>> Mike Foddrill: Good afternoon, everybody, this is a reminder, this is the tech setup for our July 23rd public meeting and we'll start at 2:00 eastern. 
 
>> Mike Foddrill: Good afternoon, I see other folks joining us, Amy Luellen, thank you for joining and I'm going to promote you to a panelist. 
 
>> Mike Foddrill: Good afternoon, everybody, this is Mike Foddrill, the executive director of INSILC, this is the July 23rd public meeting and we'll start at 2:00. 
 
>> Mike Foddrill: Hi Chris, I saw that you joined and I'm going to promote you to a panelist. 

>> Chris Spinks: Good afternoon. 

>> Chris Spinks: Mike, if my computer freezes for my report, go on with out my, because I've had to turn it off and back on four times today. 
>> Mike Foddrill: We'll step in if we need to. 
>> Chris Spinks: I'm thinking I need a new computer. 
>> Mike Foddrill: Good afternoon, Anna, I sent you invitation to be a panelist.
Halie, thank you for joining, I'm going to send you an invite to be a panelist. And Kacie as well, I'm going to send you an invite too. Ann Barnhart, I'm zoning you an invite to be a panelist. 
Cierra, thank you for joining, I'm going to invite you to be a panelist as well. 
>> Kacie Weldy: Kacie, and Mike, the only person who can se you is you, so you need to change it to gallery view instead of speaker view. 
 
>> If you make me host, I can work with that.  
>> Mike Foddrill: Okay, Kacie, I just made you cohost. 
 
>> Mike Foddrill: Okay, Kacie, you're host. 
>> Kacie Weldy: Thank you. 
>> Mike Foddrill: And I se something in the Q&A from Breanna, that says if you're participant and not a cohost, you can't se everyone, so Kacie, did that change when you became a panelist?
>> Kacie Weldy: Literacy, yeah, basically before when I was not a panelist, the only person I could se is the speaker. 
>> Mike Foddrill: And Christina, from now on.
I'm going to send you an invite to be a panelist as well. Kacie, I can't be invite panelists since I'm not a host anywhere. 
>> Kacie Weldy: Holds on a second, so I can see all of the participants, it's not pulling that up anywhere. Hold on, so I just changed it to gallery view. I hope that changed the view for everyone else. Could someone comment? 
>> Mike Foddrill: Jennifer pointed out that she should be a panelist and we'll get you promoted here. 
>> Kacie Weldy: Just a second. 
>> Mike Foddrill: Breanna says that she can see the panelist and hosts now, but not the other participants, and Jeremy sees the gallery of the council. 
>> Kacie Weldy: Okay, and I just gave Christina ‑‑ sent you an invite to promote. Is there anyone else that needed to be promoted to panelist? 
>> Mike Foddrill: Could I be made a cohost again, Kacie, so I can work the public comment section?
>> Kacie Weldy: Did Jennifer. 
>> Mike Foddrill: And Lexi says that you won't see other participants, so it seems that people are agreeing with that. 
>> The interpreters will have to see the attendees. And all participants.  
>> Mike Foddrill: If you make them a cohost ‑‑
Interpreter: We are. 
>> Kacie Weldy: The interpreters are not going to be able to see the attendees. What we'll do is promote them to panelists as they speak when we open that up to public comment and you'll be able to see them at that time. 
Interpreter: Okay. 
>> Kacie Weldy: All right, so this is Kacie. Do we have everybody, Mike, that's supposed to be? 
>> Mike Foddrill: I'm going to through the list right now, double checking to make sure. 

>> Jennifer David: Made it. 
>> Mike Foddrill: And yes, I think that we have everyone, Kacie. 
>> Kacie Weldy: All right, thank you. So this is Kacie Weldy, and we're going to get started. I'm calling the meeting to order and it's 2:05 p.m. on July 23rd. I'm going to start with a roll call. Our voting members, we have Luis Roman. Who I do not see. 
>> Mike Foddrill: I talked to Luis earlier and he said he would be here, so hopefully. 
>> Kacie Weldy: Then we have Jennifer David. 
>> Jennifer David: This is Jennifer David, I'm present. 
>> Kacie Weldy: Looks like just a second. Anna Thompson Jones. 
>> Present. 
>> Kacie Weldy: Amy Browning Varble is out today. She has given us notice ahead of time. Then we have Ann Barnhart. 
>> This is Ann, I'm here. 
>> Kacie Weldy: Okay, next, Halie Brown. I do not see or hear Halie. 
>> Mike Foddrill: Halie is here. 
>> Here. 
>> Kacie Weldy: My apologies. Linda Greeno. Okay. Kitterman. 
I'm not seeing Laura Kitterman Olson. Christina Trimnril. 
>> Present. 
>> Kacie Weldy: And Catherine Vest. 
>> Mike Foddrill: Catherine told me she's not going to be on, Kacie. 
>> Kacie Weldy: Okay. 
>> Jennifer David: Looks like we have a quorum. Do we?  Trying to keep track of everybody, but I don't think that I did. 
>> Kacie Weldy: I did our nonvoting members first. Abagail Fleenor. Not present. 
>> Mike Foddrill: Luis is on, and I'm promoting him to panelist.  And he's our seventh member, so we have a quorum. 
>> Kacie Weldy: I'm sorry, Mike, what did you say? 
>> Mike Foddrill: I said that Luis is here, and he would be the seventh member and give us a quorum. 
>> Kacie Weldy: So Abagail Fleenor is not here, we have Amy Luellen. 
>> Amy Luellen is present. 
>> Kacie Weldy: Our INSILC no more see, Cierra Thomas‑Williams. 
>> I'm here. 
>> Kacie Weldy: INSILC nominee, David Schleppenbach. And then INSILC nominee, Wanda Tackett. Do not see her. Okay. 
>> I'm present, this is Luis. I'm sorry, technical difficulties. 
>> Kacie Weldy: All right. Okay. Mike, can you talk to us about accessibility? 
>> Mike Foddrill: Yes, and so accessibility means that you have CART services and ASL services available for this meeting. If you have other questions, please feel free to reach out to me, you can do that. M Fodrill and that's at Indiana SILCing.org. Or text me. And I want to let everyone know that the chat feature is not on for now, except you can see the link for the stream chat. But the Q&A feature is working and it's on today. So you can feel free to add comments later. 
>> Kacie Weldy: Thank you, Jennifer. 
>> Jennifer David: Yes, I might need help with this, because I was trying to figure out quorum. And we have 14 members, and I didn't catch the number of the total council members present. Did anybody? 
>> Mike Foddrill: We have 7 today, so we have ‑‑
>> Jennifer David: But we have 7 voting members out of 12, so we have a quorum and that's 58%. 
>> Mike Foddrill: Yes. 
>> Kacie Weldy: All right, thank you. I'm going to start with the approval of the past minutes from the April 9th public meeting, and so do we have ‑‑ is there anyone that has any concerns or anything?  And if not, we need a motion to approve the minutes as they are.
>> This is Anna, and I make a motion to approve. 
>> Jennifer David: This is Jennifer David, and I second the motion. 
>> Kacie Weldy: All right, and then we need to do a roll call vote for the approval of the minutes. 
[ roll call taken ]

>> Kacie Weldy: I believe that's everyone. All right, so with all going communications, we'll turn it over to Jennifer. 
>> Jennifer David: I want to talk about the upcoming meetings for the arrest rest of the fiscal year, the next meeting will be September 10th, and then the winter meeting will be December 10th. Which also do have a goal of a hybrid meeting, but I'm going to let Mike talk about where we are with that. 
>> Mike Foddrill: I'm happy to do that, so one of the things that we do after every one of the public meetings, we send a survey out to all of our participants and we have been doing that for the last several meetings, and in fact for the last three meetings. We sent one out in 2024, and one of the questions that we asked during that survey, how many people would like to see a had virtual meeting and how many would prefer in‑person and of the 12 responses in October, 9 said virtual and 3 in person, so 75% virtual and 25% in‑person. January, we have 25, and 70% to 30%. And April of 2025, we had 12 responses again, and we had 8 people say they preferred virtual, 3 people said they preferred in‑person and one undecided. So the percentages, 60% virtual, 25% in‑person and 8% being undecided. So we'll continue to send the survey out after this meeting today. And after subsequent public meetings, and we'll continue to monitor the responses for that question, and if we See an uptick of the number of folks who are interested in a hybrid or in‑person meeting, we'll pursue that option. But at this time, there's such a high percentage of folks who are looking for a virtual meeting, we're going to keep this format for now. 
>> Jennifer David: Thank you, the next thing here, the notice of communication rules for the meetings, we encourage you to speak up and we just have a couple of things that we would like to ask of you. First of all, announcement of the speaker's time limit. The meeting facilitator will state whether his time is ended and if the individual goes over that time, we'll choose to mute the speaker. If you have additional comments or written comments that you want to talk about, you can email our chair, Kacie Weldy, and her email is chair at Indiana SILC.org. When you do speak, if you could please identify yourself before you speak. Unlike me, try to speak at a normal tone, consistent speech to help with interpreting and please maintain professionalism. The time limited for today is going to be ‑‑ 
>> Mike Foddrill: 15 minutes. 
>> Jennifer David: For the entire public comment period but as far as the individual speaker, how long? 
>> Mike Foddrill: We do 3 minutes, and there's an additional public comment section second end as well.
>> Jennifer David: So you'll have 3 minutes and then a little bit of time at the end to followup with any individuals on who want to speak. That's to for me. 
>> Kacie Weldy: Thank you, Jennifer, and I do need to acknowledge that we have some guest attendees, and I missed that on the agenda. My apologies. Of course we have Mike Foddrill, our executive director for the INSILC, we have Chris Spinks, our SPIL chair, and I don't believe that I see Rita Kersh, who is over the nomination chair. She's not here today. So my apologies for missing that, going back and double checking myself here. So first we need to open up our public comments. Open for 15 minutes. And I will let Katie keep track of it.
>> Mike Foddrill: Yes, so if folks want to raise their hand, Jeremy Werner, I'm going to allow you to speak, and I saw Leslie's name pop up, so Leslie, you'll be next. So Jeremy, you should be able to speak now.
>> Can you hear me all right? 
>> Mike Foddrill: Yes, just fine.
>> This is Jeremy, Warriner, walking spirit is my organization, and I wanted to draw attention to the meeting minutes from last ‑‑ from the April meeting. One because I made a comment both in the first and the last part of it, and in both cases in the minutes, it says Jeremy made a comment.  And it doesn't even identify my last name for anybody to follow up with me to find out what that comment is, and the comment is not present in either of those locations, and the reason I wanted to bring that up, there was something that really kind of bothered me about the last meeting, and the comment that I made at the end was asking about the Humana grants that was voted on and awarded to independence Indiana during that meeting. And I asked if every center for Independent Living in the state had the opportunity to apply, and the center director responded and let me know that yes, every center did. The more I thought about that that all 10 centers in the state had the opportunity to apply, I don't know who did and who didn't, but then you guys voted to award it to a coalition of seven of those centers, has really sat negatively with me since that meeting, and I guess I would really like to understand how that is ethical to award grant funding that is available for every center to individually apply to, to 7 out of ten of the centers in the state. And I'm thrilled that accessibility is one of the seven that's going to benefit from that funding because that's the part of the region or the part of the state that I'm in, but I really don't understand how it's ethical for seven centers to get that funding and the other three are left out of T that doesn't make sense, especially if it's something that they individually could apply for. So I guess that would be my concern and my question that I would like to be answered in some form. Even if you guys need to talk about it and explore that and answer that later. But it's something that I want to be answered. 
>> Kacie Weldy: So this is Kacie. Mike, can you explain how you are involved with the application process on that and can you explain how that is done? 
>> Mike Foddrill: Sure, I would be happy to. We sent out an invitation for all ten centers to apply, and there was a deadline about a month in advance, and that came in, and we had a committee made up of folks who are actually not on the council or do not work for centers, and they come together and there's a representative from Humana on that committee, and we had a Rubric of how we were going to score that application, and question scored each application on ten different areas, and how that fit into the project and how they would maintain the goals and budgeting and a variety of those criteria that we were looking at, and then the committee voted to approve that recommendation and that went before the full council and the full council voted to approve that.
 
>> I guess where I'm stuck on that, if each center had the opportunity to individually apply, how did seven of them get it?  Why independence Indiana, when the centers gives the funding to seven out of the ten centers in the state whether or not they applied for the grant?  That's a concern. And it concerns me that you guys had a vote about that in public and addressed it, to me that's a very ethical concern. Why were they allowed to apply twice through a coalition?  That doesn't seem ‑‑ like that something that was allowed for in the way that the grant was written and approached?  Was it intended to go to seven out of ten? 
>> Mike Foddrill: The group of centers, the group felt that from independence Indiana was the strongest and it ranked that way with each of the proposals.
>> So seven of the centers were allowed to apply.  
>> Mike Foddrill: They applied one time together.
>> So not individually?  That at least clarifies that a little bit. 
>> Kacie Weldy: Thank you. 
>> Mike Foddrill: Thank you for your comment. And then Leslie?  Hang on one second. And then okay, Leslie, you should be able to speak now. 
>> Can you hear me? 
>> Mike Foddrill: Yes, you're coming through fine.
>> I would like to express my disappointment that we continue ‑‑ it's in the agenda, we continue to not talk about major issues that are affecting people with can disabilities throughout the state and throughout the country. There are enormous issues related to Medicaid, the home and community based services and that type of thing. They're going to be severely affected by the changes made at the federal level and we all seem to have ignored it when we actually do have a voice.  I wanted to be able to put a thing out there that says that on July 26th, in all 50 states and across Indiana, and several ‑‑ I think it's ten different cities, if you want to email me, I could send you a list of the cities that have an action. It's called family first, and it's a national day of action all over the country that's the mess of the big beautiful bill and how it's going to affect people.  And it especially has a very negative effect on people who are getting Medicaid. Many of the people that we serve in Centers for Independent Living, and INSILC is representing are so affected by this, and I cannot believe that you're not talking about it. I see nothing about it on the website, nothing anywhere that says there's a huge problem out there. And it's kind of sticking your head in the sand type of thing is very disappointing, especially since July 26th is the 35th anniversary of the ADA, which is being systematically dismantled as we speak by what's happening at the federal level. When are you going to step up as a council and represent people with disabilities and even our peers with out disabilities are going to step up and take a stand on some of the things that are going on. There isn't any reason that this shouldn't be primary on any agenda to do with disability rights organizations. Thank you. 
>> Kacie Weldy: This is Kacie, thank you for your comment. 
are there any others that have comments? 
>> Mike Foddrill: I don't see any other hands, but I see lots of new names. We have 41 attendees this time. So if there are new folks, I would encourage everybody to make a comment if they have one, and I see everybody counts, and then Kat Kingley. Everybody Counts should be able to speak now. 
>> This is Theresa Torres, and I would like to add to Leslie's very pointed question, which as usual does not receive a response, aside from thank you for your comment. I would like to point out that the fact that the national council on Independent Living is also encouraging people in the Independent Living program to get involved. I've been very saddened to have to report to those who asked, what is not happening in Indiana respect to the Independent Living officials. Just an observation, you seem to be obsessively concerned to make sure that everybody who speaks is professional. To quote from "The Princess Bride," you keep using that. I do not think it means what you think it means. That's about it. If there are folks on the call, I would like to step back and let others speak if they would.  
>> Mike Foddrill: Thank you, Theresa. And I see Kat Kingley, you have your hand raised?  So Kat, you should be able to speak now. 
>> Hi, so this is my first time attending any of these meetings or trying to be involved with the Independent Living council. I was diagnosed with a degenerative disease about three years ago, so I'm a wheelchair user now, living in a pre ADA apartment that's located in Elkhart Indiana, and there are no Independent Living offices in this county. So I was wondering if there's any movement to expanding the council with any more offices. I doubt it with federal budgets and cuts and things. And just Indiana as a whole under the current leadership. But is there any movement to expand councils or centers?
>> Kacie Weldy: This is Kacie, so there is not movement to expand the council. But there are the different centers throughout the state that covers most of the state. And not all counties are covered. We realize that.
However, what we can do, if you would contact Mike, and Mike, if you can email message her, that way, we can try to connect you with the resources that we do have. 
>> I reach out to agency after agency after agency, and there's no movement.
so I can't leave my place on my own, and I can't get out to use the public transport. It's exhausting 
>> Mike Foddrill: This is Mike, and I would be happy to connect with you after the meeting, Kat and connect you to one of our centers that can maybe do some information and referral for you, and we're attempting to hear from folks who are in our unserved and underserved areas, and we were Southbend earlier this month.
>> I couldn't get there.  
>> Mike Foddrill: Two and so if transportation getting out of your home is tricky, that might be an opportunity to make your voice heard. We appreciate hearing from you and your thoughts. 
>> Kacie Weldy: Okay. 
>> Mike Foddrill: And Kacie, that brings us to 15 minutes, I see other hands raised. So I would like to remind everybody, that we have another public comment session coming up towards the end of our agenda, so if you haven't had a chance to speak during this session, there will be one more at the end and we'll start with folks who have not had a chance to speak yet. 

>> Kacie Weldy: All right, this is Kacie speaking. So knew we're going to go through and talk about as far as our committees and updates around reports and so forth. So first up would be Mike with our executive director report, please. 
>> Mike Foddrill: Thanks, Kacie and it's good to see everybody for an update. First, where we are with the SPIL and the cap. And as everybody knows, we did receive conditional approval for the SPIL and action plan for administration on community living and that's our federal agency that we report to. This is a common thing that comes to many SPILs across the country, and finish us, it requires completion of key focus areas by the end of September of 2025. And overall, what they're thing from us, our methods of promotion for promoting INSILC public meetings and events, gathering input and SPIL evaluation. Those are really the key topical areas of that, and documentation of policies that codify the work that we have been doing. I've given you an update on each quarter since we have had these meetings, and particularly since we had the last public meeting in April, we have made significant areas. We have drafted a new policy manual that has existing policies and new policies and you should have that and we'll go through the details later in the agenda.
we have put together a draft engagement plan that details ways that we can reach out to groups started in the SPIL and we have laid out ways to get that done. We have put together two SPIL dash boards to report back on the progress that we're making. One is a more simplified public version and the other is an internal version. And I will go over the specifics of those two things later in the agenda as well. So we'll cover the specifics and that's kind of how we're doing with the cap update. We meet with our team, with ACL every month to get an update and share our progress with where we're at.  And they are very happy with the progress that we're currently making, and our goal to be to go through the policy making, and the engagement plan in the dashboard of today's meeting and hopefully have those up for approval with the council at our September meeting, so we want folks to see those and think through them and ask questions and get answers, and then have that be finalized version ready in September. And then I do have a budget update as well. Our executive committee met with the team from the DSE, from the FFSA in May, and we kind of talked about budget and were asked about how much of a budget cut that we sustained and we have been seeing cuts coming through the network really and we just got our contract a little while ago, and we're receiving a 5% cut for fiscal year 2026, which would be the budget year from October of 2025 and goes through the end of September of 2026. And this is consistent with what other centers are getting across the board. So it's pretty standard from what we're seeing, and we'll go through that amendment in other specifics and approval as a council, and I wanted you to know where we are with a piece of the contract from FFSA. But I'm continuing to work with Anna, the treasurer and the executive committee on drafting for organizational budget for us in 2026, that would go from October 2025 through September of 2026. We have a draft that's in process now, and then our goal for this would also be to have a finalized budget for you to approve in September. That's our timeframe, and we're on track to do that, and I should say that we should be able to sustain that 5% cut with out any impact on the programming mentioned in the bill. So we'll have the pieces out and more to share when we meet in September. Then I would like to give you an update on where we are for our public forums. We just held one in Southbend last week, July 15th. A brief overview, we had 52 attendees, which we think was really good. And we were able to have exhibiters from different prides up in the area, one really great area for us, we have not gun able to have the Southbend vet center there, and that's one of the started areas in the SPIL, to have outreach from veteran communities.  And it was a nice upgrade for us. We had a Q&A with policymakers and we were able to have three policymakers there, mayor James and representative Maureen and we were able to have our roundtables as we have had our last few town has, and those were on accessible healthcare, transportation, emergency and disaster preparedness, and employment. And so all in all, it was a successful event and we did a debrief on where we can approve. If you remember, this is our second Town Hall. We did one in March in Lafayette and we had a virtual last December. A couple of areas that we can improve, we had the center in south bend and a lot of acoustics, and it was good for us in capturing what was presented and there was an issue in the it restaurant with the soap dispensers, and we related that back to the century center, and let them know that that was an area where they needed to be had fixed. So we did convey that. Other thing we had, a group of policymakers, so we had three legislatures across the state.  And that was a nice improvement over Lafayette. On the tentacle side, we didn't video any of those issues, so the mics and CART and services worked well.  And the attendance, we had about 30 in Lafayette and 52 in Southbend. So that's a growth area for us. We had two media stations as well. Two local TV stations covered the event and we didn't have those before. So getting that media attention was nice as well. So with any event like this, there's an area to make improvement and one area that we can certainly do is having a better way for people to leave feedback, and we went into the meeting using QR codes, and we had one for the event survey and one to sign up for the list serve, and we didn't capture enough information there, and we're going to do paper sign‑ups in the future. So that's one area that we need to improve O as we know, there's a little bit too much downtime in our agenda, so we started out strong with 52 people to talk with the policy makers and that trickled as the event went on, so we need to condense that, so the run time is shorter and keep people's energy up for the whole process. And then we need better and stronger INSILC. So we need to remind people, let people know that this is an INSILC event and kind of why we're there, and it needs to be more up front and more present. So those are things that we need to continue to work on in the future. And speaking of that, our next event is scheduled for September 23rd, and we're going to do that in Evansville.  And we're working with the league on co‑planning and transportation symposium that we'll talk about in a bit.  And we're going to continue to work with the SPIL committee and the marketing to make it a strong event. And we're going to continue to identify the tart population that's we're looking for to be identified in the SPIL and we'll continue to look forward to being in an area where there's underserved, where there's not a member of the Independent Living network, where week talk with spokes about the SPIL and the independent service that's we're providing. And then another success that we have had over the last several months, we have launched our new website.  And that is up. If you haven't had a chance to see that. If you go to INSILC.org, I can see the new knight and site and we have designed that to be more user friendly and we want folks to find more information on meetings and the documentation they need.  And Katie is the lead on maintaining that site. She's our new operations manager, she's doing a great job. if you think of thinks that we should add to make it more effective for members of the Independent Living network, we continue to make that more effective for people.  And then I would like to give an update on the Humana project. Again, in April, we granted approval of the partnership, to train Humana staff on awareness and independent philosophy and divergent philosophy to keep folks out of facilities, and we continue to work on that training. The group is looking at September and October as months to provide that training and we're also putting together a post‑Training survey that will access the qualities of that training and how effective it was so we can continue to improve that. And the goal is to have all of this project wrapped up by the end of December, December 31st, 2025.  And I will continue to meet with the team from IOP monthly to make sure that I'm up to speed on their progress and offer any support that we can, and support for the team to let them know where we're at as well. The last thing I would like to update you on, the inclusion institute proposal. So if you problem from before, the outcome that we want from this is the goal in the SPIL and that's to train a minimum of 100 advocates to be better advocates in the community. So we were talking with the lead on ways to franchise the institute in the state.  And we wanted a pilot projects to demonstrate how this might work, so we're co‑planning a transportation symposium with the team from the league at the Town Hall in Evansville on September 23rd. So we're working with the Evansville city council to identify leaders in the Evansville community and potential attendees in the symposium, and we're hoping to have 45 people to bring together in that group to transportation areas in the Evansville area, and then have them have prompts that they can work on coming out of that symposium to make Evansville have better transportation and improve transportation for people with disabilities. In the afternoon of that event will be an INSILC Town Hall, and we'll do Q&A with the policymakers and we're inviting Evansville to be part of that. We're looking forward to a nice events on September 23rd in Evansville. If you haven't signed up for our newsletter, please do that, and that's going to be the best way to stay nod on those events. Pretty exciting updates that I have been happy to share with you guys, and that wraps up any executive director report. 
>> Kacie Weldy: This is Kacie, thank you, Mike. Next, we have our SPIL director representative report.  And I'll have Mike handle this, and we have some individuals from Future Choices that will be speaking in a little bit. So I'll turn it back over to Mike to handle. 
>> Mike Foddrill: Actually, Kacie, I was looking at the agenda, and looks like the treasurer report is next, so I want to make sure.
>> Kacie Weldy: You're correct. I looked over one non‑intentional. Anna, can you please give us your treasurer report?
>> Anna Thompson-Jones: This is Ann A. and I'm reporting on December 2024 to may of 2025 because that's the report that we have, and it's budget versus actuals. I'm going to read the highlights, so gross profit, the actuals were $285,064 and some change. And we had budgeted $199,111. And some change was our budget. So we're over budget on that. 85,952‑dollars and some change. And the overage on our Humana grant is the biggest thing there. I'm going to jump down to total operating expenses, our actuals, $102,000.158 dollars and change. We had budgeted and change, and that's the difference, and the overexpense is also due to the Humana grant and that offsets the overage on the revenue part. On our total personnel expenses, we had app actual amount of $86,332 and some change. We had budgeted 149 thaw $302 and some change. So we are under budget $62,969 and some change on that. Our net revenues on our actuals, $93,495 and some change. And we are under budget $72,924, and we had budgeted ‑‑ I'm sorry, that much, and then we're over budget $166,419 and some change. And if you take out the Humana grant completely, we're still in a good place. I know I really butchered that today and I apologize for that, but we're in a pretty good place with our budget at this time. 
>> Kacie Weldy: All right, this is Kacie, thank you, Anna, you're not alone in butchering things today. I seem to be doing that kind of hard on today's agenda. But we'll see if we can keep moving along.  now, let's turn it back over to Mike for that piece. 
>> Mike Foddrill: Yeah, happy to do that since Amy is out today. Amy started in April, I think really good precedent having some of the SILS presenting some of the projects that they're working on, and we invited today. The teams from future choices in the Will Center, and so I see them in wants chat right now. I see Beth, so Beth, I'm going to let you speak, and I also see Deanne Hart, so I'll add Deanne, and then I saw a doctor Theresa as well. So you should all three be able to speak now. So let's hear what's going on with Future Choices. 
>> Thank you, everyone, can everyone hear me? 
>> Mike Foddrill: Yes, Beth.
>> So it's a pleasure to be with everyone, so thank you again. Future Choices started in May of 2000. And we serve 7 counties.  And those 7 counties are Delaware, Blackford, Grand, Howard, Madison, Tipton and Randall. We work with the league for the blind and we have said those that choose to come to Munsey or go to fort Wayne are welcome. So we share that county together. I am pleased to say that we have our board president with us. Deanne Hart. She has a history with working with INSILC and with the visually impaired population from the national to the American federation, and she'll get a chance to speak. We also have the honor to have Dr. Theresa Jeter. She's a consultant and she also works with urban planning for ball state university. And she has a litany of experience in housing, so we are fortunate to have Dr. Jeter on our board. Our board consists of seven individuals. We enjoy having a small board. Some of the programs that we're entertaining right now, and during the summer, it's a hectic time for us with the fairs, and with giving out information, and also providing for our students. Because the school is starting so early during the year now. So our school starts August 6th. Yesterday, which partners with Wal‑Mart, and we were able to give out around 700 bags. We also partnered with the park department, and we were able to give out another 200 bags. Tomorrow we'll be with the resource center. The family resource center, we partner with family and social services, and we donate space to them. In order to provide to individuals living in Delaware county. And they have a food pantry that we share. They have a diaper give away for young mothers, and so we have a kiosk that the employment office if they're needy, to apply for a job. We also have during our summer, we always hire youth. We have one youth staff that's still onboard with us for the summer. So we're very fortunate to have that youth staff on so they can go back to school, talk about the experiences that they had with working with people with disabilities, how they're able to modify and work with us as well as prepare our students for the transition from school to work. And we also work with birth to ‑‑ cradle to ‑‑ oh, goodness, it just left career. Sorry. So yes, it's called cradle to career, and we have been working with them as well. So Dee, would you like to add?
>> Yes, thank you for asking us to be here to for the opportunity to speak to you. Working with Beth in future choices and the staff, I've seen them make many partnerships within our community, the disability community in Munsey does a lot of outreach to another of ‑‑ on different issues concerning transportation, housing, et cetera. The inroads that Beth and her stat have made with some of those organizations has helped facilitate us having the conversations we do, and so we greatly appreciate that.
Our board continues to grow. We bring on new people as they come be available and right now, we're looking at somebody who will be an asset to us in reaching out to those in education. Those working through transition, and those working
>> Jennifer David: Playing that transition from youth to adulthood. And that will be a big asset right now with everything that's going on with education, and then also in trying to increase things in the workforce. So thank you again for allowing us to be here, and I'll turn it back to Beth.
>> Theresa, Dr. Jeter, would you like to add?
 
>> Hi, yes. Thank you so much for being here, and thank you, Beth for leading Future Choices, and Dee for being here as well. I've known Beth for more than 50 years, and she doesn't look that old, but we are, and she has been an outstanding person in the community and Future Choices is a available asset, certainly being located here in Delaware county, but reaching not only in Delaware county, but six more counties. I've served on the board for almost two years and happy to be here. And I hope to be able to serve for as long as they want my to serve, so thank you so much for this opportunity. 
>> Thank you, Dr. Jeter, and I would also like to add that last year, we were asked ‑‑ well, we went two live streams because we were on the emergency team. And we asked to be a cooling station. So our office is open 9:00 to ‑‑ it's actually open 7:30 to 4:30, but our cooling station is open from 9:00 to 4:00, and with the weekend coming up, we have posted where people can go for the cooling stations. We offer drinks for individuals, and we offer them games so they can come in and enjoy themselves. And just being able to know what to do, what things to look for with your health. Also as well, just calling out to our seniors to make sure that our seniors as well are protected and have fans, and we're able to offer fans to our elderly ‑‑ the individuals that we serve and to the community. As well if children have asthma, Wal‑Mart has offered us, since we went with the backpacks, have offered us with four air conditioners to give out to younger children that have asthma. So again, thank you. We appreciate being a part of the team. And thank you for inviting us. Thanks, Mike.  
>> Mike Foddrill: All right, thank you, Beth and Deanne and Dr. Jeter, we appreciate your time today. 
and we were also hoping for a presentation from the team from the Will Center, and I didn't get the specific names of the staff to present. If so, would you raise your hand?
I see Bianca raised her hand. 
hi, Bianca, are you here to speak for the team at the Will Center?
>> Yes, can you hear me? 
>> Mike Foddrill: Yes.
>> hello, I'm Bianca, and I'm the Independent Living director at, and I'm going to tell you about our services and what which do for our counties that we serve. We have been around since 2000. Our mission is to empower people with disabilities to ensure that they have full and complete access to community resources, to promote their independence. We have a few different programs that we provide.  And these are all free to our consumers. We have the Independent Living perhaps, we have rents for freedom, and we have a youth empowerment services. A lot of our services are advocacy and referral and Independent Living skills. Providing assistive technology for consumers and information on where they can get those devices. ADA information, and ADA bus pass or what not.
We have peer counseling, and we do offer peer support groups for our consumers monthly, those have a good turnout, and we have peer transition services. Now were our live program, that's for people that are age 55 or older who are blind or visually impaired and that program helps them overcome daily challenges to reach their personal goals and some of the services can encompass a bit of the same, referral. Low vision support groups that we holds monthly, we do provide assistive devices, and if we're not able to do that, we provide them with a catalog where they can get those. Marking and labeling and magnification. Our rents for freedom program is us providing individuals that have difficulty with mobility, getting in and out of their homes and accessing the community, we do provide that free of charge. We do ramps or low‑rise steps that are ADA compliant and that really is a huge need in our community. For our youth empowerment services, that is more aimed towards youth who are 14‑24, and that helps them gain experiences and stills to engage in the community and transition successfully into adult life.  And so some of that can look like educational advocacy. So maybe assisting with the IEP process and helping the parents and the students understand their rights in the school system. Again, with the high school to college transition, Independent Living skills, any form of advocacy and providing the peer support. Another thing we provide at the will center, we have ship councilors, unbiased counseling on Medicare and programs, so Medicare part A, B and D, and advantage plans and Medigap. And I think that's just a brief overview much the service that's we provide at the Will Center.  
>> Mike Foddrill: Thank you for sharing all of that, Bianca. Thank you for taking the time and we appreciate all of the good stuff that you're doing. 
>> Thank you.  
>> Mike Foddrill: All right, I think that's the last part of our presentation for the CIL director report. Kacie, you're muted. 
>> Kacie Weldy: Thank you, I just wanted to make sure that nobody could hear the dog snoring in the background. So thank you to both the Will Center and Future Choices for sharing about your centers. And I look forward to hearing more from other centers in the future. We'll plan on having that. So up next, we have Amy Luellen as our designated entity representative. And she can give an update from the state. 
>> Amy Luellen: We don't have much to update now, we're working our way through amendments for grants for the centers, and information will be coming out on those within the week, and that's all I have. 
>> Kacie Weldy: Thank you, and flex up, we have Chris Spinks, our SPIL chair. 
>> Chris Spinks: Thank you, and we have two workers that we have been working through the lasts couple of months. Both groups have met two times between may and July.  And the first is the data analysis work group, and the goal is for that group to effectively utilizes all of the data that we gather and use that to make positive changes by using the voices of people with disabilities, and the public information if SILS and the network. The focus right now, creating resources for passive for the SILS, and a timeline to achieve this deliverable. And then the next projects is going to be beginning on the consumer needs assessment. The guardianship and guardianship alternative network is the next one, we met twice between may and July, and the work group will meet with individuals from all sectors affected by guardianship and take their comments and information to create a product that will guide individuals in the situation to the best option for themselves with the focus on education and the least restrictive option to guardianship. There are a lot of individuals out there that don't know there's another option besides guardianship. The work group, we met last week, we invited Nick Parker from adult guardianship office of the Indiana supreme court, bear with me ‑‑ adult guardianship office to speak to us about how things are working at the state level. He's very knowledgeable and involved in the Indiana guardianship task force. And the wings group, which is working incident disciplinary network of guardianship. And it's also people in the groups that also have the thought process of least restrictive options. Not only less restrictive options but also a way to monitor and have reporting done, those types of things for guardianship. We plan to reach out to the Centers for Independent Living. Parents, families and the individuals, they have been impacted by guardianship, and attorneys have suggested to get more input information from a broader group of individuals and the input through all of this is going to be either a guide or some type of a white paper. We have not decided what we're going to do with all of this information. We need to get it gathered to see how best to utilize T our next public SPIL committee meeting is August 2nd 1 and it starts at 4:00 to 5:30 and that's all I have. Thank you. 

>> Kacie Weldy: This is Kacie, thank you very much, Chris. Rita is not here. Mike, do you have an update for the nomination committee? 
>> Mike Foddrill: I can do, the nomination committee has met over the last weeks to talk about the process, as a council. Just so you know, we have 14 current members on the council and there are three members that we approved last year, and we are still making for government confirmation, and there's a new person at the governor's office that handles those confirmations and I spoke to him and I said those three members should be getting their official notice in July, so I followed up with him this week so a hear where we are with that. And assuming that those three people are approved and that would be bring our membership up to 17, so we have 17 council members, and our bylaws say that we have to have between 11 and 22. And so talking were Kacie and the executive committee, we feel once you get past 20, it's tricky to manage and people to keep track of.  So the nominating committee is looking to nominate 2, possibly 3 to get two new nominations for the council and so that nomination process is live now, so you can get those forms and application materials on our website. It was also Linked In our latest newsletter that went out this week, and we'll have a social media post up on that soon. That process is open through Monday, August 25th.  so you need to have your applications in by the close of business, 5 p.m. on Monday, August 25th, and then the nomination it committee will work together to help rank and prioritize the members, and then the nomination committee will it decide who 20 move finished with, and we'll conduct had meetings with individuals, and the nomination committee will put together a recommended in slate of individuals and we'll pretty that for the full council approval next Monday, the tenth. So the takeaways, we're looking at two, maybe 4 members, and the nomination process is open now and it goes to the end of the day through August 25th. And you can get that on the website through the newsletter or through social media. 
>> Kacie Weldy: All right, this is Kacie. So at this time, we'll move into old business, and we didn't have any items on old business, so now new business. The first item is the approval for the amendment for the fiscal year budget with the state. So basically, this is our 2025, 2026 contracts with the state of Indiana. Regarding our INSILC agreement to that.
Mike, I'll turn that over to you to discuss.  
>> Mike Foddrill: Yeah, and everybody should have had a copy of the pack het material that went out. It does deposit kind of all of the different years that are in this contracts. You see it goes back to 2023, and it details each year subsequent to that. The easiest to read is the table on page 7, and that shows the original grants and amendment 1 and 2 and 3, which is each fiscal year since then, and then the allocation amounts for each year. So if you look at that, you can see the allocation amount for the first three years is the $280,427. And then for fiscal year 2026, which does run October of 2025 through September of 2026. That number is $266,403, and that's just about exactly a 5% cut, which is what we're seeing across the boards at the IL network. So you can kind of see where that stands. And then there's also detail in there about SILC duties and our responsibilities in that contract as well. And with this being a contract, and since it does exceeded $10,000 amount that is in our fiscal policies manual, we need to have a vote on the council approval in order to engage with that contract. Does anybody have any questions first of all before we vote?  Does anybody have any questions or answers or anything on that proposed amendment?

>> Kacie Weldy: Thanks, I don't see any questions from the council. If there are no questions, we do need to have a vote, which starts with a motion to approve the contract. 
>> Anna Thompson-Jones: This is Anna, and I make a motion to approve. 
>> Jennifer David: This is Jennifer David, I second the motion. 
>> Kacie Weldy: Okay, thank you. So we're making a motion to approve the fiscal year 2025/ 2026 contract with the state as presented. So now we'll to do roll call. First up, Luis, Anna.
[ roll call taken ] did I miss anybody?  For some reason I feel like I did. 
>> Mike Foddrill: I think you got everybody, Kacie. 
>> Kacie Weldy: So the motion passes and we approve the contract as presented. We'll get that signed off and sent over to the state. So the next item on our agenda is review of the progress of the cap. Mike, I think you talks about that earlier, but I'll turn that over to you, most of the next several objects. 
>> Mike Foddrill: I'll try to keep this nice and concise, but I want to say to everybody, I wanted to review the progress on the cap. So everybody will have a cap update for June, 2025 in their packet and we also post today on the website. This is the reports that we gave back to ACL every month, letting them know the updates of where we're at.  And if you look at finding one, this is a question about having a policy for reviewing and implementation of the state plan, and I'll go through the policy manual in a few minutes, but that has been done. Finding two is the engagement plan, how we engage with the communities that we identify in the SPIL. Ethnic minorities, veterans and people who live in rural possible communities, and those are the groups we're starting, so we have a plan to reach out to communities and get their input so it's up for review with you guys today.  And we'll again vote for that for approval in September, but we wanted to have plenty of time for you to review and ask any questions that you have. I will go through that plan and more specifics in a bit. The finding 3, the insufficient notice for public meetings, we create aid spreadsheet and Katie did a great job of this. An excel spreadsheet, letting everyone know where the meetings are, and we consider that closed and we're complete on that one. On finding number 4, the failure to consult with unserved populations, and again, this is to make sure that we have a policy and methodology and a plan for reaching those under served communities, and we have a plan for you today. And we will approve that in September. So that one is still open. And then finding number 5, the lack of year publicly available procedures for folks to request an accommodation. We have our new meeting accommodations announcement and that has been on the bottom of every meeting announcement and every social media post and agenda that we have put out. So we submitted that to ACL and they consider this closed as well. And that's complete.
And finding it 6, the inadequate process for advanced notice for executive sessions, this was a typo in the original policy manual. It said that we would provide notice no more than 48 hours in advance, and it should have said no less than, so we mated correction when we got the cap and ACL saw that and approved it, and this matter is closed also. And then finding 7, we need an inadequate method for moderating the SPIL, for the progress on that, we have two, we have an internal spreadsheet that's very detailed and thorough and then a more easy to consume public version put together and we have drafts of both of those. So those are in process. Again, the plan for those, to show you these today and give you time to think about them,ma schedules, and make sure that they are as effective as they can be for you and approve them in September.  And then the final finding would be the lack of a method for identifying and resolving potential disputes as related to putting the SPIL together. And we have this policy now, it's in the draft policy, we used the Oregon SPIL and a couple of others as a template to put that together. But that's in the process and we will vote on that in September. But that's the current status of the cap.  And again, we meet with ACL every month, and I will share with them when we meet in July, the progress that we have the chance to talk to you and council about where we're at to get this feedback. If you have not had the chance to look through the documents and if you have suggestions to make them better, please send them to me or Kacie and we'll make sure that we can make those documents as effective for you as a council as we can. That's where we are on the cap. And Kacie. If you want to go right into the policy manual since that's the next piece. 
>> Kacie Weldy: Yes, please.
>> Mike Foddrill: So all of the council members should have a copy of the new policy manual.  And if you remember, we had approved this when we met last summer that that has been approved since then. I did highlight in this manual the three new policies and those are the stakeholder input policy for the state plan for Independent Living, that's on page 7, the dispute resolution policy on page 8, and document and virtual records management policy that's on page 20. so you can look through and see the guts of this. But essentially, we needed to have a policy to show how we were going to get policy from the SPIL and the Independent Living centers around the state and how the community is going to evaluate the comments that we goat. We put methods that we use to gather input that could include public forums, surveys, interest groups, and key targets with key organizations and the committee would evaluate all of the comments that come into it and evaluate on such things as community recommendation, expert opinion, feasibility, past performance on the comments and want SPIL committee would debate these comments in a public meeting so the public can see this in terms of how to weigh and use those in the SPIL. There's more it detail and method allege around these and there's information on accessibility and inclusion on how these processes are accessible for all of the folks that want to access them and comment and pieces in here, I don't want to read through every word of it,  but there's information on continuous improvement and how we continue to do that. And I want to say too that this is probably the third or fourth iteration of this policy manual that we have cents to draft ACL and they have sent comments back and we have made revisions, we have a technical adviser, the executive director of the North Carolina SILC that prided feedback, and recommendations on how to improve.  And this is gone through feedback, so it has gone through a few rounds much experts, and also as evergreen as possible, so we don't have to change it every year, but it applies with everything that we need to be an effective SILC and we're meeting the ACLs as well. So one more chance for you to review this. And if you have comments, I would love to hear those, but again, we'll vote for formal approval in September, so you have the next six weeks or so to look this over, and if you have a question on if something is unclear, reach out to Kacie or I, and we would be happy to schedules a meeting and talk about this where we're at. But we want this policy manual to be really tight and effective for us going forwards. And then the document retention policy, we're a virtual organization, and so we keep no paper files, but it talks about how long we have to keep the virtual documents, and we scan them as well. But there's also a dispute resolution policy, and that talks about how if someone wants to file a dispute, how they do that, and it goes to the executive committee for review and it winds out the time and the next sentence, and it talks about using other resources in the state, if it has to go to a higher level. So we're trying to get this ironed out as well. And then the next time we have a SPIL, we have all of the processes ready to go, and we keep referring though these. So again, the specific details are in there, and I invite everybody to review those for the meeting and let us know if you have questions or concerns. But this has been a really good process, and even though I think everybody, we have a cap and that's not great. And certainly, we would prefer not to have one, but it has been a great process for us to go through the meetings with ACL and refine what we do and continue to get better. I think as an organization, if we're continue fog make our documents and processes better, its going to make the work which do better, and it's going to put us in a better position to help people with disabilities. It has been a good thing, and we'll meet with them through the end of September, which is the end day for the cap. So I'll continue to let people know where we are on that. Other questions, comments on the policy manual?  I know I have a few things that I'm talking through, and I want to make sure that I cover this and people have opportunity to ask questions as well. 
okay, Kacie, I have the dashboard next, so do you want me to keep going?
>> Kacie Weldy: Yep, go ahead. 
>> Mike Foddrill: To SPIL dash boards, this is again in response to the finding on the cap that we need to have an effective way to monitor our progress on the SPIL, so we had put two things together. First of all, Katie and I put together the SPIL dashboard for the public.  And you'll see that, and you should have both of these. We went through and pulled out each unique deliverable from the SPIL. So it's listed and if you look on the second sheet on the spread sheet, SPIL deliver abilities, it lists each one on here, and we go through, and it's done by SPIL goal. So you'll see those on there, and we have a section for notes, who is responsible for, and due date. For us, we went through and Marked on the status and we marked a simple green, yellow red, green on track, and yellow, needs work and red overdue. We wanted it to be easy for the public to understand because we know the SPIL can be complex, and tricky, and the first major, there's a dashboard that shows the chart and the graph on here, by listing how many are green and yellow and red. And we pulled out the highlights, the ones that are the most significant that we wanted to highlight. Again, we wanted this to be an easily digestible dashboard that we can share with anybody who asks about how the SPIL is going, and we wanted to make is as simple and hopefully as easy to approach as it could be. That was the goal for this one. And after we put that together, Kacie did an awesome job in coming together and showing us that we need a more thorough and I think a more detailed spreadsheet that will help us as we start to report these SPIL goals back to ACL and PPR, which is the periodic program that we do every year, to property our activities and it ties back to each goal of the SPIL and it lists out each goal individually to track each one, how that all fits together. And there are several sheets, it does a nice tally to show where we are, and there's dollar sign tracking as part of the goals in the SPIL to increase our resources for the network, so it gives us a way to tie that together.  And it gives us a thorough way to summarize this. I don't want to is go through the categories on all of the spreadsheets. I think they're all good, and they're all works in progress, so you'll see tweaks and adjustments going forward.  And again, we wanted to get this out before you to give you time to think about T we know it's complex, and two instruments that are easy and effective for you to use, so again, I know I've been saying this a few times, but the hope would be to approve the structures for the dash boards at the September meeting, so you have about 6 weeks to look at them.  And it's not the easiest thing, so we welcome all feedback on that too, for making them accessible and making them easy for the folks to digest. So folks can see the progress that we are making and see where we're at and kind of where the SPIL is, and what's up coming and very transparent and easy for folks to digest. But before we post T. we wanted to make sure that we had something workable for the council, so we want you to give us your comments. And again, the vote is in September. We hope that you take time to look through these, and ask questions, if we can make it more clear and if there's anything that we talk about please let us know, Kacie and I work through this, and we know it because we're talking and thinking about it all the time.  And for those who don't engage with it consistently, sometimes the language we use can be confusing and we try to take acronyms out of there.
but if you don't understand what we're trying to sigh, that's feedback that we really need. We want it to be something that somebody who is vaguely had familiar with the SPIL can pick it up and understand where we're at. Really, we value that input from you guys going forward. Any questions or comments on that?  I know I'm throwing a lot at you guys, and I'm sorry about that, but it's just the nature of today's meeting. 

>> Kacie Weldy: All right, so this is Kacie. I don't see any hands raised or any thoughts ‑‑ from our council members. So next, have you got the draft engagement plan? 
>> Mike Foddrill: Yes, we put together this plan, and this is the last deliverable that ties to the cap and you guys have a copy of this too. The goal is for us to have a plan to reach out to the targeted communities that we talked about. Veterans, folks from ethnic and racial minorities, youth and folks in rural communities.
And we wanted strategies for how to reach out and engage with all of those folks. If you see here, they're listed and it is broken up into groups, each talks about the goal and engagement strategies and things like partnerships and veteran ambassadors and targeted events and kind of what the key message to the group would be, and probably the most significant piece would be the timeline. In the veteran section, the timeline, reach out to two veteran organizations in 2025, and attend a focused events in 2026. I know that we have reached out to at least one veteran organization because they were a vendor at our south bends Town Hall. And Katie attended a veteran conference before at Southbend. So we are making good progress on that. But we wanted to have the timelines in here, but for rural communities, we talk about the engagement methods and key messaging and the timeline for that, would be a targeted Facebook at Q3 and 4, and flyers in communities. We will make sure that we have progress on that. And the third grown being youth.  And again with the youth communities, youth councils, and social media campaigns and youth submits, and the timelines for the youths grown would be to recruit a youth representative for the engagement committee, we would like to have someone from the youth community to do that. If you know somebody who would be great, reach out to me.
And super youth summit in 2026, so to have a plan for that. And particularly reach out to the youth community next year. That would be a goal of ours, and the last, the ethnic minorities, and strategies and key messaging and timeline for this, translating materials into alternative languages by 2025. Because we know we have a big group in Indiana where English is not their first language, so we know we would like to have material in other languages and we would love to hear about that as well.  And attend a cultural event to promote a network for our services, so we'll keep working on those, and there are cross strategies, and those are strategies that apply to all of the groups there at the end. And again, this is something that we hope to have approved in September, but we want to get it in front of you in time to see that.
Those are our thoughts on that, and that would be our engagement plan. All of these materials again are draft format. So if you see recommendations and things, preach out to Kacie or Katie or I, reach out to us and we would like to talk to you about that. 
>> Kacie Weldy: All right. Any last comments, questions or anything?  Okay. I do not see anybody's hands raised. So we'll go up to the last item here that's on the agenda before the second public comment section. Next up is officer elections. The positions of chair and secretary are up for election this year. Next year will be the treasurer and vice chair. So we have the slate. We had open ‑‑ things open for nominations and so forth, and we did not receive any other nominations, so at this time, Jennifer has agreed to rerun for secretary. I have agreed to rerun for chair, and we have this slate that's presented to the council. unless there's anybody now that would like to speak up that would be interested in the chair or secretary position, please let us know. So at this point, if there are no other nominees, we have to have a motion to set the slate as presented for the term ever another year. 
>> Anna Thompson-Jones: This is Anna, and I make a motion to accept the slate as presented.
>> This is Ann and I second the nomination. 
>> Kacie Weldy: So this is Kacie. We have a motion on the table to accept the slate as Kacie as the chair, Kacie Weldy as chair, Jennifer David as the secretary for the next year. So now I need to do a roll call vote. 
[ roll call taken ]
>> Kacie Weldy: Okay, we have 7 yeses, no nos, and the motion passes. Next, our public comment session, please raise your hands if you would like to comment. And it will beer in a period of 15 minutes. 
>> Mike Foddrill: And I see Jeffery Bignell first, and then Breanna and Melissa. So Jeffery, you're first, and you should be able to speak now. 
hi, Jeffery, are you there?  Would you like to make a comment?  Looks like you're muted on my end. Okay, maybe you're having a technical issue, Jeffery, so I'm going to go ahead and lower your hand and we'll come back to you if you think you resolve your tech issues and you still want to comment, we would like to hear from you, so we want you to have a chance to do that. Melissa, your hand next, so Melissa, you should be able to speak. 
>> Hello.  
>> Mike Foddrill: You're coming through fine.
>> My name is Melissa Wobschall. I was just wondering, I know that you guys came to Lafayette in March, and apparently the 30 of us who attended were a disappointing amount of people that came. But I appreciated the forums and the speakers, so I just wondered are there any next steps after you've come?  Will there be a ‑‑ I don't know, I feel like you came, and now there's nothing to be heard. So I'm just curious what the next steps might be.  
>> Mike Foddrill: That's a good question, Kacie and do you want me to take that?
>> Kacie Weldy: Yes, please.
>> Mike Foddrill: Thanks for your comment. We're taking all of the feedback we got, particularly for the roundtables back to the SPIL committee, work groups, the guardian committee and to the SPIL group and we're going to incorporate that into the work on this SPIL and potentially into the next SPIL and we're planning, Katy Myers and I, the operations manager, are thinking about the 2026 stops, and one of the goals in the SPIL is to a an event every quarter. We did Lafayette in March, and Evansville and SPIL wall in December, so we're looking at what dates and times would be in 2026, so I don't know what specifically those would be, but the goals in the SPIL would be to do outreach in unserved and under served communities. Lafayette would certainly be one of those, and so I don't know if we're going to come back and what the timeframe would be, and what the subsequent events would be, but one substantial piece would be us reporting back, here's what has happened in the last year, here's what is changed and here's how we're using it, and moving forward, I think that we'll have a better sense of where we want to go, and certainly as we start getting into 2026, particularly later in 2026 and absolutely in 2027, we'll be writing the next iteration of the SPIL. It's our strategic plan, and we want to take these feedback and hear from you guys in Lafayette and other folks around the state about things that we can do in our SPIL to improve our area. So those are the things that we want to hear from you as we're in Lafayette. So the best way to find out where and when all of the timeframe to come back to you, check the website and follow us on social media because as we lay out dates and timeframes, we'll put that up on all of those places.
>> Okay, thank you very much. 
>> Kacie Weldy: Melissa, this is Kacie. That's just where the data is being collected. I would encourage you to also, and as far as we do have these folks groups, different work groups and so forth, that Chris has worked with the SPIL and those groups are going to be in activities, and right now, we're in a gathering phase of what needs to be addressed because this is the first year of the SPIL period. And SPIL being state planning for Independent Living and it's a plan that gives information on what our network is going to cover. So I would encourage you if you're interested, getting ahold of Chris and getting involved with that. Because these groups are going to be coming up with different activities later on down the road to start to implement change, and that is to be working with the different SILS in the state. So right now, it seems not a lot is happening because it's gathering information, and that's why we're gathering the information and figging out where to go.
>> Okay, does still have it's own website?  How do I get ahold of Chris?
>> Kacie Weldy: There's a SPIL page on the website. All of the information should be on there. And we can connect with you, and Mike can make sure that we get you connected as well. So if you want to send him a message, we can do that too. 
>> Thank you very much. 
>> Kacie Weldy: Absolutely. All right. I think we have a couple more comments? 
>> Mike Foddrill: I just got a note that Jeffery Bignell who wanted to speak needs interpreting services, and I'm going to promote him to panelist so he can see the interpret where's. So Jeffery, you should see an option to promote to panelist. If you do that, then hopefully you can access the interpreting services. 
>> Kacie Weldy: This is Kacie. Jeffery, I know you're needing interpreting services and we need you to turn your camera on, so the interpreter can see you. 
>> Hi, can I go ahead?  Okay, great, hi, everybody, my name is Jeffery BIGNELL. And I'm a deaf advocate. Let me gather my notes here. I just wanted to ‑‑ so for a while now, things with the Indiana deaf school, the budget has been cut.  And also, the staff has been laid off and concerns with their situation are big. The deaf community is very concerned. Because for deaf people, they struggle finding jobs anyway, and now the place they all want to go to is the deaf school, and it really affects children as well. Also, IU Indianapolis, there are interpreting program has been cut as well. So it's two big things in this area. So that will limit interpreters in general for the deaf community. All over the state. So and a lot are approaching retirement, a lot of interpreters, so it's a huge crisis. I'm concerned, you know, in wondering if INSILC had any plans evoke change and what will they do?  And will the SPIL be involved?
>> Kacie Weldy: Mike, can you answer ‑‑ 
>> Mike Foddrill: I think, Jeffery, you're raising a really important issue. I think that it's something that systemically we do need to look at. And this feedback that you're giving us today is something in a we would incorporate into the SPIL moving forward and as Kacie said, this is our first year of the SPIL and we're talking all of that to a look at issues that we need to work on, and we'll use that as we revise the next SPIL and draft that. This is an issue, especially as we hear about this from more and more folks, it's something that we can incorporate into what we're doing now and work into the next iteration of the SPIL. It's going to take thought and strategizing and the best way forward to hear about that, and hearing from you and folks in the community puts it on our radar and it's something that we need to decrease. 
thank you, and I think we have time for two more, I see two more hands up. So Breanna, you're next, and then care Wilson will be our last comment. Okay, Breanna, you should be able to speak. 
>> Okay, can everybody hear me? 
>> Mike Foddrill: You're coming through fine. 
>> I have quite a few questions and comments, which I've kind of been peppering through the Q&A throughout the whole meeting. But I think my biggest question as of right now is since a lot of those questions aren't being answered, and Katie has said that she's answering the questions that she knows the answer to. The implication there is she doubts know the answers to a lot of questions that we have been asking. So what happens to the questions that don't get answered on this Q&A?  Are they recorded somewhere?  Are they a part of public comment?  Like what happens to them?  Do they just disappear into the void after the meeting is done? 
>> Mike Foddrill: This is Mike, and we'll have a record of those, and that's something that we can certainly put maybe into either the minutes or the transcription because we're putting now in all of the meetings, you'll have a copy of the official minutes and there will be a link to the transcript as well. So we need to see the best place to put these, they're definitely something that we want to capture and get posted. So we need to see what the best method for those will be.
>> Okay, will they be answered? 
>> Mike Foddrill: I think we can look at addressing those. We'll have to address and look at each comment specifically and see if it's a question that can be addressed or if it's just a comment for SPIL feedback or something, but I think we could look at different ways of addressing those. We want to be as responsive and transparent as we can be. 
 
>> Mike Foddrill: Okay. Thanks, Breanna. And then Karen, I see your hand is up as well. And so I'm going to allow you to speak now. So Karen, you should be able to speak.
>> Hi, I'm Karen Willison. I have two questions and the first question, what are the SILS in general doing to promote getting people who need attendant care onto the consumer directives. I have it, but it seems that nobody knows about it. And I'm not sure why it's not being promoted to the community. That's my first question.  
>> Mike Foddrill: That's a good question, and that's something, Karen, that probably each CIL would want to respond. Because each SPIL could determine how to do that in their community. If you have questions for a like a specific CIL or region to reach out to them directly. And if you go to the website under the centers tab, there's a map of Indiana and it will give contact fox.
>> It was more of a general question because as far as I know, it's a general question. The other question that I had is, how are the service areas determined for the CILs?  And is it possible for the new ones to be addressed with their specific needs?  Is it possible to add more?
>> Kacie Weldy: So the CILs are created and their funding comes from the federal government and there's a mix of things that plan. And those areas have been set up in basically ‑‑ I don't have all of the details on this specifically, but basically, from what I understand, these areas have been setup, and until honestly at this point, until all.
centers that we currently have are fully funded, there's a minimal chance of a new center being added and at this time, not ail.
centers are funded. So that's where the funding that comes in would be distributed from federal and state dollars that impact us. So we can basically ‑‑ its going to have to be a lot of changes and a lot of different things, and that's why as advocates, we have to make those changes. It's not a good answer, but it's kind of where we're at. And to be honest, I do not have the strong background to truly explain that to all of you, and that's why I would rather talk to you one‑on‑one and get someone that has a little bit more knowledge about that that could give you a better explanation on it.
>> Thank you, I appreciate it.
 
>> Mike Foddrill: And Kacie, that would be the end of our 15‑minute time. But if you have comments, it's great to see so many people today. If you have comments that are not addressed, there's a leave comments on the website. And that will come to me and to Katie and we'll make sure that we get that addressed or email me directly, had MFodrill@IndianaSILC.org and that's on the website too, and the executive committee posted as well. So if you have comments that I haven't addressed or you think of after this meeting, please reach out to us because we would love to continue the dialogue and answer the questions. 
>> Kacie Weldy: This is Kacie, and I am going to call on Chris because I think she may have the answer to that question. 
>> Chris Spinks: This is Chris, and I don't have a direct answer, but she can call all of the centers in the state for information and referral. And we can help you over the phone if it's an application issue or help direct you to the right places to help you, and we're limited on how much we can do by our funding but we do everything that we can for unserved counties. the center for Independent Living, if you give us a call, I can talk to you directly, and we can talk about it more, but I would love to hear from you. I can give you my phone number if you like for work. 

>> Kacie Weldy: This is Kacie, and Karen, you're muted at this time.
>> You can do that and send it to me private message. Thank you. 
>> Kacie Weldy: All right. So Mike, since we're done with the 15‑minute period, we'll move on. So at this point, we need to have a motion to adjourn. I think there's nothing else with the meeting, so we need a motion to adjourn, and we'll wrap up for today. Again, if there are any other comments, please, please, please, you can go to the website or you can email Mike as director, or E mail myself as the chair. 
>> Mike Foddrill: If we don't have a motion, we have to all stay O.
>> Jennifer David: I make a motion to end the meeting. 
>> This is Luis, I second that. 
>> Kacie Weldy: Thank you, so one last roll call. Since we have to do roll calls for bylaws and so forth. So Luis. 
[ roll call taken ].
>> Thank you all, we appreciate you coming here, and please reach out if you have questions and so forth. Have a great week, and we'll see everybody again in September.  
>> Mike Foddrill: All right, thank you, everybody Foddrill