FLORIDA COORDINATING COUNCIL
FOR THE DEAF AND HARD OF HEARING
Quarterly Meeting
Tallahassee, Florida
Thursday, February 6, 2020 
12:00 p.m.

Onsite CART Captioning provided by
Lisa B. Johnston, RMR, CRR, CRC
www.providingcart.com 

** This is a rough‑draft text file that was produced by a live CART Captioner (Communication Access Realtime Translation) to ensure effective communication for persons who are deaf or hard of hearing.  This file is not a certified, verbatim record, and it should not be quoted as such. ** 

* * * * *

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Good afternoon, everyone.  LaShay, that doesn't sound very loud.  

>> LaSHAY:  Keep going. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Good afternoon, everyone.  Good afternoon.  Welcome to the Florida Coordinating Council meeting.
Oh, we have to wait for the interpreters.  Run!
Good afternoon, everyone.  And thank you for joining us for the February 6‑7, 2020 meeting for the Florida Coordinating Council for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing.

[Microphone feedback]. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  We are coming to you from Tallahassee, Florida.
My name is Karen Goldberg, I am the Chair for the Florida Coordinating Council for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing.
We're going to start with a council member roll call.  We'll start to my right.  

>> GINA HALLIBURTON:  Good morning, this is Gina Halliburton representing FRID, and Vice Chair.  

>> CHRIS LITTLEWOOD:  Good afternoon, this is Chris Littlewood representing the Association of Late‑Deafened Adults.  I live in Seminole, Florida, and work for St. Petersburg College.  

>> CINDY SIMON:  Hi, everyone, so happy to see you all.  Cindy Simon from South Florida representing audiologists.  

>> Brendayl Rodriguez from the city of Miami. 

>> OPERATOR:  Has joined the conference. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Welcome everyone who's on the phone line and chat line.  Currently we are going through council member roll call.  

>> GLENNA ASHTON:  Good afternoon, everyone, this is Glenna Ashton and I'm representing the Florida Association of the Deaf from Boca Raton, Florida, South Florida.  

[Background noise on telephone].
[Microphone feedback]. 

>> INTERPRETER:  Something's wrong.  It's this one.  

>> MARY HODGES:  This is Mary Hodges, Department of Elder Affairs here in Tallahassee. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Good afternoon and welcome.  

>> TIFFANY BAYLOR:  Good morning, this is Tiffany Baylor, coordinator for the FCCDHH. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Good afternoon and welcome.  

>> CECIL BRADLEY:  Good morning ‑‑ oh, sorry, good afternoon, this is Cecil Bradley, I'm a representative for the Florida Department of Education.  Hello!  

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Good afternoon, everyone.  Is there anyone on the phone line or the chat line, member of the Council who would like to announce themselves?  

>> DARLENE LAIBL‑CROWE:  Hi, Karen, this is Darlene, I'm here.  

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Hi, Darlene, and welcome.
Anybody else?  

>> DARLENE LAIBL‑CROWE:  Thank you. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  On the phone line or the chat line on the Council who would like to announce themselves?

[No response]. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Chris?  

>> CHRIS LITTLEWOOD:  This is Chris.  First of all, since there was some confusion about the start time of the meeting, I know Debbe Hagner was planning to join by phone, but I'm thinking that maybe she's not gonna jump in until around 12:30.  

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Okay, thank you, Chris.  Once she joins, we'll have her announce herself.
Okay.  So I'd like to welcome everyone to this meeting.
I want to just do some housekeeping.  Just to remember courtesy is wait to be recognized by either Gina or myself before speaking.
And please remember to state your name before speaking for the CART.

And I'd like to also welcome, we have additional folks who are joining us today.  I would like to welcome LaShay Lewis, our AV expert, welcome; our team of interpreters:  Rebecca Blitch, April Perry, David Phillips, and Adam Lido, welcome; and also a welcome to our CART Provider, Lisa Johnston.

So as we're getting started, on the agenda, it looks like we are going to be taking our first break at 4:30.  However, we're going to amend that a little bit and take a break at 2:00 p.m. so that the interpreters and the CART Provider can have a 15‑minute break and rest up before the rest of the afternoon.
At this time, I'd like to see if there are any other announcements prior to going on with our agenda?

[No response]. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Did you want to discuss the start time for today?  It's a little bit different than it has been in the past.  Thank you.  

>> TIFFANY BAYLOR:  Yes, I sure would.  So ‑‑ 

>> LaSHAY:  Turn your microphone on. 

>> TIFFANY BAYLOR:  There has been a change in the start time for this particular meeting.  Generally our meetings will begin on the Thursday at 9:00 o'clock.  However, this particular time, we had the ‑‑ we were given the opportunity to meet with the Governor at 10:00 for today.  And we were told that there would be an opening.
But there was an unexpected trip that the Governor would have to take and so we had to change it back to a later date, a later time.
We had already posted with the Florida Administrative Registry and, therefore, it has to be done seven days in advance, so I could not change anything back due to that reason.
So, we had to keep it where we begin at 12:00, this particular time.
So today will be 12:00 until 5:30, and tomorrow will be business as usual, from 8:00 to 12:00 noon.  

>> GINA HALLIBURTON:  This is Gina.  Tiffany, do we have a password for the WiFi?  All of them say secured and I'm not able to get on the CART. 

>> CINDY SIMON:  Yeah. 

>> TIFFANY BAYLOR:  We were told by the IT specialist that came through, the password ‑‑ first of all, it's DOH guest and the password is health is key.
And then I'm gonna put the user name and password up for you. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Oh, that would be great. 

>> CINDY SIMON:  Do you want me to read it, Tiffany?  

[Pause]. 

>> CHRIS LITTLEWOOD:  This is Chris.  Are there any capitals in that or anything?  Because I tried putting just the H in as capital and it did not work.  

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Yes, Cindy?  

>> CINDY SIMON:  So, before ‑‑ before, my phone was able to connect through that.  It was just the H.  But I have two devices here, none of it will go through.
And then LaShay tried to do it with me, he can't get through either.
So, it could be that we just have a general problem getting through.  

>> TIFFANY BAYLOR:  I'm assuming that is probably what's going on, because these that I'm putting up on the floor right now, this is the... you start with that and then this is the healthiskey is to join.
The user name and password, it will get you to a screen where you put in these user names and passwords right here.

>> GINA HALLIBURTON:  This is Gina.  Tiffany, I don't get a user name and password, it just asks for a password and when I put in a password, it didn't ask for a user name.  

>> TIFFANY BAYLOR:  Okay.  I've actually ‑‑ 

[Talking over one another]. 

>> CINDY SIMON:  Once you get that in and it accepts it is when the user name and the password would come up.
If you can't get past the healthiskey, then you won't get user name and password.
So, like I said, I was able to do it on my phone earlier, but neither device will take it now.  

[Cell phone ringing]. 

>> TIFFANY BAYLOR:  So, to help that out, I've already sent an e‑mail and a call out to the IT specialists here for DOH, the one who told us all of this already and they will be responsible. 

>> CECIL BRADLEY:  Yes, there's another new one, there's another step you have to do now; this is Cecil.
I was able to connect and it sent me to another network.  

>> TIFFANY BAYLOR:  And the second network, I believe, is what brings up that... uh... that is is when you put in these highlighted parts.  It's once the second network comes up.  

>> CECIL BRADLEY:  Oh... no, there's another step.  

[Pause]. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Hi, this is Karen.  Does it say DOH Guests with an S?  Because that's what's coming up for me.  So that's the one?  

>> TIFFANY BAYLOR:  Yes, thank you.  I didn't know that. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Let me try it.  

[Pause]. 

>> CINDY SIMON:  But it won't connect. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  And the security key is healthiskey!  

>> TIFFANY BAYLOR:  Yes.  

[Pause]. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Okay.  I think it's connecting.
So while we're doing that, let's see if there's any other announcements before we go on?

[No response]. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Okay.  The next item agenda is the approval of minutes from November 7‑8, 2019 meeting.  And that can be found on section ‑‑ hold on a second. 

>> CINDY SIMON:  Six. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Section 6, thank you very much, Cindy.  Section 6, can we take two minutes to take a look at this?  

[Pause]. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Do we have a motion to accept these minutes?  

>> CINDY SIMON:  Sorry, I have one correction. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Well, we go to discuss after accept ‑‑ 

>> CINDY SIMON:  Oh, okay.  I thought it was ‑‑ 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  I know.  It seems like it should be before but it isn't.
Do we have a motion to accept these minutes?

[No response]. 

>> GINA HALLIBURTON:  This is Gina.  I'll motion to accept. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Do we have a second?  Cindy is seconding.  Thank you, Cindy and Gina.
Yes, you noted there was something?  We have discussion.  Go ahead.  

>> CINDY SIMON:  The only correction I have in here at the moment is it's Lisa Johnston, not Lisa Johnson, for the CART Provider.  

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Oh.  Thank you very much.  And our apologies Lisa Johnston. 

>> LISA (CART CAPTIONER):  Thank you!

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Any other discussion about these minutes?  Chris?  

>> CHRIS LITTLEWOOD:  Karen?  Just regarding the public comment portion, at least on page three where it has audience member Jenny, her last name is spelled incorrectly.  The correct spelling of her last name is L‑O‑C‑Y.  She's the marketing director for AQI.  

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Thank you very much, Chris.  

[Pause].

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Okay.  Any other comments?  Yes, Glenna?  

>> GLENNA ASHTON:  The audience member, the last name is spelled incorrectly, L‑O‑C‑Y, not L‑O‑S‑E‑Y, not a loser. 

[Laughter]. 

>> GLENNA ASHTON:  I was looking at that and I wasn't watching the conversation. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Okay, thank you, thank you.  So that one we have corrected.  

[Pause]. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Any other comments about these?

[No response]. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Okay.  So with the exception of those two corrections, we have accepted the agenda ‑‑ I mean, sorry, we've accepted the minutes from the last meeting.  And thank you all.
Moving onto our next agenda item.
Okay.  The next agenda item is taking a look at our current agenda, which can be found on Section 1, pages 1‑3.  

[Cell phone ringing]. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Do we have a motion to accept the agenda?  Cindy, are you making a motion?  

>> CINDY SIMON:  Yes. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Okay.  And seconded by Glenna.  Okay.  Thank you very much.
We would like to have some discussion on the agenda?

[No response]. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Oh, this is Karen, I have a question.  And it may be that we discussed in the last one and I'm going through the minutes in the last one.
When did we change from 6:00 p.m. to 5:30 for public comments at the end of day one?  

>> CINDY SIMON:  We didn't.  

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Cindy?  

>> CINDY SIMON:  No, I don't know, I was surprised to see, you know, I figured maybe we've changed things before, only if you were going to have it during the day, so maybe you reduce some of it in the afternoon. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Right, that was my understanding. 

>> CINDY SIMON:  And that's what I thought.  But if it said 5:30, it's at the Chair's pleasure.  You can change this around at the Chair's pleasure.  So we just assumed that's... 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Okay, yes, Gina?  

>> GINA HALLIBURTON:  Well, I was going to agree with Cindy, because we had discussion about having the public comments earlier in the day and then we were just sitting having to wait until 6:00 p.m., which was a waste of valuable time, and we kept moving the agenda from Friday to Thursday, so the suggestion was made to just cut it off earlier.  That was what I recall.  

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Okay.  Thank you.  Glenna?  

>> GLENNA ASHTON:  And also today we're starting at 12:00 and not 1:00 o'clock (sic) so it kind of moved things. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Okay.  So is there a proposal on the floor that we would like to amend the agenda for today?

[No response]. 

>> CINDY SIMON:  Unless you want to lengthen it, I don't think you have to amend it.  This is the published agenda and that's what it is, so you don't have to change it. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Okay.  I know it is the published.  I just want to make sure we don't miss anyone who works during the day and is not able to call in or give public comments until after 5:00.
So I would like to ‑‑ I'm not sure if it's possible, since it's already been published ‑‑ but I'd like to... 

[Pause]. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  I'd like to extend the time to 6:00.  And I'm willing to stay just to see if there are any questions that the public ‑‑ that somebody from the public may be calling in.
Is that something we can do?  Chris?  

>> CHRIS LITTLEWOOD:  This is Chris.  Procedurally, it's already been published that we're ending at 5:30, whatever it was published and noticed, that's when we should end. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Okay. 

>> CHRIS LITTLEWOOD:  I agree it would be nice to have it later and historically we've always continued on Thursday till 6:00 p.m. and we can keep ourselves busy continuing on with stuff on the agenda that we would normally do on Friday.
But let's just do that next time, because if it's published that we're ending at 5:30, there's not much point in us staying until after 5:30.
Also, I'm still having problems connecting to the internet.  And that's not a big concern for me, because I can switch to just a hotspot on my phone, but if we don't have a live connection to the internet for anybody that's wanting to connect and communicate with us through chat, that's a problem and we're excluding people from the meeting that might want to do that.
So we might want to take a short break for technical difficulties and see if we can straighten that out.  

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Okay.  So we have a motion on the floor to take a short break to work on the technical difficulties.  Can we get a second on that motion?  

>> GINA HALLIBURTON:  Mary seconds it. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Mary seconds it.  So we're going to be on break for ten minutes.  I know one of our council members is joining us remotely online and having difficulty connecting and I want to make sure she can connect.
Darlene, on the phone, can you connect?  

>> CINDY SIMON:  The connection is in this room. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Somebody else was having difficulty and I want to make sure we're addressing all the issues at the same time.
So let's take a ‑‑ do you want to do a ten‑minute break?  

>> TIFFANY BAYLOR:  Yes. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  We'll take a ten minute break while we work on technical difficulties. 

>> DARLENE LAIBL‑CROWE:  This is Darlene.  I'm sorry I was delayed in getting in, it's hard for me to switch from mute and unmute it using my iPhone.
I am not able to get on to sign in to the CART chat box.  I was in the beginning, but I left the room and I can't get in it. 

>> LISA (CART CAPTIONER):  The CART on the internet is connected.  I am not connected in the room using your WiFi.  

>> DARLENE LAIBL‑CROWE:  I am not able to follow it.  I will just speak whenever you ask me to, okay?  

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Okay.  Thank you, Darlene.  We're on a ten‑minute break.  We will return at 12:30.  Thank you.  
[Break].  

>> LISA (CART CAPTIONER):  The internet is streaming the CART.  I am not connected via this room.
The CART is up.  I'm using a totally different system than you.  So, if Darlene can't connect, that's on her end.  

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Thank you very much, Lisa.  

>> GINA HALLIBURTON:  Lisa, go ahead. 

>> LISA (CART CAPTIONER):  Debbe has joined the chat.
She says sorry I am late.  

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Debbe, we're on break until 12:30 because we're having technical difficulties.
No one in the room can connect to the internet.

[Break].

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  The WiFi you're using is for DOH guests.  It requires you to visit the home page.  Where the heck is that?  

>> CINDY SIMON:  I'm looking for it now... 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Where is that log‑in page?  Did she put down a log‑in page?  That's what the issue is. 

>> CINDY SIMON:  No, no, it takes you to it. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  It didn't take me. 

>> CINDY SIMON:  That's what I'm saying, we can't get past the first thing.  I'm going to try again now.
Now it's telling me that the ‑‑ 

>> CHRIS LITTLEWOOD:  It doesn't always take you directly to it and it depends on the browser our using, too.  I tried all three browsers and it's still not working. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  So I guess it doesn't depend on the browser!
What other browsers are there?  

>> CHRIS LITTLEWOOD:  I'm just saying, historically, I know that it hasn't worked with Chrome and then it will work with Firefox or Internet Explorer, but... 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Oh, okay.  

[Pause]. 

>> CHRIS LITTLEWOOD:  Hopefully Tiffany is bringing back somebody that can help us out.  

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Okay.  I mean, I'm on, I'm using a hotspot for my other computer, but that's going to run my battery down and my internet down.  

[Pause].

>> CHRIS LITTLEWOOD:  Well, you have to have it on your machine, Firefox or Chrome. 

>> CINDY SIMON:  I have no clue. 

>> CHRIS LITTLEWOOD:  Do you want help?  

>> CINDY SIMON:  You tell me.  

>> LISA (CART CAPTIONER):  Karen?  

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Yes, Lisa?  

>> LISA (CART CAPTIONER):  Debbe says she is able to view the CART on the internet.

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  That's terrific, she may be the only one.  She might have to be the moderator to tell us who is coming into CART.  

>> LISA (CART CAPTIONER):  If you'd like, I can interrupt and tell you when someone reaches out via chat?

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Oh, yes, that would be very nice.  

>> CINDY SIMON:  Lisa says ‑‑ 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Yes, I am concerned about that. 

>> GINA HALLIBURTON:  I have it on my phone, chat. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Can you see when people pop in?  

>> GINA HALLIBURTON:  Yes, Debbe says I'm on Firefox.  

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Okay.
Yes, Tiffany, please update us. 

>> TIFFANY BAYLOR:  I just got off the phone with him.  He feels that it's possible that the system itself might have done something, gone down, so he's starting ‑‑ talking to IT and he's coming up here in a second to do this and work on it in here. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Okay.  So do we want to continue break until that person comes in here?  

>> TIFFANY BAYLOR:  Here's the question, is CART able to still reach people?  That's actually the main requirement legally, that we have right pending that he can try to fix.
So if we have to stop again, if he comes in and says there's nothing I can do, at least we can make a decision from moving forward from there.  

>> GINA HALLIBURTON:  Okay.  This is Gina, like, just now, I was on StreamText on my phone and went off and went into what Cecil had brought up with Aruba, automatically switched over to Aruba and requires a user name and password for that portal. 

>> TIFFANY BAYLOR:  And that user name and password is... those two.

[Please see screen].

>> DARLENE LAIBL‑CROWE:  This is Darlene.  

>> OPERATOR:  Has left the conference.  

>> GINA HALLIBURTON:  Cupid did not work.  I'm going to try the roses now.  

[Pause]. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  It's 12:30 right now, we're taking another five minutes just to finish up with this tech issue and we're going to come right back at 12:35.  

[Pause]. 

>> CINDY SIMON:  Tiffany?  

>> TIFFANY BAYLOR:  Yes, ma'am?  

>> CINDY SIMON:  Remember we connected before he left a couple hours ago?  

>> TIFFANY BAYLOR:  Yes. 

>> CINDY SIMON:  My phone is still connected to the system. 

>> TIFFANY BAYLOR:  That's kind of what he was saying.  He's not sure why. 

>> CINDY SIMON:  Nothing is connecting now, but I just checked this and I'm still connected from before.  

>> TIFFANY BAYLOR:  So he's concerned that there's some reason why the system must have gone down and we are not getting it on computers, but people can sometimes still get it on the phone.  I'm not sure what exactly is going on.  

>> CINDY SIMON:  But then my tablet should be like a phone and I'm not getting it on the tablet. 

>> TIFFANY BAYLOR:  He will be up here.  I'm not really a techy. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Our speaker for 12:30 is here.  We're going to start at 12:35, I just informed her.

[Pause]. 

>> GINA HALLIBURTON:  I tried all the names and passwords and number of them work on that Aruba.  

>> TIFFANY BAYLOR:  Okay.  That's what he was wondering.  So he will be up here.
So, may I, and I'm not a techy, so I can't really offer too much, but may I still, is there a way to still make sure that the CART is what can still be run?  And then is there anybody who is getting it on the phone such as what you were talking about, Miss Cindy, that will still be able to report what someone writes in if they did write in?  

>> GINA HALLIBURTON:  This is Gina.  I was on there, but it took me off to this Aruba and now I can't get back in so I cannot. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Debbe, are you on the line?
Yes, Lisa?  

>> LISA (CART CAPTIONER):  The CART text is up.  I am using another system, that is not in this room.  Everybody on the chat is able to follow this meeting along.  Debbe is following us.  Darlene was in the chat, but I believe she's off, I'm unsure.
If Darlene is having trouble, it's on her end.  The CART is up.
If that makes sense.

>> CINDY SIMON:  I'm getting it on my phone, from where I connected earlier.  Not through my phone, but through here. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Okay.  So, Cindy, can you let us know when someone joins the chat that may have a question?  

>> CINDY SIMON:  Well, that's the negative.  I get the CART and I'm trying to see if I can get the chat to show up.
Yes, Lisa?  

>> LISA (CART CAPTIONER):  There is an individual in the chat, Brendayl Rodriguez, who says I can see the CART and chat in next, I have no problem.

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Thank you, ma'am, for sharing that information.  It is nearly 12:35, we're going to reconvene at 12:35.  

>> LISA (CART CAPTIONER):  The problem is only in this room.

[Pause].

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Good afternoon, everyone, it is now 12:35, we are going to reconvene our meeting.  We took a brief break to try to figure out some of these technical issues that we're having with the internet in this room.
The technical support person is in the room, but I'd like to get started, if we can, with our presenter.
I would like to welcome Linda McMullen, the assistant general counsel for the Officer of State surgeon general.  She's going to be speaking to us on legal rights, roles, and reach of the Council and discuss letters to the Capitol, letters to hospitals regarding complaints, et cetera.
So she's really going to go over all of that information with us.
Please welcome Ms. McMullen.  

>> LINDA McMULLEN:  What is the best place to stand?  

>> DARLENE LAIBL‑CROWE:  Darlene. 

>> OPERATOR:  Has joined the conference.  

[Pause]. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  The screen without the CART on the left side.  

>> LINDA McMULLEN:  Right here?  

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Yes, ma'am, that would work.  Can everyone still see the CART?  I think that's part of the issue.  Would it be okay if you ‑‑ 

>> LINDA McMULLEN:  Stand here?  

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  I can't see the CART. 

>> LINDA McMULLEN:  Okay, let me move. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  No, no, you're fine ‑‑ 

>> JOHN JACKSON:  Why don't we turn off the projector.  Can we get away with doing that, without being on the spotlight?  

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Yeah, that's good.  

[Pause]. 

>> LINDA McMULLEN:  Thank you.  As I said, my name is Linda McMullen, I'm assistant general counsel, I've been with the Florida Department of Health for seven years now.  I've been in the Office of General Counsel for four.  I've got a number of clients:  Community relation support is one of them.  And you fall under that part of the Department.
So, I was asked to speak to you today.  I want to give you a little bit of my background.
Prior to this, I was in organized medicine for 15 years, and prior to that I was in private practice for 20.
And prior to that ‑‑ this is telling you how old I am ‑‑ prior to that, I worked for the Governor and prior to that, I worked with the Legislature.
So I'm familiar with all of the things that you're interested in today. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  That doesn't add up, I'm sorry. 

[Laughter]. 

>> LINDA McMULLEN:  Unfortunately it does!  [Laughs].
Especially when I roll out of bed in the morning and I go ow, ow, ow, ow, ow. 

[Laughter]. 

>> LINDA McMULLEN:  And my age‑related deafness.  I just got a "battery low" notification, so I may lose my hearing in my left ear.
Your council, you've had a number of questions, I just want to give you some background before we get started.
Your council has broad plenary powers.  Your statute is very usually in that regard.  It crosses a lot of lines and provides a lot of... um... a lot of responsibilities to the Council.
In fact, there's a number of your responsibilities that are mandated.  The way the statute is written, it says "you shall" do this and there's a section of the statute that says "you may" do this.
But what you're supposed to do, what you're mandated to do, is... um... provide information and assistance to the Legislature.  Provide technical assistance to other state agencies.  Provide information and referral services.  Promote public and individual advocacy for deaf, hard of hearing, and late‑deafened citizens.  Conduct public hearings as needed.
Those are your mandates.
Your permissive activities is you may secure assistance from all state departments and agencies in order to avail yourself of expertise at minimal cost.  You may obtain information and assistance from the state or any other political subdivision, municipal corporation, public officer, or other agency thereof, and apply for and accept funds, grants, gifts, and services from local or state government or the federal government or any of their agencies or any other public or private source.
And you may use these funds for the purposes of your Council and your organization.
So, that's ‑‑ I don't see many statutes like this [chuckles] so it's very broad.
But because of the nature of your council, you are considered a public officer.  You're not an employee of the State, but you are an officer of the State, which means you're going to come under the provisions of the Sunshine statutes, which involves financial disclosure and public records.  And you're also going to come under the Code of Ethics, which is promulgated by the Commission on Ethics.
So your guidebook for a lot of your things that you have questions on is going to be that guidebook that's published by the Florida Commission on Ethics and it's called the guide to the Sunshine amendment and code of ethics and it's online and an excellent publication and they update it all the time.
So it's a good reference and available to you and applicable to you.
So, as a public officer, that's going to be really the bible of what your responsibilities are.
And I think one of the questions... um... was the difference between lobbying and advocacy.  And the difference between lobbying and advocacy is pretty straightforward.
Basically non‑profits typically are the ones that engage in advocacy.  And you engage in advocacy as much as possible to forward whatever your goals are and that's your mandate that's been given to you by statute.
Lobbying is a little more specific.  It's, on the other hand, it involves activities that are in direct support or opposition to a particular piece of legislation.
And so that's ‑‑ your advocacy may cross into that area of lobbying.
But the issue then becomes whether you know the definition of what a lobbyist is and that's defined as anyone who lobbies for compensation or any person who is principally employed for governmental affairs by another person or a governmental entity to lobby on behalf of that other person or governmental entity.
And then there's thresholds for who has to register as a lobbyist.
You have to spend and receive more than $2500.  Right away, that's not an issue here [chuckles].  Y'all are getting paid a lot for this, right?
And you have to spend over 20 hours lobbying during any three month period.
In‑house lobbyists like the legislative affairs and folks that work for the Department of Health, they have to register as lobbyists if 1/3 of their time a month is spent engaged in direct ‑‑ with lobbying folks and our affairs folks are lobbyists.
And the issue is whether you need to register as lobbyists or not.  Generally just advocating on behalf of the Council, the answer to that is going to be no.
If there's ever any question about a specific circumstance, you should defer to whatever the Commission on Ethics says and they have a page on lobbying.  If you do have to register, you can do that on the Commission on Ethics without having to go through the whole page of lobbying.gov, it's much more user friendly and it's a good tool to have.
Yes?  

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Do you want me to hold questions until the end or...?  I'm fearful I will forget. 

>> LINDA McMULLEN:  Yeah, I'm fine with stopping and answering questions as they come up.  That's when they're most relevant. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  So we meet with the Legislature in Tallahassee the Wednesday before our Tallahassee meeting, so yesterday we met, we had appointments set up and we talked about the Council and what we do, and we gave them the biennial report and we also talked about one of the House bills covering hearing aids for children.
Would that be considered lobbying?  

>> LINDA McMULLEN:  In my opinion, it would not.  

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  It would not.  So it's more advocacy. 

>> LINDA McMULLEN:  Well, it's advocacy because, A, you don't meet the threshold definition of lobbyist.  You're not doing this for compensation, you're not getting paid for it, it's not more than 20 hours during any three month period.  

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Okay.  

>> LINDA McMULLEN:  So yes, you're talking to a legislator about a particular bill and about a particular piece of legislation.  But you're not meeting those other two thresholds. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Okay.  The other question that I have is that I am a psychiatrist in the state of Florida and active with the Florida Psychiatric Society and I may write letters, all of us may, anybody can, and may meet with a legislator about a bill related to mental health, not related to this Council.
Is that a conflict or do I need to disclose that in some way as a public officer on this Council?  

>> LINDA McMULLEN:  Unless you're advocating on behalf of the Council.  Many people wear many hats. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  That's what I'm saying. 

>> LINDA McMULLEN:  If you're in front of the Legislature or the Executive Branch or local government or anything.  Make clear what hat you're on and that makes it clear for you to move from one to the other.
You may actually have to register as a lobbyist for the Florida Psychiatric Association because that association is probably registered already as a group. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Gotcha. 

>> LINDA McMULLEN:  So you just made clear that I'm here on behalf of... the Florida Psychiatric Association, I'm here on behalf of the Florida Council for the Deaf and you make that clear up front. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Okay. 

>> LINDA McMULLEN:  So one thing that you do have to worry about, so many of you are in private practice and have private businesses and things like that is the misuse of your public position.
You can't ever put yourself in a position where someone is going to say that you're advocating on behalf of the Council and it's going to benefit you personally in your business.  And that's something you have to keep in mind.
And because you will have specific interests that directly relate to the Council, that's how you got here on this Council, is they wanted people that were interested and have experience and the background.
You just have to make sure you don't put yourself in a position where it appears that you are advocating on behalf of the Council and you are going to personally benefit from that.
Yes, ma'am?  

>> GINA HALLIBURTON:  This is Gina.  I just want to clarify, I'm going to make this a really weird example, okay.  If I'm there, say, the Legislature say to the legislator on Council business, I have a private interest in, say, missionary work and if the subject were to come up and I'm there for council business, can I then say oh, well, switching my hat now, I want to talk to you about missionary work, is that ‑‑ 

>> LINDA McMULLEN:  Absolutely, there's no problem with that.  You just have to ‑‑ there should be no confusion from the legislators or the staff's point of view on what you're advocating for.  If you make that clear, there should be no problem.
And, you know, they only meet 60 days so if you can get an appointment, you want to jam as much stuff into that appointment as you can, you know [chuckles] because you're not going to get another any time soon.  It's hard to get in on the legislative schedule.
So you just have to be very clear. 

>> GINA HALLIBURTON:  Thank you. 

>> LINDA McMULLEN:  And then you say, if there are any questions, do you have any questions who I'm advocating for here?  And if they have one, they'll ask you.  They're pretty straightforward about that.
Again, you have to be careful advocating for something that will benefit for your personal business.  That's just one thing to keep in the back of your mind.
And the other thing is, really, when you go into these advocacy activities, the Council should have a group plan, there should be assignments, you should know who is advocating on behalf of what, you should have your plan for the year so that there is ‑‑ it's clear‑cut, nobody goes off field.  And everybody's clear on what the goals that you're trying to accomplish.
And you want to share all of those goals with as many people as you can.  In fact, you're mandated to share a lot of them, because that's your ‑‑ you're mandated by statute to do that, as part of your call.  

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Could we get a copy of what you have just stated that we're mandated?  

>> LINDA McMULLEN:  That's the statute.  

>> CINDY SIMON:  This was written. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  That's the actual statute. 

>> LINDA McMULLEN:  It's Section 413 ‑‑ 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  I guess it's good to hear that it's been, you know, restated it, because we've been discussing it at the last few meetings ‑‑ 

>> LINDA McMULLEN:  It's Section 413.271 of the Florida Statutes which are available online and it's subsection three and four. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Fantastic. 

>> LINDA McMULLEN:  And subsection three is your mandate and subsection four is your permissive section.
And yeah, a lot of the questions that you have that I've heard in the past are answered in this statute, which is very clear‑cut and amazingly broad. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  One of the things that we had wanted to do was a ‑‑ a hearing expo during the legislative period, and we even talked about doing it for this year.  We had so many questions about are we crossing lines?  Are we, you know, are we serving in an advocate role?  Or are we lobbying?  We wanted to be really careful about that, so we did not do it this year.
It certainly sounds like something that we can consider for the next years.  

>> LINDA McMULLEN:  Absolutely.  Under 413.271(4)(e) is conduct public hearings as needed, and I think one of the things you might want to consider is calling this a public hearing.  You would notice it according to the Sunshine laws that you're required to do, you have to notice this meeting seven days before you have it and that's a way of advertising this meeting so that if anybody is interested in coming, and you would organize it, however you want to organize your public hearing, you would take testimony, you would provide testimony, you would have speakers, you would have a public hearing on what it is.
And that's one of your mandates.  

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  That would be great.  I was going to ask Glenna this question [chuckles], would that be something that we would do in addition to the four scheduled meetings?  Or would that be something that we would do as part of that?
I guess I'm just not quite sure I understand the detail of that.  I don't know if Glenna knew or...?  

>> GLENNA ASHTON:  That's one of the things that we discussed over and over again, hosting an expo that would represent all the different organizations.  Not just as a Council, but representing all of the different organizations.  That is something that we can do those things that are included in the statute, but we need the funds to do that and that's been the problem all along, the funds, we don't have the funds for that, and how can we increase the money that we need.  We're not going to get from the Legislature.  It says we can get money other ways, but we haven't figured out how to do that. 

>> LINDA McMULLEN:  Right.  And here's a legal answer to that question.  You're mandated you have to meet four times a year, but you can meet as many times as you want, as long as you give proper notice.  And you can have as many public hearings as you want, as long as you give proper notice.
Again, that comes back to funding.
One of the things you might want to consider is forming a subcommittee to see if there is any grant money out there to write a grant to see if some funding can be obtained through that mechanism.
Your administrative arm from the Department of Health runs almost 100% on grant money.  There's federal grants, there's state grants, there's lots of grants out there that are available; you just have to apply for them and get them.
And that is your ‑‑ that's one of your permissive responsibilities, is to apply for and accept grants, so... 

>> GINA HALLIBURTON:  This is Gina.  First of all, I really appreciate you, you're making a lot of clarity of things here.
I have two unrelated questions.  One, are we allowed to do fundraisers?
And the other one I want to clarify, I think I heard you say earlier when we go out to these legislative meetings, we should have a plan and agenda in advance, so that for example, the two people going, let's just say Glenna and John are going and they would be strictly talking about technology and medical, and the other two people, maybe Karen and Chris, would be going and they would be strictly talking about whatever... medical and interpreters [hitting mic] ‑‑ oh, excuse me ‑‑ is that what you're saying?  

>> LINDA McMULLEN:  Yes, that's what I'm saying.  The reason you want to do that, everybody has to be on the same page in terms of what your advocacy program is.
And then also by making it very clear who has what responsibility, then you don't all have to become subject‑matter experts on all the issues of advocacy.  You can say well, I am the expert on this, but he's the expert on this, and I'm going to talk to you about this, but they're going to talk to you about this, and then you've got the overall advocacy plan of what you want to talk about, what you want to accomplish, and how you plan on doing it.
In answer to your second question, yes, you can do fundraisers. 

>> GINA HALLIBURTON:  Yay!  

>> LINDA McMULLEN:  Fundraisers are tricky, though, then you get into a whole 'nother set of laws of what you have to follow, raising the money, reporting it, keeping track of it, and making sure it's deposited.
Now, your administrative arm of the Department of Health can help you do that. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Unfortunately neither one of them is in the room at the moment. 

>> GINA HALLIBURTON:  We have Chris and Cecil. 

>> LINDA McMULLEN:  But again, that's part of your permissive goals, it says apply for funds, grants, gifts and services from local or state governments, federal government, any agencies or public or private source.
So, it's what you do with the ‑‑ how you advertise it and how you publish it and what you do with the money after you get it, that's when all the rules come into play.
But, again, your administrative arm of the department can help you do that.
Yes, ma'am?  

>> GLENNA ASHTON:  We haven't specifically discussed that, we've discussed fundraising.  We asked the Department of Health, we were told we can't do that, we don't have an account, we can't accept the money, it's too complicated.  There's a lot of excuses given to us and we felt kind of backed into a corner, so we needed a strong answer like that.  They're supposed to help us set up the account and do other things that we need.
And they have not been cooperative on that so we didn't ‑‑ haven't been able to be effective in that regard.  

>> LINDA McMULLEN:  Okay.  And let me speak to that too.
A part of your charge by the statute is you can go to any state agency for help.  And so the Department of Health does have limited resources.  And we don't ‑‑ we don't have people who may know a lot about that.
But you can go to ‑‑ 

>> GLENNA ASHTON:  Well, well, I'm not talking about money from them, I'm talking about getting an account established where we can deposit money from wherever we get it from fundraising, donations, or et cetera, we just don't have that account. 

>> LINDA McMULLEN:  I understand that.  And you have to set it up.  But someone from the Council could approach the Department of Financial Services which is another state agency that might be able to help you set that up and get that in place.
And you have the statutory authority to ask for information and services from any state agency, and the Department of Financial Services is a state agency. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  We have several other speakers ‑‑ not speakers, but questions from council members.  But John had his hand up and I know the others did too, but it looked like you had something specific to say to what Glenna was addressing.
And then it will be Chris, Cecil, and Cindy. 

>> JOHN JACKSON:  Just very briefly, I want to give the presently a little bit of background.  The Council has existed for 16 years, give or take, I don't remember exactly.  We brought these issues up before and we have been discouraged, and I'll just leave it at "discouraged."  We've had Department of Health attorneys come and explain this stuff to us in a much, much more narrow interpretation of our statute than what you're giving.  In fact, many on this Council have agreed to your interpretation of the council of the statute over the years and we have been shot down by the Department of Health and I want to make sure you understand that kind of what you're telling us now and it's a little bit new to us and there are ‑‑ there is a history of issues, and so in many ways just by existing for 16, give or take, years, that's why you have a bunch of people sitting here going oh, my God... so... 

>> LINDA McMULLEN:  And that's why I put the caution on, because there are a lot of pitfalls with fundraising.
It's easy to write a grant and that's really where you should be focusing, because that's where you're going to get your money from.
You're not ‑‑ you can have ‑‑ you can have fundraisers and you're not going to get enough money to make it worthwhile, after you do all of the ‑‑ unless you've got a particular source.
Some wealthy family who really wants to support this cause and is willing to write a large check, that's one thing.
But just to have a fundraiser where, you know, people come and write a check when they come in the door, you know, you're talking little tiny bits of money and then lots and lots and lots of administration.  And lots of administrative costs that you really have to do a cost‑benefit analysis on that.  What do you think you're going to raise?  What's it going to cost you to do it?
Because you have time commitments in this too and you have expenses, you'll have meeting places, you'll have to have a venue, you'll have to advertise, you've got to put the notice out, you know, all of those things cost money.
So, it's not as easy as it sounds.
But if you know a particular donor who might be interested in making a donation, you can always solicit it and we can always take that.  We have policy on how to take contributions to the Department.
So, but fundraisers in and of themselves, as I say, are problematic, but they can be done.  And that's not going to be the best bang for your buck.  

>> CHRIS LITTLEWOOD:  This is Chris.  I appreciate everything you're saying.  That's kind of been my interpretation in the long time that I've been on the Council, and I've been on the Council for a while.
However, my biggest concern is the administrators of this Council that are part of the Department of Health, they're not here to be engaged in that discussion.  So whatever you're saying, you know, other than passing along from Tiffany or reading the CART at a later date, we don't have down to ask you questions also, and it's kind of concerning at this point, even though I love the answers you're giving us.
So what recommendations would you give us to go from here?  Especially since they're not in the room?  

>> LINDA McMULLEN:  Well, what you have to do, and then this goes back to my original comment about having an agenda.  You have to have a plan.  And if you want to have a fundraiser, you have to have a plan.  You have to say we're going to have a fundraiser, we're going to contact these people, we expect to raise this much, we expect it's going to cost this much, it's going to be on this day in this place and, you know, you have to come up with a concrete plan.
If it's just "We want to have a fundraiser," everybody is going to say, I don't know how to help you with that, you know.
You've got to get very concrete on it.
And when you start that process, you're going to find that it's a lot harder than you think it is to organize a fundraiser.
I've done MANY fundraisers for MANY different reasons, political, as well as public health, as well as various charities, you know, that I've tried to do fundraisers for.
But that's what you have to have.  If that's what you want to do, you have to have a plan and it has to be concrete, discrete, and with goals and timelines and a budget.  And expenses on how or what it's going to cost you to do it and what you think you're going to raise.  

>> CHRIS LITTLEWOOD:  Okay.  You reminded me of the second part of my question ‑‑ this is Chris again ‑‑ but when you were talking about discussions or advocating to legislators and going in with a plan, just like taking these comments for fundraising and such and having a plan, is it better to discuss with legislators with more than one person at a time?  So, like, if we're talking to a legislator or a legislative official, being an assistant or something, making sure that we present what we have, at least in two people or something like that?  Or is there a recommendation on that?  

>> LINDA McMULLEN:  I would say maximize your time.  You know, when you get the time, if you get face‑to‑face with a legislator, you want to bring as many weapons to bear as you can.  And you want to maximize the time to get as many of your subjects and goals in front of that legislator as possible.
When you run out of time, what you say to them is, thank you for your time.  I would like to be able to follow‑up with you in writing, and I will prepare the rest of the things that we weren't able to present to you today, and then you send in to them with a nice letter and then you keep your issue in front of that legislator.
If you only had one person to go, go with one person.  If you have ten, take ten.
You know, it's going to be a free‑flowing kind of thing and not everybody is going to be available all the time.
But once you get that time, you want to maximize it as much as you can.
Because it's a rare gift to get a legislator's time during this time of year.
Now, that being said, from an advocacy point of view, all of you can look at it, if you have your plan and you know what your subjects are, you should be approaching first your local legislators, your local senator and your local representatives, because they are the ones that care about you individually, because you're in their district and you voted for them.  And then you can visit those people when the Legislature is not in session and that's when they're more likely to listen to you and to accept your advocacy and support you in whatever you want to do later on as the process moves down the road, so that when they get to legislative session, you can say remember I met with you last September and we talked about that?  The legislator says yes, I remember, thank you, I got it, and you're done.
So... and that should be part of your plan, would be to organize those meetings with your local senators and representatives.  Because that's how real business gets done from a legislative point of view.  They don't have time to do it during the 60 days if they're in Tallahassee.
Next question?  

>> CECIL BRADLEY:  Yes, I'm trying to figure this question out.  So, a hypothetical here, a hypothetical project maybe, if the Council decided to ‑‑ some nationwide project, say, $100,000 project, for example, to promote better awareness, better understanding through a variety of promotional materials, say it's worth $100,000, this project, if you were to read the statutes, basically under 2(f) the staff department will help the Council accomplish what they need to do.  Number three, the role of the Council is to serve the body ‑‑ the whole state.
4(c), apply to accept funds and so forth.
Number 5 is an important one:  All agencies are expected to support the Council with whatever they ask.
So, is it wrong for the Council to send a bill, say a $10,000 bill to each state agency, here, here, and here, that they need to assist with this project to be accomplished to fulfill the mission of the Council as mandated by Florida Statute?  Is that something that would be feasible?  

>> LINDA McMULLEN:  No, unfortunately not.
The way ‑‑ the way State Government works, all State Government is, there is a budget process and then there is an appropriations process.
There is X amount of money that's available to the State and to all of its agencies.
One of the things that the Legislature does ‑‑ well, the only thing that they have to do while they're in session ‑‑ is to finalize that budget.
And what they do is they dole that money out in a thousand, two thousand, three thousand page bill called the Legislative Appropriations Act and then they said Department of Health gets 88 million, Department of Education gets 126 million, and it goes down very specific levels, down to the, you know, the $200 level.
It gives the positions, it gives everything that the State is going to run on for the next year.
So if you send a $10,000 bill to an agency, they're not going to be able to pay it unless that money was appropriated to them.
So in order to get money for all of your activities from the State, you have to get an appropriation.  And you have to be ‑‑ and you get an appropriation, there's some money in for this Council, that's how we pay for the per diem and your travel expenses.
But if it's not appropriated, even if the State ‑‑ even if the agency wanted to pay you the money, they wouldn't be able to.  

>> CECIL BRADLEY:  Okay, I understand that.  There's a legislative process for the appropriations.  But reading number 5 here, it says all of the agencies in the state are instructed and are requested to assist the Council to accomplish their goals.
So what does that sentence mean in this context?  Does that not conflict?  

>> LINDA McMULLEN:  Well, that's to accomplish your goals, whatever your goals are; to pass legislation, to do educational acts or whatever.
It doesn't mean necessarily give you money.
One of the things we talked about before was maybe another agency being able to help you with the fundraising laws, if you decided you wanted to do that.
But "assist" doesn't mean give you money.  They can't give you money without outside of the appropriation context.  

>> CECIL BRADLEY:  But it doesn't say legislative here, it says the Executive Branch.  

>> LINDA McMULLEN:  I understand that.  But the executive ‑‑ 

>> CECIL BRADLEY:  So all departments but the Executive Branch. 

>> LINDA McMULLEN:  The Executive Branch gets funded as well. 

>> CECIL BRADLEY:  So according to this, this law wouldn't be applicable here.  It's not a valid law then.  It's a joke really then. 

>> LINDA McMULLEN:  Well, it depends on how you define "assist."  [Chuckles].
Assist doesn't necessarily translate to appropriation.  I mean, they could offer you meeting space, they could offer you staff, they could offer you printing.
The Florida Administrative Registry could offer you free... um... ‑‑ they could publish your notice meetings and waive that fee.
There's all kinds of ways to assist that doesn't involve writing a check.
Yes, ma'am?  Was there a question?  

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  I think Cindy had a question and then Glenna.  

>> CINDY SIMON:  I think I'm going to wait until the end.  

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Fair enough.  Glenna?  

>> GLENNA ASHTON:  So you mentioned the best approach to get funding was to write a grant.  I'm a little bit concerned about that.  Would that grant money be replacement for money from the Department of Health or in addition to that money?
Because I have seen that happen with the Department of Education as well.  

>> LINDA McMULLEN:  It shouldn't be replacement, because, again, going back to the appropriations process, you're appropriated X amount of money.  That's your money.  And that's in the bill and nobody can change that.
If you don't spend that money, if it's not used, it reverts back to general revenue.  But it can't be replaced.
The problem with a grant somebody it's non‑recurring.  It's not gonna come every year like the appropriation, it's going to be for a finite period and for a specific project and it's not gonna fund your daily activities.  You're not going to get a grant for your daily activities, your regular meetings.  That's gonna be what the state appropriations is for. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Okay.  I think we've asked a lot of questions and we certainly don't want to continue to interrupt your presentation, so please proceed. 

>> LINDA McMULLEN:  Well, I think you've covered everything I've got on my note list here. 

[Laughter]. 

>> LINDA McMULLEN:  There was one other question... I'm not sure we covered it yet... let me make sure... 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  John has a question.  

>> JOHN JACKSON:  Off the top of your head, do you know, I mean, the funding that comes in the appropriation act from ‑‑ is that something that Health has to get for us?  Could Health push back against it?  Do you see what I mean?
The Council is created by statute, but as far as the funding goes, it seems, does it come through the appropriation, it comes through the Department of Health, right?  

>> LINDA McMULLEN:  Well, we are ‑‑ you're assigned to us. 

>> JOHN JACKSON:  Mmm‑hmm. 

>> LINDA McMULLEN:  By statute. 

>> JOHN JACKSON:  Right. 

>> LINDA McMULLEN:  You're assigned to the Department of Health.  So without looking at the Appropriations Act, you can pull the Appropriations Act up online.
Without looking at it, I don't know how they ‑‑ whether you're among some for all councils and committees or whether you're a line item, whether you're separated out, and it could be any number of things depending on how the Legislature does it.
But the Legislature is exclusively in charge of all the State money.  Nobody else has any say so over it.
And nobody can do anything without the Legislature appropriating the money for it.
So, in answer to your question, I don't know how your money comes.  If it comes as a line item, then it's very specific and it's discrete to you.
If it comes out councils and committees, then there will be an estimate made, which we do on every council and committee where they estimate the number of meetings you're going to have, the number of FTEs, the number of equivalent staff you're going to need to staff it, the advertising costs, the benefits of that, and they'll come up with a budget for that particular council or committee.
And then if it's a pool appropriation, that's the way that works.
But, you know, that's a question you can ask your ‑‑ the aide to your local senator or representation.  What's my appropriation?  And they'll tell you exactly what it is. 

>> JOHN JACKSON:  Okay.  I'm going to take it one step further.  Assuming, and this is a big assumption, because you and I, neither of us know, neither of us know if it's a line item, I don't know if it's a line item or otherwise, but assuming it's not a line item and it's within the ‑‑ it's within the budget [microphone feedback] in the budget for councils or committees ‑‑ 

>> LINDA McMULLEN:  I would doubt that, that's not in our department, you have a free‑standing statute.  But go ahead. 

>> JOHN JACKSON:  My only question is you're planning ahead and if we are in line with those committees and this is all ‑‑ this is probably it, but if we are lumped in with that group and so the Department of Health says they're giving us a budget ahead of time for these group of committees, councils, et cetera, we happen to have, again, hypothetically, we've been awarded a grant and the Department of Health knows we're going to get for whatever the grant is for for the following year at the same time, the same timeframe as the budget they're trying to figure out, is there any way that the Department of Health would take that grant money we're receiving into account in deciding maybe to take some of our budgeted money from Health and move it over to the committee for dogs and cats or something like that?  

>> LINDA McMULLEN:  That was her question. 

>> JOHN JACKSON:  Is that basically the same?  

>> LINDA McMULLEN:  And the answer to that is no, because your grant, if you get a grant, it's going to be specific.  And it's going to be ‑‑ you're going to have to ‑‑ you're going to have to tell the grantor exactly what you're going to do with the money, you have to report back to the grantor usually on a monthly basis, usually three months, how you're spending the money and how you're using it and the Department wouldn't be able to interfere with that grant process.
But the issue, I mean, what happens is with most of these councils and committees is the cost of having meetings almost always exceeds what's been appropriated.  Always.  Always.
I mean, every council/committee award we have runs in the middle.  That's just a fact of life at the Department of Health.
But we do a good faith estimate on what it's going to cost for any particular entity that we're responsible for having their meetings.  And we have a lot of regulatory and advisory meetings.  We've got lots of committees, councils, and lots of boards.  There's 43 boards.  And every one ‑‑ I don't know one that runs ‑‑ that runs ‑‑ that makes ‑‑ that makes ‑‑ that breaks even [chuckles], let alone makes a profit, so... 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Thank you.  Gina?  

>> GINA HALLIBURTON:  Yes, ma'am.  Does not the State or the Health Department have a full‑time grant writer that can write grants for us?
And the reason I'm asking is the grants are not easy and subcommittees are not great, even though you have great people, it's not an easy process.
And getting a grant is so important and is so detailed, that you have to really know what you're doing.
So, is there a person that could be a full‑time grant writer for agencies like us?  We're already strapped for funds. 

>> LINDA McMULLEN:  Yeah, no, there's not.  Basically the way the Department writes our grants is each program who is looking for grant money, there is a person in that program who is familiar with the subject matter and they are the ones who work on the grant for that particular program.
But everything is in a silo and there isn't any ‑‑ there isn't any grant writer.
Now, some of your national associations will have grant writers and some of you are going to be members of your national association and those folks can be good resources.
Not only can they help you with the answers to the grant writing, but they can also tell you where the grants are, because a lot of times it's hard to find the grants.
Once you find them, some of them are easy, some of the grant applications are easy.  Some of them are complicated.  It just depends.
But the national associations will have people that can help. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Thank you.  Cindy?  

>> CINDY SIMON:  So we went visiting yesterday, we had some appointments, some senators and representatives, we talked in, one told us that we could ask that we should write for grants ‑‑ right, Glenna?  We should write ‑‑ 

>> GLENNA ASHTON:  Lifer, they said it was easier to get that one and another one. 

>> CINDY SIMON:  They said we could write grants and there are people in the state we can call for help.
My question is, let's say we knew someone who could do this and we wanted to pay them to do this for us.
Do we have to put it out for three bids and take ‑‑ because, remember, you can put something like that out for bids, but the lowest bid that you're supposed to take may not be the most accomplished writer to do this.
So, A, do you have to do that?  Or can you pick someone to help you and pay them?  

>> LINDA McMULLEN:  The answer to that is I don't know, because I'm not ‑‑ we have a whole bank of lawyers that do nothing what we call transactions and that's contract law and they know all about ‑‑ but there are thresholds for having to competitively bid.  I think it's 50,000, but don't hold me to that.  Anything under than that, you don't have to have a competitive bid, you can do a request for proposal.
But I don't know, that's a subject‑matter expertise that I don't have, but the problem is, if you have the money in your budget to spend.
But there's going to be some ‑‑ some expenditures have to be competitively bid and some don't.  There's different processes for spending your money.  And I don't know which one that is.
So, if you had a specific scenario, you can e‑mail that to me and I'll run it by Transactions and see what the answer to that question is. 

>> CINDY SIMON:  Okay.  And I don't know if I should bring this up now or not, or if this is your place, we've gone through back and forth, we wanted to be a commission, we're a council, we've tried, you know, say, oh, we really want to be a commission.
You appeared when you began to be, should I say, pleasantly surprised at how broad everything was, almost as if we should feel lucky that we have all of this.
So, in your opinion, is there an advantage to becoming a commission?  Could we lose some of what we have in there?  And are we better off staying as a council?  Or do you think we should pursue trying to become a commission?  

>> LINDA McMULLEN:  Well, where are you going to outside your commission?  If you're going to be a commission, you have to be housed somewhere.
And right now you're just assigned to the Department of Health.  But you have access to all of the state agencies.
If you become a commission... well... you know, there's advantages and disadvantages to both.
But you would probably have a higher appropriations level as a commission, but you're also going to have a much more defined statute and you're going to have a much more... um... robust responsibility list of things you have to produce, do, and follow through on.  So....
I mean, that's certainly something you can look at, but....
There aren't many commissions, there aren't many councils like yours either.
But I would look at the commissions and see if one of them, you know, suits you.
There's the Commission on Ethics, there's the Public Service Commission.  There's not many of them and they are all very formal and very structured.  

>> CINDY SIMON:  Well, I think the frustration is we can advise and recommend, but we're limited, and the feeling was as a commission, we could do more.
But you're giving me the feeling that if we know how to work our way through, we have a lot more ins staying as we are written as we are, so... 

>> LINDA McMULLEN:  Yeah, and I don't have an opinion on that, but I can just tell you how things work.
As a commission, you're not going to be able to do, really, anymore than you are now.  Commissions' responsibility is grant or deny applications and like the commissions on ethics grant punishments and collect fines and fees, and you guys don't want to do any of that, that's not your job, that's not what you're here for.
That's primarily what a commission does.
Public Service Commission, they grant or deny rate increases.  You know, the Commission on Ethics, they look to see whether you filed your public financial disclosure on time.  If you didn't, it's a $50,000 a day fine and they've done with you until they get the fine.
They write opinions whether or not what you do is ethical or not.  You know, that's not ‑‑ you know, a commission is a regulatory body.  You're not a regulatory body, you're an advisory body, you're an educational body.
That's just the way I look at it.
And that's why you're a council and not a commission, because you're not a ‑‑ you're not regulating anybody.  You're trying to improve a community.  

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  I certainly feel more empowered after this presentation.  And I really want to thank you.  There's quite a bit of clarity that you brought to the table.  Do we have any final comments?  We are running over a little bit.
Maybe we can ask if there's somebody online who has a question?  

>> GINA HALLIBURTON:  Debbe. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Yes, there's somebody online who would like to ask a question.  Go ahead.  

>> GINA HALLIBURTON:  This is Debbe:  Has anyone seen how many states have commissions versus councils in the United States?  

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Well, we had talked about the Minnesota has a commission and there are some that have commissions, and, you know, we're not up there, so we don't know exactly what led to them developing the commission and what it entails.
But I certainly feel more empowered as a Council, so... 

>> LINDA McMULLEN:  I mean, if you have questions about a state commission, call them up, they'll talk to you.  

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Cecil?  Then Glenna.  

>> CECIL BRADLEY:  Yeah, I just want to make a comment briefly.  So we were talking about the advantages and disadvantages of a commission.  It seems we have more of an influential rigidity as a Council and we don't need to much regulate certificates or licensures or providing staff for customers, so that could offer accreditation as well to keep that more professional?
There could be qualifications for staff training, for police, for the fire department, social workers, so that they could have a higher professional standard.
Because right now there isn't anything available.  So as a commission, it would have the authority to have those things.  But a council doesn't have the influence to shape the world, as it were, to help the people who serve our population.  

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  But we can certainly do more than what we thought we could do.
So, Debbe ‑‑ I'm sorry, Glenna, then Debbe.  

>> GLENNA ASHTON:  So apparently the word "commission" means something different than the state of Florida, so we may be using a different label.  For example, Agency for Persons with Disabilities, they call themselves an agency or Blind Services Division, so maybe a different label would be appropriate for what we want, rather than "commission" because apparently that has a unique definition in the state of Florida. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  But does the term "council" now that we've heard a clarity on the definition, does that seem to achieve what we were hoping to achieve?  We certainly have a lot more than we can do than we realize.  Maybe it does.
Debbe has a comment?  

>> LINDA McMULLEN:  If you were going to make a change, it's going to require legislation. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Right, right. 

>> GINA HALLIBURTON:  This is Debbe on chat:  I think there's a database regarding commissions versus councils already created.  I will see if I can find it because it was done by someone in Illinois.  

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Thank you very much, Debbe. 

>> LINDA McMULLEN:  Any one of the existing commissions probably already has that and they probably have either a formal or an informal association of those commissions that would have a lot of information as well.  

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Any final thoughts?  

>> LINDA McMULLEN:  I was just going to say, thank you, everybody, any specific questions for your next meeting or getting ready for your next meeting, just e‑mail me. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  I have one question before you leave.  There was a state push for text to 911, 20 out of 67 counties have it here in Florida and we have been talking quite a bit to legislators about taking that to the state level.
In fact, the National Association of the Deaf is trying to make it more at a federal level, even make it a federal mandate.
So if we are to ‑‑ could we do something formally as a Council to push that agenda through?  Like, to meet with legislators, talk about a bill, or is that considered lobbying?  

>> LINDA McMULLEN:  No, that's part of what you do. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Good. 

>> LINDA McMULLEN:  But what you want to do is what's the position you're advocating for. 

>> DEBBE HAGNER:  Debbe. 

>> OPERATOR:  Has joined the conference. 

>> LINDA McMULLEN:  You have to be clear what your ask is and give the specifics, this is the bill, this is the legislation, do you want it passed in your county?  Do you want it passed at the state level?
The federal level, that's a different ‑‑ that's a different ball of wax.  Then you're talking Congress. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Right, that's something bigger that they want to do at the national level. 

>> LINDA McMULLEN:  But you as a council, what they expect to hear from you is why is this a good thing?  What it's going to do?  How it's going to do it?  And why do you support it as a council?  

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Thank you so much!  This has been enlightening to all of us.
We have something we would like to give you as a thank you.  It's not a dinner card or anything. 

>> JOHN JACKSON:  We're not called a commission. 

>> LINDA McMULLEN:  Well, according to the Code of Ethics, I'm not supposed to accept gifts. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Well, this is our agenda and this is a thank you note, it's not really a gift, and we have a lanyard. 

>> LINDA McMULLEN:  Great.  I saw those on the table and I was going to take one.  Thanks, everybody.  Have a good rest of your meeting.  

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Thank you!  Thank you, do you have a card?  

>> LINDA McMULLEN:  I do.  

[Pause]. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Okay.  That was wonderful!
So, we are now scheduled at 1:15, we're a little bit behind schedule because of that delay on the technology, but we were scheduled to have an update from the Department of Health.  That was going to go ‑‑ thank you ‑‑ until 1:45.  And then we were going to have public comments at 1:45 to 2:15.
So I'm going to recommend that we do a couple of things.  One is that we do the Department of Health update from 1:30‑1:45, we keep the public comments, because it is on the agenda, 1:45‑2:15, and then at 2:15 we take a break, so that the interpreters and the CART Provider can take a break.  Does that seem reasonable to everyone?  Okay.  Let's move into the Department of Health update.  Tiffany?  

>> TIFFANY BAYLOR:  Good afternoon.  I'm going to ‑‑ I have provided this particular ‑‑ the action items.  They're in your binder.  And I'm going to go through it rather briefly so you will have a copy to view these at your leisure.
Okay.  Does everyone see where they are?  Because I took mine out because the machine came out [chuckles]. 

>> MARY HODGES:  It looks like seven. 

>> TIFFANY BAYLOR:  The action items are Section 7.

[Pause].

>> TIFFANY BAYLOR:  Okay.  I have it on the screen but it's also there.  It's coming up on the screen. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Can we turn that back on?  We turned off the projector, didn't we?  

>> TIFFANY BAYLOR:  He turned it back on. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  It's waking up. 

>> TIFFANY BAYLOR:  However, in the meantime, I can go ahead and start in light of time, I would like to have an opportunity for people with comments to have as much time as possible.
One of the first thing on the action items was to have the agenda on the front page of FCCDHH website until the quarterly conference meeting is held.  And note public comment times on the website.  That website has been updated.  The last time we met, there were a few problems with the website and we could not pull up anything.
But now all of that is there.  The meeting section has been replaced, along with the requests that were here in the agenda.
The agenda, of course, had to be changed in the middle‑way, so there was a point where the agenda was not there for probably about a day, maybe two at the most, but then it's been updated, so it's on there; it was on there.
The other thing is provide the Council with the governor's office appointment contact person and the Appointments Office contact person is Victoria Parsons as you see listed here on the right, and she's going to be contacting the Governor's office on our behalf.  Apparently we're not supposed to just file several, several calls to them, we're supposed to go through Victoria Parsons and then she will then contact them at the office.
The next one was researching DOH about giving recognition to hospitals to provide appropriate practices when working with patients who are deaf and hard of hearing.  Shay Chapman was going to discuss that and she is not here.  However, I do know she is still working on that and making sure that we can possibly do some kind of recognition for the hospitals that are doing well as Tampa did in that one situation there.
Number four, check budget estimates for the cost of travel for council members to arrive a day early to visit legislators.  That was done, but the detail of it will be coming, because tomorrow on the agenda, we have the budget person for DOH, our area, that are going to discuss a lot of your travel questions and questions that you've already had that I submitted to her and questions that you may have after she starts explaining some things.
There have been some updated forms and she discussed something about the gas and where they get their criteria. 

[Background noise on telephone]. 

>> TIFFANY BAYLOR:  And that type of thing and that's what you want to have.
Number five, regarding FCCDHH giving gifts to legislators.  This is one of the main reasons I went ahead and made sure Ms. McMullen came to speak to us today.  I wanted to give her a chance to talk about where our rights and our long arm can go if we would like, and so I'm hoping she gave you guys a pretty good indication of where we are with that.  And I really enjoyed her presentation.
Okay.  Number six was contact VR and Cecil Bradley regarding resources for computer repair and provision for blind community members.
I did that and we've all spoken with this community member and we are ‑‑ things are on the move there.
There have been some updates with her and she's doing well.
Number seven, preserve the presentation style and statistical information used in the provided contact log to be used in the future biennial reports.
In that contact log, if you look, I believe I ‑‑ the contact log is in the resources section, which is probably Section 9.  However, I have it here.  And the place where I have it... um... in your binder is not going to have the dates from ‑‑ at the very beginning to now.
What it has is the image of when all that has been done.
What I did is I did the Excel chart where it will continue from way back at the beginning, if you see on there, we started way back here.  I don't know if you can see it on there, but ‑‑ on the screen, but it started way back there since our last one, and so what I did was set up the Excel chart so that it would continue with the information all the way to the end and automatically apply that information as we go down and continue to add it.
So, the next meeting in May, you would have seen all the new calls and contacts that have come in and they will automatically populate into the photo or the chart that will make it a visible representation of the kind of calls we get.
Right now, a lot of them were interpreter calls.  And IEP calls.
Although, a good number of them were independent living‑type calls related to housing, mostly HUD‑type things, and service dogs was a big one.
I seem to get a plethora of service dog questions where people are trying to find out ‑‑ 

[Background noise on telephone]. 

>> TIFFANY BAYLOR:  ‑‑ what is the legal card that they are supposed to get and where do they get it. 

[Background noise on telephone]. 

>> TIFFANY BAYLOR:  And what constitutes a service dog for several different disabilities, but also for a hearing dog.  And for that reason, I have set up for one of our presenters a little later today will be someone from Paws For A Cause who will be talking about service dogs.
Okay.  So let's look at number seven, preserve the presentation.  That's what we just did.
Eight is research legal resources to be shared with an audience member requesting assistance, and that was the last audience member that was here at the last meeting, and we have done that.
Solidify dates and locations for the May quarterly conference.
As of now, we're looking at, of course, Miami.  Debra Knox provided me with a couple of different ones that she was suggesting and we looked into it and the DOH requirement is that it be 150 or less per night.  Everybody was above that.
Now, outside the airport, it was less expensive, but the goal is to reach as many people as possible to be able to come to the meeting and whether there was bus transportation and all of that, and there was a lot going into why this particular location was chosen.
And the location will be the Marriott Dadeland is the one that we're looking at right now. 

>> CINDY SIMON:  Yes!  

>> TIFFANY BAYLOR:  And it apparently is very close, walking distance, to a lot of things in the city, including places to eat and including places where the people can get to us.  The bus line is good, et cetera.  So that's where that's going to be.
And, let's see... 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Hold on one second, I have a question about that. 

>> TIFFANY BAYLOR:  Okay.  

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  So when the presenter was here talking about we could do public hearings, just as a thought, since we're planning the next meeting, I'm wondering if we could have some type of a public hearing set up, maybe the day before.  Is that possible?  To talk about key issues.  And we would set those, that agenda up.  Is that something that is possible?
They said we have to have our four quarterly meetings as a minimum, but could we attach a public hearing meeting to one of our quarterly meetings?  So it would be, like, coming a day early or something like that, if that makes any sense.
She says you can have people testify and we could report that directly to the Legislature as well.  
>> TIFFANY BAYLOR:  At this point I'm not sure that we're allowed to, because I'm not in charge here at DOH.  However, I will bring it back to them.
As far as coming a day early, the only consideration that I would have, any bearing in, is I want to make sure that there is ‑‑ the budget will set and be fine for us to add on everybody one more day.
I think the end of fiscal for you guys might be soon thereafter. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Yeah, June 30th. 

>> TIFFANY BAYLOR:  Yeah, which means there won't be another big expense following that May one before we get the new budget. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Correct. 

>> TIFFANY BAYLOR:  So for that reason, it's looking good, if I may say so. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Okay. 

>> TIFFANY BAYLOR:  But I have to talk to ‑‑ 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Let's find out. 
The other thing is the reason I'm thinking that, Miami‑Dade has a very large deaf, hard of hearing, that whole southeast part of Florida has a very large Deaf community.
Go ahead, Glenna.  

>> GLENNA ASHTON:  This is Glenna.  I thought we were talking about for Fort Lauderdale or Palm ‑‑ that area, not Miami.  There are way more active Deaf individuals in Broward County, you know, not necessarily the Miami area specifically.
I mean, that's just one group.
So it may be a little cheaper in Fort Lauderdale, in Palm Beach, that particular area.  I'm surprised they decided on Miami already.  I thought we already talked about this. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  I'm fine with either one.  Because I'm in a different part of the state, I don't really understand how far apart Fort Lauderdale and Miami is in terms of the reality of differences in ‑‑ 

>> GLENNA ASHTON:  It's an hour. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Right, I understand it's an hour ‑‑ 

>> GLENNA ASHTON:  People who are in Fort Lauderdale aren't going to come to Miami or to Palm Beach. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  So maybe we can discuss that a little bit more.  Yes, Cindy?  

>> CINDY SIMON:  So, I do remember sitting there, because Debra Knox and I were both saying if we were down south there, to look at the Marriott.  Everything is walking distance, the mall is across the street, there's plenty of food, and it's near a public transportation.
In terms of Fort Lauderdale ‑‑ I live in Fort Lauderdale, okay, for me to get to my office is just under 39 miles, and traffic, I allow a minimum of an hour and a half to get there. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Okay. 

>> CINDY SIMON:  So I'm just explaining. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  So is it better to do Fort Lauderdale ‑‑ 

>> CINDY SIMON:  Palm Beach ‑‑ 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  ‑‑ Fort Lauderdale and Palm Beach?  

>> CINDY SIMON:  Palm Beach people don't want to come down.  Miami people don't want to go there, Fort Lauderdale doesn't want to go to Miami, I guarantee you.
Where was our last southern meeting?  Was it in the Palm Beach area?  If that's the case, it may be time for South Dade.  

[Pause]. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Tiffany?  

>> TIFFANY BAYLOR:  So during the choice of Miami was not necessarily one of DOH.  The Council decided on the Miami location last time. 

>> CINDY SIMON:  I remember. 

>> TIFFANY BAYLOR:  And so I just jump off from there and go seek it.
So, I don't know that ‑‑ at this point contracts are already started because they have to be started this far in advance to make sure that everything works right with the number of rooms and the price negotiation, with our legal and the hotel's legal.
So, I'm not quite sure what has to happen and whether we would soon be behind the gun if we go change it to Fort Lauderdale at this time.
But we can check on that.
But in the meantime, I just want you to know the reason why we went ahead and went with Miami was as a suggestion from you all.
And so we just kind of went with that.
If you guys would like to change it, we just really have to really jump on it something serious.  

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Yes, sir, Chris?  

>> CHRIS LITTLEWOOD:  Folks, I would not recommend trying to change the location at this point.  We did discuss last time Miami because we went to Palm Beach about a year ago.
All of the South Florida cities are not that far apart from each other.  The bigger problem, as folks that live in South Florida know, is the traffic.  People that live in Palm Beach are not going to travel to Miami and vice versa.
So, because it's been a longer period of time since we've been to Miami, I think we should try to stick with that one.
I do know I'm teaching in South Florida around that same time and the prices of hotels, because it's the end of the spring break period, that is a difficult task and we may have to go a little bit further away from the airports and things like that to try to accommodate the cost limits that the State has.  

>> TIFFANY BAYLOR:  As of this point, we actually have negotiated a price that is reasonable, as opposed to 150 or less, they're making it 151, and I believe our legal is willing to agree with that [chuckles]. 
So, I think that they've already looked into, we've got Miami, Marriott Dadeland set for the location for the next one.
And, you know, August is the next one and if there's a real need, if we do this in Miami and find that there is a really pressing need in Fort Lauderdale, there is nothing wrong with going then to Fort Lauderdale in August.  

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Okay.  So I don't know that we want to do South Florida two in a row or, yeah, two in a row.
Okay.  So I think that it's fine, we can do Miami.
But I'd like to go back to the issue of maybe ‑‑ I'm sorry, somebody did have their hand up and I apologize, Cecil.  I'll recognize you in one second.
But I do think, I like this idea of doing a public hearing.  And I really want us to talk about adding that in somehow.
We have plenty of time to talk about it, it's three months, and to set something up.  And maybe just to even get our feet wet on public hearings and maybe we will get some people from Fort Lauderdale or Palm Beach or something coming there.
Okay.  Let's recognize Cecil first and then John.  

>> CECIL BRADLEY:  Thank you, thank you, Madam Chair.  It's a comment about Miami.  I think it's a good time to go.  You know, last year we were in West Palm Beach and really, we need to go to the "deep south" [chuckles], it's a different world, it really is, it has its own world.
It would be nice to hear from their Miami culture, the community that's there.  I remember that we went there two years ago, they had a community meeting, we confronted some of the VR issues we dealt with at the time, it was an interesting community and it's really good to go at least once a year to see the people and, again, we really need to advertise well.
Many times we don't do a good job with promoting that, so it means that we have several people in Miami that we can contact, I'm sure they would help us with, with that promotion, and to have a strong and encouraging presence there as soon as possible and not waiting until May.  Thank you.  

[Pause].
[Microphone feedback]. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  John first.  

>> JOHN JACKSON:  I think Cindy was first. 

>> DARLENE LAIBL‑CROWE:  This is Darlene. 

>> JOHN JACKSON:  What are you talking about?  Our meetings are all public and we have public comment periods within them, and so I guess I got mixed and didn't understand something, what did you mean by public hearing as opposed to what we always do?  

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Well, I think it is different.  So the quarterly meetings talk about we get reports, we get, you know, we talk about the agenda items.
A public hearing, as I see it, and maybe I'm way out there, but the way I see it, it would be on specific topics.  Let's say text to 911 or something we specifically want to report to the Legislature that we took public comment specifically on this or we had testimony on this by some experts in the field.
Like we had the presentation from the Collier County text to 911 department, perhaps we would have more testimony along those lines in that area.
And just something that I'm thinking.
Now, testimony is a little bit different.  It's like you have three or four people giving us, like, 15‑minute pros, cons, to whatever we're talking about.  So that's what I'm thinking about public hearing, is different than public meeting.
I don't know if that answered the question or not. 

>> JOHN JACKSON:  It sounds like you want to develop a panel on a particular topic.  

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  No, I want to have a public hearing and get opinions. 

>> JOHN JACKSON:  Well, yeah... okay.  

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  I thought Glenna, then you.  

>> GLENNA ASHTON:  For May, the May council meeting, I know we already have a few people that we can contact to do presentations.  John Paul ‑‑ Jimmy... hmm?  

[Pause]. 

>> GLENNA ASHTON:  He's a director of Waving Hands down in South Florida, they do lots of things with Deaf children and in Miami alone, but he teaches ASL at the school there and I think that's in South Miami as well, and I think after school he can come and present to us.
Two, I think that we probably could convince Miami‑Dade College to send their students to come and sit and watch the Council, I think that would be great, so we can have an audience.  We have a few Deaf there as well, I think.
And Cindy also mentioned inviting some people from ‑‑ there's the Debbie School, it's an oral school there and I think we can talk about people to invite in May.  We can talk about that. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Sounds good.  Yes, Gina?  

>> GINA HALLIBURTON:  The public hearing definition online says informal meeting from receiving testimony from the public at large for an issue or proposed action. 

>> OPERATOR:  Darlene has left the conference. 

>> GINA HALLIBURTON:  And this is usually recorded for public and reported summarizing the key points generated which is kind of like what we do for our public comments, except we don't expand it to actually have testimony. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Right, that's the thing, that's how we differentiate the meeting from public comments and the hearings.
I think Cindy, and then Glenna.  

>> GINA HALLIBURTON:  I just wanted to add, Debbe has been waiting for a while, she wants you to know she did not get the binder and she can't follow along. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Is it online?  

>> DEBBE HAGNER:  Yeah, I'm still on. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Hi, Darlene.  Is the binder available online?  Oh, it is?  

>> GINA HALLIBURTON:  She wants to know why she did not get a binder; this is Debbe. 

>> DEBBE HAGNER:  I thought the binders were supposed to be mailed to us.  If we told the Council that we were not going to be there ahead of time.
That's how it was done in the past.  

[Pause]. 

>> DEBBE HAGNER:  She was expedite it and send it overnight express and mail us the binders so we have it ahead of time. 

>> DARLENE LAIBL‑CROWE:  Darlene. 

>> OPERATOR:  Has joined the conference.  

[Pause]. 

>> DEBBE HAGNER:  Let Darlene talk. 

>> TIFFANY BAYLOR:  Hi, this is Tiffany.  I was the one who would be responsible for sending the binder.  I have no idea about sending the binder, a full binder down there.  But in our office, we have had a bit of a change of staff and so I did not know about that.
Usually if someone says they're not going to be present, I will send the things like the agenda or the meeting minutes or something like that.
So, um... I apologize for that.  I'll make sure that you get it right now.

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  How are you going to do that?  

>> TIFFANY BAYLOR:  Is she on e‑mail?  I can't send the binder, there's not going to be a hard copy binder.  I'm sending it via e‑mail. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  I thought maybe you were going to take a Concord jet and get it to her and come back. 

>> TIFFANY BAYLOR:  Well, if I could use the Council's jet to... 

[Laughter]. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Okay.  And I just wanted to make note that we are in the public comments timeframe, 1:45‑2:15.  So can we do, please, a quick check to see if we have any public comment in the room or on chat line or on the phone?
Anyone in the room from the public?

[No response]. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Anybody on the chat line or on the phone?  

>> Good afternoon, this is Brendaly Rodriguez.  Would this be the right time?  

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Yes, ma'am, we are open for public comments.  

>> Thank you for the opportunity.  And I thank you for Tiffany to forward the documents to me to be able to know about the proceedings and the agenda.
My name again is Brendayl Rodriguez from the University of Miami and from the Florida Workforce Coalition and I was able to send a one pager to the committee, or to the commission, and hopefully it would be made available, either electrically or in print.
And just briefly, I wanted to support the ‑‑ having the next meeting in Miami, in South Florida, as it really pertains to the topic of ‑‑ that I wanted to just bring awareness and hopefully in that meeting explain more, with more time, about the recent data that was released about the ‑‑ from the Hispanic Community Health Study that shows that more and more Hispanic aged 45 and older with a hearing problem and becoming like a silent health disparity.
We do have others, like diabetes and other things with health conditions, but hearing laws and age‑related hearing laws and reaching a diagnosis and access to use of hearing aids is found as problematic.
And there are journals and other reports that will support some of this ‑‑ these comments that I'm making and definitely with having an opportunity for a public hearing, I also express my support on that idea and actually can be of assistance as well as you see fit through the networks that we are gathering with stakeholders from different groups serving the Hispanic community age 50 and over with hearing loss, age‑related hearing loss.
And I'm available to have questions, if you receive the handout, it does describe a little bit of this newly funded opportunity.  We have the University of Miami and University of Arizona working in tandem and with the Arizona Commission for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing on their advisory board on this, and trying to ‑‑ in this effort, trying to build research capacity, to create better hearing loss intervention in this underserved community of Latinos 50 and over.
Because we see that this is a still productive, very much productive population and the effectiveness ‑‑ and the impact of age related hearing loss, it does affect the availability ‑‑ the way they can be more productive members of society resulting in isolation and depression.
So in our goals, is to create a Hispanic Hearing Healthcare Access Coalition between Florida and Arizona based on previous work that the University of Arizona has done with community health workers educating the public, raising awareness, and linking other community stakeholders, like clinicians and other service providers on this.
I would definitely talk more on this effort in your next commission meeting. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Thank you very much for your comments and for sending this information to us.
I understand that you're going to be presenting at the next council meeting, is that correct?  

>> I would love to be present, whether it's in Miami, Fort Lauderdale, or in any other location.  And we can present more details and actually elaborate more on the health disparities for the hard of hearing in the Latino and Hispanic community.  

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  All right.  Thank you very much for representing this project.
And we have a council member who has a question.  Yes, Cindy?  

>> CINDY SIMON:  So Brendaly, if there's anything I can do to help, I am an audiologist, I actually know most of the audiologists in UM and I am located in South Dade and I can honestly say probably 3/4 of my population that I see are Hispanic.  So feel free to contact me.  

>> Thank you so much!  We will.  

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  I think Gina, then Glenna.  

>> GINA HALLIBURTON:  Hi, this is Gina.  Thank you so much for the information you provided.  I would also ask that you encourage those in your community who experience hearing loss to be here for the meeting and provide their personal testimonies and input as to the challenges that they are personally facing.
That's a great time for them to come and present their positions, during our public comment meetings.  

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Thank you, Gina.  And I think you mean be there in Miami, right?  Or here did you mean?  

>> GINA HALLIBURTON:  At our meeting. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  At the next one?  Okay, okay.  Glenna?  

>> GLENNA ASHTON:  I'm assuming you've probably seen the same problem that we have seen.  For example, the Deaf signers complain about interpreters, hard‑of‑hearing people complain about being able to afford hearing aids, and deaf‑blind people are unable to get assistant services from providers.
So, do you see the same kind of problems in your area?  

>> Yes, we want to have a platform with those issues being brought up and documented, because we have already collected data through the Hispanic community group health study at the University of Miami over the years on this, and this is, by the way, the largest study in the Latino health in the U.S. across the nation, and so this is from the NIH, and so this data ‑‑ we share more and all this testimony that people have alluded to before, I think we send a powerful message and it can be more well known and disseminated. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Thank you very much.  One other comment and then we do have another member of the public who has a public comment who is in the room with us.
Yes, Glenna?  

>> GLENNA ASHTON:  Do you know Dr. Michael McKee?  Or Tyler James from the University of Florida?  

>> Personally, no ‑‑ 

>> GLENNA ASHTON:  Because they are excellent resources to start feeding information to help with that kind of survey.

>> Thank you.  

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  This is very exciting.  And certainly we would love to have you present at our next council meeting in Miami, Florida.  It's called Miami what?  Miami South Dade?  

>> CINDY SIMON:  No, it's in Miami in the Dadeland area. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Dadeland.  Okay.  And we do have a member of the public in the room who would like to make a comment.  

[Pause]. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Just announce yourself and present.  

>> AUDIENCE MEMBER:  Yes, hi, my name is Drew and I attended the town hall meeting that VR had in Miami a couple of years ago.  I just wanted to mention something on logistics of coordinating interpreters.
Because there is such a ‑‑ there are several experts on this Council who are already aware, because there's such a cultural linguistic diversity there, when VR coordinated the meeting, we needed ASL interpreters, we needed interpreters who could sign ASL but mouth Spanish, and we needed several Certified Deaf Interpreters to handle both deaf‑blind interpreting and interpret for some individuals who had atypical languages because they had migrated from another company.
So whatever agency you're working with, make sure that you have all of those needs covered.
I think I'm really preaching to the choir here.  But it was our experience, we thought we had them covered.  We just had them barely covered.  Everyone was stretched as thin as they could go.
But it went well and we heard a lot of interesting things from the community.
So, I know you'll consider those needs.  That's just a little plug to keep them in mind. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Thank you very much, Drew.  I think that is quite true and certainly necessary.  And we will be working with our interpreter team making sure we can accommodate.

[Pause].

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Any other public comments on the line?  I didn't just pull a mom, did I?  "on the line," online or on the phone or in the room?

[No response].

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  We have about ten minutes left for public comments.
Anyone online?  

>> GINA HALLIBURTON:  [Shakes head]. 

>> JOHN JACKSON:  This is John.

[Microphone feedback]. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  John, it's your electric personality. 

>> JOHN JACKSON:  I wanted to wait until our present from Health left because I felt weird saying it and I didn't want her to think I was in some way disagreeing with her or challenging her, but she said something well, we got two things out of the presentation.  I think that one thing we finally got someone from the Department of Health who came down and kind of agreed with all of us about what our reading of what seems very broad powers in this statute and suddenly we got some acknowledgement from our administrative handlers, so to speak, that they agreed and we can finally put that to rest and we can start moving forward on that, in many different ways forward, I guess.
The sec thing, though, I think she said something really, really important, and I just want to make sure that everyone heard it and everyone thinks about it more broadly, and that is she said:  Commissions are regulatory.  And that's right, they are regulatory.  All right?
And in the past, I know that this Council, certain members of the Council, have, you know, they'd like the idea of us getting more powers of some sort, which, when described at the time did sound regulatory as well.
Beyond just being a Council, and that's been talked around.
And I just want to say that, you know, I've been honest with the Council before in my opinions about how the winds are blowing in Tallahassee and I just want to make sure that everybody knows that regulation and regulatory stuff is a negative thing in Tallahassee right now.  

>> Brendayl Rodriguez from the University of Miami. 

>> OPERATOR:  Has left the conference. 

>> JOHN JACKSON:  You could argue it's always been what policies or whatever is coming out of whoever is in power at the time, but this Legislature and this Governor's office, they are not only are they not fond of regulation and regulatory stuff, but they are really looking at scaling back regulatory matters throughout State Government, which is their right to do so as elected officials.  And, you know, they bring their agenda, sobeit, no problem.
But I just want to advise the Council and take it for what you want, that it's not a good time to not only ‑‑ I wouldn't even utter the word "commission "because certain people, when they hear that word, that's the type of organizations that fine people, that regulate behavior and such.
And, you know, even if you use the word commission and whatever it means in your mind, just hearing that word with certain leaders can absolutely ‑‑ that will end, if not literally end the conversation, that will end any kind of hope of getting into the heads of the people you're talking to, because they'll hear regulatory, they'll hear commission, and it will be in one ear and out the other and anything that's said after that point.
I think that talking about how we would like to get more out of the Council and the Council do more, I think we need to be careful of some of the things that we say or suggest that would sound like that we are moving in the regulatory manner.
Now, that being said, if the Council, as a council, would want to, as a group, move that way, then sobeit, that's, you know, we have a vote and we decide how we're going to move forward.
But until the Council has really, really thought about something and moved and acted as a Council to do so, I think that we should be very careful not sounding like this is a Council that considers themselves regulatory, even though they're not, or that is actively pushing to become regulatory.
Because that's just not popular, frankly, right now, in government in Tallahassee.
And we are an executive ‑‑ you know, we come from the executive agency, we are administered by an executive agency ‑‑ I'm sorry, we come from the Executive Branch and we are administered by an executive agency.
So, as a Council, I would just advise that we be very careful not only in our actions, but even in our words as far as anything that would look like that we're really pushing to become regulatory, because I ‑‑ even if we were, I see absolutely no success on the horizon.
But I don't think we should give the impression that that's what we want, unless the Council, after strong consideration and vote, et cetera, of all members, that we decide that we're going to go down that route hell or high water.  

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Okay.  Thank you, John.  I think that's really a very good point.
And it occurs to me that the definition of "commission" in the state of Florida is different than it may be in other states.
So, it may not be the right fit for the state of Florida.
I think our concerns are that we didn't have a good understanding of how broad our statute is and now we're hearing that we really can be more proactive.
And I'm very excited about the potential that we have as a Council, now that I understand the statute.
It's interesting when you rotate onto the Council, not having been here from the beginning, you miss out on well, what does it really mean?
And I wonder if each year in February would be a good time to review this material that we heard today going forward.
Because we're not ‑‑ we're going to have new council members and they're not going to understand it and it's going to go year in, year out, and we're just kind of stuck with your understanding, as it being limited.
But this is certainly very helpful and I'm pretty jazzed up right now of our potential.
Anybody else with comments?  Yes, Cindy?  

>> CINDY SIMON:  She seemed amazed by how much we could really contact and go out there.
Now, I think I've been here the longest, after John and Cecil, and then Chris after me.
And I've never heard it described that way.  And I've been on since 2008.
But I will also caution you to different people who come up there will interpret differently.  Just like do you remember we had that person, do we really have to file our economic stuff for that....
And one person came on and said absolutely, you don't, because you are not employees.
Another one was absolutely you do, and this was one year after the other.
So, be very cautious on what you wish for, because the next one who comes up may not have that same broad perspective.  

>> JOHN JACKSON:  Can I follow‑up with Cindy, please?  

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Certainly. 

>> JOHN JACKSON:  Cindy is absolutely right but what makes is different, we have it in writing, you have CART, it's recorded. 

>> CINDY SIMON:  The other one was too. 

>> JOHN JACKSON:  Yeah, but we never had anything to throw in front of somebody and say wrong, this is the interpretation.  This is how we work as a Council and you have to really work hard to tell us that that interpretation was wrong and depending on the lawyer, the lawyer that did present that, Ms. McMullen, I would hold her up to any lawyer that walks into this place, myself included.
So, yeah, we had a lawyer in Jacksonville back in maybe it was 2009, I only remember it because I dated her in law school. 

[Laughter]. 

>> JOHN JACKSON:  And she presented to the Council and she had a different opinion on a lot of this stuff.  It seemed like her entire presentation was limiting the statute and the questions and the things we asked that we wanted to do.
And so, you know, we now, we got it, we know it.  We're not going to ask it anymore.  We're just going to act under it and we're going to move forward.
And so I ‑‑ this was ‑‑ I never saw this coming.  

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Yeah, this was awesome. 

>> JOHN JACKSON:  No!  

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  We're all so jazzed now.
It is just about 2:15, we have a minute or so.  I want to make sure that we're going to get the CART transcript of her presentation and just so that we'll have it, it was just fantastic.
And yes, Cindy?  

>> CINDY SIMON:  So, I was going to suggest that we take that CART transcript, especially with her interpretation, and have it right behind the statute in every binder, so that, A, you don't have to go looking for it and it's always in there with the interpretation as things go on, if someone has questions. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  That's fantastic.  Maybe we'll even laminate it. 

[Laughter]. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Okay.  So it is currently, on my computer, it's 2:13, that clock I think is a couple minutes fast at 2:15.
I'm checking to see if Debbe has any comments or Darlene or anyone else on the phone or online in the chat room?

>> DEBBE HAGNER:  No.  This is Debbe, no.

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Okay.  Thank you.
Cindy has a comment?  Go ahead.  

>> CINDY SIMON:  Yeah, well, this has to do with Debbe not getting the binder.  So we can ‑‑ I guess we can just say whenever we know in advance that a council member isn't going to be here but is going to be on the phone, you don't have to spend the money to e‑mail ‑‑ to send the binder, all documents will be e‑mailed to the council member. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Okay.  Thank you very much. 

>> CINDY SIMON:  And they can print it. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  I have one comment.  Yesterday there was a question as we were making rounds about a bill and I wanted to, since we're talking on this topic about our Council, I sent it to everyone last night... let me look and find it... um....
We had heard as we were walking around that there was some question about either some parts of this Council was going to be affected by a bill and we weren't quite sure what that meant.
So I sent that question to Shay and she responded to me in an e‑mail and said I did a quick search, I see that in Senate Bill 596, they delete some obsolete language in the statute, but it does not eliminate the Council or threaten the Council in any way.
So, if we can take a look at that bill, it would be really helpful, and I'm not sure quite what they mean by "obsolete language."  We're not quite sure what that means.  If we can do that over the course of the day and maybe tomorrow we can talk about it.
Tiffany, is Shay coming in tomorrow?  

>> TIFFANY BAYLOR:  No, she won't be, but I will pull it up on this, I will save a copy so we can pull it up and hash it out tomorrow. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Because we're so jazzed right now, I want to make sure we stay jazzed.
Okay.  It is now 2:15, we're going to go on break, unless there's any burning desires to share something before break?

[No response]. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Okay.  We're on break until... let me take a look... um... 

>> CINDY SIMON:  15 minutes?  2:30?  

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Do you want to do 2:30?  2:35?  Give the interpreters a break.  

>> GINA HALLIBURTON:  2:35. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Okay.  We will reconvene at 2:35.  Thank you all.

[Break].

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Ding, ding, ding, it's 2:35, it is time to reconvene.

[Pause]. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  We have another speaker coming in at 3:00 o'clock.  Have we heard that that individual has been delayed because of the storm or anything?  

>> TIFFANY BAYLOR:  [Shakes head]. 

>> GINA HALLIBURTON:  No, Tiffany said no. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  I'm going to see if we can do our committee updates in 25 minutes and then we'll be back on time with everything else.  Good idea?  Good.
We took a 15 minute break but I don't have to do roll call right now, do I?  

>> GINA HALLIBURTON:  No. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Okay.  Good enough.  Okay.  All right.  Let's go ahead and get a report from the Web Committee.  That would be Darlene and Debbe.  Is Debbe or Darlene available to give an update on the Web Committee?

>> DEBBE HAGNER:  This is Debbe.  I have not done anything on the web ‑‑ reviewing the website or anything.  But I would be happy to do that this weekend.

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Okay.  What about, like, we have a Facebook page, don't we?

>> DEBBE HAGNER:  Yeah, I haven't done anything.  I've been posting a lot of things quickie, but as far as anything else, no, nothing.  

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Are we getting any comments or questions or anything through the website or ‑‑ not the website, but the Facebook asking us any kind of questions or providing comments, anything like that?

>> DEBBE HAGNER:  Again, I have not done that.  I will follow‑up on that.  

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Thank you very much.  Darlene, I don't know if you're on the line?  She's not on the line or online.  Okay.
And I'm going to, just because I know it's a committee update, but I know Tiffany does quite a bit with the website.  Tiffany, anything that you wanted to add about the website?  

>> TIFFANY BAYLOR:  One good thing about Facebook that's going to be coming up is that those photos that you all just took, that's what they're for, so there will be a face to that.
Also, right now on our website, which is taking a moment to come up, it will have the FCCDHH ‑‑ 

>> CECIL BRADLEY:  That one!  The Council's website you see here. 

>> TIFFANY BAYLOR:  Yes.  I'm just trying to pull it up ‑‑ 

>> OPERATOR:  Has left the conference. 

>> TIFFANY BAYLOR:  ‑‑ or our navigation within it.
I went and took the webmaster's training at the Department of Health and... I kind of really wanted you all to see ‑‑ 

>> GINA HALLIBURTON:  Tiffany, while you're pulling that up, I have a question.  The pictures, are you able to put video clips on the Facebook page?
And two, do we send you the photos via e‑mail?  What is the process?  We took a lot of pictures during the legislative and I don't know if you want to pick the best ones or you want us to pick them.  Cindy?  

>> CINDY SIMON:  I know I was with you when you asked permission to do this, but can we just post their pictures without having a release that they want to be seen in public. 

>> DARLENE LAIBL‑CROWE:  Darlene. 

>> OPERATOR:  Has joined the conference. 

>> CINDY SIMON:  I don't know.  John, maybe do you know?  

>> GLENNA ASHTON:  Well, they're public fixtures, so... 

>> GINA HALLIBURTON:  They were very happy to have their pictures taken with everybody, so that's why I figured they would want them publicized.  So if there's something within our department that says no, we should not, then we need to know that.  

>> TIFFANY BAYLOR:  Okay.  I'll send that back and ask about it. 

[Background noise on telephone]. 

>> TIFFANY BAYLOR:  I do know on the website of DOH, which is the one that I have to ‑‑ that I work with, we're not allowed to add any pictures to it.  They kept saying pictures are not on the website, yet this one right here, I had to pull a few strings to get that one up.
So, because it announced our, you know, our meeting. 

[Background noise on telephone]. 

>> TIFFANY BAYLOR:  So what I've been doing on this website ‑‑ 

[Background noise on telephone]. 

>> TIFFANY BAYLOR:  ‑‑ is a lot of checking the links.  Some of the pages have not been reviewed since 2013, 2014 and '15.  Of course I wasn't here yet.
So I couldn't really do anything about that until I got the webmaster's training and was certified to be able to access this, because this is DOH property and still represents DOH, so there's a lot of rules related to that.
So after I took the class, I've been going through, which is somewhat methodical, because I have to check every link, because what happens as some of our links are to external sources and the external sources may have either gone out of business or changed their links or located somewhere else or merged, whatever the reason be, it messes up our links.
So, the cascade system ‑‑ 

[Background noise on telephone]. 

>> TIFFANY BAYLOR:  ‑‑ will tell us and alert of us if there are links in our pages that are not up to date, but by the same token, they won't get them all, and I have to go in and re‑read it and see if anything is obsolete and put it back in.
So, that's kind of what we're doing now.
There's always going to be an action banner, like this one that tells that the meeting is coming up, and then the person clicks it, and right now it's... but the person clicks it and it will come up with the flyer.  Today... 

[Pause]. 
[Laughter]. 

>> TIFFANY BAYLOR:  But it will generally come up with a flyer. 

[Laughter]. 

>> TIFFANY BAYLOR:  So when we had to change the meeting times, I had to keep going back in here and readjusting, but once I readjust, my hand is not the last hand on it, it then goes to the web team that's the people in charge and they go in and check all the links and check all the things that I've added and then approve it and then it posts, like, the next day or the next two days.  

>> GINA HALLIBURTON:  But Tiffany, my question is, do we send the pictures and the videos to you or to Debbe for the Facebook where it's uploaded?  What were the points of the pictures, I guess is my question. 

>> TIFFANY BAYLOR:  I would say both.  For Facebook, y'all are allowed to put any pictures, of course, within reason, but pictures that you want to put up, you're allowed to do that. 
Now, that's holding back on whether or not it's allowed by those people who were legislators and public figures, whether they want it or not, you'll have to work that part out.
But as far as putting something up, you do have that ability on Facebook.
However, on this FCCDHH website, it's not as ‑‑ as... um... as easily done.  There's a lot of permissions that have to happen.  Which I don't mind getting.
So, that's pretty much ‑‑ like, let's ‑‑ meetings was gone the last time we were here.  And then you'll have these, and each one of these links has to be put in, plus approved, plus checked.
And so this is what I've been having to work out.
Plus all of the resources and whether they were old or new.
And so far we've found quite a few that have been needing to be removed and then I'll research and find who is sort of handling that area now, and then I go and get theirs and put it in.
So there's been some work on that.
And I continue to do it, I will continue to do it. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Thank you very much, Tiffany.
We're going to have the committee Education/Medical/Outreach and technology, Gina Halliburton and Cindy Simon.  

>> GINA HALLIBURTON:  I'll go first.  In my former life, I will go first.  I don't have anything to add for Education/Medical/Outreach.  I will turn it over to Cindy for technology. 

>> CINDY SIMON:  We have not had a meeting so I have nothing to report either. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Are there any planned since the next council meeting?  

>> CINDY SIMON:  I think we planned one, we tried to put one out and planned one, but nobody responded. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  That's on our radar now and let's make sure that gets scheduled between now and the next meeting.
Okay.  The Legislative Committee, Chair, Glenna Ashton.  

>> GLENNA ASHTON:  So I'll discuss this later at 4:45 when we have more time to describe what went on yesterday.  

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Oh, right, during the summary of the legislative visits.
So we also addressed a few other things, there are two bills currently, one of them for sure we know about and then there's the new one that we're just going to be looking at that I asked Tiffany to take a look at.  

>> GLENNA ASHTON:  Yeah, that's SB 1006 and HB 125.  It's related to coverage for hearing aids for children.
There's a lot of co‑sponsors already on it, but the person who is the Chair of the committee, the aide, they shot it down because the insurance companies don't want to cover it, because it would be basically increasing the monthly payments.
I think that's bull, but anyway... 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  All right.  So you'll go over that at the summary.
We had a really great meeting yesterday.
So, meetings with the Legislature yesterday, and that was very exciting.
And since we have about ten minutes left, 10‑12 minutes left, we're going to go through the Budget Committee with Cecil Bradley as the Chair and then go over some of the these budget items that we have.  

>> CECIL BRADLEY:  Okay, good afternoon, everyone, this is Cecil speaking.
Honestly, we haven't had much communication between Tiffany and I with regards to budget, and in tab number eight, you can find the budget there in the binders, again, it's tab number eight.
Looking quickly, there's nothing that really stands out that's off or odd as far as the budget goes.
Um... you might be aware, I missed the last one because my brother‑in‑law passed away, so I had to attend a funeral out of state, so I haven't had much discussion since then.
But I'm hoping that the next time Tiffany and I get in touch, we can discuss the budget a little bit more in detail.
Honestly, just looking at a glance, everything looks good.
Does anyone have any thoughts or comments?
Just keep in mind that the money is appropriated from DOH, you can see that in the left column in blue, that's how much we get from DOH.
Then you can see the expenses there in blue.
The encumbered is money that's been committed.  That can't be changed where that money goes.  You see that in the first column there, or the second part, on the second column.  The second part of that column.
So any questions on that?  Tiffany?  

>> TIFFANY BAYLOR:  I'm sorry about that, Cecil, the ‑‑ the budget person is one of the speakers and presenters, the budget person for DOH, and that's part of the reason why she's going to be discussing issues with the budget and questions that we might have tomorrow.  

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Oh, okay.  So we'll have a speaker tomorrow that can address that.
So how much do we have left for this year, until June 30th?  

>> CECIL BRADLEY:  Looking at the right column, we have adequate money.  Remember, on the left, in the first column, it talks about the... 

[Pause]. 

>> CECIL BRADLEY:  For the Council itself, it's separate.  You can see there's a staff position, but that money's already been allocated, and you see underneath that the services and expenses and such.
Let me see here... we have... 

[Pause].

>> CECIL BRADLEY:  Close to 150,000, we'll say, call it 150, it's 148 something, but in the last column you can see the expenses are 659 that's been spent, and the total budget is 80,000... so basically I would say we have plenty of money left to carry us through the remaining three and four months.
DOH in the past has said don't worry, we can always find money to continue whatever to cover us for the remainder of the year.  

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Okay.  So ‑‑ but we're not at risk of not having enough to get us to the next meeting.  

>> CECIL BRADLEY:  No. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  So the question would be what happens if we have leftover at the end?  

>> CECIL BRADLEY:  There's no such thing as "money left at the end."
But they just, whatever is given to us is given to us and then it's gone after that, so basically... I know if it's a specific line item, an appropriation, it could carry over, but that doesn't apply to this kind of budget.
We get it, we spend it, or we lose it.  

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Cindy, please.  

>> CINDY SIMON:  When Eloise was her, her famous admonishment was:  You have money here, spend it.  Because if you don't, you don't have it anymore at the end. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Okay.  But then there's no problem, I wasn't sure if it rolls over and becomes part of next year's. 

>> CECIL BRADLEY:  [Clapping]. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Not added to the total of next year, but if there's money ‑‑ 

>> CINDY SIMON:  The fear was if we don't spend it, they'll say we don't need that much money and we're not going to allocate that, so... 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Right.  You don't get rewarded for being lean, is that correct?  Because on the times that you do need it....
So would this be something that we could discuss what we'd want to do in May that may ‑‑ since we're going to be going to an area that has a very large deaf/hard‑of‑hearing community, I know they're in Palm Beach, a lot of them, I wish we could set up a bus to have them come down [chuckles].
But would that be something we would want to do and discuss something about a public hearing?

[No response]. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  I will say, though, just to kind of put this on the radar, are we already set for speakers for the next meeting, Tiffany?  Do we already have enough?  

>> TIFFANY BAYLOR:  We can always ‑‑ 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Okay. 

>> TIFFANY BAYLOR:  Because a lot of them change their minds partway. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Okay.  So I had been on the phone with the attorney for National Association of the Deaf for a different reason and we got to talking about text to 911 and he said he would be honored to present at one of our council meetings about what's happening at the national level and the research that they have done to promote text to 911.
I didn't know if that would be something that we would want to have a presenter from NAD to come down?  But he did say he would be very interested in doing that.
But I think it may be we'd have to provide some cost to getting him here; I'm not quite sure.  I don't think NAD is going to foot the bill to fly him to our council meeting. 

>> GLENNA ASHTON:  I'm wondering who that person is. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  I believe his name is Mark Jacobson, I spoke to him for a second and Dave me his information and I spoke to him for the next meeting.
It wasn't Howard, it was not Howard, Howard... 

>> GLENNA ASHTON:  Oh, okay, not Howard. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Somebody who works with him, part of the legal council team.
And he also has done quite a bit of work in Florida.
When I contacted, it was a legal issue that was happening with a deaf/hard‑of‑hearing individual in the state of Florida and I called the legal department at NAD to get some guidance and he was the gentleman who called back.
So he is very knowledgeable and after we talked about that case, he and I started to talk about some of the things we're doing with the Council and what's facing some of our constituent ‑‑ not constituents ‑‑ community members/citizens and he says he does quite a bit of work in Tallahassee.
They had just worked on closed captioning for all of the Senate and House meetings and got that passed.
And so he does a lot of work with the state of Florida.
So I thought he would be a wonderful speaker from NAD.  

>> GINA HALLIBURTON:  Cindy?  

>> CINDY SIMON:  So my question ‑‑ my question is, we need to take into account the next meeting and look at what monies we will have left, because we will have to pay for that. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Right. 

>> CINDY SIMON:  So if you want to do what you want to do, we need to see is there enough monies to pay for an extra night?  And then maybe you want to have all the public comment and your testimonies in one day throughout the day for it, you know, to consider that.
But to know what we have to add, we have to guesstimate what it's going to cost us.  

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Okay.  Thank you very much, Cindy.
And Darlene has been waiting patiently.  I apologize, Darlene, I meant to get to you a few minutes before now.

[No response].

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Darlene, are you there?

[No response].

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Okay.  Darlene, when you are ready, just let us know.  Right now I'm going to ‑‑ 

>> DARLENE LAIBL‑CROWE:  Yes, I'm here. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Oh, okay, Darlene.  Did you want to share something?  

>> DARLENE LAIBL‑CROWE:  It takes me a while to mute and unmute because I'm using my iPhone and it takes some effort.

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Oh, I understand.  

>> DARLENE LAIBL‑CROWE:  Okay.
Is there something you're asking me?  

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Gina said that you had wanted to share something?

>> DARLENE LAIBL‑CROWE:  Share something?  

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Did you want to share something about the committee?  

>> DARLENE LAIBL‑CROWE:  Oh, no.  We have not been able to do any of the insight or anything, but I have been using my iPhone to share what I receive on my news feed and there's been several items, and I know there's been a couple of comments that I'm not able to get to it.

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Okay.  Thank you.

>> CECIL BRADLEY:  Madam Chair, just a quick comment regarding the budget.
I know we'll do a deeper analysis, and I notice on the bottom there, the second line, the white line, um... the totals, I guess if you look at February through June, there's about 80,000, 184,000 left for the balance, so that's about half the budget that we've already spent.
If you look at the last expenditures, I mean the previous expenditures, we're averaging 2,000‑3,000 a month or so.  I think we should have plenty of money left.
If you want to make something big for Miami, I'm not sure what that's going to look like, per se, but I suspect that we have more than what we've spent, just kind of going in a little deeper within the analysis, so as far as what we can do for the remaining three, four, five months, that's undetermined.  

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Okay.  Thank you very much, Cecil.  Glenna?  

>> GLENNA ASHTON:  So maybe we can afford to invite Mark, as you mentioned, from NAD then?
And also ‑‑ and also ‑‑ hello?  And also ‑‑ 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  I was reading. 

>> GLENNA ASHTON:  Oh.  The idea of getting a bus, a charter bus, to get folks from Palm Beach, there was another event we looked into doing that for.  The cost is probably about $1,000 for that.  

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  And is that something that we can budget for?  Are we allowed to budget for that?  

>> GINA HALLIBURTON:  Cecil. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Yes, Cecil?  

>> CECIL BRADLEY:  This is Cecil, sorry.  I would ask, we need a formal request from DOH to approve that, to approve the bus.  So maybe that's something that Tiffany can work with the Chair to determine whether or not that's possible.  

>> GLENNA ASHTON:  With your idea of having a public hearing, a hearing, I don't know what sign is best for that. 

[Laughter]. 

>> GLENNA ASHTON:  It's some sign jokes there. 

[Laughter]. 

>> GLENNA ASHTON:  Some puns, if you will.
So, that was on Wednesday and all day, if we had Mark from NAD presenting with the bus, as well, bus people in, allowing for people to have comments, hopefully each organization would also be able to get up and make comments representing their organizations and maybe invite the board members or officers from your organizations, and we might be able to have NAD to stay and get into more discussion on Thursday with them, doing the council business on Thursday and Friday. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  We can do Wednesday, Thursday, Friday is what you're saying.  Okay.  See, Cecil, and then Gina. 

>> CECIL BRADLEY:  Can I modify that?  Not a public hearing‑hearing, whatever the sign is, call it a town hall.  I think that's more attractive for, you know, a town hall on legal rights or something, have that be the topic, I think that's more attractive for folks to attend. 

>> GLENNA ASHTON:  We could call it now we're in the new decade, we could say the next decade of whatever. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Oh, yeah, I like that!  Yeah!  

>> GLENNA ASHTON:  The next decade town hall, you know, looking at the next ten years.  

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Gina first.  

>> GINA HALLIBURTON:  This is Gina.  I need to ask Cindy to watch the chat room, because my internet keeps going off and I keep losing connection, so if I could have Cindy kind of back that up, that would be great.  

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Anything there?  

>> CINDY SIMON:  I've been checking the chat and when that was written in there, there was no request prior.  I backed all the way up. 

>> GINA HALLIBURTON:  I did too. 

>> CINDY SIMON:  There was nothing on there and you did not miss anything. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Cindy, did you want to add to this discussion?  We need to transition to our next speaker. 

>> CINDY SIMON:  Yeah, going into the town hall concept, I really like that idea, just like officials go in and have all the stakeholders involved in that come in and make comment, rather than what you were thinking, we have something that's open to the three companies and if you're going to do a bus, do busloads, spread out meeting and town hall, so each day you can bus them from another, if you really want to get confused, bus from Palm Beach and Broward, but have an opportunity for everybody to come and give their comments and their needs.
Here is your Council who cares about you.  Come tell us your needs and let's get it on record overall, and that could take a whole day from everyone coming just on that, and then we have something concrete to work with, we can show where we got this information, and it's all in the state of Florida.  

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Can we do anything with The Hearing Expo or is that being too ambitious?

[No response].

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Maybe we want to think about that?  

>> CINDY SIMON:  Just remember what you said, okay.  You have to look at what you're going to get, the amount of effort, and the reporting, and if we're looking at making something from having everybody there for a couple hundred dollars, it's not going to be worth the effort to have to do and where the money has to go and the paperwork.  

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Okay, fair enough.
It is now 3:00 o'clock and I would like us to invite our next speaker.  

[Pause].

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  We would like to welcome Judi Volpe, field representative for Paws For A Cause.  If you can go all the way up to the front.  

>> JUDI VOLPE:  Okay.  

[Pause].
[Sound of raining outside]. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Is that the storm they're talking about?  

>> JOHN JACKSON:  That's not the storm, that's just rain, that's just rain. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  So that's the opening act.  

>> JOHN JACKSON:  The storm is coming.  That's just the rain.  Bad weather. 

>> CINDY SIMON:  I can hear it pounding!  

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Yes, Chris?  

>> CHRIS LITTLEWOOD:  This is Chris.  As the emergency preparedness guy, it's real important for me to ask these questions, but where are we supposed to go in this building related to a tornado?  And also, because we have ‑‑ 

[Laughter]. 

>> CECIL BRADLEY:  Jump out the window. 

>> CHRIS LITTLEWOOD:  Because of this storm, is there anything that we should consider as far as closing the meeting a bit early?  I mean, not right this second, but maybe 4:30 instead of 5:30 or something like that?  

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  I'm just concerned about closing the public comments, unless it's actually an emergency.
Do we have any information from National Weather Society that there is an emergency statement put out currently?  

>> CECIL BRADLEY:  By the time we get out of here, the weather is gone. 

>> JUDI VOLPE:  Most of the rain was until later in the afternoon. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Did they put it on the schedule, did they?  

>> JUDI VOLPE:  I have an app on my phone that shows.  The schools let out early, so I don't know. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Okay.  So schools are out. 

>> JOHN JACKSON:  Some agencies are already letting their people out early as well.  From the reports I'm getting, so....
I know that we're under a tornado watch, but not a warning, I know that we're under a severe weather alert as well.  

>> TIFFANY BAYLOR:  I went, when we had the break, over to Shay to check, so she's not saying there's anything yet.  But I will go back and check again, because I do want to know where we would go in case of an emergency, you know, if it just decided a tornado ‑‑ you know, I just came out of a hurricane and I'm not real comfortable anyway!  [Laughs]. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Okay.  So before we have our speaker, I want to give everybody an update on the weather report that was posted 38 minutes ago.  I don't know if there's anything more recent than that [chuckles].
Tornado watch in the Florida peninsula and they are outlining what looks like areas south of Tallahassee as more at risk.  Um....
What county are we in currently?  

>> JUDI VOLPE:  Leon. 

[Background noise on telephone]. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Yeah, so Leon County is included in this.  So it is a tornado watch until 8:00 p.m.  Um... and they listed all the different areas.  So that's kind of the most recent.
Unless someone has something more recent.
They said this is the big bend, this is what's called the big bend?  

[Background noise on telephone]. 

>> TIFFANY BAYLOR:  Yes. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  The tornado watch is extended for big bend and South Georgia, and that's what I've got as the most recent.  

>> GINA HALLIBURTON:  The only thing my ask is on that, is if there's expected to be hail, so... 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Okay.  

>> GINA HALLIBURTON:  Our cars might get damaged. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  During a severe storm, take shelter immediately, keep windows closed, do not stand next to them, my entire group over there. 

>> JOHN JACKSON:  I think the drive home or drive to the hotel is the big risk. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Right, it does say stay out of your car if driving, fasten your seat belt and hug your floorboard.  No, it doesn't say that. 

[Laughter]. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  We'll keep an eye on it for everyone's safety.
I don't want to delay any longer our speaker.  Thank you so much for being here, and have at it.  

>> JUDI VOLPE:  Okay.  My name is Judi and I come from Paws For A Cause.  I need a mic?
Okay.  My name is Judi ‑‑ okay.  You have to quick moving ‑‑ I work for Paws For A Cause, we train dogs, this is my partner, Fletcher, he is a golden retriever, he did not make it as a service dog, he has mild dysplasia and is my demonstration dog.
Most of what he demonstrates is for million disabilities, because I'm wearing ‑‑ where I'm at, I'm going to talk to you more about our hearing dogs and what they do.  And I'll throw a little of the other stuff in later.
Most of our hearing dogs tend to be smaller dogs, but they don't have to be.  Our dogs are raised by raisers that we have, actually I'll back up.  We breed our own dogs.  The dogs are raised by our particular raisers.  They're turned in at about a year old.  Where they're further assessed and then they begin training.
We have a facility, our Headquarters is in Wayland, Michigan, and in our facility we have an apartment where they do most of the training of the hearing dogs, because we use the sounds in the apartment.
The dogs alert to phone ringing, a TBD, they alert to smoke alarm, the timer on the stove, a door knock, doorbell, baby crying, um... carbon monoxide alarm.  Probably any other sound that you might have that you need.
We train our dogs for the client.  We don't just train a whole bunch of dogs and then find people they go with, we train them for the clients.
So, when a client applies and the application process and our application time is right now until March 31st, and I brought some literature I'll be happy to leave with you, so you've got phone numbers and websites and everything.
When you apply for the dog, that's when my job begins.  I go into the home, I do a needs assessment, I see what you need.  How can we help you, what is it exactly that you need.  And that's what your dog is trained for.
They then begin to look for your dog.  They find the dog that fits you.
We have clients that are very busy and so we get a dog that tends to have a little bit more activity. 
We have some dogs that are what I call lugs, they just are slow and they don't tend to move very fast, and so we have people that don't go very much and they don't need that dog that is quick.
So that's how we look at the person.
Once the dog is ready, my job begins again.  I take the dog to the client and I tell them I am their owners' manual, I will teach you everything you need to know with the dog.  When the dog comes to them, it's a fully‑trained dog and I work with them weekly, sometimes a couple times a week, depending on where they are.
I placed a hearing dog over in Panama City and so I only saw her once a week.
I do have another job, I teach kindergarten, so during the week I kind of do something else, and I ran from school here, so....
But I work with them, we start with one sound, we introduce the sound, the dog knows the sound, it's a matter of getting the dog to alert to the person.
And typically our alert, let's see if Fletcher will do it.
Sit.  Sit, paw, come on, paw.  There it is, he will paw the client.
Now, our little dog, sometimes we have him jump up with both feet.  The bigger dogs they paw with one foot, the client says what?  The dog takes them to the sound.
If it's a door knock, the dog will take you to the door.  If it's the stove timer, they take you to the kitchen.  You know you put something in the oven, and when they alert, typically you automatically know where to go.
It also requires that if you go to the door and no one's there, well maybe it was something else that he alerted you to.
The dogs love this.  They love doing sounds.
Many times the dogs that I've placed with clients have other people in the house.  Whether they're hearing or not hearing, the dog will sometimes alert them.
I had a client whose son did most of the cooking and we worked the dog to alert her at the stove timer, but the dog figured out he was the one doing the cooking so he started alerting him to the stove timer, because he was the one doing it.
They're pretty smart.  They can figure things out.
Once you get working very well with them, we leave you for a little bit and then we come back and certify you and you're a certified team.
It's a fairly easy process.  But it takes a lot of commitment, because they come to you knowing what they're supposed to do, but like most children, they push the buttons a little bit and act, like, oh, I don't know what you want me to do... and so sometimes we have to get in there and say ah... remember?  This is what you're supposed to do.
All my clients have said they... [Sighs]... they don't know how they did without them beforehand.  Of course you have to be a lover of dogs.  We don't train cats to do this because they wouldn't do anything.  But we do train the dogs to do it.
Other things that we train is we train for seizure response.  If someone's having a seizure, we will train the dog to do what's needed for them, whether it's an emergency box ‑‑ hold on.  

[Pause]. 

>> JUDI VOLPE:  That's what beeped when I sat down over there.  We have an emergency box when you get something like Life Line or one of those automatic phone things, call help, call for help, we put it inside, the dog hits it and it automatically calls for help.
They paw it.  It usually stays in the same place, so this could be done for any client.  Any client that felt that they needed help, we can train the dog to do this.
We train the dog to get the phone; many times in a case of an emergency you can't get to the phone.  We train the dogs for what you need and we train the dogs ‑‑ but we don't train the dogs for something you can do.
In case of an emergency, the box is fine.  But a lot of people say well, I want the dog to turn on the lights and turn them off.  If the client is capable of turning the lights on and off, we're not going to train the dog to do that.
Because we want to make them more independent.  We don't want to make them dependent, and so a lot of times that's what they do.
Question?  

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Yes, just going back to that emergency that they step on that box, who does it contact?  

>> JUDI VOLPE:  Whoever they have a contract with.  The client has to get a contract with somebody like Life Line. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Okay. 

>> JUDI VOLPE:  Like the button. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Okay.  So it's not Paws to 911, like text to 911.  

[Laughter]. 

>> JUDI VOLPE:  No, Paws doesn't get involved with that, it's that button they put inside of it, they have a practice one and a real one so they can keep the dog working with it.
Although many of those places tell them to do it at least once a month to make sure it's still working, well, that's great for us, because the dog can practice, if the person's not using it quite that much.
Um... we train dogs for lots of things.  If it's in their physical capability, they usually train it.  Our trainers love to think of new things to train their dogs to do.
Dogs pull wheelchairs, they do a brace, so people can stand up and get up off the floor, open doors, elevator buttons, light switches elevator buttons, the one thing with a dog is you have to be really patient, because in the elevator, they're not going to take their little nail and hit, you know, number two.
They might hit [chuckles] one, two, three, four, you know, but okay, you're going to get to the one that you need, because they go up and hit it with their feet.  Some dogs will go up and do it with their nose.
But it's not an exact science with the dogs.  They'll do it, and they'll do it over and over.
One of the big things too is picking things up off the floor.  It is the one thing that most of our clients call in that's what they want.  I want the dogs to pick things up.  I drop things and I can't pick them up.  I might fall out of my wheelchair.  I'm unbalanced, I can't do it.  And undoubtedly they drop their keys just as they're getting into their van and so they have to sit and wait until somebody comes and picks them up for them or then their fear is somebody is going to pick them up and take their van.  You know, here they have their keys in their hand.
So, having a dog there that will automatically pick them up is very helpful for them.
And then as we get into it, we find other things that they need, that can be done to help them.
I can show you a few things with Fletcher.  Like I said, Fletcher is three and you guys are the lucky ones, this is his first demonstration, so out of ‑‑ out in public.
So he's a well‑behaved boy.  He's been at school with me all day long, so he's a very tired boy!
But he can do a few things.  He'll pick some things up for you.  He does know sign language, sit, down, stay, and come.
We teach them things like that in case they're needed.  If there's another sign that the dog needs to learn, it's not a problem, if the client ‑‑ the trainers will train him.
Let me set some things out and I can show you some things that he does.  

[Pause]. 

>> JUDI VOLPE:  I'm not going to actually ask him in any order, I'm just going to ask him to pick it up.  I shouldn't tell you this, but what he's supposed to do is pick it up, hold it, bring it to me, and not release it until I ask him to.
Ready, bud?  Okay.  Take it.  Take it.  Hurrily.  Sit.  Hold.  Hold.  That's a good one to do this with.
The reason for that, if someone has any kind of disability, we want them to have ‑‑ hold, sit ‑‑ we want them to have ‑‑ 

[Laughter]. 

>> JUDI VOLPE:  He's sitting on this. 

[Laughter]. 

>> JUDI VOLPE:  We want him to have a good hold.  Sit.  Give.  Yes.  Fletcher?  Take it.  They should be able to pick up paper.  Oh, man!  Okay, now you're embarrassing me. 

[Laughter]. 

>> JUDI VOLPE:  Sit.  That was bad.  Give!
Let's try it again.  Take it.  Come.  This is the phone.  Sit.  Hold.  Give.
This is the phone, we put a strap on it which makes it easier for them to bring it to me.
Ah, ah, ah!  Give.  Sit.  Stay.
That is if you have the old fashioned phone.
Sit!  Stay!  Thank you!
Nowadays it's the cell phones, so the strap is smaller.
He does... 

[Pause]. 

>> JUDI VOLPE:  Where is it, Fletch?  

[Pause]. 

>> JUDI VOLPE:  I have an old cell phone of mine.  Fletcher, take it.  Oh!  Come.  Hold.  I don't care how I picks ‑‑ hold!  Stay.  Give.  Good boy!
Fletcher, take it.  No.  Come here.  Heel.  Heel.  Ready?  Take it.  Take it!  

[Laughter]. 

>> JUDI VOLPE:  Okay!  Come here!  Sit.
Are you going to get the strap for me?  Come here.  Take it.  Get it.  Come.  Sit.  Hold.  Give.  Good boy!
So, they retrieve all kinds of ‑‑ and my paper [laughs] ‑‑ it was used many times, so I think that's why he tore it.  But we do try to teach them to do this and not tear things up and do it the right way.
Um... are there any questions?  

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Yes, Tiffany?  

>> TIFFANY BAYLOR:  I think that is commendable, because when it comes to dogs in general, and I have a service dog too, that they really don't like things that are metal, it's uncomfortable for the front of their teeth, and yours just picked up a pair of scissors that mine would just look at and say you've got to be kidding!  I'm not doing it.  And so that was really cool.
And also really tiny things that they have to be delicate with, you'll see them actually pull their lips apart and try to get it with their teeth and do it like this... and so it's really very ‑‑ that's hard to do.  So that's really amazing.  

>> JUDI VOLPE:  I haven't trained him yet, and I'm still working on it, to pick up a dime.  My last service dog, my last demo dog, could flip that dime up and have it picked up faster than anybody.  Wow!  He learned how to click it with his tongue and it would flip up into his mouth and he would just hand it right over to me.
He also picked up a pair of pliers for me once, very heavy metal.  But they have to.  If the keys, they have to pick them up.
I had a client who was ‑‑ he's a quadriplegic and when is he going to drop his electric razor but when he's shaving and it's on.  So they trained his dog to pick up the electric razor when it's buzzing and on.  And it's not a comfortable thing for the dogs to do, but....
There's something about a service dog, whether it's a hearing dog, a seizure response, a guide dog, they know it's their job.  And I have seen ‑‑ I've done this for ‑‑ I had to figure it out the other day, I've been with Paws for 22 years and I've seen many, many clients and I've seen these dogs work until the day before they died, and they work right up to the bitter end, because that's their job, and they take it very seriously.
And it's in their heart.
And when we get the dogs at Headquarters, the puppies that come in, I actually just had two puppies go to Headquarters and oh, I hope they make it as a service dog.
No, one of them is going to work with Customs, he has way too much energy and he needs to find things and he's going to be excellent at that job.
The other one we think is going to work with children with autism or possibly some of our service members coming back with PTSD, because he's very ‑‑ she's a very gentle, loving, but doesn't have a whole lot of drive to work.
We don't do many PTSD dogs but we do train dogs for children with autism, so we find where they need to go.  

[Background noise on telephone]. 

>> JUDI VOLPE:  They want a job, we just need to find where they go. 

[Background noise on telephone]. 

>> GINA HALLIBURTON:  Judi, I don't know if you can answer this question, but I've seen a lot of service dogs that I think are frauds.  You know, they have the little vest on and I work with the commission with service dog trainers and I've seen great service dogs.  These dogs are not service dogs. 

>> JUDI VOLPE:  Unfortunately, you're right, there are a lot of people find their cape on the internet, they make their own ID, and I know that ADI, assistance for ‑‑ IADP (sp), one of them, they're working that making it that your dog has to some from a certified organization.
Paws is certified through ADI, they come in a paws headquarters once a year, I believe, they go through our files and our tapes and we have certain things we have to follow, and I know there's a lot of need for these dogs out there, but there are a lot of people that have their dogs and they say they're their dogs.
First of all, an emotional support dog is not a service dog. 

[Background noise on telephone]. 

>> JUDI VOLPE:  An emotional service dog is just a pet.  My dogs are emotional service dogs.
A dog that is being carried around or being pushed in a stroller is not a service dog. 

[Background noise on telephone]. 

>> JUDI VOLPE:  We have Chihuahuas that are hearing dogs and they walk on their four feet and they are not to be picked up, unless they're in a situation where, you know, they're going to be stepped on, they're in the middle of a crowd or something like that.
Of course they're tiny, we have to take care of them.  But most of our dogs want to walk.  Service dogs should be on their four feet.
I try to tell people in restaurants or managers, if the dog smells or is not under control, you may ask them to leave as per the law.  

[Background noise on telephone]. 

>> JUDI VOLPE:  They should not.  And I hear all kinds of stories, you are so right, there are people out there and that's what hurts, the people that really do have a service dog, you know, that behaves.
I like to hear them say, I didn't know you had a dog under the table. 

[Background noise on telephone]. 

>> JUDI VOLPE:  You're not supposed to, it's just an extension of my arm. 

[Background noise on telephone]. 

>> JUDI VOLPE:  He shouldn't make noise, he shouldn't cause problems.
And the one question you can't ask, and you all probably already know this, you cannot ask your disability, but I can ask you what your dog does for you, and if it's not a task where they do something for you, then it's not a service dog.
If they make you feel good, I'm so happy.  Because I have another one at home that does that.  But she is not anywhere near being able to go out in public.  

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  I'm sorry ‑‑ so ‑‑ 

>> DARLENE LAIBL‑CROWE:  This is Darlene. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  ‑‑ oftentimes in a position, I request a lot of requests for letters for emotional support animals, okay, and I know that there's a different procedure for a service animal, okay.
So, what does all the paperwork that's needed to get a service animal on an airplane compared to an emotional support?  You may not know about the emotional support. 

>> JUDI VOLPE:  I don't know about the emotional support.  Fletcher does fly with me.  I have to have his shot records with me.
The last time I flew, which was last summer, I flew out to Montana because I have a client in Montana, he was in Florida but now he's in Montana and I go out and see him there ‑‑ oh, darn, it's beautiful! ‑‑ 

[Background noise on telephone]. 

>> JUDI VOLPE:  But we had to go online and fill out this paperwork, I had to answer some questions with the lady on the phone, because you have to call and say I'm flying with a service dog. 

[Background noise on telephone]. 

>> JUDI VOLPE:  And they ask you some questions.  I had to upload his shot record and carry it with me.  That's all I had to do for him.  And actually when I was switching planes, the second flight didn't have it marked on their computer that I had the shot records in there.  So I had them with him, I pulled them out and showed them to her. 

[Background noise on telephone]. 

>> JUDI VOLPE:  But that's all they require. 

[Background noise on telephone]. 

>> JUDI VOLPE:  Because there's not a requirement for service dogs in public, whether it's a service dog or not.
That's why if the animal comes from an accredited organization and those are the ones that have the particular card that says you can go in public, then we'd start to wipe out maybe some of this other stuff.
I don't know.  They might find their way around it. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Okay.  Thank you very much.  I think Darlene has a question.  

>> DARLENE LAIBL‑CROWE:  This is Darlene, I have a question.  

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Yes, ma'am, Darlene?  

>> DARLENE LAIBL‑CROWE:  Okay.  I wanted to ask the young lady to clarify.  You said that to be a service animal, they have to do something?  And if they don't do something, then they're not a service animal?  Is that correct?  

>> JUDI VOLPE:  Yes, they need to have a task.  They open the door for me, they pick things up for me, they pull my wheelchair, they get the phone when there's an emergency, those are considered tasks.
For a hearing dog, they alert me when my phone rings.  They alert me when someone knocks at my door.
You don't have to sit at the door and wait for the UPS man because you know he's coming, he'll knock on the door and the dog alerts you to it.
So that's a task. 

[Background noise on telephone]. 

>> JUDI VOLPE:  And I know it's a fine line, but that's how they state it. 

[Background noise on telephone]. 

>> DARLENE LAIBL‑CROWE:  I have a guide dog, because I am blind, and she also does hearing alerts as well.
So... um... as far as I know, she is a service animal.  So... I'm not sure, you know, like you were saying, that they do something.
So guide dogs do something, right?  

>> JUDI VOLPE:  Yes, guide dogs are ‑‑ they are service dogs.  They just call them guide dogs instead of service dogs.
Yes, they are ‑‑ they have total access out in public.
She doesn't even have to do anything else for you.  The guide dog itself is your service dog.  

>> DARLENE LAIBL‑CROWE:  Okay.  Now I know that there's sort of ‑‑ I'm sorry ‑‑ sorry about my voice being whatever it is ‑‑ anyway....
I wanted to also mention that there was a disability attorney that told me that if you are out in public with a service animal or assistant dog and the managers at the store were confused and asked you to identify, the best way to identify them is that if they have a leash and if their behavior is under control.
Do you believe in that?  

>> JUDI VOLPE:  Yes.  Not necessarily the leash, because some people use different.  But being under control in public is the biggest thing.  It really is, because why would somebody question you if your dog is being very good?
And because it's ‑‑ like I said, it's such a fine line.
But if your dog is under control, I always carry a copy of the law with me, because sometimes people want to see that this is a guide dog. 

[Background noise on telephone]. 

>> JUDI VOLPE:  And yes, they are allowed to be here.
So ‑‑ but as long as they're well behaved, you have nothing to worry about.  

>> DARLENE LAIBL‑CROWE:  Okay.  Now what about barking in public?  

>> JUDI VOLPE:  Hmm... [Sighs]... well, if they bark once, if it's just a yip or a quick bark, it's not a problem.  I mean, it happens, they see something, they bark, you're at Sea World and the dolphin jumps and they make a quick bark.
If they're barking at something, that's a problem.  They're not supposed to be heard, they should be quiet.
Usually if they bark, people laugh, oh, he likes that.  But if it's a constant barking, barking, barking, yes, that's a problem. 

>> DARLENE LAIBL‑CROWE:  I actually had problems going out in a store when another service animal is by us and I've actually had them become aggressive and start barking really loud beside their owner, and at one point, one time, my guide dog just laid down because it was too ‑‑ she was ‑‑ she got too aggressive, overwhelmed with the dog, and so I was just wondering how that was monitored as far as a dog being aggressive and barking and ‑‑ to me, personally, that would be a behavior that is out of control.  

>> JUDI VOLPE:  Yes, you're right.  And I've had some of my clients have had that happen too.
It's not monitored, but my suggestion to you is if the dog does have a cape on that has the name of the organization on it, call them.
As Paws With a Cause, we want to know, if we get a call that, you know, John and his dog Fletcher, the dog was barking and all out of control, the first thing is Paws will call me and get in there and find out what's going on.  We don't want that happening.
If they have a cape that has the name of the organization on it that you can see, remember it, write it down, and call them and let them know where you were and kind of what the dog looked like.  You won't know the name, but they'll know kind of what dog it is.
If not, just get out of the situation as quickly as you can and be safe for you and your dog.  

[Background noise on telephone]. 

>> DARLENE LAIBL‑CROWE:  And the last question [chuckles], I am on my local Animal Control Council and I represent the service animals on there and I have encountered that service animal, the label of it also includes law enforcement, fire dogs, and things like that, according to the ordinance, and it has been a reality check with determining what are service animals and what are not.
And thank you very much for coming and sharing. 

>> JUDI VOLPE:  You're welcome.  I've never heard of fire dogs being service dogs, but... 

>> GINA HALLIBURTON:  Okay.  This is Gina, we have Chris ‑‑ 

>> DARLENE LAIBL‑CROWE:  I'm sorry, what was that?  

[Pause]. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Somebody else has another question, so Chris?  

[Background noise on telephone]. 

>> CHRIS LITTLEWOOD:  Hi, this is Chris.  Thank you so much, I'm very interested in service animals.  Probably because I teach a class for victims' advocates and public safety for hearing personnel just so they understand what is and isn't a service animal.
I don't elaborate a whole lot because I'm so far an expert on service animals, but it is my understanding, and correct me if I'm wrong, that there's no paperwork required for somebody that uses a service animal so long as, like you said, they're under the person's control and you can say what task they do for you under the guidelines of the ADA, correct?  

>> JUDI VOLPE:  Exactly. 

>> CHRIS LITTLEWOOD:  Okay.  All right.  

>> JUDI VOLPE:  We mark our dogs, Paws wants our dogs marked, we want them in our cape with a Paws For A Cause with the mark on it and all of our clients have ID cards that states what their dog does.  But that's just us. 

>> CHRIS LITTLEWOOD:  And the other question I have is for me personally, because I've never been a dog owner until two years ago, when my little Bichon Billy changed my life, he's awesome, he's a pet, not a service animal, but he does a lot for me that I never anticipated that is really great, and he's just a little over two.  Is it too late for him to start training if I wanted him to become a service animal?  

>> JUDI VOLPE:  No, it's not too late.  Um... [Sighs]... we did that before.  A client had a dog and we took his dog and we trained his dog.  The dog would need to come up to Headquarters for probably a couple months, they'd have to assess him, see if he's good to do the job.  

[Background noise on telephone]. 

>> JUDI VOLPE:  ‑‑ per them.
I mean, he might do it for you, but I can't say what they're going to say.
The best bet is, is contact them and ask them and say this is what I've got.  Yes, I'm willing to let him go away for a little bit so that you can train him, and see what they say.  Because I can't really answer that totally for you.  

>> CHRIS LITTLEWOOD:  Okay.  You said he goes to Headquarters for training.  Is that with the owner or ‑‑ 

>> JUDI VOLPE:  [Shakes head]. 

>> CHRIS LITTLEWOOD:  Like I would put him in a little cage thing on a plane?  

>> JUDI VOLPE:  It's not with you, unless you want to deliver him.  And we get them up there in various, various ways.
Those of us that live in Florida know that there are a lot of Michigan people that come to Florida and so we always have people coming back and forth, so sometimes we send them that way.  Sometimes someone's driving up that way and we take them up there.
We don't like to fly them.  I've never had one have a problem, but it's ‑‑ I don't like it.
So, and in four months I'll be retired, so I'll be able to go back and forth and I can take him up there. 

>> CHRIS LITTLEWOOD:  Thank you.  

>> JUDI VOLPE:  You're welcome. 

>> DEBBE HAGNER:  This is Debbe.  

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Debbe, go ahead.  

>> DEBBE HAGNER:  Thank you.  I've seen a lot of people who bring their animals to public places and I know for sure that one person claimed ‑‑ trained the dog as a service animal and is not by an organization.
I have a real serious problem with that.  People who are self‑taught or keeping their own animals as a service animal, I just have a problem with it.  Um....
Do you have anything, suggestions or things you can add to that?  

>> JUDI VOLPE:  No, but you're not alone.  There's a lot of us out there that feel that way.
It just hurts the people that really need it.  And I don't think they understand.
The clients I have that have been questioned and asked and ‑‑ you probably have, you here that I see, have probably been asked, you look like you are perfectly fine, you have, you know....
And then someone goes to talk to you and you can't understand them.  And they first look at you and say you don't need a service dog, you're okay.  Well, it's not looks that's the disability.
And so clients have been asked to leave because you don't need a service dog.  You don't have to be in a wheelchair to have a disability.
And so I totally understand, it makes me angry all the time when I see it.  And there's nothing we can do about it.
Not that I know of. 

>> DEBBE HAGNER:  [Indiscernible] in this community, there's a lot of people who have dogs in this area, in my neighborhood, they consider them as a "comfort dog," whatever that means.  Um... and that frustrates me, because one, I'm allergic to dogs and I've had a couple of times when dogs have bitten me because I didn't hear them growl.
And so these are small dogs, so it shouldn't be a real problem.
But it just irritates me that these people are training as their "comfort dogs" and it's, like, oh, please....
Maybe I'm being overreacting about it, but... 

>> JUDI VOLPE:  No, you're not overreacting.  It's a wrong thing.
And unfortunately the dog shouldn't be that close to you and growling.  And my question is, where was the person holding the leash?
But, you know, it has happened to you and I'm sorry about that, but unfortunately I don't think there's anything we can do.
We can ask them not to do it.  We can remind them that comfort dogs are not service dogs.  But we can't stop it.  

>> GINA HALLIBURTON:  I have ‑‑ 

>> DEBBE HAGNER:  Going back to the, um, like the orange leash, I thought it was in the past that he has to have an orange leash and that's considered a service animal?  

>> JUDI VOLPE:  It was.  When I began with Paws For A Cause, all our dogs were delivered with an orange leash.
The problem with that is the orange material is very uncomfortable in the hands.  If they could make a leather that was orange, it might be helpful, because the leather leashes get very soft, they're a lot more comfortable.
And I don't know why they got away from it, but they got away from it, because I deliver dogs with orange leashes and now we don't have them, so I'm not sure why.
It was a good idea.  Then you knew with the orange leash.  But then they could go out and buy an orange leash at Pet Smart. 

[Background noise on telephone]. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  We have another question in the room. 

>> DEBBE HAGNER:  That's it at this time. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Thank you, Debbe.  We have Mary and Cindy ‑‑ 

>> DARLENE LAIBL‑CROWE:  This is Darlene. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Hold on, Darlene, we have other people ‑‑ 

>> DARLENE LAIBL‑CROWE:  I was just ‑‑ 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Hold on, Darlene, we have other people waiting as well. 

>> DARLENE LAIBL‑CROWE:  Okay, that's fine. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  I'll call on you when it's your turn.  Mary?  

>> MARY HODGES:  Yes, I have two questions.  The first one is does pause for the cause ‑‑ 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Hold on, Mary.  The interpreter needs to get your attention.  

>> INTERPRETER:  We just wanted to turn the mic on. 

>> MARY HODGES:  Does Paws For A Cause train dogs who are medically ‑‑ who assist in medical conditions or is that considered a service dog?  

>> JUDI VOLPE:  Can you tell me what ‑‑ 

>> MARY HODGES:  For example, somebody who is diabetic and I have seen dogs that are sensitive to knowing when somebody is in trouble.  

>> JUDI VOLPE:  We don't do dogs for diabetics.  And when we do dogs that is a seizure dog, it is a seizure response dog.  We don't train the dog to tell the person the seizure is coming, because it's a smell that your body gives off and we can't simulate that smell.
So, we back up and we train the dog for the very first sign.
And we've got to talk to the family, because it's, like, what happens first?  Well, they fall on the floor.  What happens before that?  Well, she gets this glazed look in her eye.  What happens before that?
And if you really watch, there's something very small.  Maybe their thumb starts to twitch.  That's what we train the dog to, that thumb twitching.
And then a lot of the times, I can't tell you the percentage, as soon as the dog gets in the house and starts responding to the seizures, they start picking up to them before.
I had a client that ‑‑ actually she's getting her second dog next month, I've delivered the dog and ‑‑ this was just a phenomenal little dog, a little black lab ‑‑ and we did all the paperwork and what are you supposed to do, she had these two 3‑year‑old twins that were absolutely adorable and I had to tell them you can't touch the dog because I needed the dog to bond to the mom, and as I was leaving after being there for a couple hours, she went into a seizure and the dog, Cally, looked up at me and I said down, and she laid down right next to her, and she came out of the seizure and I left and two days later they said what's going on with Cally?  Tell me what you're doing, she keeps running into Billy and knocking her over?  And I said what happens next?  Billy is having a seizure, Cally picked up on it within the first two days and they knew, when Cally started bumping her, sit down, it was coming, and Billy was having multiple seizures a day.
And it ended up she wasn't having as many later on, but if I could train that, we'd train it.  But that was a phenomenal little dog that picked up on it that fast. 

>> DEBBE HAGNER:  Debbe. 

>> OPERATOR:  Has joined the conference. 

>> JUDI VOLPE:  They will alert and do what the client needs, but medically I think the seizure dog is the only medical dog we do. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Did you have another question, Mary?  We'll go to Gina and then Cindy and Darlene.  

>> MARY HODGES:  There was a specific breed that you all work with?  

>> JUDI VOLPE:  No.  Most of the dogs we do are Labradors and Goldens, that's the biggest ones we use.  We have Papillons we use mostly for hearing dogs, they're not good for service dogs, they don't pull, we have Boston Terriers, Chihuahuas, Poodles, we have mixes of Labs and Goldens, we tend to stick with the Labs and Goldens and soft‑faced Poodles.
Mainly because, if you are disabled and possibly in a wheelchair and crutches and I put a German shepherd with you, a lot of people aren't going to come up to you.  And it's not because ‑‑ the dog could be a very friendly dog, but it doesn't look friendly.
If you have a soft‑faced Goldens and a lot of people with disabilities feel like nobody wants to be around them, nobody wants to talk to them because I have a disability, I'm in a wheelchair, I look a little funny or whatever, so you put one of these soft‑faced Goldens or Labradors with them, they get a lot of attention, sometimes more than what they want, and that's why we tend to use them.
They're very easy in the kennels, they love everybody.  He would go with you as quickly as I would let him go.  And it's sad for me to say, because I love him, but they can pop from their family home to their trainer to, and we use the prison program, to their prisoner, back to their trainer and to the client and never skip a beat, because they are just flexible that way. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Thank you.  We have a list of next in the line for questions. 

[Laughter]. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  A lot of people have questions!  Gina, Cindy, Darlene, then Tiffany.  

>> GINA HALLIBURTON:  This is Gina.  One of the things we do is send out information and to educate the community and I was thinking in terms of doctors being requested to give letters to authorize "service dogs" that are not service dogs, like emotional support, comfort support.
Well, if doctors don't know that, I'm wondering if you have any kind of template or boilerplate language that we as a committee can use to send out and say this is a service dog, this is not a service dog, so that when they're approached to have, you know, documentation ‑‑ 

>> JUDI VOLPE:  I would like you to contact Headquarters on that one. 

>> GINA HALLIBURTON:  Okay. 

>> JUDI VOLPE:  Because they probably do, the website is pawswithacause.org, all of them together, oh, they changed their phone number... I don't know the phone number.  But I have literature, and it's got everything on it that you can contact them, tell them who you are, tell them what you're looking for, and now when you call, it's like, if you know who you're calling, push this button, push that button, it's saving money on the receptionist, okay, it's not because they're not friendly, it's just because it saves money. 

>> DEBBE HAGNER:  Debbe. 

>> OPERATOR:  Has left the conference. 

>> JUDI VOLPE:  Contact them and tell them what you need and they will have the answer. 

>> GINA HALLIBURTON:  Thank you.  Next is Cindy and then Darlene ‑‑ 

>> CINDY SIMON:  Won't worry about me, I want to tell Debbe, I'm with you, I'm highly allergic and if you're in a store and they don't have a vest on that says they're a service animal, then I go up to the office and ask them to please ask them to leave, because I don't need someone rubbing a large dog rubbing the food and then I can touch the food.
So I'm with you and that's what I would do, let them know.  

>> GINA HALLIBURTON:  Darlene?

[No response].

>> DARLENE LAIBL‑CROWE:  I'm here.  I just wanted to mention to Debbe, when I was trained to get a service animal, it was made very clear, you keep a leash on the animal, then you are in control of them.
And I know that the guide dog schools do not use aggressive animals at all.
If they are aggressive, they don't provide them.  They put them in other areas, like in the fire departments or law enforcement.
But any dog that is out there to serve a person in public, they ‑‑ the handler needs to be able to control the dog and they need to manage the behaviors.
So, biting someone is not ‑‑ a big no‑no.  

>> JUDI VOLPE:  Yes, ma'am!  

>> DARLENE LAIBL‑CROWE:  Okay.  

>> GINA HALLIBURTON:  Tiffany?  

>> TIFFANY BAYLOR:  Hi, I'm just gonna expound on that a little bit also, in that I am the one that gets all these calls from people on the FCCDHH phone line where people call in and literally the statement is, "Hi, I need to know what I have to do to make my dog a service dog so that it can be brought with me to wherever I need to go."  And this is actually what they say to me.
And I, I am usually having to count to ten to hide the fact that I'm appalled at the fact that they're even asking that question, because I'm a service dog user myself, and it really does negate the high‑level of training and time and choosing which dog is most appropriate, in temperament and breeding and everything that goes into it, to make a real service dog.
It just negates it.
So when someone just fakes a service dog by just saying hey, I just wanna....
The good thing, did you hear him?  Chris was so good about asking how can I take it to get trained?  If you're not an expert and you're not a trainer who's gone through training, you can't train a dog.  A lot of people will say I'll do what I want him to do.
It has to go to school.  Don't ask me to figure out a physics problem, I haven't been trained and I'm not crazy enough to go out there and shoot a rocket and think it's going to get to the moon.
There is not what you're supposed to do.
Those two questions that you're allowed to ask are on the ADA website saying service dogs and if you're not sure the way HIPAA works, you cannot go and ask anything about their disability, but you're more than welcome to say is this dog a service animal required because of a disability, that's one question.
And then what work or task has the dog been trained to do to help you with that disability?
Secondly, the dog has to be with the person with the disability.  So you can't go into a store with your cousin's guide dog and say yeah, it's been trained.  Well, it's not trained to work for you, so it need not be in there.
And so there's just a lot that goes on with it.
And while she was talking and while people were asking questions, I pulled up the Amazon.com and found a service dog vest for 24.95. 

[Laughter]. 

>> TIFFANY BAYLOR:  It comes with 50 ADA cards on the law about service dogs.  And that's just appalling!
Because according to that card, they're misdoing anyway, the fact that they purchased a vest.
So generally, most guide dog schools will provide you with a card and you'll see that they'll have their own vest, because they're really big on making sure that people know that that is their trained dog.
And so, yeah, I have to just say that it really is hurting for those of us who use service dogs legitly when people fake it. 

>> JUDI VOLPE:  Exactly.  And our foster puppies out there have a cape that has a Paws With a Cause insignia on it, they're good, I've had a couple problems, we've gone in and fixed them, I've never had an aggressive dog and never had one of my dogs aggressive to anybody else, and they need to be marked.
I do know of some other organizations that mark their dogs ‑‑ oh, he's tired! ‑‑ and that's a good thing, because you know that organization is standing behind their dog.  The guide dogs always do it because they stand behind their dogs and they say our dogs are gonna be good.
And if you call them because of a problem, they're going to get in there and fix it.  

[Pause]. 

>> GINA HALLIBURTON:  Chris?  

>> CHRIS LITTLEWOOD:  One more question.  The training that the dog goes through, how long is that?  

>> JUDI VOLPE:  About a year, could be longer.  They get to Headquarters as a, at a 14 month old puppy, we do some assessing on them, they then go into the prison program for four months where the prisoners work with them 24 hours a day, and then they come out, go to Headquarters, then get further training with the trainers.
The prison program is mostly for our big dogs.  Our little dogs don't tend to need that.
They need that constant training.
Heel is the worst thing to teach a dog.  It is the hardest thing to teach a dog and it's something you have to constantly stay on top of.
And when we put them in the program, we find that these prisoners have nothing else to do but work the dogs and it work out to be a good situation.  The prisoners are behaving because they want to do this.  We are getting dogs that have, you know, a good 12 hour day of doing nothing but heeling and behaving and sitting and downing and go back to Headquarters.
Depending what they're trained to do depends on how long to go then.  It could be less than six months, it could be eight months.
Most of the dogs get out of Headquarters at about 2‑2 and a half years of age and we hope to get up to 12 years of age, the big ones.  The smaller ones live much longer. 

[Pause]. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Any last questions?  It's just at 4:00 o'clock.  Yes, Mary?  

>> MARY HODGES:  Training for trainers, is there a school for folks to be trained to train?  

>> JUDI VOLPE:  I don't know the names of them.  I know there are some facilities, some that train trainers.
Our Headquarters, we have apprentices, so if somebody wants to be a trainer for Paws With a Cause, there's an interview and an application and all of that, they have to have some experience with training their personal dogs and then they're an apprentice and we teach them how we train the dogs.
But I do know there are some schools out there, I just don't know the names of them.  

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Anybody else?

[No response]. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  We're going to wrap it up.  Thank you for coming and speak to us. 

>> JUDI VOLPE:  No problem.  I love speaking for Paws With a Cause.
How do you want me to ‑‑ with this literature, do you want me to leave it in the back table and you guys pick up what you want?  Is that the easiest?  

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Tiffany?  

>> TIFFANY BAYLOR:  I can take it and I will disburse them. 

>> JUDI VOLPE:  Okay.  Thank you very much. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Thank you very much.  We have a card for you. 

>> JUDI VOLPE:  Oh, it's starting to rain!  

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  We have a thank you card for you, do you want me to throw it on the ground so he can pick it up for you?  

[Laughter]. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Thank you very much!  

>> TIFFANY BAYLOR:  May I add a quick statement real quick?  

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  You may indeed!  

>> TIFFANY BAYLOR:  Just so you all know, I had a service dog, my fourth one I had to retire right before I began working for the Council, and I have been trying to decide if I was ready to get another one.  And I have applied at every school to see which one had the best temperament, training situation, and applicability to my life and lifestyle, and I have chosen one and it is the Seeing Eye in New Jersey and I applied about four months ago and I leave March 2nd to attend that school and get a new service dog.  

[Applause]. 

>> TIFFANY BAYLOR:  It will be a German shepherd, so it's going to be a very big dog.  And I have to live there for three weeks, 26 days or so, and in that time, they have already trained him, they come to your house, they check your speed of walk, they check your lifestyle, they check how many people are in your house, back yard, and then they go and work on trying to find one that meets your ‑‑ the meld, that would meld best with you, and I have a very fast pace, so that was a bit of a trouble, trying to find one that would maintain such a fast pace of walk.
And then finally they called last Friday and said that I was picked.  So I'll be ‑‑ 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Mazel tov. 
I think Fletcher wants to stay with us.  

>> JUDI VOLPE:  I think he liked the floor. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  It is now 4:00 o'clock and it is now time for public comments until 4:30.
Is there anyone in the room, on the phone, or on line in the chat who would like to make a public comment?

[No response].

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  No one on chat.  Okay.
Just due to the weather, would we like to, while we're waiting for someone to come to give a statement, do we want to talk about the legislative visits?
Is that something that we want to do?  Is everybody okay with advancing that?  And then if somebody comes in to make a public comment, we'll put that on hold and then move on to public comment.
All good?  Yeah?  

>> GLENNA ASHTON:  Sounds good.  Okay.  This is Glenna.  I started the process for looking up all of the senators and representatives from each of our home areas and set up a whole list of that.  And that was two weeks before yesterday.  And I sent out the letter explaining FCCDHH, what we do, and that we wanted an appointment for that Wednesday, and we'd wait for replies.
I knew they weren't going to reply two weeks before and didn't get on the schedule until the Thursday or Friday before the following week.
But it would be interesting to have them know that before ‑‑ a week or so before for us, and so I knew I had to wait ‑‑ I had to wait for that.
So, again, early Thursday morning, before they opened for business ‑‑ okay.  Let me back up.  This is the fourth time I've done this and so the other three years I've sent everything out and got tons of appointments, like 15 appointments, and we split the team up and we all ran around all day going to meetings.
This time we only got six.  And I was, like... what is up with that?
So I don't know what the difference is this year.  But every other year we've had large groups that came at the same time, so I don't know what was going on.
So, we decided since we had done this before, I could walk around, drop off the report, kind of see if there's an aide that might be available and just grab them and give them our elevator speech, and move on to the next one.
And that worked pretty well yesterday.  I had six appointments.
The nice thing that was a little bit different, those six appointments were on... let's see... one, two, three, four, five, six ‑‑ so we actually saw a real senator and a representative.  Most of the ones in the past had been their aides, so we got pictures with them also.
It was the first time for Cindy and Gina, and Karen and I.
So the four of us at one time, we could split up into pairs, and then Karen took off on her own to try to get ‑‑ 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  It was great!  It was actually great, it was very productive.  I found a hot pocket of Hillsborough [laughs]. 

>> GLENNA ASHTON:  Wait, wait, wait, let me finish here.
So we gave out the reports and the nice thing was that a few of the people had remembered me from previous years, so that was a plus!
Well... hmm....
So, we explained briefly about the Council and that we hear from public comments.  I emphasized that we do public comments and that the top concerns were for signing deaf and having interpreters for the hard of hearing, affording hearing aids for the deaf‑blind community and SSPs, support service providers, and then the text to 911.
So those were the ones we mentioned.
We also mentioned the bill SB 1006 and HB 125 for the hearing aids for children.
And some of them were already co‑sponsored, but many of them were, like, oh, sure, yeah, we'll co‑sponsor, and they could either do it right away or told their aide to get on it, so that was very nice for the visits.
We found out who the Chair of the committee of the bill ‑‑ that the bill was sitting in, it was Pigman (sp) and they talked to the aide and they shot it down.
So after that, we were pretty depressed.  Pigman, I followed the guy, Pigman!
And I suspect it's because the insurance companies told them oh, no, we can't do that, you know, if you want to provide coverage for hearing aids, then we're going to have to raise all the monthly premiums for insurance.  So you pay for cochlear implants!
So that was a downer, that was depressing.  But we kept forging ahead.
The last appointment was at 4:15 and the interpreter said that they announced on the P.A. system that the session will start at 4:15 and we are, like, aww... I knew we weren't going to get in, but we got in and were able to get in early and leave early, so it was nice.
Some of the folks we spoke to just kind of nodded their heads, like, yeah, yeah... you know... like we were just repeating things.
Last year we had four bills related to things that we were interested in as a Council, and so folks, you know, were interested in that.  But this time we had the one, so....
Hmm... it was nice.
Cindy and Gina had a good time, lots of walky.
Cindy, did you want to add anything?  

>> CINDY SIMON:  I just thought it was a really nice response we got from some.  From one person who we really didn't even have an appointment with him and he said yeah, when you're done there, come on over, and if you have time and I'm free, I'll see you, and then he heard about the bill and goes ‑‑ 

>> GLENNA ASHTON:  Right. 

>> CINDY SIMON:  ‑‑ called his aide in and said sign me up for this.
And one of the interesting things, one of the first aides that we saw where we didn't have an appointment and it was the first stop we made and they took us and told us there is a lot of money out there that we can be applying for, do you remember that?  

>> GLENNA ASHTON:  Yeah ‑‑ 

[Talking over one another].

>> GLENNA ASHTON:  They said it's rather easy and then another person said oh, no, that's going to be hard to get, so we thought maybe they meant it was easy to apply but not so easy to get the money actually.  

>> CINDY SIMON:  Well, I think she was saying that you have a better shot with that, but that there was a lot of money to be had.
So, I'm not sure how, but when that aide to that last person who was Chair of the committee just looked at us and said look... they're expensive, it's going to have to be spread out over everyone, even if it only raises cost $2, then you add this and it goes to 5 and you add that and it goes to 50, so nothing is getting on the doc that will add any money out there and we all just looked at each other, like [Gasps]. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Well, I mean, all we can do is support.  

>> GINA HALLIBURTON:  I just want to give kudos to Glenna, because she organized the meetings so well, and for me being the first time, the only issue I had was stairs and that's not her fault!  

[Laughter]. 

>> GINA HALLIBURTON:  With the stairs, it was my fault, or my issue.
But the meetings were really, really very productive.  I thought they were ‑‑ I had three senators ask me to keep them informed about what our Council was doing.  That was amazing!
I had another one that asked me, I had never heard of 911, can you put me in touch with somebody?  I already did that with Chris to make sure he, you know, gives that person that information.
So that was just a really, really great day!
And I had to give my hats off to Glenna for that.

[Sound of thunder outside].

>> GINA HALLIBURTON:  The one thing I want to say is she said one of the issues was having to call so much and Glenna, thank you for making all the phone calls ‑‑ 

>> GLENNA ASHTON:  I did all the e‑mails, so....

[Sound of thunder outside]. 

>> GLENNA ASHTON:  I could probably get more appointments if we were going to call, but I had noticed visiting the office, the phones are always busy and so it's not easy, it's easier to e‑mail through, but I think next time, to put at the top of the e‑mail, "appointment request" and they'll read that. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Listen, I'm going to interrupt for one second.  There is a storm moving in right now, there is a strong bolt of lightning that seemed to come right next to the window, Cindy's hair was flat and now it's not. 

[Laughter]. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  I'm concerned it's dangerous on that side, do you want to move or pull the desks in?  

>> CINDY SIMON:  I'm not concerned at all. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  You're not concerned at all.  I just wanted to ‑‑ 

>> CINDY SIMON:  Unless it comes through the electric lines. 

>> GLENNA ASHTON:  This is normal. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Can I piggyback on what Gina said to Glenna about Glenna?
Glenna has organized this every year that I've attended these legislative meetings and she's so organized when she goes in to sit down, to talk with them, that I have almost copied her speech and take it to other people.
So her example has helped me feel confident going off on my own and meeting with legislators and talking to them as well about what we're trying to achieve here.
So I just really want to say kudos also to Glenna for setting these up.
And I also wanted to add that I did go off on my own, there was a person from my district and it turns out that there were several in that area or that... um... the same suite that were from Hillsborough County and they were all very interested in getting information, so I really appreciated that flexibility with the team, to be able to, you know, maximize our impact out there.
So thank you for everything you did, great job. 

>> GLENNA ASHTON:  I have copies of the talking points, if you all would like to copy these.  These are the talking points that I use and you can tweak them to fit your needs.  

>> GINA HALLIBURTON:  Just to finish my comments ‑‑ Cindy, I'll get back to you ‑‑ Cindy took time to make bullet points to abbreviate, I thought that was a great plus.
And also I want to give a naughty‑naughty to Karen for leaving a newbie by herself!  

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Who is the newbie?  

>> GINA HALLIBURTON:  I was the newbie, you left me all alone!  

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  I'm sorry, I had to go back to the hotel, I had a patient emergency.  What can you do.
Cecil and then Cindy?  

>> CECIL BRADLEY:  No, I was going to get a paper from Glenna.  

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Cindy?  

>> CINDY SIMON:  Glenna really had everything organized and when be she talked about, we'll just do walk byes and dropoffs, and I didn't think anything would come of it, but yet the very first two we did was something.
What wasn't mentioned was Gina here, she said do you mind if I film this?  She filmed every talk before we did the group pictures, she sat there filming while we were talking to them!
So, you should know that she has video of all of this!  

>> GINA HALLIBURTON:  Yeah, and what was so cool ‑‑ this is Gina ‑‑ what was so cool about it is Glenna was signing to the representatives and they were sitting there really listening and it just really looks cool, so....
That's why I was asking Tiffany, where can we send that to be used?
I thought it was just great for our Council!

>> TIFFANY BAYLOR:  That is good, a picture says a thousand words. 

>> GINA HALLIBURTON:  A thousand words, it does.  

[Pause]. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  What else in. 

>> GLENNA ASHTON:  And Karen, you mentioned ‑‑ this is Glenna ‑‑ you mentioned trying to get a table or something. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Oh, yeah, so when we first went into the rotunda, there were several groups that had tables and we had talked about doing something this year, but we weren't really able to pull it together, and we thought, you know, see if we can get a table next year and have our information available there, right there in the rotunda, there's millions ‑‑ not millions ‑‑ but so many people walk through there after they go through security.
And so, of course, you know, I stopped by all the tables because I was interested in what other people are doing.
So, I asked one of the individuals, I said how much does it cost to get a table?  And they said it doesn't cost anything.  You just need to get it scheduled.  And I said... all righty!  We're going to work on that.
So, if we do it maybe a year in advance?  

>> GINA HALLIBURTON:  The only thing we would have to have is the budget approved for extra people, because somebody has to stay at the table while the others go around. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  That would be good.  And maybe take turns.  Maybe we don't need extra people, maybe we just need to take turns, so... all right, yes, Tiffany?  

>> TIFFANY BAYLOR:  In your last folder from last time that y'all were here, I put in the back in your resources the packet that is actually provided for us to request.  It's not in this one, it was in the one from last time, because I sent it out to all of you, it's not in here, but it has all of the requirements needed and the paperwork and all we'd have to do is just order it early, if we want session time.  Because that's hard to come by.  People are getting session time, like, now for next year. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Okay. 

>> TIFFANY BAYLOR:  But other times, you know, that's how you rent it.  And there's so many different areas that they let you use everything from, you know, up top on the 22nd to all in the circle before the rotunda, the second floor.  It's just listed with so many, and you just fill out that form.
It's not really a difficult task at all.
The hard part would just be making sure that people can tend to it, but if we're already here for the meetings if it's next year during legislative time, we wouldn't have too much work. 

>> GINA HALLIBURTON:  This is Gina.  Can the application be online or is it a hard copy?  

>> TIFFANY BAYLOR:  It is, it is. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Do we know our future scheduled meetings?  That may be something we can address. 

>> TIFFANY BAYLOR:  We don't know them yet, but we know they are always ‑‑ well, I'm new, I haven't been here a whole year, but the way I've heard, I've heard it always goes August, November, February, and May.
So as I've ‑‑ it's usually the first week in it and what you guys would be voting on and arranging and we know there's at least one in February here.  

>> GLENNA ASHTON:  Is it the second week?  

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Let me see. 

>> GLENNA ASHTON:  It's the second week of the month. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  We also want to make sure it corresponds with the legislative session for 2021.  Do we know what that session is?  

>> TIFFANY BAYLOR:  Not yet.  

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Okay.  So the first week of February in 2021 is February 3, 4, and 5.  The second week is 10, 11, and 12, that's Wednesday through Friday.
It's just... 

[Pause]. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Would it be online, the legislative session for next year?  

>> TIFFANY BAYLOR:  That's what I'm looking up.  

[Pause].

>> GLENNA ASHTON:  Yeah, it should be.  

[Pause].  

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Outside it looks like the northeast in winter, when it gets dark by 4:30 [chuckles]. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  While you're looking that up, I would like to see if there's anyone in the room, on the phone, or online who would like to make a public comment?

[No response]. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Glenna, you have a comment?  

>> GLENNA ASHTON:  Because Cindy and I will not be here tomorrow morning, would it be possible to discuss the future meeting dates and locations?  

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  I think that's a very good idea.  Yes, Mary?  

>> MARY HODGES:  I don't know if this is the appropriate time, but before the meeting dates, for future meetings, I wanted to see if we could entertain the idea of a subcommittee to look at the availability of grants for the Council, and if we could identify specific things that the Council wants to do, because that would help in searching grants. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  That would be wonderful.  All right.  So we have two additional topics that have been brought up for this afternoon.
The other one that did come up, because Cindy and Glenna are not going to be here tomorrow, do we have a quorum?  

[Pause]. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Who will be here tomorrow?  

>> DEBBE HAGNER:  This is Debbe, I will also be online.  

>> CINDY SIMON:  That's Debbe online. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Yes, hi, Debbe. 

>> DEBBE HAGNER:  I will be at the public library.  

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  You will be online tomorrow morning, is that what you were saying?  

>> DEBBE HAGNER:  Yes.  

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Okay. 

>> DEBBE HAGNER:  I'm going to be online from home until about 10:30 and then I'll be at the public library from 10:30 on. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Okay.  Thank you very much for that information.  So you'll be a council member attending the meeting tomorrow; that's terrific.
Who else will be here tomorrow?  

>> DARLENE LAIBL‑CROWE:  Yes, this is Darlene.  I'll be on the phone tomorrow.  

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Fantastic, Darlene will be in attendance.  Yes?  

>> CECIL BRADLEY:  This is Cecil, yes. 

>> DARLENE LAIBL‑CROWE:  I am going to attend, mmm‑hmm.  

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Okay.  Thank you.  Yes, I'll be here. 

>> DARLENE LAIBL‑CROWE:  Mmm‑hmm. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  I think we do have a quorum.  Okay.  We have a quorum in case we need to vote on anything.
Tiffany, can I just clarify something you had said about something tomorrow at 1:00 o'clock.  Is that still ‑‑ 

>> TIFFANY BAYLOR:  So, that's part of the reason I'm also looking in this ‑‑ am I on? ‑‑ yes, computer, because I'm looking to see if she, the director of ‑‑ over there at the Governor's Office, has contacted me.  She has tentatively put us in for a meet and greet photo session opportunity at 1:00 o'clock.  But because it's tentative, I'm trying to see if there's been any change, and I'm still looking... 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  And I've been asked to attend another meeting tomorrow at 1:00 o'clock that deals with mental health parody, so I don't know that I would be able to do the meet and greet.  

>> TIFFANY BAYLOR:  It came in a few minutes ago.  

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Oh, wow. 

>> TIFFANY BAYLOR:  Unfortunately, there has been a change in the Governor's schedule and he will no longer be available for the photo tomorrow.  I sincerity apologize, please don't hesitate to reach out regarding future opportunities, so... 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Okay.  So I can go to my meeting with a clear conscious. 

>> CECIL BRADLEY:  This is Cecil.  Next year. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  There's always next year.
Okay, I appreciate your efforts.  You've done a tremendous job arranging these things and couldn't be more grateful.  Thank you.
Okay.  So the two topics that have come up, one is let's talk about the future meetings and maybe set dates.
Do we already have dates?  Normally I've seen them by these meetings, but I don't see anything online about our future meetings.
When is our May meeting?  

>> TIFFANY BAYLOR:  It is on here... I believe I actually have the possible ‑‑ 

>> GLENNA ASHTON:  It's May 6, 7, 8.  May 6, 7, 8, just like before. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  That's a Saturday.  

>> GLENNA ASHTON:  That's the dates they set before.  I was just going by what she said earlier. 

>> TIFFANY BAYLOR:  Okay.  It looks like ‑‑ well, we check in Wednesday, May 6. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  May.  Oh, I'm in 2021, sorry.  Let me come back to the current year [laughs]. 

>> TIFFANY BAYLOR:  May 6, 2020, we check in; we check out May 8, 2020. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  That would be correct.  All right.  That's perfect.  

[Pause].

>> CECIL BRADLEY:  Evil is coming!  It's getting very dark outside!  

>> JOHN JACKSON:  The calm before the storm!  

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Move away from the window!  

>> JOHN JACKSON:  [Indiscernible]. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Say that one more time. 

>> JOHN JACKSON:  Are we going to vote on anything?  

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  I don't know.  Are we voting on anything?  I don't think we're voting.  Do we need to vote on ‑‑ can we leave before the bad storm?  Do we need to vote?  

[Pause]. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  I don't think we're voting on anything.  Can we vote on whether or not John can leave?  

[Laughter]. 

>> JOHN JACKSON:  John is leaving anyway!
Haven't we voted on places and times ‑‑ 

>> CINDY SIMON:  He just means what's the date, what city?  

>> TIFFANY BAYLOR:  It will be the Miami‑Dadeland Marriott, and it is the ‑‑ the date is Wednesday, May 6, leaving Friday, May 8. 

>> CINDY SIMON:  Right.  And after that is August.  

>> TIFFANY BAYLOR:  But before we go there, I'm hearing a lot more excitement out there.

[Sound of raining outside]. 

>> TIFFANY BAYLOR:  So I talked to Shay Chapman and she said that we go into the stairwell that is directly outside the door where we took our picture, we go further down to where the stairwell is, if there is a reason, I wanted to make sure I told you all where to go. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Yes, Chris?  

>> CHRIS LITTLEWOOD:  This is Chris.  Regarding future meeting dates, I wanted to remind everybody that typically and the information in our bylaws is that it is always the second Thursday and Friday of August, November, February, and May.  With minor exceptions.  And usually the minor exceptions come up for two reasons:  One, for the Veterans' Day holiday for the November meeting ‑‑ well, actually three meetings, a conflict with religious holidays, we made changes to that because of Jewish holidays and finally because of when the Governor's Hurricane Conference falls in May because some people have wanted to participate or be involved in that.
I'll make a few comments related to that in the morning.
But also, I did want to make a motion, considering the storm, that if we have a chance to break out of here, if things let up just a little bit, between now and 5:00 o'clock, that we adjourn a little bit early and wrap things up and resume tomorrow morning.  

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Okay.  Thank you very much, Chris.
So, yes, John?  

>> JOHN JACKSON:  That's a second. 

[Laughter]. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  That's a second, yes, yes.
So, we have the May meeting.  Do we know where the August meeting will be?  

[Pause]. 

>> GINA HALLIBURTON:  Jacksonville. 

>> JOHN JACKSON:  [Indiscernible]. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  It will be in Jacksonville, okay, terrific, and it will be that second week of August.  Okay.
Wait, let's look at that second week of August.

[Sound of raining outside]. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  That would be check in 12 and 13, 14, is that what we're looking at?  

[Pause]. 

>> TIFFANY BAYLOR:  The second week of August ‑‑ I had it. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  We've had some challenges in the past.  I will be leaving, I'm not sure when, to move my daughter back up to college.  I heard college starts on August 17th and we're going up to North Carolina, so I'm not sure if I'm going to leave Saturday or Friday to do that, so I don't know if we have any flexibility with the August dates.  

[Pause]. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  That's equally challenging for other people who are starting school.  I know we've had issues in the past with people starting school.  

[Pause]. 

>> CINDY SIMON:  I'll be in classes but then. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Hmm?  

>> CINDY SIMON:  I'll definitely be in class by then.  

[Pause]. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Is there any possibly of moving that to 5, 6, and 7?
I mean 6 and 7?  

[Pause]. 

>> GINA HALLIBURTON:  That's fine with me.  Is that good for you?  

>> CINDY SIMON:  The first week of August is fine for me. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Chris?  

[Pause]. 

>> CHRIS LITTLEWOOD:  Personally I would prefer it stays the same. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Okay.  Glenna?  Moving the August meeting to 6 and 7.  

>> GLENNA ASHTON:  That's fine.  Where?  

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  It's in Jacksonville in August. 

>> LISA (CART CAPTIONER):  Debbe has a comment.  

>> CHRIS LITTLEWOOD:  [Indiscernible]. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  We have to drive to North Carolina, to Boone, so... I'm not exactly sure, it's so far away.  I'm getting her home in May.
I mean, I'm going to be leaving on ‑‑ I'm going to be leaving in May also to go to pick her up.  That's a good point.  May 9th is her last exam.
It will all work out, whichever one it is. 

>> GINA HALLIBURTON:  Are we moving it to the 5, 6, 7?  

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  I'm proposing that.  Yes, ma'am?  

>> CINDY SIMON:  There's always going to be something not good for someone.  What we've done in the past, unless it's a really major thing, keep it the same day, the Vice Chair can do it, then everyone knows exactly what date it is, and then you don't have to worry about it. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  I'm fine with that. 

>> CINDY SIMON:  What you do is have someone else driving and you sit on the phone. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  That's actually a really good idea [chuckles].
I don't like to drive that far anyway, my husband does it. 

>> CINDY SIMON:  There you go. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  My daughter doesn't seem to mind it.  She's also 19.
So, from Tampa to Boone is, like, uh... maybe 14 hours maybe?  

>> JOHN JACKSON:  From Tallahassee to Boone, I can get to Boone in nine hours from Tallahassee.  

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  And we're about four hours. 

>> JOHN JACKSON:  Yeah, but you have to come over northwest and you have to come back over, you should be able to get to Boone in about 12 hours, you could, if not less.  

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Yes, ma'am?  

>> CINDY SIMON:  There's a comment from Debbe. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Yes, please. 

>> CINDY SIMON:  So, I don't know what that means, because I'm not from there, but the Sunshine Skyway is closed. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Okay.  I don't think anybody is leaving here today to go there right now. 

>> CHRIS LITTLEWOOD:  She's just saying because of the storm.  

>> JOHN JACKSON:  Yes, there are 60‑70‑miles‑an‑hour wind gusts coming our way. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Oh, not here yet, though.  

>> JOHN JACKSON:  Within the next hour, when we're all ‑‑ 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  We probably should adjourn.
Are there any other comments, public comments?

[No response]. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Okay.  Public comments have ended at 4:30, but I'm going to ask, just as we were talking, anybody on the chat line or on the phone or in the room for public comments?

[No response]. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Okay, all right.  Since this last hour is going ‑‑ was to be discussion of legislative update, which has already been done, I would like to suggest that we make an early adjournment today.
Do I need a motion or a vote or anything?  

>> JOHN JACKSON:  Yeah, I make a motion that due to the storm that's coming and the fact that people are evacuating all over the city to their homes, that we adjourn this one for today, given that the council members, most of them are from Tallahassee and have to find their hotel and it will be a little while. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Okay.  Thank you very much. 

>> JOHN JACKSON:  I won't go into details on why we're adjourning early. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  Second, Glenna?  

>> GLENNA ASHTON:  Second. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  She says she seconds it.  All in favor say aye.

[Ayes]. 

>> KAREN GOLDBERG:  8:00 a.m. tomorrow morning.  Have a safe evening!

>> DEBBE HAGNER:  Be safe, guys!  Be safe!

>> CINDY SIMON:  Thanks!

[Concludes at 4:37 p.m.]

** This is a rough‑draft text file that was produced by a live CART Captioner (Communication Access Realtime Translation) to ensure effective communication for persons who are deaf or hard of hearing.  This file is not a certified, verbatim record, and it should not be quoted as such. **