Council hears about $75,000 state multilingual outreach grant for canvassing and services

Council members heard a description of a state-funded multilingual outreach grant of $75,000 that will fund community outreach delivered by a third party, staff said.

A staff speaker summarized the program: “It’s a $75,000 grant. There’s multiple jurisdictions that are involved in this. Basically what is it? It’s community outreach that’s gonna be done through a third party. It’s door to door canvassing, phone banking, text banking, in multiple languages.” The staff speaker listed services the outreach will connect residents to, including testing and vaccination services, mental-health and substance-abuse services, education and training, job fairs, veteran services and homeless services.

Council members discussed ways to publicize resolutions and programs such as the multilingual outreach effort. One council member suggested highlighting select resolutions after public comment or at the end of meetings so the public would know what the council had approved. At one point a council member said, “we have an exciting program that we approved the resolution on,” and asked Administrator Shirley to provide details.

The transcript does not include the resolution text, the third-party contractor’s name, or a recorded vote on adopting the specific grant agreement during the provided excerpt. Funding was repeatedly described as a state grant; no local match or budget breakdown was specified in the discussion.

Council members agreed to try briefly highlighting resolutions at the end of the meeting to better inform the public, with the understanding they could revisit the approach if it proved awkward.

The multilingual outreach remarks occurred during the council’s regular meeting under the items labeled old business/new business and during discussion of how to present resolutions to the public.