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Jennifer Gruber, founder of the Norfolk Safety Advocacy Group, emphasizes the importance of citizens coming together to address public safety concerns. She encourages attending meetings at the city and state level and sharing information with each other. She highlights upcoming meetings, including the city council, school board, and housing sessions. She also discusses the upcoming Engage Norfolk event and the importance of voter engagement in the upcoming elections. She announces the appointment of Dr. Regina Brizgoni as the group's volunteer director of research. Lastly, she mentions upcoming meetings featuring a DEA representative discussing the dangers of drugs and a presentation from the chief magistrate of the region. My name is Jennifer Gruber. I'm the founder of the Norfolk Safety Advocacy Group. Please sign in if you have not done so. The mission of our group, the Norfolk Safety Advocacy Group, is to connect Norfolk residents together as we share our public safety concerns. As we learn more about what leads to crime, how the criminal justice system works, and what we can do to protect our communities and our families, we become more empowered. We seek to become more informed by attending meetings at our city and state level. Since there just isn't enough time for one person to attend all the different meetings, my hope is that each of us can work together to maybe go to one or two meetings a month and then share that information with each other, and then we can share that summary with each other. So the more engaged that we are as citizens, the healthier that our city will be. So speaking of being engaged, I would just like to take two minutes to recognize Mr. Bilal Mohamed for coming to this meeting. He has been a leader for a very long time. I feel humbled. I feel like you should be leading the meeting, and I'm really grateful that you're joining us, and I hope that if you have any thoughts or direction that you'll feel free to share it with us. So I am going to sort of what we do at every meeting is we share meetings that are coming up in the city so that people know what's going on. That's part of our energy. So the city council meeting will be holding a meeting, I think actually they're holding one tonight, but the following Wednesday evening is February 14th, 28th, March 4th, and March 28th. If you want to speak, you have to sign up in advance. You can also send comments via e-mail. The Norfolk School Board will hold business meetings at 7 o'clock on the following Wednesdays, February 14th, and March 20th. In addition, the superintendent of the Norfolk Public Schools will present her budget on Wednesday, February 7th at 4 p.m. So all meetings are held at the Norfolk Administration Building, and you can sign up in advance to speak or you can go early and sign up. On Wednesday, January 31st, from 1.30 p.m. to 3.30 p.m., the Virginia Department of Housing and Community Development will be holding an input session for affordable and special needs housing in Newport News at the Grissom Library. The Hampton Roads Planning District Commission Regional Housing Assessment Working Group, which has a lot of big players from City Council, and I saw a delegate on that board, and a lot of people with funding, like private entities. There are a lot of people on that commission, so I listened to it online. I hope to go to this meeting. They're having a meeting on Tuesday, January 30th from 12 to 1.30 p.m. in Chesapeake to discuss affordable and workforce housing needs for the Tidewater area. On Saturday, February 3rd, from 9.30 a.m. to 12.30 p.m. at the Scope, the Engage Norfolk Yearly Event will be held. This is a wonderful opportunity for groups such as ours to connect with citizens and also for us to learn about other groups. So I did reserve a table. My Sabbath is on Saturday, so I can't man or woman the table, but I'm hoping that maybe some people in our group would be willing to volunteer to help run the table from 9.30 to 12.30, so see me after. Hi, I'm Candace Ferguson. Regarding elections, the first day of in-person, because we talk about becoming involved, right? So elections are really important. We have to learn about the candidates. We have to at least try to be engaged. So that's why we always also share about when the elections are and who we're voting for. The first day of in-person voting for the primary election will be Friday, May 3rd, 2024. The actual primary election day is Tuesday, June 18th. The election itself, I guess the big election after the primary is November 5th. So in addition to this being a presidential election, the following local positions, like local is very important, local positions are going to be voted on. Norfolk School Board Ward 5, Norfolk School Board Ward 6, Dr. Noel Gabriel is the incumbent, and Ward 7, Rodney Jordan is the incumbent. Other local positions up for election include the mayor's office. There's incumbent, Dr. Kenneth Alexander, who's running against, and he has Tommy Lehman running against him. And then Super Ward 6, Andrew McClellan, and Super Ward 7, Danica Royster. So speaking of elections, I'm very thankful to share that the Norfolk Safety Advocacy Group has voted to install Dr. Regina Brizgoni of Norfolk State University to become our volunteer director of research. She was sad she couldn't come since she's teaching a class. On Wednesday, February 7th, we're also having our meetings coming up for our group. So we have our next meeting is Wednesday, February 7th from 630 to 8 p.m. A drug enforcement agency representative, we have a special agent coming, as well as the Norfolk supervisor of our area coming to talk about how one pill can kill. And he shared with me how he would talk to his own children and grandchildren. He told me that, like I said, what advice would you give me as a mom? He's like, well, tell your children if you get something from another child, even if it's your older sibling, if they tell you it's safe, it's okay. He said I should always have them, like, have it checked by their parents, and they shouldn't take things from other children, because the older child might think it's fine or think it's funny and get it from someone else. So they're going to give a very thorough, excellent presentation. They're going to also talk about fentanyl, and it's a very wide-ranging presentation, and I think it's going to be really informative. That's going to take place at the Park Place Multi-Services Center. On Thursday, February 8th from 3 to 4, we're going to have a presentation from the chief magistrate of our region. So it's Region 7, and he's the chief magistrate of the 4th Judicial District. And the magistrates have a lot of power. My understanding is it's a nonviolent crime. It doesn't actually go, maybe, to a judge at first. It goes to a magistrate who decides if they get bail or not, what happens. And I think it's important to know and understand how it works, like, you know, who's looking over them, what processes do they follow, how do they get appointed. For instance, they don't need to be a lawyer or a judge to become... Yeah, which may be fine, but it's just good to know. So he's going to come, and I think they're probably very, you know, expert, I still don't understand what they do. That's going to be held at the Chrysler Museum, which should be great. That's the end of my opening remarks. So I'm going to briefly introduce our wonderful speakers.
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