Orange County NC Website
Delores Bailey: Right. And along that same line, in the group that you selected the ones that you just 150 <br />mentioned, did you have a breakdown of how many African Americans, how many Hispanics? I know that she 151 <br />mentioned that there was whole session done in Spanish. And were there any takers to that or – 152 <br /> 153 <br />Leigh Anne King: No. So, you know, there was a fair amount of effort that went into making it accessible 154 <br />and reaching out to different organizations and contacts that represent those communities within Orange 155 <br />County, and I think that's one thing that we really want to improve upon for the second round of engagement is 156 <br />to make sure that we don't just kind of provide the opportunity, but we're actually engaging with those 157 <br />community members. So, I think we're ready and know how to do that, we just have to make sure that we are 158 <br />going to be able to engage with them directly. And we have some ideas for how we can do that better in the 159 <br />second round of engagement. 160 <br /> 161 <br />Chris Johnston: I want to go back to the DEI database that you were talking about. You sent out 162 <br />messages to 70 orgs and 100 direct outreaches, what was the response rate on that? In terms of how many 163 <br />people actually replied back to your outreach? 164 <br /> 165 <br />Leigh Anne King: So, some of the outreach was just more informational to let them know. I think the 70 plus 166 <br />was, “these community meetings are happening in January. Here's the time and location. We encourage you 167 <br />to attend. Please make your networks aware that this is an opportunity.” We also publicized that the gift cards 168 <br />were going to be available as kind of an incentive to attend. For the direct reach contacts, there was some 169 <br />level of response as part of that. So, Tate Consulting that worked on the team, they were directly emailing and 170 <br />calling different contacts as part of that work. I don't want to speak on behalf of them, but I think what I would 171 <br />characterize my understanding of that experience is that they didn't receive as much response as they had 172 <br />hoped to. You don't always get everyone on the phone when you make the first call. And so, I think there's 173 <br />some work to be done to kind of make land use planning important to these groups and organizations, and 174 <br />help them understand why it’s important to be participating in this process. So that's another part of our 175 <br />charge moving forward. 176 <br /> 177 <br />Chris Johnston: In the public workshops and that sort of thing, how many repeat people came to those 178 <br />meetings? Did you have a lot of people who were there for Meeting 1, 2, and 3? 179 <br /> 180 <br />Leigh Anne King: We did have some folks. I don't think that we have an accurate counting of that 181 <br />necessarily. I would say not the majority of people. The majority of people from meeting to meeting were new. 182 <br />But there were some that were repeat. I think there were some that actually attended every meeting. 183 <br /> 184 <br />Chris Johnston: And at the end of all this, if we go through and we don't have the representation that 185 <br />matches the County or whatever the case may be, what's the end outcome there? 186 <br /> 187 <br />Leigh Anne King: Well, that's why you have the Strategic Plan Survey because that is, that's the one you 188 <br />can kind of hang your hat on in terms of representation across the community. That's the one that really did 189 <br />look closely at making sure that all communities were represented in the data. I'm sure you're probably aware 190 <br />of this, this is a challenge that most communities face, to get harder-to-reach communities that maybe 191 <br />historically haven't been involved or haven't been asked to be involved in engagement processes. It's harder 192 <br />to connect with them. So again, I think we're coming up with some different ideas for how we can do that 193 <br />better in the second round. 194 <br /> 195 <br />Chris Johnston: I guess I just come back to the question of there seems to be a sub-vendor who's entire 196 <br />purpose is to make sure that we have this kind of outreach and it just doesn't seem to be happening quite yet. 197 <br />And so, I don't know what that deliverable looks like. It's a problem across the board. But what are next steps 198 <br />9