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REPORT OF THE COMMISSION CHAIR PREPARED ON ..IANUARY9, LO'I3 Regarding Chair & Commission Activities during the Past Month January 16, 2013 Item 5 Chair's Report HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSION MEETING OF .IANUARY 16, 2013 Commissioners Singleton and Becker Reappointed: The City Council on January 7t" reappointed David Singleton and Scot Becker to a full three year term. Congratulations on their appointments. I look forward t continuing my productive relationship with David, and Scot's future contributions to our mission. Meeting Agenda: This Commission agenda is crowded with a lot of housekeeping and beginning of the New Year items, such as confirming our 2013 meeting schedule and determining committee assignments. Attach� for your review and response are the following items: 1. Staff's Tentative Meeting Schedule for the Commission; 2. A listing of current committee descriptions, with last year's assignments; and 3. Some suggested clarifications to our current By-Laws which became apparent to me as I worked on oi grant application for a Community Dialogue on Violence. Attached are these items for your review, approval, and volunteering. The agenda is scheduled to get these items resolved at the beginning of our meeting. (See attached Agenda Items # 1, # 2, and # 3.) Chair's Activities: Much of the past few weeks I have been involved in selecting a consultant for the Web Redesign Project, one of the Civic Engagement's major recommendations. I have also been assisting Megan Dushin, a member of our Civic Engagement Task Force, in drafting a$3,500 grant application to the Meadowlark Institute for a series of Community Dialogues on Violence. The initial impetus for this work came from the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut. In consultation with the Operations Committee I submitted a grant request on December 29tn And Some Great News: Early this week we received notice that the Institute had awarded us $2,500 for thes� dialogues. Under the Program Planning Committee's Report on our agenda you will be asked to concur in our grant request and to accept the $2,500 which by the way is more than our annual budget from the Council. The Commission in 2011 approved a series of Community Dialogues proposed by the Program Planning Committee at that time. Commissioner Kaying Thao was instrumental in developing a proposal for this outreach effort. Background on the Human Rights Commission's involvement in such dialogues is attached. (See Attached #4.) Uniform Commission Code: Last summer our Operations Committee met with City Manager Bill Malinen anc Carolyn Curti regarding our concerns over a staff-drafted ordinance providing for a Uniform City Code. We expressed concerns over various items in the Code as drafted at that time. In December a revised Code was presented to the Council. While we appreciate that many of our concerns have been addressed, we remain concerned about a few of its provisions, especially the prohibition against any commission making decisions. In the proposal presented to the Council last month there was also a significant revision to our ordinance, as well as every other commission. We had not seen this section of the proposed code, so at our Commission meeting this will be the Commission's first opportunity to review and discuss these changes. This discussion will occur later on in our agenda, probably under New Business. Respectfully submitted, Gary Grefenberg, Chair Attachments 1-4