City Council — February 10, 2026

City Council meeting for February

Thank you. And Assistant Scoutmaster Brett Chandler. Jace Ashbrook. Gyro Watto. Owen Sam. Tracey Matthews? and their service project participation, flag placement at Barsdale Cemetery in May, Memorial Day Barsdale Cemetery in May, presentation of colors at the alumni dinner in June, coastal cleanup in September, presentation of colors at Blue and White Night Parade in November, volunteer Lions Club enchilada dinner in November.

Veterans Day Parade in November, Lions Club Christmas Parade in December and collect discarded flags for formal flag retirement throughout the year. Group has been a member of the community for 76 years. Thank you guys for your service to our community. You guys line up in the front and we'll take a picture? Do you guys mind if we move?

Let's get the submissions. Cubs in the front, cubs in the front? Move up in the front, yeah move in the front. I'll

slip behind you and get on the other side here.

this way.

Okay guys, go back to your seats.

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Moving on to item 5C, proclamation honoring Black History Month. Whereas black history month is observed each February to recognize and celebrate the significant contributions, achievements and resilience of African Americans throughout United States history. And whereas African Americans have placed a vital role in shaping social cultural economic political and civic Foundations of our nation, often in the face of systemic inequalities and injustice. And whereas the legacy of African Americans leaders, innovators, educators, artists, activists and public servants continue to inspire progress towards equality justice and opportunity for all. And whereas Black History Month provides an opportunity to reflect on our shared history, acknowledge past injustices and recommit ourselves to fostering inclusion, equity and mutual respect within our communities.

And whereas the City of Fillmore values diversity and recognizes that honoring black history strengthens community understanding, civic engagement and unity. Now therefore I Albert Mendez Mayor of the City of Fillmore do hereby proclaim February 2026 as Black History Month in the City of Fillmore Be it further resolved that the City of Fillmore encourages residents, schools, businesses and community organizations to observe Black History Month through education, reflection and celebration of the many contributions African Americans have made and continue to make to our nation and local communities.

Mayor, if I could. One of the things that I think I've noticed is that other communities also have a celebration for Juneteenth and I would like to see if we couldn't explore doing something as well since we are having more black residents in the town and I think that would be appropriate.

Thank you. Moving on to item number 5D, presentation on human trafficking awareness.

Sorry, let me just get this queued up. Thank you for having me back, by the way. I started my patrol career here in Fillmore so it's a lot like coming home. It feels good. Okay, so my name is Detective Jamal Obey. I'm with the Ventura County Sheriff's Office and I am the coordinator for the Ventura County Human Trafficking Task Force. So we're going to have a little technical difficulties. We'll just push on without it Okay, so I understand that I don't have a ton of time tonight So I'm just gonna kind of breeze through some of the unimportant things But if you guys do have any questions at the end we can revisit some of that stuff I don't know, can you guys all hear me? Sorry. Okay perfect.

So human trafficking is an issue it's been an issue for several years it was first recognized into law in the year 2000. It does occur here in Ventura County enough to the point where we had a Human Trafficking Task Force stand stood up here in 2019 So the task force itself is actually a collaboration of several agencies within the county that have a unique expertise in each of their fields. Particularly law enforcement, both local and federal. And then we have victim advocacy groups, social service providers, community partners, medical health professionals. And we all work collectively to confront human trafficking here in the county.

So at its definition, I know a lot of people when they hear human trafficking it is a buzzword nowadays and a lot of people see the sensationalized version of it in the movies and they think Taken and The Sound of Freedom things like that. But in reality human trafficking itself is legally defined as a person who deprives or violates the personal liberty of another with the intent to obtain forced labor or services.

Right, so it is not always that kidnapping situation where someone's being held against their will and being forced into. I just want to make sure all the kids are out into sex trafficking or labor trafficking So human trafficking itself is, there are two separate categories. There's the sex trafficking and then there is the labor trafficking. Now sex trafficking itself is a commercial sex act which is induced by forced fraud or coercion in which the person induced to perform such act has not attained 18 years of age and that is because that person has not gained the age of consent yet.

Now the Commercial Sex Act is defined as an exchange of something of value for illicit sex And that can be money, property, drugs, things of that nature. Labor trafficking itself is the recruitment, harboring, transportation provision or obtaining of a person for labor services through the use of force, fraud and coercion. That's exactly what it sounds like. But every case is independent and unique to that person, right? So it could be something as simple as coming into the country thinking that you're going to take on a babysitting job, like an au pair or something, and then being forced into excessive amount of labor with unfair pay.

So again, it is not always that take in Hollywood, Sound of Freedom situation. But by legal definition we're here and it's occurring in the county. So the theme between those two sex trafficking and labor trafficking is the forced fraud coercion. Right? So that is the mechanism of obtaining those services. So force of self is the physical harm, physical restraint or confinement. And that's what most people think of when they think of sex trafficking and labor trafficking, right? Being chained to a bed or being unfairly housed in an overcrowded dormitory, right? And being forced to work an excessive amount of hours.

Now fraud is the false promises of working living conditions, withholding promised wages and contract fraud. So that goes back to my example of an au pair that came over from another country and is now working and was told they were going to be doing something else and are now doing something else basically. Coercion is the most prominent one we deal with. On the law enforcement side, and that is the threat of serious harm or physical restraint against a person scheming planning or pattern intended to instill fear or serious harm or restraint or abuse or threatened abuse of legal process. Right? And so that last one is the big one right? That's the one that we deal with a lot. So a lot of people will come over with a visa of some sort to work in our country And then when they get here, they have a visa to work for a specific location.

And once they arrive that person now turns over their documents and feels like they can't come to the authorities for whatever reason and they are being exploited by that vulnerability. So the AMP model is something we came across with the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 which is when human trafficking became a law. And we teach this a lot to all of our partners within the task force. That includes the medical professionals and the victim advocacy groups.

So it is the action, the mean, and the purpose. Just like I was saying, it is any of these actions using that mechanism of forced fraud or coercion in order to obtain those illicit services. It's a little dated. The numbers are always a little skewed. However, I like showing this because it shows that it is not isolated to just California. This is a problem nationwide.

It is a huge problem. But if you look on the West Coast here we are between two large hot spots. So we're between LA and the San Francisco Bay. And they use, the traffickers will use the one-on-one corridor to traffic victims north and south up and down that corridor. And we are unfortunately on that corridor and we find our victims here. Also with this map, NASDAQ.

The human trafficking subculture, the unlawful nature of it has benefited at 400, I want to say $460 billion in the last year from trafficking people. So they're profiting as far as the labor trafficking skeezy goes. It's a very large business. We are a very small county but we're still being affected. So the victims themselves, adults, minors, foreign nationals, U.S. citizens, any gender identity, any demographic, any social network background, college students, master's degrees, doctorates, juveniles, right? Undocumented, documented, poverty, affluent, right?

The fact of the matter is there is no one category of victim, right? I've been doing this for a while and the only thing that I've seen more prevalent than the others is the trend of foster care youth and runaway youth as well as the kids in the STRTP programs at some of our homes. Right so it's those vulnerable populations.

Mayor if I may just ask a question on that acronym what does that stand for?

STRTP?

Yes.

I'm sorry, so it is... I'm sorry this is escaping me right now but they are state... what's that? No no no, so they're actually a youth population that has issues kind of conforming to socioeconomic norms and they are put into, whether it be like educational or on the law side. And they're getting basically placed into a state-run foster care. Part of the state-run system? Yes. Okay thank you. Sorry I'll look that up sorry about that but it is that vulnerable population that is getting exploited the most from what I've seen and that typically is from what I've seen The homes that have no parents or one parent, it's the kids that are constantly looking for something. Looking to fill a void and it seems like the traffickers are using that to kind of gain their trust and exploit them.

And the grooming and the recruitment. So these are some of the common tactics. Now, the traffickers themselves are very sophisticated in this grooming process I've seen usually is three to six months long. It's a long process and these are just some things they do. Now the educational and travel opportunities, that's something I touched on earlier with my example of the au pair.

So a lot of the third world countries or less affluent countries they'll be offered jobs in America for more money than they can make in a year over there. where whatever country they're coming from and They'll come over here, and they'll have those visas specifically to work at say a massage parlor right and they apply for this visa They'll come up here for the visa at the massage parlor and when they arrive They turn over all their documents their passports their visas things like that and now their trafficker Has a lot of leverage over them right and they're usually sold a lie of You're here illegally, you're here on this visa temporarily or whatever the case is and if you go to the authorities, the likelihood of you getting deported is pretty high.

So that is a form of coercion they'll use for some of these victims. The romantic tactic is exactly what it sounds like so people looking for love are also very vulnerable. And then there's false job ads which ties into travel opportunities Colts, we don't have an issue here in Ventura County but they do have them in L.A., which we work hand-in-hand with quite a bit.

The sale by family, we haven't had a ton of issues with but typically from what I've seen it's been dealing with People that are having addiction issues, and they will sell kids, nephews, nieces, things like that. Cousins. The gang involvement is very large in Los Angeles. So the gang culture in Los Angeles has found that it's very, very profitable to the tune of I think $236 billion in the last year to sell human beings.

And it's way more profitable than narcotics. It's actually the second most profitable commodity being sold in the world today. is human beings, because they don't have to go out and find narcotics and travel from country to country to bring these products here. And then they're only sold once, and then they can't be reused. Whereas they see human beings as this commodity that can be re-reused time and time again throughout the entire day until they're entirely worn up, unfortunately.

Now, the biggest one I save for last is social media itself. Social media is the frontier of Thank you. There's a generational gap, I guess I'll say. While most parents have an understanding of the internet and social apps they don't have a deep understanding like the kids do right? They're having just like any other subculture, the kids have a completely different vernacular right? They're using different words and languages and they're on different apps and it's very hard even for me, I'm 40 and I can't keep up with all the apps right?

As I do these interviews with the victims they're telling me about these new apps that are kind of popping up and I have no idea about them But it's very incumbent upon, I'll say parents themselves to stay active in their kids lives and be wary of what they're doing online. And that does extend to gaming platforms, I will say. So it's not just the social media, the Instagrams and TikToks and things of that nature but it also goes down to Roblox, yes. Yeah so the average age for a victim to get pulled into human trafficking is 12-14 is typically when it starts and they start grooming pretty young.

So sex trafficking in Ventura County. The porn industry is here, both formal and informal, legalized and illicit. The outdoor solicitation we don't typically deal with here in Ventura County, but it is very prominent in Los Angeles County. So the Figueroa Corridor is, especially here in Fillmore, it's probably 45 minutes from here and a lot of the youth that we, a lot of the youth victims that we have in Ventura County end up on the Figueroa Corridor unfortunately.

I like to think that Here in Ventura County, the residents themselves as a whole, we just don't have the stomach to see sex workers walking the street and not getting called. Notifying law enforcement and things like that. But in the event that it does start trickling over from Los Angeles County, it should be something that should be reported. Escort services are an underground subculture. It does occur in our hotels and motels, internet ads, and the nightclub district clubs.

It is an issue but it's something that we have a handle on right now and we're proactively working on it still. Residential. This does occur, residential brothels so as we as law enforcement continue to progress and get better at our job the more sophisticated criminals are also progressing and getting better right? So it's kind of this cat-and-mouse where as we get better they get better and they learn every time we make a substantial arrest right every time we make a noticeable arrest and we have You know, we have transparency with the public and we let them know how we arrested this person. And circumstances of the arrest, those criminals are also watching what we're doing and learning. So residential brothels are becoming a thing. Previously it was a commercial brothel, a commercial front brothel.

So massage parlors acting under the guise of being a massage parlor And things like that. I will say, in the last few years, Ventura County itself we did have, unfortunately we did have more massage parlors than Starbucks. But in the last few years, the task force has done a very good job. We've actually shut down at the tune of 40. So we have also got a pretty good handle on that too but obviously we're still doing our work.

And then the web and internet sexual acts, these do occur. They are a little more difficult to combat as far as law enforcement standpoint just because a lot of them happen on the dark web or under chat rooms and things that we don't have access to. So this is a video, I'm not going to play it but it's just a video we had set up. It's on a camera, it's a covert camera that we had setup in front of one of our suspected hotels that we thought we had some human trafficking occurring. The victim here is an adult so we just didn't watch.

Men come in and out of a juvenile's room, just so you guys are aware. But we let this run for 72 hours because we weren't sure what was actually occurring. So we put this truck out there and let this roll for 72 hours to gain more information, more intelligence on the criminal case. And in that 72 hours, we saw approximately 40 customers come in and out. Now, this victim was advertised on a website. So this is how we got her rates. So for the half hours they were $80 to $100 based off services or $120 to $150 based on hourly depending on services.

So the reason why this is happening, just like I said earlier that tune of $236 billion last year, this is occurring in Ventura County rain. So just the 72 hours alone on the low end if every customer went in for $80, this traffic would make $3,200. And then on the high end about $6,000. So it's a problem but Again, we're collectively as a collaboration and really confronting this.

Now indicators of commercial sex is usually typically what you would assume right? And inappropriately dressed brandings which also include tattoos. Typically they'll be of Monikers of their traffickers and things of that nature, usually money bags or cherries, high heels. Nothing that I'm expecting you guys to remember but these things are occurring right? The brandings that brands themselves sometimes depending on how bad the victims are treated. Sometimes they do get branded with like hot irons and things like that And then typically they'll be afraid of law enforcement and have large sums of cash that is inexplicable.

Multiple mobile devices, so they'll have a personal and then they'll have one that they use for their work which will have typically some kind of GPS monitoring because the world of sex driving has evolved just like modern era right? So they're now using Life 360 and all these same apps that we use to track our kids. I'm sorry, let me just touch on this last thing. The commercial sex industry verbiage. So just like the kids have with their very unique vernacular and verbiage when they're talking to each other online or in these other chat rooms, the commercial sex industry also has its own unique words and verbiage that they use.

So a lot of times when I do talk to other members of task force or conduct other trainings A victim will typically refer to their trafficker as their boyfriend, or their uncle, or some other male figure. So it kind of blurs the lines. But if you guys ever come across anything like that, or your kids ever come across anything like that where they're talking to someone and they say it's their uncle or something, it might be a flag.

Now labor trafficking. Labor trafficking itself is very difficult to investigate, just by the nature of the trafficking subculture. So typically it'll be with a migrant worker who's already afraid of dealing with law enforcement, particularly in this social climate and a lot of misinformation. So a lot of these workers will deal with housekeeping, traveling sales, agriculture, domestic work, restaurant food But again, there is a lot of misinformation in these fields.

There's inappropriate safety gear. So some of these are indicators, right? So if they're out and they're doing something because a lot of this stuff will be blue collar work so if they're working construction jobs and they don't have hard hats or they don''t have steel-toed boots or gloves or they're working with heavy machinery and they're not prepared, they're not equipped by their employers to do this that might be a sign, right? Because a lot of times these guys are trying to cut costs at any point. The excessive hours questionable pay just like I was telling you guys earlier about the au pair example And then the isolation, because they're trying to keep them away from us basically.

And then overcrowded or dangerous living conditions. Now these are just a few general indicators across the board for sex trafficking and labor trafficking. Just fearful resistance to assistance, non-control of their money, non control of their documents is really big. So if you guys do ever come across these or deal with healthcare providers in the city that think they've seen these signs, emergency-wise give us a call.

And that's just as simple as 911 letting dispatcher know that you think he was suspected of human trafficking. If it's not an emergency there is the number two interface which is our victim service provider or advocacy group And then if it is a minor, that Forever Found is strictly for minors. Now as far as the labor trafficking goes, like I was saying there's a lot of misinformation and a lot of the main coercive tactic that they will use is to threaten with the possibility of being deported. All right?

And I say this is a lot of misinformation because we have specific visas that we offer to victims that are here being trafficked. And there's the T visa, right? And that will afford somebody the opportunity to stay if they are identified as a trafficking victim and they'll be able to stay and we'll be able to still provide services for them so they're not getting deported immediately.

And this is something that I try to explain to a lot of people because it is a very good program and I think it's not being spoken a lot about and I think needs These are a few of the other services that we do provide, whether they get the TV's or not. Regardless of their status as being documented or undocumented but it does, we do provide translation. We have most languages covered and then as far as medical, dental, legal services, case management, child care getting them into shelters and safe houses these are all things that we can help with.

That's all I have to say unless you guys have any questions for me. Again, I'm Detective Jamal LaVey with the Sheriff's Office.

Great presentation, I really appreciate it. Thank you. I know that going back probably 15-20 years ago there was a huge effort in dispersing placards throughout retail businesses, restaurants, all sorts of locations and I don't see those as much anymore. The program was continued and I wondered if there were any plans to pass those out again? Information that was provided So the public or someone who was being trafficked would see that information and have a phone call, contact information for assistance and to get out of that trafficking situation.

Are those still being dispersed? And if not, should they be?

Absolutely and absolutely, right. So we are doing our best, right? We're coming up with new ideas all the time. We're trying to be innovative. We did talk to Panda Express so they put up pamphlets at their locations through the month of January which is the National Human Trafficking Awareness Month. We try to focus on major areas of transportation like bus stops, train stations The airport, so places where we think there are gonna be a large amount of transit, right? Because we're trying to prevent the victims getting transported over long distances.

Something like putting pamphlets out at smaller stores is something that we can look into. I think it's just something we're constantly looking for new ways to do things.

So are those placards or stickers, are they available for communities to obtain now and if so, I think that'd be something great that City of Fillmore could do You know, pick up a handful of them to post on various places throughout our own community. So are they available still?

I don't have any per se. We didn't distribute any small pamphlets this year or placards. We did work with the Suroptimist group and we helped put up that large billboard. I don t know if you guys saw it by the collection in Oxnard so that was something we did. Trying to get the best bang for our buck, right? Not to say that the small pamphlets or placards are not something great. It is something we can look at maybe next year.

Yeah, and they actually weren't pamphlets. They were stickers that were adhesive Okay, and you'd see them on bathroom walls public restroom in restrooms And I'm trying to remember if it was I think with a joint effort by the DA's office in the sheriff department That put those together

so the district attorney's office is one of the members of the of the task force We do work collectively with them yeah, so it may be something we can revisit for sure

Thank You

Thank you. I need to thank you, Detective LeBay. Thank you for your presentation is really, really important insightful and we need to keep spreading the word for these this really terrible problem that we have. So my question is was actually Councilmember Brogy similar question too about how can we spread the word more in our community but also For families and parents, we've had a couple of recent cases of high schoolers being trafficked, being groomed.

What would be if you were to tell a parent the top two or three things for To be aware of, to check in with. What would those be? So that's question number one and then question number two is this information that you provided. Is it available at a website or on social media and is it available in Spanish if there was just some sort of small video clip that we can direct people to for parents particularly to watch?

Absolutely, so I always want to do these speaking events. I usually tell parents to just be active and present in their children's lives Which I know is very difficult with teenagers right there constantly withdrawing and trying to be cool one right? So I get it but some of the signs will be Will be that withdrawal right but it will also include withdrawal from friends Right. And then when they're actively seeking or spending a ton of time online, which I know also is pretty typical of teenagers, right? But like I was saying it, I think it's incumbent upon parents to make sure you're aware of what they're doing online. Right. I know that a lot of the teenage victims that I do talk to once we rescue them they will have parent accounts.

All right so Go through their phone, right? I tell parents to try to foster a healthy relationship with their kids as far as being aware of what's on the internet and the dangers of the internet itself. Because I know years prior, it was like a catfishing thing where people don't present themselves as who they actually are online. But now, as things have evolved, kids are being coerced into traveling beyond county line and being coerced into doing things that they probably don't want to be doing. And then they're stuck out there.

It's kind of this spiral that we have to deal with So I would just say that the signs are there. They mimic a lot of the normal behavior that they're going to exhibit, so I think it's really just being active and present in their life and knowing their friend groups, knowing when there is a change in their friend group, knowing when they start withdrawing from their friends and figuring out why, right? Like whatever the catalyst is and the withdrawal and finding out if they're seeking that attention somewhere else, right? Whether it be a boyfriend or girlfriend or parent.

And then I'm sorry the second part

was... Sorry the second question was about a resource maybe a short video in Spanish educational for parents just sort of about the science but what

we do have pamphlets available and it is in English and Spanish. I can work with the captain and get some pamphlets here on the city of Fillmore but we do have plenty media

Thank you.

I had a question regarding, so you mentioned in part of your presentation by the way. Great presentation- Thank you. Thank you very timely. You mentioned in your presentation that foster youth in particular are very vulnerable to this kind of trafficking and I was just wondering if there's any kind of organized effort by your department or other departments to try to educate foster youth about the dangers of this kind of human trafficking?

Yes, a hundred percent. Because we have noticed that trend of particularly the vulnerable youth getting exploited but they're also it's kind of like a ball of clay right and I hate using the analogy but it's very difficult to get a grasp on because we are bound by the same laws that we vote for right and in these STRTP houses these state-run houses where the kids are The wards of the state, a lot of times they are in these facilities and in the facilities themselves they're still afforded a lot of freedoms. And they should be right? Like they're not in prison and they're not incarcerated but it brings a lot of problems right so in these facilities there aren't a lot about locked doors, they have access to their phones still And it presents a lot of issues, right?

So as these vulnerable youth are in the programs where they don't want to be and they're typically brought out of their own counties to get removed because that is usually a tactic that helps. In the past, that's how it would help if you remove them from the problem from whatever their troubled friend group is or whatever the case is and you bring them to let's say from Kern County to here. You kind of remove them from that environment. It typically would help in the past But now we're dealing with, like I said, that whole different frontier of the digital realm.

So instead of dealing with the physical friends wherever they were in Kern County, now they're making new friend groups online and there is no boundary. They could be meeting traffickers coming from Alabama or Tennessee. I had a case recently and I'm not going to get into this. Details of it, but I had a trafficker from Philadelphia reaching out to youth here in Ventura County.

So the digital frontier is boundless and you don't know what the predators are going to be doing on there because they are way more sophisticated than I think most people imagine. Almost go into the psyche of kind of figuring out which child or whichever prey they're going to deal with. And they do spend months and months and months grooming these kids, looking for these kids.

I've talked to a trafficker where he told me he sends out 100 messages a day. And he told me he's looking for one reply. It is scary, right? Just the digital realm. So again as long as people are being active and stuff.

So kind of follow-up question so that I used to be on the school board and one of the things that I guess that it sounds like would be helpful is some kind of a curriculum for the appropriately aged students that would be targeted that may be educating the staff. Is something like that in the works or do you have something like that for our public schools?

I have never breached that topic. I think it comes with a lot of nuances and issues, right? Like it is a public school. It's obviously very sensitive. Exactly right. Just the sensitive nature of trafficking itself whether it be sex or labor trafficking in a public school district, it's very difficult to breach that topic as far as what can be said and what parents feel comfortable with their kids are being exposed to.

So yeah. Thank you so much. Absolutely, thank you.

Moving on to item 5E update on communications engagement and community outreach

Hello, good evening Mayor, City Council and staff. My name is Angel Garcia for the record and I'm your city senior management analyst and I'm going to be presenting to you an update on our recent growth in communications. So I want to go over first the overview of the metrics of our various forms of social media as also the forms of outreach and also analyzing the data and explaining what this data means.

So to begin with, I want to start off with Facebook. Our Facebook has been experiencing some very steady and healthy growth on the date range of the data right here is when I first started here in the city of Fillmore in the month of July all the way up to January 2028. So as you can see, we had a net increase of 287 new followers. The total followers that we have to as of January 28th were 3,527 so there's a good chance that our followers have increased since then and A lot of the content that we have posted actually nets new followers. So as you can see, 55.1% of the new followers that we have gotten have been from our videos. So it seems that our audience really likes the videos that the city posts which gains much more followers. Same thing with just Posting much more frequently, as you can see 44.4% come from posts so that includes pictures and the flyers and just the updates that we the city share.

And of course 0.5% from stories. Facebook isn't really well known for its stories. You don't really see much engagement on there but as you can see we might have gotten maybe a follower or so if someone has shared it. on their story. of the post coming up on their feed over 400,000 which is a net increase of 197%. That is a very healthy increase for the City of Fillmore and helps us in our outreach. And as you can see with interactions that means the likes, the comments, the sharing that's really good an increase of 159% Moving on, here's some data that comes from Meta that kind of shares the demographics and the cities in which our followers are from. So as you can see majority of our followers are from the city of Fillmore and the date range of this data is a lifetime so this is upon the creation of the page until now.

So as you can see majority of our followers are from the city of Fillmore but of course we also have some fans from the city of Santa Paula, Ventura, Oxford, Piru and even LA! They really like the stuff that we're putting up in LA. As you can see, we're very popular amongst the age range of 35 to 44. It represents about 31%, and under that are the other ages in which that were popular with. As you can see fairly low when it comes to between the ages of 18-24.

Mostly around that age range, you'll probably see them on other platforms such as Instagram or maybe even TikTok. So as you can see the Facebook doesn't get much engagement from that age group but at the medium-age it's known for that community gathering and information as that. But as you can see a lot of our followers mostly are women so fellas if you're listening to this we gotta you got to get to know what the City of Fillmore is doing so please help us in sharing that information amongst the gentlemen here in the city And diving deeper into the Facebook metrics, as you can see this is engagement through our content type. So this data range is from July up to January and as you can see we have a very good increase of interactions 159 percent.

Here's a breakdown of them on the left you can see with reactions around 5,000 comments for 160 and shares 493 that is a really good number to have that means that our residents community members and orgs are sharing our content and which is extending our reach which is really good and as you can see we can see the breakdown of where the content and that engagement comes from, which is from followers and non-followers. So even if you're not seeing high engagement from followers, that engagement from non-followers is good. That means that folks say if a friend or family member is sharing that content and it's coming up on their feed and they're engaging with it, that's good. That can turn a non-follower into a follower And especially if it's a neighbor from Fillmore that's sharing it and a neighbor that doesn't follow the City of Fillmore on our socials, that can change them into a follower.

So that's actually a really good number to have amongst non-followers. And as you can see, the highest reactions 85.1%. That's really good. That means they see our content and they're liking it and they're commenting on it. Also, as you can see, the Reels have been in a very effective form of outreach when it comes to Facebook. 39.7%. Can

I ask Angel a question?

Yes.

Thank you. Angel, back on the last one what would...I know it says other but do we have an indication of what other is?

That's a great question. I wish MEDA would define that. I assume that could mean maybe if something was re-shared. It doesn't really describe that but that's a percentage. I had that same question as well. Now for Instagram. When looking at the data with Instagram, I was very surprised in posting on Instagram and I constantly see the increase in engagement and followers but once I started looking at the data in preparation for this presentation, I was impressed.