is being <br /> collected. It also provides a timeline of engagement. We had an internal meeting with City staff <br /> and Common Council Members and then we had an informal community engagement meeting. <br /> Ms. Fowler asked, When did you have the meeting with Common Council? <br /> Ms. Brooks replied, That was the internal meeting. It was in the Mayor's Conference Room. <br /> Ms. Brooks went on, So the next time that we have scheduled for Colette to come is November <br /> 2018. That will be the outreach to business owners. In order to make sure she gets honest feedback <br /> from the business community, she has asked that no representatives from the City or Common <br /> Council be in those meetings. She wants to hold individual one (1) on one (1) meetings and focus <br /> groups. The closer we get to that date we will have more detailed information about where those <br /> meetings will take place and the days she will be here. She is using the information that we <br /> collected from the initial public meeting. Everyone that attended that initial public meeting will <br /> receive an invitation to attend one (1) of those data collection sessions if they own a business or <br /> they have some type of insightful information about diversity purchasing in the City. In addition <br /> to that,she is also counting on us to provide her with an up to date list of businesses that have done <br /> business with the City of South Bend. <br /> Ms. Brooks continued, To be clear, she is not just interviewing minority and women business <br /> owners. She is interviewing everyone that has done business with the City. This is an inclusive, <br /> and hopefully a transparent, process. I hope people understand that it is not just a specific group <br /> that she wants to talk to. She wants to talk to everyone. We have provided her a preliminary list <br /> but the closer we get to November,we will send her an updated list of vendors that have contracted <br /> with the City in the past, not just over the three (3) years of the study but also including 2018. So <br /> that is the next engagement piece. Right now we are still cleaning up some of the data. There is a <br /> master contract data file that Colette's team is using to actually conduct the availability and <br /> utilization analysis. We are cleaning that up as there were some missing bits of information so we <br /> are trying to make sure that contract data file is as complete as possible so that their analysis has <br /> 5 <br />