2026-10-14 - Youth Commission

Hello, today is Wednesday, October 14, 2026. We are here with the Youth Commission members. Starting off our first official meeting of the 2026-2027 term. My name is Jordan Perry. I'm one of the staff

liaisons here at the City of Rockville with the Youth Commission. Melinda Norton, also staff liaison. We have our commission members here. I'm going to allow everyone to re-introduce themselves for

the public so you guys can know who they are. We'll start over here. So, Cora O.K.K. I'm a senior at Woodin High School. Alan Gitch, a senior at Richard Montgomery High School. Halle M. Ron, sophomore

at Woodin. Anusha Murchin, eighth grader at Robert Frost. Albert Lee, a junior at Rockville High School. William Brine, a senior at Richard Montgomery. Christina Muse, a senior at Richard Montgomery.

Catherine Buxa, a senior at Woodin. Elijah Notus, sophomore at Richard Montgomery. Mrs. Strader, freshman at Elder Johnson. Great, so now we'll review the agenda. So, we'll have our community forum.

Then we'll approve the minutes of the previous meeting. Then we'll do staff liaison report, council liaison report, chair and vice chair, nomination and voting. Then we'll talk about our term goals

and discussion. And then we'll talk about our opportunities for participation in our upcoming. And then discuss some partnership proposals we have received, have any older new business, and then

adjourn. Great, so community forum is typically what we have for individuals to come speak to the youth commission from the community. Today we do not have anyone, but it is an opportunity for people

from the community to come and speak. That could be your SGA, it could be your friends, it could be your principal's computer teacher. It's really anyone from the community, from the public that would

like to come out and speak to you guys directly. Okay, next we will move into approval of the minutes from the previous meeting. Some of you were not here during that time. We do have a couple

commission members that were present during that time. So just take a few minutes to review those minutes. If there are any edits that need to be made, let us know. If there is no edits, then we will

move to approve the minutes. Our last name is just filled up, but I'm going to have a second time. I'm going to be so sorry. It's like a worry. I just never know if this will say something. You've got

to please say something. Okay. To me, the letters should be reversed. I'm so sorry. I will fix that. Anybody else? I'm so sorry. Anybody else see any issues? And so how it works when we have to

approve your vote on something is that first we have to ask for a motion. So I need a motion to approve the minutes of the previous meeting with the correction of captain's last name. Motion. So it's

been moved and seconded to approve the minutes of the previous meeting with the one correction. All in favor. Anybody opposed. Minutes have been approved. Being opposed to that. Never happened, but it

could never know. Next we have the staff liaison report. So during this section, typically Melinda and I kind of give you guys a report of what's going on in the city. So start, we have our annual

antique car show this Saturday. I believe it starts at 11 a.m. And it goes until 4 p.m. Melinda has a wonderful event right after. It's from six to eight for families, kids. Very fun event. Yes, it

is. So that's all being done in the Civic Center Park area. The car show is just in the kind of the grass area near the social hall. And then Melinda is at the Nature Center. Next Friday, we have a

hollow teen haunted carnival event for middle school students grade six through eight. That's one of the three events that the city offers to middle school students. We typically last year was our

first time offering that free event. We had about 150 kids. Right now we have 89 people that have RSVP. We are going out to the schools next week to kind of advertise that event. So hopefully we'll

get more. So if you guys are able to come to that event, that would be a great opportunity for you guys to speak to the youth directly and kind of gauge what their ideas are and see how things are

going and what you guys can do as you commit just to support them. Let's see what else is going on. We're currently working on budgets. So there'll be more details to come as Jordan and I work on

development of youth programming. So we'll give you updates on that. But our first meetings are this week. So that's happening as well. So it's for the FY 28 fiscal year, which begins in July of

twenty twenty seven. So Rockville works on a fiscal year. So it goes to July one to June 30th. So instead of a calendar year, we use that fiscal year. So we're developing four things that will happen

starting next July. The thing to add on Tuesday and Monday, we had our first youth well-being meeting with community partners around the city of Rockville. So we had a representative from Turnburg

Elementary. They had a resident elementary, rich Montgomery, Rockville High School. Some community partners from Montgomery County Public Schools that work in the central office. We had a reverend

there and then we had some of the directors in the city of Rockville. So our human resources director, our assistant city manager, assistant city manager. We had a representative from our finance

team. Of course, the rec and parks team was there programmers, center supervisors. It was really just a kick off to kind of put the framework of what our goals are to support the youth. So our goal is

to kind of work with school partners, community organizations to kind of build a platform to support the youth in your well-being. We would definitely like to have you guys at the table at some point

right now. We don't know when that will be and what our next steps are. But I do want to get that on your radar because this may come up within the year that you guys are with us. I think that is it.

That's all right. Next on the agenda is usually our council member liaison. She typically gives a report based off of what's going on with the mayor and council itself. She is not here at the moment.

I'm not sure if she will be here today, but hopefully she will see her soon within your term. OK, now we will be voting on the chair and the vice chair. So how this works is that first you either can

nominate yourself or nominate someone else. Then the people that are nominees will kind of talk to you about why they want to be on the chair or the vice chair. And then we'll do a vote. And they have

any paper that starts or is a bit. For chair, Alan, I nominate myself running for chair for chair. Anybody else interested in being the chairperson? So you don't have to vote. Congratulations, Alan.

You will be in the chair. Because I will have to do nominations for vice chair. I nominate myself for vice chair. Anybody else interested? That was super easy. Congratulations. Exactly. Done and done.

So I will give you guys this. This is kind of to help you run the meetings and give you some pointers to look at. We'll definitely assist you during the process. If you have any questions during it,

just let us know. It's your first time possibly running a meeting. So just let us know along the way. OK. All right, Alan. Show is yours. The next action item on our agenda for today are the terms and

goals discussion. I know we talked about some of this at the meeting group. But for some of our new members or like some of our returning members that could attend last meeting, anyone could share

what goals they want to focus on for this year and what we should tackle first. I think we definitely want to continue town halls and hopefully making those small three community centers. And then for

tackling first, I'd really like to put you on our social media, just kind of up and running. Get a framework for that with an approval process of how we want to go about posting things. And then I'd

be like, I need the commission. We got approval for it, right? I'm sorry. The Instagram account? Yes, the account was great, yes. So that'll probably be an action item on our next agenda. This one was

mostly focused on just getting you guys appointed and then kind of going over some things that happened in the previous commission members term and things that have happened during that kind of recess

period. And then once we get off this, after we finish this meeting, we'll move into more of those detail and things. And I think at the meeting, we mentioned Silcon pointing a marketing coordinator.

And you guys can approve whoever that may be. There's no stipulations on anyone's grades or anything like anyone can do it. You guys will just have to nominate that one person. All marketing

communication will go through that person. That person will talk directly to Melinda. And then we'll run that chain, whoever we need to run it through. And then it'll be posted, yes. Do we know

anything now? I don't think it needs to be an official vote or anything to be Jordan. It doesn't have to be. I think it's just that, like, who would, like, are there, is there more than who would be

interested in helping with the marketing? Oh, the core is really good. I think it's just, I think we should just set up a small committee of people that are interested and then do it that way. So that

should be definitely one of our goals. Yeah, absolutely. Setting that up and getting that going is so cool. Because you're starting to scratch. So it's like you're building it. Last year, last term's

goal was to get it. They got it. Now this term's goal is, one of the goals could be just put together and get it out there. I know at the meet and greet that we briefly discussed the town hall at

Frombrook. I know you were kind of the lead on that. I don't know if you want to share a little bit more to the group that was not a part of it. I know exactly what you guys did. And then to set the

stage for the next groups or forming the groups that do LinkedIn Park Community Center and Thomas Farm Community Center. Yeah. A big thing last year was when you realized that there was kind of a gap

in programming and that there wasn't much being offered in the middle for high schoolers. So we attempted to have three town halls at each of the community centers, which was LinkedIn Park, Twinbrook,

and Thomas Farm. We ended up only doing the Twinbrook Run, and we're all going to do the other two this year. But we had three subcommittees, and it was a really big success. We had council members

come. We had about 50 kids, and we just had it on a Friday night. We had Carmen's come. We had people playing basketball, building arts, people doing coding. And we made kind of an interactive

scavenger hunt where people were able to put in feedbacks kind of on what the city was doing, and we wanted to see more of -- we had a lot of responses seeing more stuff focused on mental health. We

had boards, basically, and there would be boards set out like whatever question. There was only five options. People had little tokens over at the scavenger hunt, and they put them on that part of the

board. So it's kind of like an easy way to do it. And then we were able to get feedback that way, which is pretty cool. The boards are actually in this building, stored in storage. So if you guys want

to check it out, I can show you after the meeting. So I do know there was some of you that was a part of the Lincoln Park and Thomas Farm group. Who was in -- who was a part of which group? I was the

head for the Lincoln Park one. Okay. I was in Thomas Farm. Thomas Farm. Okay. So amongst the ones that are new to the commission, I guess I will leave it up to you guys to decide which group you want

to be a part of. But that will be one of our goals this year. This term is to complete those two town halls. And I'm going to give you an example. I'm going to give you an example. I'm going to give

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I'm going to give you an example. I'm going to give you an example. I'm going to give you an example. I'm going to give you an example. Yes. So it would be kind of the youth commission trying to lobby

your SGA. We don't really have control over what happens in the schools, but we can, you know, one of the points, I think, the youth commission is to have, because the youth commission behind you

would try to get things done, I guess. Is there a sponsor group? I had a little group. It was also the SGA sponsor group. I'm not sure that we can, like, see it up front. Is there a way that for,

like, the next meeting, they have an action feedback agenda? Yeah, I can provide the survey responses. Yeah, I can provide that for you guys. All right. Anyone else want to share their ideas? Thanks.

About what you last said about the fact that we have the information, we just need to use it. Maybe we could use the town halls to kind of, like, try things out and see what is, like, popular. Like,

we take, like, the biggest ideas and, like, do things for something. And we should get sports equipment. Mm-hmm. For the elementary schools. Mm-hmm. For the kids. And we're really at, when I was in

elementary school, being quick in the middle was, like, sometimes kind of, like, worn out, and then you would be, like, "What do you have in front of you today?" This is, like, working with something

like that. And they got rid of all the goals at the elementary schools, and that's what they're saying on the city notes. They're like, "We want to have sophomores."