Commissioners Court - Regular Meeting

Good morning. Welcome to commissioner's court meeting on Tuesday, 04/28/2026. Commissioner Calvert, I believe you have the opening prayer with, father Jimmy and the pledge of allegiance. And I believe, commissioner Calvert, you are present. I will yield the floor to you.

You so much judge. We unfortunately had a little mishap with father Jimmy, but we are so fortunate to have a lifelong friend, Reverend Deborah Seward, is our MLK chair and also the community engagement coordinator for the San Antonio archive, African American archive and museum. Reverend Seward is a proud alum of Highland University, excuse me, of Highlands High School. She dedicated thirteen years of service as a paraprofessional in the special education department at the San Antonio Independent School District. She holds certifications in early childhood education from San Antonio College and lay ministry and and pastoral studies from the Oblak School of Theology.

Her divine calling led her to becoming licensed in ministry on January 2037 And she is married to Reverend Butch Seward, mother to one biological daughter and affectionately known as mom to many, including myself who because I've known her since I was literally a child. She she looks the same. She hasn't aged a day. Her heart beats for service as evidenced by her dedication to community engagement, event coordination and volunteer support for the San Antonio African American Archive and Museum. Beyond her work at the museum, she also actively contributes to our community.

As I said, she is our MLK March chair. Reverend Seward, if all would rise in the Commissioner's Court, you have the floor, Reverend Seward, for our prayer.

Shall we pray? Father God, we thank you, Lord, for this day. We thank you for everything that you've done in our lives. Lord, and we don't take it for granted because blessings come from you, and we're so grateful. Lord, I wanna ask a special blessing on our commissioners today.

Lord, I ask that you guide them and lead them as they lead this city and throughout. Lord, I ask for blessing on their staffers as they continue to support the leadership. Lord, and I ask a rich blessing on the city of San Antonio and Bexar County and the surrounding cities. Lord, we need you more than anything today and beyond. Lord, our future lay in your hands, and we cannot do anything without you.

Lord, we thank you for this very moment. We thank you for everything that you will continue to do as we work, Lord, to serve this community. Lord, let us do it with truth, honesty, and with love. Lord, we thank you for everything that will happen in today's session. Lord, and I pray your richest blessings on all the proceedings. Thank you so much, Lord, that you continue to love us the way that you do. And it is in Jesus' name that I asked and I pray and I believe. Amen. Amen.

Thank you, Reverend Stewart. If everyone would turn towards the flag and repeat the pledge of allegiance. Pledge allegiance to the flag of The United States Of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Thank you, commissioner Calvert. We'll take up agenda item three, request of commissioner to identify items from consent agenda for additional discussion, approve remaining consent agenda items. Commissioner Clay Flores?

Can you come back to me, please?

Alright. Commissioner Rodriguez will shortly be here. Commissioner Moody? I don't have it. Commissioner Calvert?

No items, judge. Thank you.

I'm back to you, commissioner.

Nothing equaled, judge.

Alright. Okay. Is there a motion?

Move for approval.

Motion by commissioner Clay Flores. Second. Second by commissioner Moody. Any further discussion? Hearing none. All those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries. Let me see that I believe there might be some citizens to be heard. I need in in regards to consent. Let me have those right now, please.

Alright. Which one are random?

One are random?

These right here. Okay. These are right here.

Mhmm. Which one are consent? This one.

Right here. These

are. Okay.

It doesn't have one. Alright. I'm trying to accommodate those that had signed up for consent. As you just heard, the entire consent agenda has been approved. All those matters of consent are now been passed by unanimous vote of the court. However, in order to accommodate and as a professional courtesy, I want those that signed up if you still wish to speak. I will I have agenda item 52. I have a one, two, three, four, five, six, seven people. 52 has been passed at this time. I will call your name out.

If you wish to speak, you have three minutes. If you wish to wave, I certainly understand. First one will be Jim Burke. Do you wish to speak? This is agenda item 52.

I'm representing mister Burke and and the other folks that signed up for item number 52. So mister Burke had signed up to make a presentation when the item 52 came up. But if no presentation I'm

donating my time to Rob Alright. Rob Killen, you have three Judge. Actually, you got six minutes with him yielding.

No. No. I I actually signed up for for myself as well to speak on this for item 52 with Syrian Citizens. I got mister Burke and the other speakers on item 52. Really, he's here. Mister Burke is here to answer questions about the item. But if you'd like me to speak under my son, if I can do that right now.

Proceed.

So thank you, judge Skye, commissioners. My name is Rob Killen. I'm an attorney of law firm of Killen Griffin and Fairmont. Our address is 10101 Union Place in San Antonio here on behalf of mister Burke. Mister Burke is here today to make a donation to Bexar County in the amount of $2,175,000. That donation is to pay for critical infrastructure in Southeast San Antonio, which will be considered under item 52 on the agenda. You have a couple of items. One is an agreement for mister Burke's donation to Bexar County, and then an advanced funding agreement to take mister Burke's donation and give it to TxDOT to pay for a ramp at thirty seven and military. So project that TxDOT has been working on for a while. It is similar to an agreement that this court approved back in 2015.

So you had an advanced funding agreement and a donation agreement back in 2015. Parties have changed. So one of the action items on your agenda today is to take the old agreement and get rid of it. There's a entity called CIRCA that was part of the original agreement. They're gone.

So basically bring it up to speed. And so mister Burke has been and his family have been frequent and heavy heavily engaged throughout the years with San Antonio as leaders, as donors. Mister Burke has made a number of donations of land or money over the years for parks, for Brooks hospital, and higher education. This donation today will help alleviate some traffic congestion at that military and I 37 interchange. We started working on this new version of the agreement about four months ago, working with textile, working with your public works department.

We've worked with the city of San Antonio. On March 31, the district attorney's office sent us the final version of the agreement. We executed it, and we were agendized for today. So I just really wanna say today, thank you. I wanna thank your Public Works Department. I wanna thank the DA's office, City of San Antonio. In particular, I wanna thank Charles Benavides, the district engineer with TxDOT who has worked overtime on this. And then Commissioner Calvert, know Commissioner Calvert is remote, but Commissioner Calvert, thank you so much for for taking the lead on this. But really just wanna thank the court for their engagement on this important vital piece of public infrastructure. So with that, I will conclude my remarks and and ask you to accept mister Burke's donation of 2.175.

Rob, would you please stay right there?

Yes,

sir. The court the court me has erred. 52 is not part of consent. And so the consent agenda items have all been approved by prior vote. So I am now gonna call up for purpose of the record item 52, which is a late file. So I'm asking the court for permission to consider all late files. So if I could have a motion to consider late file items fifty, fifty one, 52, 53. Is there a motion?

Move approval to have all late filed items on the agenda.

Motion by commissioner Calvert, second by commissioner Clay Flores. All those in favor, signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstention, motion carried.

The court will now call up item 52 and have discussion appropriate action related to the granting exception to administrative policy 1.2 to authorize consideration of following late file agenda item 52 a. Having approved the late file 52 a, discussion appropriate action regarding approval of indemnity agreement between Bexar County and Indian Homes for the construction of the interchange of I H 37 State Loop 13 Southeast Military Drive as well as associated frontage roads. Approval of amendment number one for purpose of terminating the advanced funding agreement executed between TxDOT and Bexar County on November 1335 and approval of a voluntary local government contributions advanced funding agreement for $2,175,000 between Bexar County and the Texas Department of Transportation. Do we need a presentation by mister Wegman? I just for purpose of the court, we've actually had mister Killen do that for us.

Also too, then let me go back to the citizens we heard. Mister Killen, I just wanna make sure anybody is here because Miranda Aguirre, are you here? Miranda? Where are you? Miranda Aguirre?

And judge, it would be, I think, very good for the public to get Dave Wegmans presentation just because it's such an important infrastructure intersection. It helps educate the community. So hopefully, he's close.

So noted. But let me go ahead and get the citizens to be heard. Diego Albrecht. Hi. How are you? You? Yes. Commissioner Rodriguez, we have the proclamations. Priscilla? Yes. Shelly? Bookman? Butchman? Shelley? Butchman? Alright. Roger Williams? Roger Williams? Okay. Steven Vickers.

Steven Vickers. Alright. Mister Wegman, where are you? The court has called. Is Jeff Bradley in the room? Jeff, did you sign up? You didn't put what you signed up for. Which item? Jeff Bradley. Number five. Okay. Got it. Okay. Alright. Mister Smith.

Hold on. Hold on. We got a motion on the floor.

Judge, David. David Webb couldn't make it here today. So I'm representing him. This item was on consent. It got pulled. Unfortunately, we don't have a presentation. But I believe the gentleman over here already presented the item. So if have any questions?

Alright. Commissioner Calvert, this is in your precinct. Do you have any questions or further comment?

No. I'm I'm appreciative to move this infrastructure forward to improve the interchange at 37 And Southeast Military. It's a very congested area and this helps us with that congestion. It will be another triangle, believe, configuration similar to what Blanco Road is developing. So I'd like to move approval of the indemnity agreement between Bexar County and Indian Homes Ltd for the construction of the interchange of IH 37 and Southeast Military Drive, Loop 13 as well as the associated frontage roads.

Second. Motion by Commissioner Calvert. I take it we're gonna take it as separate motions. We got the three motions, so second by Commissioner Rodriguez. Any further discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor, second by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstention? Commissioner Calvert, second motion?

Yes, sir. Approval of amendment number one for the purpose of terminating the advanced funding agreement executed between Texthot and Bexar County on 11/13/2015.

Second. Motion by commissioner Calvert, second by commissioner Rodriguez. All those favor, signal by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstention? Motion carries. Third motion.

It'll be to move to approve a voluntary local government contributions advanced funding agreement for $2,175,000 between Bexar County and the Texas Department of Transportation.

Second. Motion by commissioner Calvert, second by commissioner Rodriguez. All those in favor, second by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any opposition? Motion carries. I believe that concludes. Mister Killen, you I'll let you have the closing statement.

Yeah. Thank you so much, judge, commissioners, commissioner Calvert, and and everyone involved on county staff, as well as, again, our friends at TxDOT. This is a critically important piece of infrastructure. The diverging diamond design will significantly reduce wait times at that intersection, twenty, forty minutes in some cases. So we're very excited to have it happen and look forward to seeing it built. Thank you very much.

And mister Killen, I would like to express my gratitude to the Burke family. They're an integral part of this project. So, mister Burke, thank you. And I'd like to just recognize and ask that we give the Burke family a round of applause. And if you have any closing statements Thank you so much, judge. I love your brevity, mister Burke. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Alright. Let us go back then to ceremonial and get through that. And I'm gonna ask for brevity, please. So that first one will be presentation proclamation on behalf of commissioner's court recognizing Jewish American heritage month by commissioner Moody. And commissioner Rodriguez, we need your signatures.

Good morning.

Well, it's an honor to be able to recognize May as Jewish Heritage Month. And to see today's proclamation, we have some friends from the Jewish Federation of San Antonio with us today. I think I have everybody. Amanda Feit, Leslie Mette, Sarah Edinger, Sarah Ram, Lisa Guerrero. I don't see Craig.

I do see Noah and Ari Lasky. So thank you for being here to to receive this. The proclamation reads, whereas May 2026 is recognized as Jewish American Heritage Month, honoring the contributions of Jewish Americans to The United States, Texas, and Bexar County. And whereas May was officially first proclaimed Jewish American Heritage Month by president George w Bush in 2006. And whereas, the American Jewish community traces its roots to 1654 when Jewish refugees arrived to escape religious persecution and to seek religious freedom, beginning a legacy that has helped shape our nation.

And whereas the Jewish families have lived in Bexar County since the eighteen forties when early settlers helped build San Antonio and founded the first Jewish congregation in Bexar County in 1874. And whereas, the Jewish community of Bexar County has contributed significantly to the cultural richness, economic vitality, charity, and civic leadership of this region. Their contributions and legacy include the Lighthouse for the Blind, the Tuesday Night Music Club, the San Antonio Symphony, the Holocaust Memorial Museum of San Antonio, the Jewish Community Relations Council, Child Advocates San Antonio, and Jewish Family Services. The community's dedication to civic life includes includes taking on positions of leadership and helping to dismantle segregation during the civil rights movement. And whereas the Jewish American Heritage Month provides an opportunity to reflect on these contributions, recognizing the resilience and achievements of Jewish Americans, reaffirms Bear County's commitment to combating prejudice, standing against anti Semitism, and all forms of hate, and promotes unity among our residents of this county.

Now therefore be it resolved that the Bexar County Commissioners Court hereby designates May 2026 as Jewish Heritage Month. Signed your commissioner's court. If you'd like to say a few words, please.

Thank you. It's an honor. Thank you commissioner Moody and judge Sakai, commissioner Rodriguez, Commissioner Clay Flores, and Commissioner Calvert. We're really honored today to mark the beginning of Jewish American Heritage Month for the month of May, and we're just proud residents of Bexar County, and just really happy to be part of the vibrant fabric of our county.

Thank you. Would you please step forward to accept the proclamation and take a picture? Commissioner Calvert, I'm teeing you up. You have the next three. The first one will be the animal day.

The next one will be the Masonic Lodge, and the third one will be the second chance month. So we'll take a presentation and proclamation on behalf of Berk County Commissioners Court recognizing April 30 as National Therapy Animal Day and the work of volunteers, Cynthia, happy buttle buttle it's not Butler. It's Buttles, and Linda Kaiser and their therapy animals serving the Bear County community. So I'll ask for a correction of the agenda to say Buttles, b u t t l e s. Alright. Com comrade Calvert.

Thank thank you so much, judge, and all the team that's down there. And we have this proclamation in the name by the authority of the commissioners court of Bear County. And it reads, whereas therapy animal teams serve communities across The United States including Bexar County. And whereas pet partners has designated April 30 as National Therapy Animal Day. And whereas research shows that interaction with therapy animals can reduce stress, improve mental and physical health, and strengthen the human animal bond.

And whereas therapy animal teams throughout Bexar County play a vital role in enhancing health and well-being by fostering the human animal bond, serving a wide range of residents including veterans, seniors, hospital patients, students and individuals facing serious illness or end of life care. And whereas Bexar County encourages residents to consider volunteering with organizations such as pet partners to expand access to therapy animal services across our community. Now therefore be it resolved that the Bear County Commissioners Court hereby recognizes and celebrates, we got a typo here, 04/30/2026 as National Therapy Animal Day. Witness our signature in the civil office this April 2026 signed by your commissioner's court. Happy and team.

Happy to hear from you. Thank

you. Ahead, judge. Go ahead.

Or is it the honorable? Judge Boyd.

Thank you so much. Judge Boyd. Oh, good morning. It is an honor to be here, and I wanna thank judge Sakai and thank the commissioners for doing this. I can tell you that I've had therapy dogs in my court, to help with young witnesses because we have that a lot, in the felony courts, and they do just such excellent work. And so I'm honored to be here just to celebrate them because too often we overlook the therapy dogs and don't realize that they're actually doing work. So thank you so much for giving them this honor. Thank you Commissioner Calvert, and thank you, Happy and Piper.

And I see commissioner commissioner. Excuse me. The honorable judge Ron Ronhill. 379.

Good morning, judge Sakai. Good morning, commissioners Court. I've lost my voice. As we all know, there were two parades this past weekend, and I yelled probably a little more than I should have. Anyway, I wanna thank you for having us today. Let me tell you just a few a few moments about what therapy dogs can do and what I've seen in the courtroom. We know that the courtroom is a rigid, structured place, which doesn't feel very human. But when you consider every aspect of what makes the courtroom what it is, it's a human endeavor. Be it judge, jury, witnesses, victims of crime, defendants, and anybody that comes in as a human being with their own emotions, their own feelings, their own thoughts about things, and you can feel that stress level really come up. Therapy dogs in the courtroom really, really lowers that.

It brings compassion. It brings an opportunity for folks to feel like everything is okay being in that particular environment. And sort of as an aside, lately in the courtroom, because of the advent of technology, we have seen some real serious crimes take place. By way of example, there was a case where a young man shot at a couple of other young folks. A police officer runs up to a 16 year old child, turns her around, tries to save her life, and she passes away on video on the on the officer's dashcam.

That was very stressful for the witnesses, very stressful for the jurors. I think the therapy dogs coming in really helped to alleviate that particular stress, that particular anxiety, and allowed folks to come with a conclusion that was appropriate. Thank you for what you're doing. They are here to stay. Have a great rest of the day. Thank you.

Thank you. Would y'all please come come forward or come forward for your proclamation and a picture. Thank you, guys. Judge. Commissioner, presentation proclamation on behalf of Bexar County Commissioners Court regarding the recognizing the hundred and fiftieth anniversary of San Antonio Lodge number one, the first Masonic Lodge of African Americans in the state of Texas.

Oh, commissioner Clay Flores?

Yeah. I'm reading it for commissioner Calvert. If you guys wanna come forward, please. Whereas San Antonio Lodge number one, under the most worshipful Prince Hall Grand Lodge, free and accepted Masons of Texas and jurisdictions, originates from establishment in 1873 as one of the first Masonic Lodge of black men in Texas, Later rechartered as San Antonio Lodge number one in 1876. In RADS, San Antonio Lodge number one has played a significant role in the civic, professional, and spiritual life of Bexar County, counting among its members, leaders including clergy, physicians, civil rights advocates, military veterans, and public servants.

And whereas, as it commemorates its its anniversary, San Antonio Lodge number one stands as a lasting testament to the enduring legacy of Prince Hall Masonry and its commitment to service education and the betterment of mankind. Now therefore be it resolved that Bexar County Commissioners Court hereby recognizes the anniversary of San Antonio Lodge number one. Thank you so much for being here.

First, giving honor to God, the honorable judge Zakai, commissioners, thank you so much for the recognition. As stated in the proclamation, we're a 150 plus years old. As being the first, the birthplace of Prince Hall of Masonry in Texas is important to us. A 150 of making good men better. And not just the men behind me being Mason, but we're all US veterans as well in the military, various services.

And I know my brother Marine there was over at the downtown for the ceremony for the eighth on the rooftop ceremony. That's when I saw you there, but that was great. But once again, we wanna thank you all. We're looking forward to not just celebrating one hundred and fifty years, but celebrating another fifty years. Hopefully I'll be around for that time, I don't think so. But we do have a new generation of Masons that are just coming up. We just raised or had a ceremony for three just last week. So we're continuing to do the great work and thank you so much for allowing us to be here.

Alright. Commissioner Tina, presentation on proclamation behalf of commissioner's court recognizes April as second chance month highlighting the importance of reentry and recovery support services for individual transitioning from incarceration.

Thank you so much. And I'll just say as Mason's leave, my grandfather was a thirty second degree Mason. So congratulations once again. Well, judging commissioners, want to thank you all for your support of our second chance job fair. This year was one of the most heartwarming and real sign of progress as our teams from the reentry center come to the dais. We had over a thousand people who pre registered and came for jobs. And many of those folks were justice involved. We had a record number of employers, I believe over 80 this year. And this was one of the best. And I saw Renee Watson in the shot taking a picture a moment ago.

She was the first organizer for our office in the county. And I want to thank her all the way up to Ida and her great team at the reentry center who have helped to really change the culture in Bexar County of our second chance community. So this proclamation reads, whereas Bexar County is committed to strengthening public safety and community stability by supporting individuals returning from incarceration with opportunities for employment, recovery and reintegration. And whereas Second Chance Month is observed each April to raise awareness of the barriers faced by justice involved individuals and to promote policies that support successful reentry. And whereas the Bexar County Reentry Center works collaboratively with local systems and community partners to provide evidence based reentry and recovery support services that improve outcomes, strengthen families and enhance public safety.

And whereas the dedicated efforts of community organizations such as Unity Recovery, provide critical peer led support, workforce readiness services and community based programs that reduce barriers to long term stability as reflected in their ongoing participation in the Second Chance Job Fair. Now therefore be it resolved that the Bexar County Commissioners Court does hereby proclaim the month of April as second chance month witness our signatures and seal of offices April 2026 signed by your commissioners court. We'd love to hear from you all at the dais. Good

morning, Judge Sakai and commissioners. Thank you for having us here today. My name is Aida Negron. I serve as the Bexar County reentry manager. And I believe in second chances and third chances and fourth chances and twentieth chances because one of those chances might be the one where a justice involved person decides to change the trajectory of their lives.

Why is Second Chance Month important to me and to all of us here? Because as at the end of twenty twenty three, one point eight million people were incarcerated in The United States. This makes The United States the country with the largest number of prisoners in the world. The US has roughly 5% of the world's population and has more than 25% of the world's prison population. The US incarcerates its citizens more than China, Russia, and North Korea.

In 2021, state and local governments spent 135,000,000,000 on police, 87,000,000,000 on corrections, 52,000,000,000 on courts, which totals $274,000,000,000. That's a lot of money, and I think we can use that money for more beneficial things for our community. The one thing that everybody who is in jail and prisons has in common is that 95% of them will return to their communities. Why does this matter to Bexar County? Because approximately 77 to a 100,000,000 Americans, roughly one in three adults have a criminal record.

Additionally, this is the reason why nearly seventy five percent of people who were informally incarcerated remain unemployed a year after being released. To address the issue in Bexar County, every April since 2015, Commissioner Calvert has championed the second chance job fair event for returning citizens. His team and the reentry center team standing here in the black polo shirts worked diligently to provide an annual job fair at the Freeman Coliseum Expo Hall in honor of National Second Chance Month.

Uh-oh. Can't turn the page.

This is the place where preparation meets opportunity for job seekers. This year, seven seventeen justice impacted individuals were able to provide their resumes to fifty eight second chance employers and speak to them face to face. We are so grateful to those employers who attended our job fair. We can't thank you enough for being open minded and giving second chances to people who have completed their sentences and want to live a crime free life. You are making it possible for them to earn a livable wage and become tax paying citizens.

We are also blessed to have great community based organizations that are willing to assist job seekers with resources at the job fair. Thank you always for being supportive and filling the gaps. To all the people in Bexar County who are struggling with barriers after after incarceration, please call us or stop by our office. We wanna assist you in your journey to change your life. Najah brought some packets.

She's our employer specialist, and we wanna share that with you. I also wanna thank all of you for recognizing April as Second Chance Month, and Commissioner Calvert has been a champion, like I said, and wonderful at getting the word out about our event. And I kindly request that you share the packet with employers in your precincts so that way next year in 2027, we have 100 employers at our job fair. But lastly, before I finish, I would like to let Nigel say a few words if that's okay with everybody. I wanted to call up Susie Malone.

She is probably the only person that I know of besides Commissioner Calvert, who has been at all the second chance job fairs since 2015. And this Thursday, come on, this Thursday, she is retiring from the county after fifteen years of service at the jail and at the reentry center. Please help me give her a round of applause for her hard work and helping incarcerated as well as returning citizens over the past fifteen years. I would appreciate it. Yes. Alright.

Miss Malone? Yeah.

She's gonna this is a packet that will help employers understand the importance of hiring the formerly incarcerated, as well as giving them information about how to find the incentives. SHRM, which is the national organization that provides HR managers with information on how to change policies at your workplace that, will allow an individual to work there, and just not cut them off because they have a background.

Thank you so much.

Hello, everyone. My name is Naja Barantes. Like Aida had said, I serve as the career and technical education specialist for the Bexar County Reentry Center. This proclamation is important because it reflects what we do and what we see every day in our office. We sit with people who are ready to grow, contribute, and work. They just need that opportunity. Right? Right now, there's a big gap between those ready to work and those willing to give the second chance. We're working really close to educate employers on the incentives and benefits around second chance hiring. Right?

We have this big talent pool that's untapped into of people who have certifications and trainings and are ready to contribute in a meaningful way. This work is about creating spaces where people are not defined by their past, but recognized for their potential, and where employers choose to lead with opportunity. Our call to action is very simple, to partner with us, open your doors, and be a part have employers be a part of a stronger, more inclusive workforce. When we invest in second chances, we strengthen families all around Bexar County. So thank you all for having us here today.

Sir, I believe the unity people are here as well.

Thank you very much. Mister Calvert, for your leadership on the re reentry program.

Thank you for your support.

Alright. The next one will be presentation proclamation behalf of commission court recognizing May 2026 as Bexar County Small Business Week and highlighted in partnership and efforts of the US Small Business Administration, SBA, San Antonio District Office, Texas Southwest SBDC Network, UTSA SBDC, and Bexar County Small Business and Entrepreneurship Department. Miss Renee Watson, I will read the proclamation. Whereas, small businesses are the engine of the American economy and the foundation of a free and prosperous nation built by people of all backgrounds who work hard, take risk, and believe in the power of the American dream. And whereas in our fields, on our factory floors, or at the frontiers of technology, small businesses are driving the innovation and building the products that keep America strong, competitive, and secure.

Whereas this country's 30,000,000 small businesses create nearly two out of three net new jobs in our economy. We cannot resolve to create jobs and spur economic growth in America without discussing ways to support our entrepreneurs. And whereas the president of The United States has proclaimed National Small Business Week every year since 1963 to highlight the programs and services available to entrepreneurship through the US Small Business Administration, SBA, Bexar County Small Business and Entrepreneurship Department, and other government agencies. And whereas the SBA recognizes small business owners' successes and contributions to our nation in celebration of the winners, the San Antonio Small Business Awards luncheon cohost by Texas Southwest SBDC Network will be held on 05/07/2026 at the Norris Conference Center. Now therefore be resolved that the Bexar County Commissioners Court hereby proclaims May 4 through 05/08/2026 as Bexar County Small Business Week signed by the members of the court.

Let's give them a round of applause too. Good

morning. Good morning and thank you. Renee Watson, I serve as the director of the small business and entrepreneurship department at Berwick County. Today is game day, which impacts a lot of small businesses in our community. So we're gonna start off by saying go Spurs, go wrap it up tonight.

So we can continue to have more activity as we look forward. The Spurs are our partners in our celebration and today we have and we're recognizing our partnership with the US Small Business Administration as well as the UT San Antonio Small Business Development Center. Several of their representatives are here and we will have remarks from our SBA deputy district director, Anessa, and she will give you some remarks on behalf of the SBA. Thank

you. Thank you, Renee. Good morning, commissioners, partners, and community members. My name is Inessa Stepanenko. I'm a deputy district director with the San Antonio district office of US Small Business Administration.

As you said, judge Sakai, we've been around since 1953, almost eighty years of celebrating National Small Business Week. And we're here today, and it is our privilege to join you celebrating National Small Business Week and the proclamation recognizing May 2026 as Bexar County Small Business Week. In a city that has just come of the energy and tradition of Fiesta, it is fitting that we carry that spirit forward by recognizing and celebrating small businesses and entrepreneurs who power our local economy, as well as all the partners, community collaborators, small business champions across Bexar County who champion their success. This recognition reflects the impact and resilience of our small business community. The SBA is proud of the strong partnership between our office, the Texas Southwest SBDC Network, UT SBDC, and of course Bexar County small business and entrepreneurship department, along with many other city and county partners.

Together, we're expanding access to capital, technical opportunities, and assistance to federal contracting. This collaboration represents the success what it looks like between federal, state, city, county, academic, and local partners working together to ensure that small businesses not only endure, but grow and thrive. Thank you for your leadership, judge Sakai, commissioners, in recognizing our small business community. We look forward to continuing this important work together. Viva National Small Business Week, Bexar County.

To do the proclamation, presentation proclamation behalf of commissioner court recognizing and celebrating the greater San Antonio chapter of the American Red Cross. Red Cross, please step forward as I read the proclamation. Whereas Claire Barton founded American Red Cross more than one hundred and forty years ago since the foundation, generation after generation of volunteers has stepped up to deliver relief and care across our country and around the world, bringing out the best of humanity in times of crisis. And the Greater San Antonio chapter, the American Red Cross, was first charted on 02/11/1916, sprouting an opportunity for Greater San Antonio volunteers and supporters to advance the noble mission of preventing and alleviating human suffering in the face of today's hardships and emergencies. And whereas in this year alone, the Greater San Antonio chapter responded to the 400 disaster events assisting 1,700 impacted residents of Bexar County.

The chapter also installed 1,500 smoke alarms in 430 area homes, an initiative that has saved over 30 lives, and made 1,200 people safer, building 70 including 70 individuals who are deaf or hard of hearing, 90 veterans, 220 youth, 160 individuals with disabilities, and 400 seniors. And whereas this April, we celebrate the greater San Antonio chapter of the American Red Cross by recognizing the compassion acts of the volunteers, partners, and donors of the chapter renewing our commitment to lend a helping hand to neighbors in their greatest times of need. Now therefore be resolved that the Bexar County Commissioners go here hereby recognize and celebrate greater sanitary champion of the American Red Cross and encourage all residents to reach out and lend their support to the American Red Cross in carrying out its vital humanitarian mission signed by the members of the court. Well, let's give them a round of applause. Alright.

That concludes ceremony. I, court, I would like to take up before we go to time certain, agenda item number 50. Number 55 o. We have always obviously approved by late file. We will now take up 50 a. Discussion appropriate action regarding approval and extension to the 2023 agreement between Bear County and the law firm, Meleinberger, Gogan, Blair, and Samson LLP, and Appraisal Collection Technologies, a company wholly owned by the law firm for a six day period beginning 05/09/2026 to provide delinquent tax collections and software license, hardware purchase, and maintenance. Mister Rusty.

Judge, commissioners, thank you for allowing us to be here today. In March of this year, we upon the advice of the purchasing department, an r q was issued for professional services for delinquent collections and tax collection software. Limebarger, Goggin Blair, and Sampson LLC was the sole respondent. We currently have a contract with Linebarger that will expire on 05/09/2026. We are working to finalize our new contract along with the purchasing department so that we cannot the the problem is they cannot have a gap in the in or lapse in our contracts with them.

So we are asking today for this extension of the current term for a brief period of sixty days so we can bring back to court an agreement for the new term. I'm gonna turn over to mister Galloway and then Cliff Douglas from Linebarger is here if you all have any questions.

Mister Galloway?

Agreed. Your honor, commissioners, good morning. Greg Galloway, Bexar County purchasing agent. Just as Al just stated, we are working through the extension, requesting an extension so that we can finalize the new agreement with Landbarger. If you have any specific questions, we'd be glad to address those for you.

Move approval of the

Commissioner Calvert?

I was just moving approval of the extension.

I'm sorry. Motion by Commissioner Calvert. Second. Second by commissioner Rodriguez. Any further discussions? Hearing none. All those in favor of the motion, signal by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstention? Motion carries. Mister Cliff Douglas, let me thank you for your services and the professional services that you provide the county. If you have any words, I will yield the floor to you. Otherwise, we're moving on to our next agenda item.

Judge and commissioners, thank you very, very much. I'm Cliff Douglas. I have been with the law firm, oh my gosh, since 1987. And we've had the privilege to represent Bexar County to collect its delinquent property taxes for the past forty six years, I think. And we want to continue that, and it's an honor and a privilege for us to do so. So we thank you. This is as Mr. Uresti said, this is a sixty day extension to allow us to just finalize the terms of the agreement. So thank you very, very much. We appreciate it very much.

Thank you. Alright. I believe we're at the time certain, so we will now go to agenda item five a. Presentation discussion, jail diversion program and strategies. Mister Thomas Guevara, you have the floor. For purposes for the public, this we've estimated that this may take an hour and a half. And I apologize, but we have this for time certain. We need to take this up. And I believe we have a presentation to be made and perhaps we have peep I do believe we have citizens to be heard. I will call you up after the presentations.

But mister Guevara, I yield the floor to you for the presentation on the issues regarding jail diversion programs and strategies of Bexar County.

Thank you, judge. Commissioners for the record, Thomas Gavada, office of the county manager. I'm joined today by Leticia Moreno, our deputy director for the office of criminal justice, as well as Antonio Salazar Rosas, our pretrial services manager. I'm also joined by doctor Andrea Guerrero, our director of public health, as well as many of your partners here. At the request of commissioners court, staff was tasked to bring back a discussion item on various public safety strategies to reduce jail population.

Community discussion on jail population and the issue of diversion has been amplified in recent months. Those conversations continue to highlight that our county jail serves as the largest de facto mental health hospital for mental illness. As of Monday, yesterday, April 27, the jail track report indicated the custodial jail population at 4,685 compared to 4,975 same day last year. So as part of our agenda today, staff will cover the following areas. First, we will cover two concepts that tend to be used synonymously but have distinct characteristics, deflection and diversion.

We will then provide an overview and a snapshot of both the Office of Criminal Justice and the Public Health Department's activities in both deflection and diversion. And the presentation will include a progress report on implemented recommendations from two previously funded commissioners court studies on our criminal justice system, and we will conclude with the availability for comments and share other community efforts aimed at reducing jail population. So as I mentioned earlier, Court, the use of deflection and diversions are sometimes used interchangeably, but for the purposes of this presentation and using the National Association of Pretrial Services definition, we want to ensure that we're providing distinct terminology and definitions for both terms. So we're going to make this very simple. Deflection programs will be those efforts where that occurs before an individual is arrested, and diversion programs are those after an arrest occurs but prior to conviction.

But I wanna be clear that both concepts aim to to to address underlying issues that offer treatment instead of incarceration. I would also like to take this opportunity before we move on to recognize commissioners court and this county's efforts in diversion, going back to the mid nineties with the establishment of of the adult drug specialty court, we've been recognized as leader in those areas. So I'd like to remind, we've been doing this for for years. And in fact, those specialty courts have expanded. I believe we have 12 now in a variety of specialty areas.

So deflection. The next few slides will cover the concept of of deflection in the criminal justice realm. The emergence of deflection programs recognizes that justice involved individuals could be helped before an arrest occurs. Deflection may allow for a law enforcement officer to drop off an individual at a treatment center and leave an arrest. Charges are either suspended or never filed by the district attorney's office, and no arrest record is created.

Eligibility for which charges to pursue is at the discretion of the district attorney's office, a very key point. Examples of eligible charges include theft charges under $750, possession of marijuana, less than four ounces, and criminal justice and mental health histories are factors taken into consideration whether an individual is determined eligible for deflection. A deflection location is where treatment begins immediately, and an example of that is the public sobering unit operated by CHGS. Another key criminal deflection program employed here in Bexar County is cite and release, and it's used by law enforcement to issue citations instead of taking someone into custody for certain low level offenses. Cite and release is used in cases for nonviolent misdemeanors, such as minor theft, trespassing, low level drug possession, and traffic violations.

Benefits include preventing low level offenders from being booked unnecessarily into our ADC and increases efficiencies in both time and resources for law enforcement. Some of our participating agencies are listed below, including SAPD, our sheriff's office, and a variety of our suburban cities. The next couple of slides will cover the concept of diversion and current programs operated by or in partnership with the Office of Criminal Justice. Again, the eligibility is at the discretion of the DA's office for what charges to pursue. Again, criminal justice and mental health history are important factors.

And when an individual is not eligible for diversion, that can occur when a PR bond is denied by the judge, a case is dismissed prior to us finishing our referral process, or if the defendant himself or herself denied the PR bond or diversion program directly. So the Office of Criminal Justice participates and oversees a variety of diversion programs, including GPS for pretrial defendants and specialty courts, as I previously discussed. Earlier today, commissioners court, on your consent agenda, approved a memorandum of understanding with the Center for Healthcare Services for gel based competency restoration, targeting 80 individuals in an effort to increase access to restoration services and reducing the inpatient psychiatric bed waitlist. And Jillian Jamieson and her team are here with us and available for questions. I would also like to take a little point of recognition of our staff.

Obviously, y'all fund a variety of these programs through your annual budget, but we're always constantly looking for partnerships and opportunities to reduce your efforts. So I'd like to bring Antonio up here to talk about the County Court at Law two pilot program with the nonprofit continuum. Again, that is for outpatient services, and I'd ask Antonio to come up and just kind of highlight what we're doing there.

Thanks, Thomas. Good morning, judge and commissioners. I've been asked to spend a little bit on the County Court two pilot program with Continuum. As Thomas highlighted, this is one of the programs where the treatment services, really it's a partnership within providers in the community. And I wanna give you some numbers on that program, right, and a little bit of information on that program.

So Judge Sines, the presiding judge for County Court Two, had reached out to me in 2025 while I was the jail population impact control unit manager. And she was asking me as far as what services do we have for individuals that are getting released into the community for addressing substance use, mental health, homelessness. One of the things that became apparent is that we have, obviously those are the three major issues when we look at jail population. So we started working on the potential of addressing and identifying individuals with substance use disorders that were being released into the community. So in August 2024, we started this pilot program.

And I will say at the beginning, it was supported through the gel diversionary process and programs that we have through OCJ. And Lifetime Recovery was our prime partner for the outpatient services. And the reason I want to highlight outpatient services is we identify that individuals released into the community, especially with a charge from county court number two, are misdemeanor cases. A lot of these individuals, we wanted to, one, ensure that substance use disorder was an issue for them. And two, we wanted to address that in an appropriate way.

Right? And that was done through a couple of ways. Public health provided at the beginning of the program by helping us with the screenings and identifying the appropriate type of treatment for these individuals. We wanted to focus on outpatient treatment because we understand that individuals getting released back into their communities on bond still have jobs, families, and other things that they still have to be out in the community, right, so that they can be successful. So with County Court two and the continuing partnership that we started in December 2025, I just wanna give you some numbers.

Right? So we've been able from pretrial services to Continuum, 226 referrals. Out of those 226 referrals from individuals being released into the community, one hundred and nine are currently engaged in programming right now. Fifty five have successfully completed their outpatient treatment and are still out in the community. Fifty nine have been referred to a higher level of care, which is residential services or medicated assisted treatment.

And also part of that fifty nine has also had their cases adjudicated or dismissed and no longer in pretrial supervision. The big key of this program is, like Thomas mentioned, it's not something that is really costing the county money in the sense of funding for treatment. We've been able to partner up with Continuum. And Continuum is providing this treatment as long as we have a pathway and a way to work together. Right?

So this two twenty six referrals, we've been able to again work on those individuals without any of the diversionary funding. And again, really what that has done to pretrial services, OCJ, the Office of Criminal Justice, is really identifying other partnerships and funding that is in the community to be able to assist individuals as they're going back into the community. And one of the things since I'm here, I wanted to highlight from pretrial and as we speak about diversion programs, is when we're looking at diversion on our end, right, the Office of Criminal Justice, we're looking at it through a lens of the judicial system. So, when I'm looking at the criminal justice system and the jail population, for example, I am taking a look at it from a population standpoint of what stage are they within the judicial process. Again, a big part of the jail population, many times, is the pretrial stage.

And it's individuals that have not been adjudicated and are waiting to go to court for their cases. We have other parts of the jail population that are part of individuals that have been sentenced and awaiting a treatment bid. We have individuals, as Thomas mentioned, our partnership with the Center for Healthcare Services in addressing incompetency that are still remaining at the jail. But when we're looking at diversion, I wanna make sure that everybody understands that we are definitely Public safety is at the forefront of what we do. And we're always looking at public safety to ensuring that individuals that are being diverted to programs are those individuals that are gonna benefit from this programming, and that are low risk offenders going back into the community.

When we're looking at diversion, we're also looking obviously at mental health, like I mentioned earlier, substance use disorder, and unsheltered individuals. And again, our support also goes to reentry and post release of individuals coming out of the jail. Because our main goal at the Office of Criminal Justice is to reduce recidivism. And again, those are the things I wanted to share with you regarding some of the programming and jail criminal justice diversion programs. Thank you.

Thanks, Antonio. And I failed to recognize Tony Gossettias, our director over at the Justice Intake and Assessment area. So

thanks, Tony.

So to date, this slide includes a snapshot of this year's fiscal year's stats to date for current criminal justice diversion and deflection programs. For example, as you see here, we've in the area of residential treatment, we served 136 individuals to date with a projected two seventy five individuals to be treated by September 2026. In the area of transitional housing, through criminal justice, we've served over 100 individuals with a projected two fifteen individuals to receive assistance by the end of the fiscal year. So now we'll move into the area of public health and the public health department and their deflection and diversion programs. So again, programs that you see on this slide here, Court, you've seen on the side of criminal justice as well.

But one of the most visible programs we have in this community in the terms of deflection is our SMART program, a crisis intervention team specialized in de escalation that provides on scene behavioral health support during emergencies. Again, these programs are intended to be preventative and yeah, sorry about that. So now we'll move into some specific diversion programs in public health. The Bexar County Department of Public Health oversees the mental health and IDD assessment processes that occur in the GEA in partnership with UHS and ACOG, and I know we have our partners with here. Becomes became the mental health provider in the GEA in October 2025, and public health is implementing a pathway for diversions for those released directly from the GEA that includes multiple providers.

Those providers include GT San Antonio, True Mental Health, and others that will facilitate referrals to mental health appointments and other services, including transportation. Again, another snapshot of those strategies in the public health realm. Again, this court one thing I would like to highlight in some of these in the funding column, this court has invested a lot of opioid dollars to cover most, if not all, the substance use disorder programs within the strategies attached. So we've gone over deflection and diversion programs, both operated by Office of Criminal Justice, our partners, and the public health department. So what does that mean for our jail population and our team over there?

As you can see, the yellow line graph illustrates jail population averages with diversion programs since 2023, fiscal year 2023. The blue line represents that without that county and community investments and efforts, jail population would have reached over 6,100 individuals last year, putting even more strain on detention staff and costing this community with out of county beds. As I mentioned earlier and as part of the discussion, I would like to highlight certain programs and projects that this court has invested in based on two important criminal justice based assessments that we've conducted, the Meadows study and the UT Health Houston study conducted by doctor Tessa and his team. As you can see from the chart, there's been significant investments by this commissioner's court through the American Rescue Plan Act opioid funding to facilitate many of the resolutions through those recommendations. We've also had partnerships like the MOU with CHCS on gel based competency in regards to the Meadows study.

So kind of this particular chart is just to kind of highlight where we've completed some of those recommendations, areas that are still in progress and those funding sources. One key recommendation in the UT Health Houston study observation is the issue of dual magistration. Doctor. Testa's study recommended assembling a joint county city working group to end the dual magistration system to address inefficiencies and challenges posed by the by the current system. The working group shouldn't should work collaboratively to plan a transition to a unified system where all detainees are processed at a single centralized facility.

It'll be important that should the court direct us to to go down that path that we work with Dan Curry and his team to do any of our needs assessments for facilities. And again, commissioners and staff here, you know, we can't do this alone. There's a lot of collaborative efforts here. It's not all on the sheriff's office. It's not all on the staff back here or court or some of our other internal partners, but we have a lot of collaborative efforts that are currently ongoing or about to kick off.

The first is a CHCS COSA, City of San Antonio, I should say, University Health funded diversion feasibility study that has kicked off just recently, and our staff will be a part of that far as those interviews are concerned. Secondly, Commissioner Rodriguez and Councilwoman Castillo will be kicking off a Diversion and Recovery Committee to work. And commissioner, I'll kind of defer to you down the down the line to to discuss that a bit more. And another area that we wanted to highlight was our Southwest Texas Crisis Collaborative, which we commonly refer to as the STIC. Again, the STIC is a wide ranging collaboration that has existed over many years that consists hospital systems, our mental health providers, the city of San Antonio, Bexar County, and CHCS, with Strack serving as the convener, data partner and subject matter expert on resource coordination.

Eric Epley is also here and available for questions. So as we start to wind down, staff recognizes that we must do more, and we can do more. It will require strengthening our partnerships both internally and externally. Therefore, staff is committed, and we would recommend that we first start with reviewing our internal policies and procedures to make sure that we are optimizing all our efficiency opportunities. Again, one area that we've not addressed to a previous assessment is dual magistration, so we've identified that as a future strategy, and we would continue to identify grant funding, both local, state, and federal to help try to bridge the gap with some of these areas.

So in summary, I just want to recognize that Bexar County, we have invested in many process improvements that have already been identified in previous assessments. We've put money into capital programs, projects to expand bed capacity. One example is the American Rescue Plan Applewhite dual diagnosis center that that we ribbon cut back October, November of last year, and we've expanded bed and housing treatment capacity. But we also recognize that there's further challenges and opportunities to address. So the first, the big one here is dual magistration.

Again, I've already talked about optimizing our process to improve efficiencies. We want to look at other ways that we can provide support services to reduce recidivism. Again, one area I did not go over that this court has heard previously was the Sash Reuse study that Dan Curry presented back in November, December 2024. I know that is more of a long term strategy down the line that's going to require legislation and other collaborative efforts, but we've listed that on here. And one area, as we were going through this presentation and we're receiving updates from our partners, we've also been made aware of certain gaps.

I mentioned earlier the dual diagnosis center at Applewhite, that the facility has been completed. But in our discussions with Jarvis Anderson, who I believe is here as well, we've identified some gaps, in particular gaps in funding for substance use disorders on that side of the coin there. So we At the moment, you're correct. So 130, I believe that's 130 beds. If you double up, that's about 200.

Jarvis working with the Department of Public Health, I believe we're gonna try to formulate a strategy here, and I'll let Jarvis and and doctor a speak a little bit more to that. But we've identified possibly using opioid funding to bridge that gap. But again, that's over 100 individuals currently in the jail that once we get started, that's a short term solution that we can address immediately. So with that, I will turn over the presentation for questions, comments. And again, we have both staff, various partners, I see Ed Banos and his team here as well. So again, court, we'll turn it back over to you.

The court for direction. We have citizens to be heard. I'd like to call them up, and then we'll get back to any further discussion. And then I will open up the commissioners to direct questions or other speakers. Alright? So at this time, I'm bringing up those that signed up for citizen to be heard on this particular agenda item. Oh, judge Commissioner Rodriguez, point of personal privilege.

Yeah. Thank you, judge. I guess in sticking with the theme, if I can divert the conversation briefly. We've got some young students up here from Wilson Elementary in SAISD.

Yeah. Can you

guys stand and be recognized? Give them a round of applause. They are here. Mahdi, thank you for arranging the tour and they're here learning about about local government and and civic engagement. These are all future leaders. We're very proud of what you do in representing your school and your community. So thank you for being here. I know Mari's taking great care of you Mari. Thank you for doing that. Again, continue on, study hard, and we look forward to you guys leading this city and county in the future. Thank you.

Thank you. Alright. Susan be heard. Lydia Leos, you're first. Lydia

Leos.

Good morning, judge. Good morning, commissioners. Thank you for allowing us to be here. My name is Lydia Leos. I have voices behind the cell. It is from grief to justice, from silence to accountability. My name is Lydia Leos, and I stand here before you as the mother of Julie and Dana. My son entered the Bear County Jail alive. He should have come home alive. Instead, I was left with a pain that no parent should ever carry, with questions no family should ever have to fight to have answered. Julian was not a case number. He was not a statistic. He was my son. He was loved, valued, and his life mattered. I'm sorry.

What began as heartbreak became a purpose. What began as grief became a movement. Through voices behind the cell, I now stand for every family who has been ignored, dismissed, or left in the dark after losing a loved one in custody. Too many families in Texas still face the same failures, delayed notification during emergencies or hospitalizations, lack of clear answers when a loved one is in a crisis, mental health needs ignored or mishandled, Inadequate medical care. Preventable deaths followed by silence.

Families forced to search for truth on their own. That is why we demand real reform. What must change now? Immediate family notification during emergencies, hospitalizations, or death, independent investigation in all in custody deaths, mental health treatment and diversion before jail becomes the answer. Accountability for negligent medical care, public transparency on death and critical incidents.

Consequences for repeated failures, respect for every human life in custody, message to elected officials, to Sheriff Salazar, County Commissioner, judges, lawmakers, the power to correct the system is in your hands. Families should not have to become investigators to learn what happened to their loved ones. We need action. We need transparency. We need accountability.

We need correction in Bexar County Jail and across Texas. In loving memory of Julian Denna, Julian's name will not be forgotten. His life now fuels fight for truth and change because custody should never become a death sentence, because silence project silence protects negligence, because every family deserves answers. I should not have stayed at home not knowing my son was on life support for twelve hours because the jail was lazy. Two hours is enough time to be busy, put your paperwork together, but not twelve, not ten hours where we don't know that our loved ones have been transported out of the facility and are on life support.

By the time I got the next of kin call, all I was left to do was disconnect life support. Thank you so much, and have a good

day. Good

morning, commissioners. I am Gillen Jamieson, the CEO for CHCS. I wanna thank you earlier for your support in the MOU with CHCS to continue the jail based competency program currently being operated at our jail. CHCS has been an innovator and been involved in jail diversion since 1994, And we stand before you enjoying the investment previous investment by University Health in the Meadows study and by Bear County in the UT study. And we've used those studies to communicate with our community over the past eight months about the importance of a jail diversion center, and promoting, therapeutic justice for this community.

But we can't do it alone. And so your strategy that you're discussing today of limiting access to the criminal justice system should work hand in hand with the expansion of therapeutic justice. Therapeutic justice focuses on the overall well-being. It's a collaborative approach. And it certainly involves problem solving courts to address the issues that we're seeing in our community.

While therapeutic justice reforms the experience within the system, we do believe limiting exposure also aims to keep people out of the system. So we need investment in both. Decriminalization, diversion programs, and community based programming will work hand in hand in reducing the overall negative collateral consequences that we are experiencing in our community with individuals who live with mental health and substance use issues and find themselves staying in jail. I hope you will continue to support your staff's involvement with CHCS in the in validating the feasibility and need of a diversion center and coming up with a plan to recommend to both Bexar County and the city of San Antonio. But we need all of Bexar County to support this effort.

We need your district attorney's office. We need your judicial departments, and we need your staff to come to the table with us as we develop this plan for this diversion center in this community. Our goal is that it will be a therapeutic alternative to jail for individuals with low level offenses and nonviolent offenses who cycle through the system because of untreated mental illness and IDD. This community needs a jail division diversion center to reduce our jail population, to improve our overall health outcomes and extend the life expectancy of our citizens in this community, and we need to lower the long term cost to our taxpayers. Excuse me.

So I come to you today seeking your support for this effort, continued work with your staff, but the continued support of all of Bexar County as we consider this jail diversion center in the future. I thank you for your support.

Goldie Van Sant.

Good morning, Commissioners and Judge. My name is Goldie Van Zandt. I am a US Navy veteran and a client advocate with Texas Jail Project. We are a statewide advocacy organization working on county jail conditions and pretrial detention. Our co founder and ED serves on the administrative rules advisory committee of the Texas Commission on Jail Standards and the Texas Judicial Commission on Mental Health.

We heard judge Siskaya's presentation at the jail commission meeting in February on the proposal for a mental health diversion center, and we read the 72 page report that he submitted to the commission. What's missing from that report was data on the worst outcomes of being held in your county jail, which is custody death. We ran a quick analysis based on data from the Texas Commission on Jail Standards for the past decade. You can see in the handout, a hundred and twenty four people reportedly died in custody between 02/2025. Most of them were pretrial.

In the past five years, the number of deaths in Bexar County have almost matched Harris County despite despite the jail population being roughly half of Harris County. The majority of these deaths seem to be driven by suicides. What's missing from our analysis of deaths is the connection with the mental health CCQ data and the forensic wait list, data that only the county has access to. We recommend that before this court invests a lot of resources into a diversion center, you may consider doing a deep dive into your jail psychiatric population. Except for Harris County, diversion centers in all counties are being underutilized because all diversion is voluntary and only for low level nonviolent charges.

Plus new legislation such as senate bill six from 2021 and senate bill nine from 2025 prevent diversion on a wide ranges of charges. In our experience, there's a revolving door between the public mental health and the county jail system due to the lack of continuity of care protocols upon release from jail. And your local mental health authorities pattern of practice of placing people in appropriate levels of care. But instead of studying the effectiveness of programs, counties keep expanding their jails, which doesn't help solve the underlying problem. The state has advocated its responsibility to create a meaningful continuum of community based mental health care and push this crisis into the counties, where you are now paying for a public health issue with your limited public safety dollars.

The IDD population is a good example of this issue. The state supported living centers or SLC's are entitlement for people with IDD. But instead of placing them on an inpatient care wait list, your AACOG provides inappropriate placement such as group homes, leading to arrest and more criminalizations. How do we know this? HHSC's own data.

The largest number of transfers to SLCS or people with IDD happens from county jails. So, of accessing an SLLC through the civil side, this population is forced into jail first before they can access SLOC through the forensic pathway. Yes, we don't have enough SLOC beds, but HHSC has made no recommendation to the legislation for expanding those beds. They seem more than comfortable pushing people into jails and prisons. Our organization helped pass two riders last session.

One mandated the jail commission to collect and publish CCQ data and ordering for HHSC to create a community based upon based option for the high needs population that cycles between the jail and streets. We hope this court will take advantage of these riders to make robust data informed decisions. Thank you for your time.

Judge, commissioners, and the rest of the people here, ma'am, I'm very sorry to hear about your loss. I wanna compliment the court here today. Several things I've already seen is that you have your second chance program was here. Your court therapy animals, which is a huge help that a lot more than people realize, especially for juveniles. Your diversion speakers, at some point, we'd love to talk to them.

That was an excellent presentation and a very good start for what you're looking to do. And also ma'am who just spoke about therapeutic justice, that's also what I'm here to talk to you about today, addressing those issues. My name is Jeff Bradley. I'm with HOK Architecture. I'm their national director, and I live here in Texas.

And the first diversion type program that addressed mental health I was involved in was Dallas County about 14 ago. We did 200 mental health beds, a 100 medical beds, and it's been a very successful program for them. Since then, our our firm is actually a leader in civic and justice design work, but we're not just architects. We're consultants. We have the health care people inside.

We have mental health people. We also work with other firms such as Meadows. Actually, UHS study, we did that. We worked for Meadows, and we were here involved in that with Alta Architecture, a local firm here on your UHS program. It was about two years ago, and that was for a new medical facility, a clinic, and an infirmary.

A few other things I'd like to share with you and talk about is what's important is that the people you talk to are also experts in the operational of the actual justice system, both the system overall and then also within the jail itself. And that's where the sheriff and and is those folks really need to be involved as well. Your mental health people, the sheriff people, the the leadership and such, in order to deliver successful program. Over over the past excuse me. Over the last eight or ten years or or so, we've done 11 mental health diversion facilities for counties around the country.

A little over 1,900 specialty beds for that. For states, we've done 12 specialty mental health facilities in state prisons totaling over 6,000 beds. So we've done almost 8,000 beds for special mental health needs. Somebody mentioned earlier today that about the number of people who have mental health issues, and over sixty percent of the people who are incarcerated around the country do have mental health issues, and the majority of them are on some sort of psychotropic drugs. It's it's it's important that you have people that you have access to. All the people from our firm that would be ever do any work for you, we actually we have

a Judge, commissioners, the time has expired.

I'm sorry? That's three minutes? Okay. Yeah. I've got some things to pass out here to you to the additional projects. Got for the commissioner's court, for Dan Curry, the county auditor, and some letters from other county judges around the state for you to read and take a look at. So thank you for your time.

Alright. Was there anybody else signed up? That's all I had for item number five. Let me then yield to commissioner Moody. Oh, who can can you state your name? Never Never mind. Nope. Okay. Commissioner Moody, let me yield to you and then

Oh, there's one more.

Oh, there's one more. Judge Oscar Kaczyn, are you here on agenda item number five? Number five? Yes. Yes. You have your three minutes.

I know this is only the citizens to be heard part, but I just wish to echo for everyone that especially the twenty five plus years that I've been doing mental health. It is such a much it is a much bigger process. And I admire what the commissioner's court in this county is doing by way of the jail and jail diversion and preventing the deaths and preventing injuries at the jail, etcetera. But I just wanted to pause in all of the discussion, just to surround the community at large. I know you're aware of it.

That that pipeline that we speak to today is so much bigger. For example, most people are unaware that we conduct and do over 10,000 emergency detentions. That's where somebody is dangerous to self or others, a police officer has shown up. In days past, they would have gone to the jail. Can you imagine right now if those emergency detentions, if the teams that were devoted to transferring them to hospitals weren't available.

Can you imagine what the discussion would be today if you had to deal with another 10,000 arrests? Because if there's no place to go, the Bexar County jail is the biggest mental health facility in the county. I urge the community at large and this commission and the commissioner's court, after they get past this very important task of jail and jail diversion, to continue the discussion on the rest of that pipeline. Those are the court programs and court agendas that keep people out of jail. Those are the services that we provide in the handoff afterwards.

Those are the things that truly impact in the end our jail population. And lastly, I urge this commission to look at how we can build a bigger system of providers in this community, a bigger system of help and utilization so that we have many voices that we can rely on when we need their help. With that, I said, I just wanted it to be a quick reminder to the public at large, should they be watching, that this pipeline is so much bigger. Although this is as terribly important as anything else, the rest of that pipeline shouldn't be forgotten. Your

long standing commitment to the probate courts as a probate judge and obviously for the mental health system. And I'll I'll just kind of tie the connect the dots, so to speak. Your program truly is part of deflection. That's what you just said. Without your system, we would probably have 10,000 people more in our criminal well, and it's perhaps that's an over exaggeration, but there'd be many, many more people. So it is a very complicated, complex system. It is a need of funding and initiative and the ability of this community to come together with all the different parts of our justice system. So thank you, judge Casey,

for bringing that up to

Tomas as well. He's been very good to in talking to us about this.

Thank you. Alright.

Thank you.

Having heard that, let me yield to commissioner Moody and open up. And commissioner Moody, if we need the team to come back up, do you want the team to come back up?

Please. But there's gonna be a lot of players.

Right.

So Thomas and team come back.

Yeah. Some presentations.

Okay.

So first of all, appreciate the presentation. Sure. I'm glad we're here. I think this discussion was overdue, but at least we're here. I just want to reiterate, to me, you know, there may be some things we we disagree on here, but this is not a political issue.

Starts as a public safety issue, and then it becomes a management issue and a leadership issue. And that's why I think we have to we have to come to the table here. We have to have serious conversations about all the the current problems our criminal justice system is facing, and then how we address them as a county, and with our partners, many of which are here in the room. So thank you to all the partners. I'm definitely looking forward to to getting your thoughts here as well.

First of all, I apologize upfront. Covered a lot of information, and there's other things I still wanna cover. So I'll try to get through everything here and hopefully get some engagement and conversation going on where we go from here. Where we stand today. So, Thomas, you mentioned our current capacity at the jail, which puts us probably in, what, 93%, 94%, something like that.

You know, Brandon Wood later can can talk to us about recommendations from the state about 90% capacity, going beyond 90% can become a strain. How much of our county budget is currently spent at the jail? And I don't need an exact figure here. I'm not trying to put anybody on the spot. But in terms of all the detention officers that we have, which is close to a thousand.

Do you

have a ballpark figure?

At the jail? I think that might include patrol. 87,000,000.

I was gonna say a 100,000,000, so I was pretty close. While throwing overtime costs, what were our overtime costs last year, Tina? 20. So down here over a 100,000,000. $107,000,000 just at the county jail. A huge portion of the county budget, and that doesn't include the rest of the criminal justice system. This is the the centerpiece of of the county's budget and and our work. How much did we spend last year housing inmates out at a cost? About 4,000,000. And and is that what we budgeted this year?

4 point yeah. 4.5, I think.

But based on the change in cost at Kerr County, we increased that $2,000,000. Correct?

Correct. If

we use those beds as as expected. So you got another 4 to 8,000,000 there depending on how many beds you plan to use at surrounding counties. Going to your presentation, I know you had some numbers here, but the total total amount of investments in criminal justice strategies, whether that's an annual number or over the past few years. If I'm just looking at what's on this presentation, it looks like a couple million dollars.

I'm sorry, commissioner. Can you repeat that question? Which slide are you looking at?

Just just the funding for current criminal justice strategies. Those are the ones that you have highlighted here on slide eight.

Yes, that sounds about right, Commissioner. Again, is for this current fiscal year, so it doesn't incorporate investments that we've had through ARPA that are multi year, etcetera. So this is fiscal year only.

Okay. And then

I'm sorry. I missed the number, commissioner. What was that? 8,000,000 did you say, commissioner?

Well, I said two based on the numbers I'm seeing on slide eight.

And again, it does not include Commissioner Calvert. As you know, we've we've added a lot of residential permanent supportive housing through ARPA. It doesn't include any of those numbers. What you've invested in for rehabbing, you know, the Commons Of The Sacred Trails, etcetera. Some of those community based programs that you could also incorporate into this dollar amount. So this is just a snapshot.

Okay. And then going to the public health strategies, there's even a lot more than that. It looks like 45 to $50,000,000?

That is correct.

Okay. And I'll come back to that too here in a second. But I think my my point up front is we're spending hundreds of millions of dollars in the criminal justice system. Right? So that absolutely demands the level of attention and focus and conversation that we're trying to have here today.

Spending some time actually diving into this, not to mention the deaths that we heard about earlier and some of the other concerns that that are out there in the jail. So let me circle back to to a couple other comments just to make. So I know the the jail population has bounced around significantly. Right? And we're actually down several 100 from where we were kinda at a peak.

However, if you look at the the expected growth rates for Bexar County over the next fifteen years, we're projected to grow 29%. Over the next thirty five years, that's 54%. If you just held incarceration rates constant, that would lead to an additional 1,500 inmates in fifteen years, or 2,500 inmates in thirty five years. Again, incarceration rates constant. So I think that begs the question, first of all, are we planning for that level of growth, or are there some assumptions underlying here that, incarceration rates are gonna dramatically decrease, or the throughput of our court system is going to go from sixty days to thirty days, or are there some other assumptions that I'm totally missing?

Because if if we look at the the numbers we have today and the the current trajectory of growth, then it begs the question, like, are your assumptions if you don't think we need additional capacity? I think it's a fair question for everybody in the room. So I'm and again, I I didn't wanna dive into, you know, this just being a capacity conversation because there's there's multiple pieces here, And I am not opposed to exploring diversion. I've said several times that I think diversion efforts are necessary, but not sufficient to solve the overall problem. And so there's there's some short term solutions.

There's diversion efforts. There's things we maybe can clean up in our our court system. But ultimately, there's some mid long term solutions that are gonna require some serious investments by Bexar County. And I think, you know, we can't look past that because we know that these big projects can take years and not two or three years, five, six, seven years by the time we we actually see them realized. I'm gonna come back to to some of the presentations that I I that have and and highlighted here.

But one other thing I wanted to mention. I see this there's there's three separate discussion items, I think, today. To me, there's there's this demand part of the problem that is mainly wraps around deflection and diversion. Right? How how are we not creating how are we reducing the demand for facilities and bed space?

And we can talk about that. And then there's supply side, and this really has to do with facilities. This has to do with Dan Curry. This has to deal with the sheriff. This has to do with us talking about additional mental health beds, forensic beds, civil beds, potentially jail beds, medical beds, all the above.

And then there's a third part of this, and and to be honest, this has come more to me in the last couple days. But there is there are issues around coordination and partnership in this space that we have to address. And, you know, we can't dive really deep into each one of those here today, but we got a lot of cooks in the kitchen, but we have to remember we're on the same team and know that we're trying to move the county forward. And you know, based on some of the things I've heard and some of the the the fights, the the ongoing fights that we have between different organizations and different partners, we need to work through this, alright, for the good of the county. We can't see contracts lapse.

We can't see people not get paid. We we can't allow some of the capacity we do have to disappear. Right? We're talking about additional capacity we need, and I know Eric Epley can speak to the fact that we're losing capacity today. So some serious questions are gonna have to be be answered on that front. Let me just go back to to your presentation, and and there's a few things here. Let's just go back to the the public health strategies and the criminal justice strategies you mentioned. You said we've been doing diversion for a long time. Correct?

Correct.

I know a previous version of one of these slides actually had total cases versus eligible versus accepted for diversion. What percent of total inmates today are eligible for diversion?

So total percent

and Should we not have someone from the sheriff's office to answer

that? I

I

do know I do know

and looking over the last couple of fiscal years, the individuals who go through the doors at a d at the adult detention center ranges between 37 to 38,000 individuals, unique individuals that go through those doors. About fifty percent of those individuals are released within three days, three to four days. Under the current charges that we went over that are allowed by the DA's office that are eligible, We were identifying through a fiscal year more or less around a thousand individuals that we deemed eligible. Kind of a round number.

Perfect. Perfect.

Of that thousand, I believe we were actually diverting maybe anywhere between 500 to 600 individuals of that number. So again, those are over the last few fiscal years, so just kind of high Again, level

I just want to get at the ballpark

that percentage was 26% according to staff this fiscal year. Correct, Jennifer?

You said 26% were eligible?

Yes. For PR. For PR bonds only.

So I'm well, now I'm gonna have to try to reconcile the 26% with the 1,000 versus 40,000 because I thought it was much smaller percentage based on those numbers that you first provided.

Yes. Think the percentage I gave you was for one set of eligible. So I would go off the whole numbers that I just presented.

Okay. Well, whether it's a few percentage points or whether it's 20%, it's still a smaller percentage of of the total, right Correct. Who are eligible. If 26% of those were eligible, then you would have a lot more. I mean, you're talking about thousands of people potentially.

So I'm not sure, you know, again, we need clarity on that, exactly who's eligible. I think one of the other questions I had was just in terms of the funding that is being spent there today for both public health and criminal justice strategies. We're highlighting this and we're throwing out, you know, numbers. We don't really know, like, what additional need, additional capacity available, and how productive like what are the performance indicators here? We're showing numbers that have gone through this program.

We're spending money on these, but I don't really see the performance indicators or knowing the capacity. Hey, we actually have another 100 residential treatment beds, and there is a demand and there are eligible individuals. What's the sticking point? Or is it transitional housing? Well, we're at 100, we're capped out. We have no capacity. So there's no understanding of what the limits are on some of these categories or what the additional costs would be. And so I think it's hard for us to determine. We had a conversation with Advanos and Jimmy Haslocker and his team. I know they showed the triangle of care.

Right? And at the bottom, we have a lot of these public health strategies and investments. But how do we think about the performance of them, where there's additional need, how how are the gearing ratios between all these categories? And the the other question I'll just mention before before you jump in is, of all these dollars that are listed here, how many what's the breakdown between Bexar County dollars, ARPA dollars, opioid dollars? Because I think there's we need to understand whether those existing investments are going to be able to continue or whether they're going to have to now come out of the general fund to continue if they were ARPA funded or opioid funded.

And so if you could speak to that as well. Thank

you, commissioners, judge. I'm Doctor. Andrea Guerrero. I'm the director of public health for Bexar County. And I can speak specifically to the public health strategies, but I will reiterate that the reason we're doing this presentation and presenting public health alongside the Office of Criminal Justice is to demonstrate how we dovetail these strategies.

Public health is focused on primary prevention to help folks limit their exposure to the criminal justice system before they become before they have an encounter with law enforcement. So really preventative and upstream. As whereas office of criminal justice, all of the programs that they are operating are once someone has already been arrested, maybe again. And the diversion or deflection program is a condition of their release. It's a condition of their bond.

So just making that distinction. So to address your question, commissioner, the investments that you see here for this funding year, they're they're a mix. So the inpatient psychiatric beds, that is a contract that we have with Strack for 8 almost $8,000,000, and that was completely ARPA funded. And I'll and I'll say that it was kind of underspent until until we expanded the scope to include pediatric beds, and then we were able to really increase those bed days and get that number up so that we're spending all that money. So that's ARPA.

For the smart team, mobile multidisciplinary team, is a mix of general fund. The expansion to twenty four seven was made possible through ARPA funds. For residential treatment, almost entirely all of that is opioid funding. Opioid settlement funding took places like Lifetime, Alpha Home, Pay It Forward, Crosspoint, either for some construction, but mostly residential treatment. The other ARPA funds that support residential treatment would be RISE Recovery, which is a school based high school that focuses on recovery for high school students. And then the outpatient lower acuity that is almost entirely ARPA that was made possible over the last couple years.

Okay. If you could just sum up then on on that page with what did we say was $45,000,000? How much of that is Bexar County versus ARPA versus opioid?

For all of these, the entire thing, it's almost entirely ARPA and opioid with the exception of part of the smart budget. Probably about half of that? About half of that would be general fund.

So what is the plan for replacing those funds, or is there a plan or an option?

Well, I'll address your other question about outcomes and how are we measuring success or not of a lot of these things. And so we have an entire team, and our focus is on not just formative evaluation, summative evaluation, but looking at what is the impact of these programs, whether however they were funded, whether they were general fund, smart fund or general fund, ARPA, or opioid. And some of the things, especially with residential treatment, because those are the ones that have a really high risk of becoming rearrested. But we're looking at recidivism rates as is OCJ. We are looking at the number of days to rearrest.

We're looking whether or not that number number of days to re arrest correlates with the number of days they spent in inpatient to and and that type of evaluation will give us better insight into the things that are more or less a good investment, the ones that come up with the highest amount of cost avoidance. Because, of course, with public health, it's it's sometimes hard to measure what didn't happen because it was prevention. But we can tell, like, example, with the days if we're correlating days length of stay to the days to re arrest, for example, I'll just call out lifetime. They have over one hundred and fifty days till re arrest. And the people that are in there in recovery voluntarily, it's not a condition of their bond for the for the contract under public health.

So we're tracking all of these measures for all of the programs. And similarly, with mental health programs as well, the mental health the $20,000,000 ARPAT investment into school based and the ISDs to provide mental health services there. It's not included in this presentation because it's it's really upstream to judge Kaysen's point about the pipeline, but preventative away upstream.

So I'm glad that you're you're maintaining performance indicators within programs. I think the challenge is across programs. Right? And how do we compare different programs that maybe have different measurements and performance indicators? So, that will be something like we kinda have to work on.

We've become very prescriptive in how we create our contracts, how we provide standards and standardizing those metrics across programs so that we're collecting data going forward. So we're comparing apples to apples.

Okay. Yes. But but just again to clarify, because this is, you know, I I did not have the answer coming in here. But all that funding on slide 11 is ARPA funded. And that those are programmatic dollars. Those weren't just capital dollars for expansion on facility. Correct? Correct.

Yes.

And so just to be clear, Thomas, we don't have a plan right now on how we're going to backfill any of those programs or which programs will be back filled?

That is correct. That's current currently under evaluation.

K.

And I did wanna bring up Antonio to discuss the same thing on our criminal justice strategies in those numbers.

And and and add this into another difficult conversation that's upcoming about our long term financial forecast, and it's double concerning, to me. Go ahead.

Thank you, commissioner. I think a lot of the points that you made are definitely in part with what Doctor. Guerrero just mentioned and really the county manager's office. We're looking at all our contracts and realigning them to ensure accountability, right, and ensuring that the dollars are going to a point where we can measure the success and the metrics right. So for OCJ, we're looking at recidivism as our main factor. Right? To your point, for example, one hundred and thirty six individuals went to residential treatment. We're aligning all our contracts to ensure that we can report to the court out of the 136, this is the recidivism rate for those individuals. More importantly, not only just for residential treatment, but really for all of the services that we're providing. Right?

So that way we can come back and say individuals that are benefiting from residential treatment facilities or any of the other programs that we have, transitional housing, they're not coming back to the jail. Right? Because ultimately that, at the end of the day, we can then quantify and put some of the the cost that is going to that. Right? But again, we're aligning all our contracts.

The county manager's office has brought really the departments. To your point, collaboration is one of the key things that we've identified. My previous role as overseeing the jail population, right, is one of the things that working hand in hand with the sheriff's office, with all the departments, right, to make sure that we're, to your point, in the same team and going in the same direction. Right? And that we can cross collaborate, not only internally, but also with our our providers out in the community. Right? Because I think there's a lot of gaps and missed opportunities that we have to be able to maximize some of the county funding and some of the stuff that we have.

Okay. No, I appreciate it. But, yeah, let me just finish my thought here.

And one thing, Commissioner, just to add, just before I forget, when you look at the funding streams, a lot of that is general fund here across the board here. Which part? Majority of these services and strategies on the OCJ side is general funded. We do have a couple of grants in here, but for the most part that is general Which

slide are you talking about?

Slide eight.

Okay. That's the that's the small one. It's it's the other big one that's the challenge. So you have 45,000,000, not a clear funding mechanism today. We know we're going to talk about our long range financial forecast. And we know that there's there's an increasing need. I'll go ahead and yield to colleagues. First

of all, thank you for being here. I just wanna recognize some of the some of the good work we are doing. So I want to recognize Doctor. Norma Greenfield Labordi. I know she was unable to be here today, but of course her deputy is here, her staff is here. Also CHCS and the work that they have been partnering with us. I recently met with my appointee regarding some of these some of these issues, and of course, UHS. The Southside Hospital is, of course, being built, but the preventative health I'm using preventative health. We're talking about deflection. We're talking about diversion.

But as doctor Andrea was talking about, I use the word preventative a lot. So the Preventative Health Building is open for business, y'all. And the 3rd Floor, because Ed and I, we had a lot of conversations, And I'm not gonna say fight because we don't fight, but advocated very well. And because of that advocacy, the 3rd Floor is solely dedicated to mental health and behavioral health because this is about preventative. So way before I was commissioner, I was talking about in the state of Texas, our jails are the number one providers of mental health services, and that is a shame.

To the parent who spoke earlier, who's still here who's still here in the back, I wrote down something she said, horrible to say, but it was a quote that she said, custody shouldn't be a death sentence. And so in order to avoid that, we need to make sure we are about preventative health. So the 20,000,000 school based, county wide mental health program is a community deflection program that I have been talking about way before I became commissioner, was able to implement. And I've been clear with school districts. This is seed funding because these are opera dollars.

So use the best practices, use the success stories to then go and be able to get more money. So we need to make sure, our lobbyists, if you're listening, we passed y'all's contracts last month, and I pulled it, but voted for it. So to our lobbyists, to Melissa Shannon, we need to make sure that at the state level that we continue to advocate for these school mental health programs so that we won't have these situations. And again, since before I got here, was talking about we need more mental health beds because people should not be rotting in jail. And so, I wanna ask Jarvis, if you would come up, So it's a little confusing with Jarvis, so we pushed a lot of funding.

I believe it was $2,530,000,000 dollars for Applewhite, which is in my precinct, and it is a beautiful facility. It is open. So the the facility is the county's facility, but Jarvis is an interesting role because I guess part of your funding in your employees, although our county employees, but get funded through the state, something like that. It's very confusing. So can you tell us why the beautiful facility and the beds, why they're not filled yet?

Yes. Good morning.

And what we can do about to make Good that

morning, county judge, commissioner Jarvis Anderson, director of Bexar County Community Division.

Jarvis, you're tall, so you're gonna need to speak into the mic a little bit. Or that. Thank you.

So so the beds, beautiful campus. And I and I thank the county for their investment. And it was our per dollar, so I appreciate that. We we received the certificate of advocacy in February. We started moving people over from the 0300 Building to the new wing in March. The the the issue that we discovered, commissioner and and just so for the record, all the employees are kind of judicial employees, get funded by the state. They work for me. So we we're not county employees. We received some county benefits.

Okay.

The issue that we discovered from all of this is psych meds. Right? That's the main holdup for us. Right? I'm working on a long term plan where the state will actually fund that. But in the interim, the only way psych meds get funded in the DDRF, if they go through the COMI, which partner with the Center for Healthcare Services. That's my main issue there. Right? I can I can bring in counselors? I can I can absorb the food and security, but that's the one issue I have?

I'm working with with Bear County Mental Health Department to see if we can do something in the interim while I work on a long term solution where the state will fund this. Right? The engagement center, the DDRF facility, we have a code for the state can fund us in the future. Right? So that's my main issue right now, commissioner, is getting the psych meds resolved. Right? And I have a meeting this Friday with you at Jess to see if there's something we can do in the interim. So the beds itself, there's a 130 beds. So I will never double anyone in that space because I don't want to put people with mental illness kind of in sardine cans with their

own top of one rather.

Right.

I welcome all the commissioners to come out and look at this space because it's truly remarkable what's happening out there. The facility is a co occurring facility. So you can't come out there just for mental illness. It has to be a substance use disorder as well. We've been out there in operations since 1987. That particular facility came out in 2005. We partnered with the center to do that. Right? They do the clinical aspect of it. We do the substance use disorder aspect of it. Security, treatment, food, everything else. So if I can solve the medication, then I can get someone I can get those individuals out to jail, about a 100 of them, at Applewhite within the next three to four months.

And and I do wanna say the work that you guys are doing at Applewhite is really excellent, having been there, having spoken to to some of the people who are getting treatment there and being served there, but we need to make sure that the rest of the beds are filled. So if there's anything that commissioners court can do or my office specifically, please reach out to me, and you're my constituent too, as you know. So please reach out to us. Doctor. Andrew, did you have some a comment?

And to your point, Commissioner Moody, just about collaboration. Right? Jarvis and I, in going over this presentation, making sure that we're telling the right story when we talk about Applewhite and listening to why aren't we filling these beds. The solution that we've come up with in the short term is that Jarvis has said that he has about 105 people that are currently in the jail, that if we can solve the medication problem over the next three months, it will cost us about $60,000, And we can do that through the opioid settlement fund, and then work with and bring have a new conversation. We're already talking to to their jail based detention folks about coming with a longer term solution instead of purchasing, not just psych meds, also like blood pressure medication meds.

Because they leave the jail with seven days, but they need a longer term solution to make sure that they have medication sufficient for their stay at Applewhite. So we'll bring back to this court as soon as possible, hopefully at the next meeting, a request for, at least $60,000 We'll come up with a more specific budget to purchase those medications with the intent to work with on a long term solution so we can get their pricing instead of purchasing them outright at full cost.

And and we know that diversion centers alone aren't gonna, solve the jail population issues. I don't know if someone wants to speak to that.

Thank you, Jarvis. You're correct, commissioner. I mean, the diversion center alone isn't gonna reduce jail population. You know, isn't gonna empty out the jail, but it is one part of a holistic plan that we we do need to dive down because we know the benefits that it can achieve. And that's, first and foremost, the individual themselves becoming stabilized and and and getting the treatment they deserve in a facility that isn't, you know, the gel. So so that is one aspect that we do wanna go down that pathway. Yes. And,

you know, I recognize some of our outside partners earlier, but of course, it takes the whole county. Believe, Jen I don't know if Jenlyn's still here, but she had mentioned this. So it also oh, there's is that her? Yes. She's talking. Okay. It's also about all of our departments working together, including our district attorney's office, our sheriff's department. It takes all of us. So do you want to speak a little bit? I know Commissioner Rodriguez can speak more to this about how Harris County DA handles handles their deflection programs, and then I don't know if Commissioner Rodriguez wants to chime in from his visit.

Yes, Commissioner. Having the opportunity to visit Harris County along with the team here and the Commissioner, one area that the DA's office is heavily involved with in the area of deflection is having a dedicated intake team with experienced prosecutors fielding phone calls from law enforcement actually still in the field. So, in that concept, you have a law enforcement officer in the field detaining someone, calling that in to the DA, providing that information, what they have that individual detained for. And at that moment, in real time, the DA's intake team can let that law enforcement officer know you don't have enough information or enough evidence to bring that individual in. We wouldn't charge.

We would dismiss those charges, so don't bring that individual in. Or, hey, you have some, but you need a little bit more, call back, do your investigation, or bring them in, but we'll go ahead and charge. So before that law enforcement officer from, you know, including suburban cities over there brings that individual all the way downtown, that's time, effort, Right then and there, the the DA's office is saying yes or no. So that is one concept that we've we've kind of they've been doing it for a while, it it appears. So law enforcement officers there, that's I guess that's what they're trained to do.

It's been around for some time. But that is one area that we kind of saw as an opportunity. We actually were able to see a call in real time where the DA themselves said, you don't have enough. Don't don't ring this individual in. And I I think that credibility of those intake, prosecutors with experience in the courtroom, I think, provides some some, confidence that this is truly a public safety call. They understand kind of what those dynamics are that that prosecutor would have to deal with in the courtroom. So that is one area. Commissioner, I don't know. Staff, I don't know. If I

can just want to comment on based on what you're you can come up. Is it Antonio?

Yes.

Yeah. So we're talking about, obviously, the budget coming up and not the great projection of things are looking nationally and worldwide. So we can talk about lack of funding, but based on what you just said, there's some things that can be more efficient that we already have that we just need to put in place better. Correct? Alright. Thank you.

Correct. Commissioner, I I just wanted to add, I know, to Tom's point. Right? That's one of the things we saw can obviously help on both ends. Right? Because I think on previous visits to Harris County, I got to see an individual essentially being rejected from the field from bringing them into custody. But I also got to see another situation where an individual it was a life call, and they were actually getting more information and building a stronger case from the scene. Right? So for a public safety aspect, they were even able to build a stronger case as they're bringing somebody into custody. In addition to that, would say one of the other things that I'm always looking at efficiency, especially within the judicial system, is their ability to be able to electronically file cases.

Right? So they're able to electronically file cases in sense, to give you a sense of time frames, misdemeanor cases within twenty four hours same day you're filing a case. Right? When we're talking about efficiencies, we're talking about how long has it taken Bexar County right now without electronic filing to file cases. Which in misdemeanor cases, many times leads to individuals being in custody fifteen days plus, right, just to try to get a case filed. So those are some of the things that, to your point, Commissioner Clifford is right, is we're talking about efficiencies right into the system. Thank you. Thank

you, judge. Yeah. Let me let me start with that discussion on the diversion center because I was with Thomas and and my team, I guess back in March visiting Harris County. And I know Doctor. Testa was there as well.

Thank you for doing that doc. So you know a lot of the discussion focuses at least publicly on kind of a bricks and mortar diversion center. As has been pointed out, I think there's been strategies in place for some time where we've been trying to divert, deflect folks from the system. And so I think part of the discussion, and this is great that we're having this discussion, we're not gonna solve it all in ninety minutes today. So hopefully judge we can have an ongoing dialogue as it leads into our budget, into the city's budget, into University Health's budget this year.

But the the synergies in Harris County, as you mentioned Thomas, were what I noticed more related to processes for for proper diversion and deflection, right? It was different elected officials, the different department heads. Harris Health was a significant part of their diversion center there. So I think those are things that we're going to have to improve on despite the best efforts of a lot of folks here. Gillen and CHCS, I know judge Kaysen talked about a little bit of what he's done, all of the specialty courts that have put in, been put in place for decades that have worked towards the restorative therapeutic justice model.

We, you know, I think in an ideal world we'd have a smaller bricks and mortar jail and a bigger bricks and mortar diversion center, so that we could help folks that rather than lock them up. And so I think that that is the goal. I don't know what that number of beds looks like, but I wanted to acknowledge the fact that, you know, I saw David here, you know, from from Lifetime. I met the new CEO, John Hornsby recently. Big shoes to fill there at Lifetime, but I've known John for twenty five years and I know he's committed to being a partner.

We can't, as a county, just fully rely on our partners, and I think that's where we we center back the discussion on on a diversion type unit or building. I wanted to ask, and I was gonna put you in the spotlight, Eddie, because I know you just had a recent surgery. You looked great, by the way. But if Ed would come up, because I think, again, these are just my impressions. I hope you're doing well, Ed, by the way. You look great.

Thank you.

Ed did not listen to me and stay

on I know you should be you should not be here. Should be on hold.

Listen to the commissioner on everything she needs to

to that she says.

That's how important this discussion is Ed, and so we appreciate you being here. You know, going back to my first budget on commissioners court 2019 with the discussion that I had with you and George Hernandez and Reed Hurley, if you recall, we had a discussion back then about potentially tinkering with your tax rate. And it would have been back then a de minimis amount to an average homeowner, but it would have meant $7,000,000 or 8,000,000 to your budget. And the discussion back then was can we use that instead to bolster what University Health is doing in the mental health space? You remember that Ed?

Mhmm. Am I recollecting Okay. That Yes. So we brought that to court. We eventually got commissioners to agree to that.

And so I wanted to highlight that because we tend to forget that, you know, everybody thinks of university health as a place you go when you need a surgery. But the reality is there are preventative programs that you're working on, that you're committed to, and increasingly those have been in the mental health space, and even recently with respect to those that interface with our justice system at the jail. So Ed, I wanted to first of all thank you for the commitment that UHS has made in the past. And I think, again, just me speaking, the court's gonna weigh in. I think that we're gonna have to lean in to that partnership even further.

And and I'd like to hear your thoughts on how you see that in terms of your vision for helping us through what I think is a core function. And not just that, not only is it a core responsibility of ours, but I think it's what makes the most impact in a lot of areas, quality of life wise, on where people choose to work and live. So if you can talk a little bit about maybe what what you've done past budgets with those dollars and and how you see the vision for moving forward.

Yeah. Well, first of all, I'm glad to be here. And I want to thank all the commissioners and Judge Sakai who have reached out. It was very, very nice of you, and I appreciate that. I'm one of 13,000 employees at University Health that are committed to this county and to South Texas.

If somebody needs help, we're gonna make sure that we can provide the care. And I want to recognize a few people that wouldn't be without the leadership of Mr. Jimmy Haslocker as our board chair, all of your appointees. I can't say enough how wonderful every one of our board members are who take this seriously, every issue when it comes to, medical and mental health in our in our community. We have a public health subcommittee that met last night.

Again, at the urging of commissioner Clay Flores, I wanna just tell you how we start to we see the problem, we address the problem, and we try working together with all the organizations. And I wanna recognize also Eric Epley who had the vision when I came here in 2015 about all the health systems working together, the city, the county, and we wouldn't be where we are today, which is much better off than a lot of cities across the country by having navigation, the teams, the pick teams, the working with the sheriff and his teams, and then the staff in the back, doctor Abby Lozano, who's over our mental health, Stephanie Stiefer, who's over the jail service, correctional services, Sally Taylor, who's retired but doesn't retire, she still works with us. But just to give you an example, the commitment we knew needed to be on the South Side. That clinic opened. We saw 554 patients already there, 187 new just in a few months, 456 therapy visits.

Our largest population is from 18 to 39. We're treating anxiety, depression, PTSD. We have a domestic violence address down there. We have a zero suicide program down there. We have licensed chemical dependency people down there.

We're treating this in the outpatient before they can become part of the system that we've discussed today. In the jail, we're up to about three seventy health care providers in the jail, a growth of over $30,000,000 in expense for employees. We have chemical dependency counselors down there, social workers, psychiatrists, regular, what I would say regular mental health, as well as medical providers down there. In a very big, large facility that is not a hospital where you can do things as easily. Working together as a group, no one department, county, individual department, we have to work together as a team.

We have lots of opportunities to look at alternative fundings as we mentioned when it comes to medication management. There's opportunities to get pharmaceuticals funded if they're outpatients through the 340B program, federal programs, other programs. We have a grants department. We also have to hold the state accountable, which is the state's responsible for mental health and making sure that funding is available. The dollars that we make sure that are available through our budget.

It is so important that we all work together and collaboratively as you mentioned today. And I'd like to just take the liberty. We all put some editorials in the newspaper over the last couple of months, and one of the editorials that I was lucky enough to be able to put in was talking about how we could all work together, how we have, as Commissioner Moody mentioned, the pyramid. There's multiple layers, the last parts being that we don't want inpatient hospitalizations or incarceration as our goal when we know that we can treat on an ambulatory side. And I received a unique letter, and I just wanna read some excerpts to you, and it says, after reading your recent article in the San Antonio News Express, I feel excited and quasi loved knowing that people such as yourself have the heart that beats.

As a current inmate in the Bexar County Jail and under prescribed mental health medication, I relate to your mission and support this thinking. I am not under the Suboxone or opioid program here in jail, but many of those in my housing unit do need this treatment. And I do have and I have benefited from faster and I could have benefited from faster alternative treatments rather than incarceration. If I may, I'd like to share with you another issue that I myself has experienced. Beer County has remanded many inmates, myself included, without bond under mental health sixteen twenty two.

Keep all keeps all the jail population with many inmates that could benefit from programs mentioned in your article. I've been inside the jail for over a year awaiting a competency restoration program. I have heard code one blue when inmate is unresponsive. I've heard it announced in the mental health units of the building more times than I can remember. It goes on, and I just wanna say is my appeal to you, mister Banis, is to continue to strive with collaborative legislation to improve treatment, timeliness of care, and alternatives to jail in Bexar County especially.

Thank you for your willingness to voice your opinion. As an incarcerated veteran US Army, I am very aware of the problems that arise from being in jail with mental illness. Even with medications, the problems conditions worse. And then at at the very very end, it says, p s, thank all the medication nurses in the jail. Their smiles make a difference for those of us with mental illness. I just wanted to put a little personal story to that because we're talking about people that their lives are in jail. We need to make sure that they're taken care of. I want to make sure the university can be a part of the solution, but the solution is not just universities alone.

Yeah.

It's all the people that are in this room working together. I You have my commitment. I don't want mister Houselocker's commitment and the board that we are gonna do everything we can to make Bexar County the shining star in the state, if not the nation, on how we can do this right. We know that people don't need to be in the jail. We know that we can keep them out of the jail with preventative treatment. We know that in the community we can take care of them. We know if we invest our dollars for this, these are gonna be the least expensive dollars before we have to do the more expensive dollars. And I'm committed to all of you to making sure that we can solve this problem together.

Ed, thank you for for sharing that. I'm gonna I'm gonna let you yeah. Let's give him a round of applause. I'm gonna let you sit down because I know I know you're still getting back on your feet from your from your surgery. But you know, I I think people think about you, Ed and Jimmy, and you guys just run a hospital, but you're really impacting a lot of lives in a lot of different ways.

And I think that we certainly recognize that and I think that's part of the reason, as I mentioned, we're going to be even more joined at the hip in terms of figuring this out with the rest of the folks in this room, Jillian included. I mean, I've worked with Jillian since we were both at the city. And so there's a lot of folks from county staff to our partners that if we're going to the next court in ten or twenty years is talking about what we're doing, there's going to be a different footprint for how we get there. And I'm very confident the folks in this room can help make that happen. So thank you, Ed, for that.

Thomas, I wanted to ask you a couple of things, but I'm going let you sit down, Ed. Thank you.

Thank you.

Part part of, by the way, I know Ed, you're you're part of the city county committee. I know there's a the way, there's a initial planning meeting this afternoon that commissioner mean, a councilwoman Castillo and I are co chairing. So I don't know if you're going to be there or somebody from your team will.

Some of our team will be there. They're attending. And they're actually going to go on the field trip to Harris Health as well. Yes. That she said scheduled.

Perfect. Jimmy, do you want to add something?

Ed, can you please go home and rest?

I I echo what Ed Ed has said. This is very important. You've gotta have a healthy community, and part part of that has to be that we all work together in order to be able to help these people that that need the help. You look at the Laurel Ridge situation right now. Judge Kaysen and I were in the back discussing it.

It's a very difficult situation. It's going to put a lot of pressure on the ERs around town for all the hospitals, not just university. And we will probably talk a little bit about it tonight at our board meeting that we're having this evening. But this is a problem that takes a lot of partners to be able to make a difference, and we all must work together because there's an awful lot of money that's being spent that we all, if we got together, could probably go a little bit further. And thank the commissioners for having this session this morning, and we look forward to working with you.

Thank you, Jimmy. Appreciate that. Thomas, let me just ask real quick back to the presentation, just to clarify in my head that slide, 11 that is a list of strategies. So I thought you had said, if I heard you correctly or someone said that these are all programmatic dollars, none of this includes the capital in

there?

No. Believe that includes capital in there.

It is.

Okay. It might just for CrossPoint.

Doctor Aiken? Couldn't hear you.

If if I'm not mistaken, part of the residential treatment might have been for CrossPoint. I'd I'd have to double check and see if that but the majority is for direct services.

Okay. So so if you guys can get us

The breakdown?

The breakdown. Absolutely. That would be great. And this is, you know, a forecast for our budget team, and it's already gonna be a a tough budget. And I know we've already had folks, different departments ask us.

And I think this court in the past have been very supportive, for example, in adding law enforcement, adding constables. It may not be that we can do that this particular budget because we're gonna have to prioritize and make some tough decisions on programs that impact people and that really help them turn their lives around. Not to say that law enforcement doesn't, but I think that's going to be part of this discussion this court's going to have to have on making some of those tough decisions and prioritizing because as we've seen some of the initial revenue numbers from property tax flattened out a little bit and probably will be for the next couple of years, coupled with the fact that those ARPA dollars are on the down drawing down. So okay, let me ask one more thing and I'll let my other my colleagues chime in. Actually, you know what?

Commissioner Clay Flood has asked about the Applewhite. And so Jarvis, thanks for thank you. You don't need to come back up. Thank you for doing what you can to get that on track. I know it seems like we made that allocation or at least the appropriation several years ago. I think the sooner we can get that going, the better. But we appreciate your work on doing that. You know, go ahead and pass my time for now, but I appreciate the work that everybody's done. And I look forward to continuing the conversation. Thank you, judge.

And is it Commissioner Cowart? I don't forget.

Yes. Thank you, judge. Thank you, commissioner Moody for helping to get this all the staff and everyone there present. Commissioner Moody asked a question about assumptions that we have that may be missing. I would say that one of the big criminal justice changes we just heard from Ed with respect to the Southside Public Health development is this increase in therapeutic justice and the movement of therapy into schools.

You all have heard me say before, this was not something possible ten excuse me, twelve years ago when when I was on commissioners court, it was very taboo for superintendents to do mental health. So I think one of the things that we have to look at in terms of assumptions is, what is the Texas legislature going to do with respect to adverse childhood experiences. Adverse childhood experiences are potentially traumatic events occurring before the age of 18, including abuse and neglect and household dysfunction. When there's addiction in the house, there are sometimes divorce or incarceration. These are very common things that happen in our community.

And about sixty one percent of adults report at least one adverse childhood experience, and that can lead to long term toxic stress that negatively impacts brain development and long term physical and mental health. So I think our legislative team needs to perhaps look at some of the positive tea leaves and also begin to work around the state. I don't say this for a partisan reason. I just say this as a political observer. It looks like the Texas House may end up changing parties.

And that would I think be positive for addressing adverse childhood experiences. And I think it's up to us as other leaders on the ground looking at this to not forget and let the legislature forget that they should be having the burden financially of supporting the kind of mental health services that the commissioner's court provided as a result of the American Recovery Plan Act. That is not something that the county has really all the time under its statutory mandate, but it's something that the legislature should use as part of school programming, for part of community school programming, something that we can partner with them. And we also need to expand the amount of counselors that are available in order to meet the demand. I think that is a lot to do with those 10,000 mental health detentions that Judge Kacen came in and talked about are such a problem.

So I think that we need to look at the fact that in the past when we did projections for jail population, we did not have mental health counseling in our schools. And what does somebody needs to do a study on, what does the inclusion of mental health counseling do in terms of that school to prison prison pipeline? What does it do to reduce that? I think NAMI needs to be in this conversation, the National Association for Mental Illness. School districts need to be brought.

The state of Texas's public health director or public health commissioner rather and and probably a director too. Our charters are nonprofits. All of those folks may be at the table, but they are are very important. Now with respect to this pharmaceutical issue, we've got University Health folks in the room. I'm not exactly sure what the holdup is, but I think that considering that we have 100 and plus unused beds, if we got to get HEB, CVS, Walmart, Ortiz Pharmacy, whoever to help us with the licensing and the needs that we have, I think we need to make that a priority so that the beds are not empty and actually dealing with recidivism.

We also have not taken in consideration, commissioners court, the expansion of mental health that can take place at the State Hospital. We know that that's a regional, know, that's not all Bexar County. But the addition of $300,000,000 for that campus is is important in some of the severe acute cases that come through the Bexar County Jail. But moreover, in this leading the other elected officials around the state and an agenda that helps address gel prevention and and and diversion. The 100 there's literally a 111 acres of empty land there where hospital is that could be placed for additional medical, some mental health services and partnerships for a number of organizations.

And I would submit that we need to get with the State Facilities Corporation and others and begin planning how do we do that treatment in partnership with all the folks that you've mentioned today. So I wanted to throw that out there. I'm actually quite optimistic that the political wins in the next five years in Texas are going to be such that there's going be more investments to stem the school, the prison pipeline and and that gel diversion, that gel deflection, whatever the term, you all know what we're supposed to what we're trying to say. Whatever it is, is going to help us not have to necessarily build $1,000,000,000 for expansion of our jail. So thank you, judge. Thank you, court for this discussion.

Commissioner Muria, back to you.

Thank you, judge. Appreciate all the the engagement here, and and I think it's it's good. It's good to hear alignment and support. There's a few things I still wanna cover, and I wanted to make sure all of our partners had a chance to to speak as well. Just one quick thing, Thomas, before going on. Slide 12, I was just looking at the the jail population snapshot. The diverted numbers they just didn't look like they matched up with between the two lines there. Are the the numbers in parentheses right or the the gap between the lines?

You're talking about the year to date

The May and the 05/30? Mhmm. I was just trying to understand those those two numbers versus the between the lines, it looks like it's more than that. I don't know where we got them.

Yeah. The gap is correct. I mean, Joe Pop snapshot, there's other items, not just diversion that's adjudication, other stuff that's moving Okay. People out

And this will lead into to the other conversation I wanted to have. But you had a bunch of recommendations here, but I did saw that the on-site annex at the jail was not included as an assessment recommendation. Were there other like recommendations from the SASH study, Meadows, Testa that were not included here?

I think the only things we kinda left off from those were kind of some minor policies, some some technology. So I think those are things we're gonna be handling, you know, back of the house. But

Okay. Because I kinda wanna pull pull a couple things together. I did share with my colleagues here the old studies that we have seen here in commissioner's court. Right? From the GI evaluation by doctor Chesta, the Meadows study, the SASH study that was presented to us by Dan Curry, and he may want to come out as well.

Oh, you're back there. But one of the highlights here that was part of the SASH study was a new medical behavioral health facility on the current ADC campus that could provide improved medical facilities for UHS, as well as mental health beds, forensic beds, and also potentially address the JIA situation, which is ongoing and another separate story. But that wasn't included in your slides, and I just wanted to go back. Is that still one of the recommendations, Mr. Curry, from the Meadows study, is that correct?

Yeah. The the sash reuse piece or the forgive me. The the building a medical facility at the jail campus was a recommendation buried in the Meadows assessment. The phase two of that assessment. I know they did a regional community based look and then a detention based look through two phases of that study. In the detention based phase of that study, they recommended additional medical and medical mental health treatment facility beds on the jail campus or some some other location. So our our SAS presentation was directly in line with that recommendation from the MEDAW study to expand that mental health supply No,

appreciate that. Because I think it's an important omission because that concept, that recommendation that came before I was on court, right, and that study was out there and completed before we were on court, made that recommendation to this commissioner's court. And I don't think we should look past it, especially after talking with our partners at UHS and knowing their concerns, knowing also the impact on staffing over time with all the transportation issues going back and forth between the jail. I know Commissioner Rodriguez highlighted it. I very much appreciate UHS's commitment to partnering with us.

We've had some great discussions over in the Pet Tower regarding this. And I think we need to start looking at solutions. Right? We're in alignment. We're starting to see alignment here and some good discussion. But what does that mean? Right? In the near term, that communication highlights, you know, gaps in information. Like, we didn't know some some beds were sitting vacant. We know there needs to be medication.

You know, does UHS help with that? How how do we solve that? So I think that's great. But in the mid to long term, what does that look like in terms of psychiatric hospital, in terms of a partnership, a financial partnership, potentially between UHS and Bexar County on a facility that could, again, be on the current grounds of the jail or somewhere else that would provide those mental health beds, medical facilities close by to facilitate care that we need in the jail as well. So I think those are all important things to highlight.

I did capture your comment, Ed, about not a hospital. It isn't a hospital. Right? But we know we have to provide medical care there in the jail, and so we need to make sure that we have the medical facilities necessary to be able to do that. I wanted to make sure and call up had a couple other invited guests.

Eric Epley, would you mind just coming up and speaking to us briefly from Thank you for your patience. I know it's been been a long discussion here, but from Strak's perspective, I know you've done a lot of work out there in making sure people in crisis get the care they need and have a lot of experience in this space. Would love to get your recommendations, your thoughts, and any challenges you're dealing with with smart teams or anything else at this point.

Thank you, commissioner Moody. And commissioners and judge, it's a great chance to have a conversation with you. It's a tough conversation. I'm glad you're tackling the Diversion Deflection Center. It's one of the three legs of the stool.

It's one of the three legs. I I convened a meeting of the the health care principles about two or three months ago, and we came to consensus on those three legs. Mr. Banas was a key leader in that discussion, but the other health care system CEOs and other key leaders were in that room, and those three legs were pretty simple. They're expensive, but they're pretty simple.

Diversion deflection center, which you're tackling right now, which we appreciate. Wraparound services because it doesn't matter if it's a diversion center or if it's an inpatient actual psychiatric hospital or inpatient bed capacity, that's the third leg. The wraparound services make sure those things stay eligible for more patients. Transitional housing, permanent supportive housing, multidisciplinary response teams, some of those things we're doing pretty well. You mentioned the SMART team.

We also have the core team in the city. We are having trouble with that. The SMART team alone did 2,500, almost 2,500 patients last year responded to in the county, both on the East and West side. We had no arrests. We had no arrests, and we almost had no use of force.

We had one use of force, but only because the gentleman took off and ran into a busy interstate, and we had to tase him to be able to stop him before he was committing suicide. So so honestly, you look at an effective diversion deflection effort, the SMART team is critical. It's critical to our success right now. It's a National Association of Counties Best Practice Award we received for it. It's in jeopardy.

It's in jeopardy right now. Strack is committed to the SMART team, to the SMART team mission. Strack has been committed to this from day one for that purpose. Right now, we find ourselves funding our partners, Bexar County ESD District two, great guys who are providing paramedics to the SMART team. Mr. Flores, I think you know that. CHCS, wonderful partner with clinicians to go on those teams. You're talking about a Bear County deputy, an ESD two paramedic, and a CHCS mental health clinician in that Tahoe. They're making these runs every day. They deserve to be paid.

We've been paying them. We're doing that without a contract. I know some of you are aware of that, but I want to make the court aware of that. We'd like to resolve the issues with that, but but the county attorney will not even meet with us face to face. We have to give all of our comments, even from our lawyers.

We won't even talk to our lawyers face to face or on the phone, Zoom. I I I don't know how to resolve issues over red lines that take weeks to come back and forth. That's why we're at eight months. I think a face to face meeting, judge, with with perhaps one of you maybe a couple of commissioner or you or and and mediate some of these discussions because it this this this is too important a mission. I have a lot of other things to say.

I'm gonna drop that now, but that's my that's my request, judge. Things you may not know about the Laurel Ridge Treatment Center closure. They've lost their CMS provider status. CMS has been working with them for months, This didn't happen overnight. I think this is significant to our community.

CMS doesn't take this is a pretty rash action. CMS takes this action about seven to 10 times a year across the entire United States. Laurel Ridge's commitment to me from their leadership is they're gonna stay open with a very small unit, 20 to 40 beds. They're gonna reapply for their CMS status because they can't bill Medicare, Medicaid, and many contracts, private contracts, require you to have your CMS status as sort of a level of capability, right? There will be a waiting period before they're allowed to reapply.

Do you know how long that will be?

They don't know. It could be three months, it could be six months, it could be a year, could be a day. It's not going be a day. We'll know that hopefully next week. They have 86 patients as of today, and by Friday, they will be down to the 20.

That is a three thirty bed facility, three thirty bed loss to our inpatient capability. 22 of those three thirty beds are what we call the unfunded contract beds that CHCS is so generously providing through HHSC funds. We currently have about 68 contract beds, 22 of those are at Laurel Ridge. Earlier, it was mentioned we have those ARPA beds as well. Thank you for those eight additional contract beds.

That's the 60 plus eight. That's how we get to 68. So we're losing Laurel Ridge on Friday. We're losing those 22 contract beds that Laurel Ridge has provided, and we're losing the ARPA beds on Friday, midnight. That's going to have impact to the psychiatric centers in this town. That's going to have impact to the ERs in this town. I would I would encourage our health care partners to remember twenty fifteen and 2016. That's where we're going back to on Friday morning. It's gonna impact the police and the sheriff. There's no doubt.

It's gonna impact the jail. We're talking about trying to reduce the jail, but when it's as the final destination if there is no other destination. We've seen it over and over, and that's coming. It's gonna impact the shelters. It's gonna impact every part of our society, and and it I it's coming like a freight train.

You know, crisis mental health is complex because it has three components. You, of course, have a health care component, but you also have a you you have this justice

justice

component and a public safety component. Well, public safety and justice are used to having geopolitical lines. Health care doesn't deal in we know oh, you're from Comal County? Yeah. We're not gonna see you over here at Methodist or Baptist. Like, that doesn't exist. We it's it's a catchment area. It's how far can you draw patients. And and those geopolitical lines create a great deal of the complexity related to crisis mental health. So it's where people can be funded and not funded, etcetera.

We're committed to trying to help navigate that complexity at STIC, at the at the STRIC, South Southwest Texas Crisis Collaborative. I've said it. I'm gonna pause there.

Well, I I appreciate your candor and your willingness to to give us facts. I think, first of all, I mean, you have my commitment to to to try to facilitate this going forward with the smart teams. I think there's agreement that this is something that has been hugely successful and that we would wanna see continued. But obviously, we need to sort that out in terms of the contract. I also think you bring up some serious points that we need to consider.

I mean, we want to we want to think about playing offense on this issue, but I mean, shoot, we got to play defense too. I mean, we're losing hundreds of beds, and and what does that look like, you know, next week? So I I think that those are some definitely sobering numbers and stats that we need to consider going forward. But appreciate your willingness to come here and share all that. And I don't know if anybody else has any questions or comments.

Wanted to bring Brandon Wood up as well. You, Eric. I think I Brandon, if you could join us. I just wanted to introduce Brandon Wood, former director of the Texas jail commission, I believe, and recently we sat down for a breakfast and got to pick his brain on what he's seen over the years. Both both, you know, in terms of stats with with our jail and criminal justice system, but also across the state.

He's watched some of the things that are going on in Harris County, Dallas County, Travis County, and other big urban areas. So I'm just gonna kinda open it up to you rather than than talking anymore, but if you could tell us about, you know, your experience and and kind of what you've seen and and some of the challenges and how other big urban counties are are thinking about this and and dealing with these issues.

Brandon Wood, former executive director of Texas Commission on Jail Standards, currently, with GMJ. And, I appreciate the opportunity to, speak to, an extremely important issue. And to be honest with you, you're asking the right questions and you're saying the right things. You understand that there's a need for deflection and diversion. You've heard that it is one part of this three legged stool.

It may have more legs, than just three because criminal justice, is an extremely complicated program, probably one of the least popular unfortunately or fortunately, whichever way you wanna look at it, that counties are required to operate. Your general public normally does not have a general understanding of what these jails consist of. And the first thing I always tell people is that your county jail is just one part of a criminal justice system. And if any part of that system is not working and operating as effectively and as efficiently as possible, your jail population will go up and you will continue to experience the outcomes that you're trying to avoid. Deflection and diversion, we hear people talk about it all the time, all across the state, all across the nation.

And the first thing that I'd ask is, you want to deflect these people, you want to divert them, where are you diverting them to? What type of care is being provided? One of the things that is extremely as important is also to ensure that local law enforcement has buy in and understands the value of these diversion centers. Because, for example, I've heard time and time again and have seen it as well, if an individual is picked up and taken to a diversion center and they are able to check themselves out within three to four hours and that same officer runs across that individual on his same shift, they have less of an incentive to utilize those facilities. So that programming is extremely important.

Quick math based upon some of the data that y'all were throwing out there earlier. Your county is projected to be at 3,300,000, I believe, is the number that I heard previously by 2015, about twenty five years, twenty twenty four years now. Even if you were able to drive your incarceration rate down to two point o, which is where we see most of the larger urban counties across the state, you would still probably have an inmate population over 6,500. So even if you are doing everything that you need to do, you do have to have a plan at some point in the future to provide that additional capacity.

Can divert and deflect everyone.

I'm sorry. What was

the We we can't divert and deflect everyone.

No, sir.

The providing of public safety is one of the primary functions of local government and state government, and ensuring that you have proper space for those individuals that you cannot safely release back out in the public is something that we are burdened with. But you should still try as much as you possibly can. You have to drive down your incarceration rates. You have to ensure that if that individual can be placed safely back into the community, that should be your number one goal after the provision of public safety. So a realistic approach, do you have tripwires in place where if your inmate population reaches a certain amount, what occurs at that point in time?

Or if the programs that you are putting in place are not providing the outcomes that you are expecting, what does the return on investment in regards to these programs reinforce success on those programs? So I would encourage you to keep having these discussions. These programs, just like any large organization, having come from state bureaucracy, I can speak to this firsthand, we have a tendency to find ourselves operating in a silo. You have to ensure that you engage your partners, open lines of communication, holding everybody accountable to what they're supposed to be doing. That can be difficult at times, I know.

But it is imperative that the county continue down the path. Bexar County was traditionally seen as very progressive in this regard. Whenever I first started, I was blown away by the the match program, mothers and their children, that was being operated at the jail. The other programs that were being provided with the community, community support, providing those programs so that you can divert these individuals. Provision of health care within jails.

Every jail that we see coming online now to include one that we are currently helping program, large amounts of space are being provided for additional health care to be provided on-site at the county jail. You're not expected to possibly be operating a level one trauma center at these jails, but you do need the space and the resources available to provide that level of care. We want to reduce the number of in custody deaths. Everybody has that goal. Nobody sets out wanting to be ranked number one in the state for death in custodies.

We understand that, unfortunately, some of the individuals that we do interact with in our criminal justice system have preexisting health conditions. They have not had access to health care that would help them, but reduction of suicides, elimination of homicides, those are items that have to be done. And ensuring that you have that seamless type transition whenever you're moving these people out can help you accomplish that. But you have to be providing those services in that county jail.

Well, I I appreciate all those thoughts. I just have a couple quick questions and I wanted to highlight a couple of your points. First of all, that you said medical on-site is a best practice that is being utilized in all new new construction, basically, at

this point. It is.

Also highlighted the the math says based on our growth rate, even if we drove incarceration rates down, again, we're talking about assumptions earlier, you'd still be looking at 6,500 inmates, which we're at 5,000 capacity. So that that would be a serious problem. To your point about trip wires and having a plan, I think that that's something we realized when we hit the trip wire and we didn't have a plan. And so we did, you know, get these contracts with surrounding counties, but we're still trying to figure out what that process looks like, and how we pull inmates back when we have that additional capacity, and we don't overuse those contracts. But how does that look like statewide at this point?

Because if more and more counties are having to look to other surrounding counties for additional capacity, are you seeing a lot of that? And I mean, we just saw one of our counties increase the cost per bed per night $20, you know, 30% overnight. So are are you seeing a dwindling supply of of those counties that are willing to do that?

We see counties get into bidding wars against each other for those available beds. That in turn has forced some counties to actually house their inmates out of state. And that is an issue that we were not able to prevent because we did not have the authority while I was with the commission. But we had concerns with that practice because those are citizens of the state of Texas, and they were no longer being held within the confines of the state. And whenever you have over 1,000 of your inmates housed out of state, and then we had other counties, smaller counties, simply did not have the ability to compete with some of the larger counties consuming these available beds, they were also starting to move their inmates out of state.

So the reduction in excess capacity across the state has finally reached the point that you cannot simply just pick up the phone and secure 500 beds without any issue. Accounting may guarantee you 100 beds, but they may even say that you're going to pay for those 100 beds even if you do not fill them. So that is the new model that is coming into play and I believe that will continue into the near future.

Yeah. There's there's two parts to that. First of all, you you if you do find them, there's gonna be enough competition that the price is gonna go up, which we just saw Yes. With Kerr County. And that's if you're lucky. If not, you can't find those beds, and then you got a bigger problem. That's correct. Appreciate you sharing that. Now, I don't know what the answer to this question will be, but I want you to just speak to what you know about the Dallas County situation, because I know they are building a new jail there. I'm not suggesting that we build a new jail, but they are sometimes we partisan politics creeps in here.

Dallas County doesn't have a Republican on their commissioner's court. They are building a new Dallas County Jail. They're slightly bigger than we are, but could you speak to the details of that? And what compelled them to believe that they needed to do that at this time?

So the Dallas County Jail System has several similarities to Bexar County. Multi facilities that have been built over the years. They have tried to make them as efficient as possible. But in the end, it was the realization that they did need to move probably out of downtown and address the criminal justice needs of the county for the next thirty to fifty years, right out of the bat. Now if that includes doing a phased approach, that may be one of the things that they do undertake, but they wanna make sure that they're providing the right type of beds along with diversion programmed into it in order to try to reduce the end number of beds that they would need at that fifty year period.

So the age of the facilities, maintenance of these facilities can become exorbitant. You are dealing with systems that age out, vendors no longer produce the parts. And then whenever you have the responsibility to ensure that all of your doors actually lock and stay locked, but that vendor no longer produces those parts, all of a sudden, you're encountering a situation in which you are now having to do a complete replacement of doors, security electronics, computer systems. All those items, you know, whether it's planned obsolescence or whatever you wanna call it, they have to be replaced on an ongoing basis. Then you have all the life safety systems that are in place.

And anytime that you're dealing with these older buildings, they decay. They are used twenty four seven, three hundred and sixty five days a year. It is not like your traditional office building, which gets a break. So the cost of maintenance of these jails, the older they are, the higher it becomes. And at certain points, you have to realize that you are no longer getting out of that jail what you need to get out of it. You're spending more on it than it would almost cost to build a new one. But it is a breakeven point.

No. I appreciate that, Brandon. And I think that it's You know, I used the example one time about, you know, your your truck, your your Chevy pickup truck. Right? Like, you're good at a 150,000 miles. You know, you start spending more and more on maintenance. You get to 200,000 miles. I see you, Thomas. You get to 250,000 miles. I mean, at some point, you start, I need a new engine, I need a new transmission.

You start putting so much money out in terms of maintenance costs that you figure, well, I could actually go out and purchase a new truck and save money going that way. And eventually, Thomas, everybody gets there. But I think that that brings to your point. Right? And I'd like, Dan, if you wouldn't mind coming up just briefly. I'm gonna close things down here, judge, shortly. But Dan, could you just speak to the different annexes and and the dates? Like and and Brandon, I'd like to hear your thoughts too on the useful life of a jail in general.

Well, I think you're looking at, you know, our dissension facilities and their age. So again, the original Bexar County detention center on the Comal Campus was BNC Tower and was constructed around 1986. A few years later in 1889, they added A Tower. So pretty quickly after that. So that's what we call the main Forty years. Correct.

Okay. Yeah.

Adult attention center annex was completed in the early nineties. When those came online, I think '95 was when the building was renovated, A And B Tower and then C And D Tower was added to that. So a quick progression in that twenty year window of adding a significant number of beds to that campus. And in back in 2015, we added 512 beds to the South Tower facility, which includes the GA intake center.

Have we seen an increase in escalation and maintenance costs? Mean, there any, you know, maintenance costs that are just going to be an extreme burden in the coming years?

Well, I will I will tell you, I'm thankful that the court has in the past invested heavily in making sure the jail stays in compliance, and it has all the public physical plant attributes that it needs. Yeah. You allowed us to replace the detention toilets, which were cause of concern, replace detention lighting. So I don't know, akin to kind of pulling the skeleton out of the body and putting it back in. But it is a significant investment, for the county as you well noted and we're doing our best to make sure that we bring you projects to make sure it stays in compliance with standards.

Yeah. And I hope that we can kind of continue this conversation because I know we could continue on for another couple hours, but know we got other business to attend to as well. So I wanted to kind of close things down. But I do think understanding like our ongoing maintenance costs for the jail, like looking at them over the last ten years, and what's expected over the next ten years would be helpful in thinking about this too. Mr. Wood, if you wouldn't mind just answering that question as well in terms of useful life.

So one of the things that we always encourage counties to take into account is that you want that jail to be able to last twenty years without having to add on to it. Now even during that twenty years because twenty years is traditionally the length of the bond that is issued, paid off, so forth and so on. Nobody ever wants to go back out to the voters and say, yeah, we didn't ask for enough money to build enough jail beds. But even during that twenty year period, roofs are going to need to be replaced. You can have mechanical systems start going out.

So hopefully, you get a good five years where you're like in really good shape, but after that, you're probably going to start incurring preventative maintenance costs and some replacement costs. You may have a generator go out. Generators get hit by lightning, whatever the case may be. So we always encourage counties to look at that twenty year window right there, and then counties want to operate that jail and not build anything for a hundred and twenty years. I get it.

I understand. There are some in the state that are approaching that age, but they're smaller counties. They should be museums rather than jails, but they still hang on. So it's just that balancing act that counties have to do, not just with jails, but everything else that y'all are responsible for. But jails, you're dealing with a very unique situation, and it's very challenging. And it's also one of the reasons why we encourage counties to pay attention to the type of jail beds that they build so that the operator, the sheriff's office, has what they need because that design is gonna drive operations and operations can ensure a safer and more secure facility throughout.

Okay. Thank you.

Yes, sir.

All right. I'm gonna final comments here, and, we'll we'll let the judge finish this out. But the medical mental health annex recommendation, I don't think we should be excluding that from the mix because it also touches another point that isn't included in the recommendation, but the JIA, right? And we've talked about double magistration a little bit. I think we need to talk about it more because we know it's an issue.

It's delaying the intake process, and we got to solve that. But a new medical mental health annex would provide the opportunity to rebuild the JIA with the scale and flow that it needs to be successful for both the city and the county. So I do still want to keep that in the mix of options as we go forward and think about things. I know Sash, the actual renovation of the buildings, we didn't get into the details there. That was something that was presented by Dan Currie as well with that SASH study.

It requires engagement with the state. I'll be honest, we didn't have the level of engagement I think that we needed or alignment on what our plan was in order to do that and go to the governor's office. I'm willing to do that, but we have to be aligned and have a plan that makes sense and and that we're committed to and behind. I talked to the Lubbock County judge about what they were doing out in Lubbock County. I talked to the Travis County judge, but we need to go deeper and make sure that this court's aligned if we're gonna go into the legislative session and make a big ask for renovation dollars, and and more importantly, not just the money to renovate the buildings, but in actual to be able to take control of those beds so we can utilize those beds.

Right? If not, they're a state asset, and you know, we're at the mercy of the state. Right? So we really wanna have control of the bets too. So it's a it's kind of a dual ask in the state legislature. So I think those are are two things we we probably need to talk more about. I know the sheriff has has made some suggestions on the the JIA, the dual magistration situation that we need to continue to dive deeper into. But I think we saw today there was a few things. If there are barriers that partners see, elevate those barriers. I don't think anybody up here was aware of the the situation at Applewhite.

Right? I'm sure there's other things maybe that you've talked about in the back of the the room here that we need to be aware of. We can't address things we're not aware of and that we aren't able to talk about. So I hope that if anything today, we've elevated the conversation, we've gained some awareness about what some of the challenges are, what some of the opportunities are. Shoot, I mean, I've been very active clearly in engaging with a lot of our partners.

You know, the points that were made about all the funding that we have for programmatic funding within behavioral health, public health, and that none of those dollars are in our current general budget. I mean, that was eye opening. And it creates a huge gap as we go forward and have a conversation about our long term finances. Maybe that's another conversation to have with UHS, right? How can we ask for support on that front to help fill that gap on the things that we think are priorities?

But I hope that as we go forward, again, I I wanna thank Judge and my colleagues for the willingness to have this conversation. I wanna thank all of our partners in the room, especially Jimmy, Ed, Eric, Brandon coming in from out of town, and others. This is gonna take a team effort. And we didn't solve anything today, but at least we started the conversation. I hope we continue that going forward because I think this is too big a problem for us to look past it. Thank you.

Yeah. Just we spent a lot of time on this, and we've talked a lot about a lot of stuff. And just to remind everyone, it's not just about numbers and stats and budget, but as the parent is still back there, Ed, thank you for reading that letter. I mean, I guess it was a shout out, Express News is here. But to know that people in jail are reading the Express News and that you're taking time to open your mail and or someone opened it for you and and and you're reading that.

And to remember that every mental health program, every school based program that I fought for, every diversion program, deflection program, every person in CHCS, every person sitting in jail right now is somebody's child, somebody's father, someone's sister. These are lives we're talking about. They're not just stats and numbers. Thank you.

I've been quiet while the commissioners have articulated their thoughts and positions on this. Obviously, there's some clear takeaways, but I don't wanna leave out there's one person that I believe is here, doctor Testa. Where you at? Come up forward. Thomas, stay right there. Thomas, tee up slide.

He might step down.

1314. Did doctor Testa step out?

He was here all morning.

Well, while y'all are finding doctor Testa, y'all been standing up for a long time. If y'all wanna sit down, sit down. If we wanna call you up, we can. If if you'd like to sit down.

So as we hopefully, doctor Tessa didn't leave, I I would would want his input. But the point being made, Thomas, and did we get the slides up? Thirteen, fourteen, which are the assessment recommendations. I want it noted for the record that these are studies that didn't get on a shelf and we forgot about them. The county has been actively participating and actively engaged in diversion and deflection.

As county judge, I work very closely with Thomas and the budget office and the manager's office in order to lend my expertise from the judicial system, having worked, although not albeit not in the criminal justice side, but obviously as local administrative judge and a former prosecutor in the district attorney's office. So Thomas, where I'm going with that is, if you did bring up those slides, it looks like most of all recommendations have been completed. Some are still in progress, and we've heard that they're actively engaged. We got the Applewhite issue put on the table, and I think that is something that I have given direction that we need to get those beds open. I expect a proposal so that we can get that done.

The reason why I wanted to talk to doctor Testa, apparently he's left, and and Thomas, I'm have to rely on you to let us know from the study, doctor Testa has identified the dual magistration, double magistration as an impediment, as an issue as to the process in regards to diversion deflection. Can you explain that as to why double magistration is such is a hindrance obstacle?

Yes, judge. Again, right now, for certain class c misdemeanors, if you're a San Antonio police officer, you're taking those individuals to Frio Street. And those individuals are going through their magistration process. That can take up to anywhere between six to eight hours before those individuals are transferred over to the sheriff's office and our intake center. During that time, the reason that's important and those inefficiencies there is during that time, if an individual is having a substance use, is suffering from substance use or or mental illness, that's time delayed before our team can really take a look at those individuals and hopefully divert them from those areas.

So it's really that time gap between receiving those individuals from the city over to the county where we can really invest in their care, and that that is one of the the systematic areas that we really need to improve on. Again, as many of our partners have have advocated for, that's the time where we should be really focusing on these individuals, whether it's diversion or deflection opportunity. So it's really that key area, Judge. It's time. It's those inefficiencies there in getting those certain individuals treatment.

Sometimes people will die as a result of that lack of attention. Correct?

Correct.

Clearly heard today. So let let me put on record what I see as clear takeaways. It is clear that the issues of the jail population, the diversion and inflection that the county has been committed to is indeed complex and multifaceted. The solutions require extensive coordination and communication between internal and external stakeholders. And we've only touched a few of them.

There's the DA's office has has and the sheriff are also integrated parts of the puzzle. Today, the county has provided an important definition for diversion. That was the main thing I wanted this presentation to be is diversion and deflection or deflection diversion is an alternative to incarceration. Correct, Thomas? Correct. Or else we have started that conversation. Do we just do we need another jail? Do we need a bigger jail? And I think we've heard that the county has been very effective and those graphs let's go to the graphs. That's it is at number 11.

That but for your efforts, we see that we have made significant. And that is a big cost savings. Correct?

Correct.

But we have ongoing programs that are being funded through the ARPA, through the opioid. And as just mister Rodriguez has pointed out, we're gonna have to figure out what return of investment we have and what we will continue to do. The commission's court, it is clear, in the last three years has made significant investments. So I don't want anybody in this community or in this courtroom to feel that the county has not made a commitment to deflection and diversion strategies. This shows the significant impact that we made diverting eligible people in alternatives incarceration.

Eric Epley's statement of the smart program, which I am committed to make sure we continue, I will bring that back. I'm gonna ask the county manager to get that on the next available agenda so that we can have a discussion there in order to help resolve whatever issues there are. I am familiar with it, and I am making my position known. We will continue that program because you heard that program has kept indeed people from being arrested. And without that program, I I know for a fact those people would have ended up in the criminal justice system.

So we invested in and promoted programs for deflection, which is diverting people from the jail pre arrest. Remember, pre arrest. A great example is a cider release program for eligible minor offenses. You heard mister Woods say, yeah, but you gotta be careful with cider release because as we know, that became a political issue of people not being held in the jail. So we have to be careful and cautious, especially in regards to public safety.

We know that without these efforts, the county would have been forced housing the thousand plus people. Our decisive investments in studying and addressing the problem prevented that scenario by helping more than a thousand people get diverted to the appropriate alternative to incarceration. In my experience as county judge, I see that deflection and diversion are as much about the process of identifying and routing eligible populations or the portal of diversion as it about outlets for diversion increasing capacity. In court, that's gonna cost us money, and we're gonna have to figure out where we put our money for the best return of investment. These outlets for diversion are community based supports.

That's why it is a public private partnership with our nonprofit community, our faith based community, and those people that are dedicated to the criminal justice system, and the advocates that and the people that are most affected. And we've heard those stories today of people that are most affected by our criminal justice system. We know that the issues are about subsequent recovery, mental health treatment, as well as support systems or wraparound services that mister Epley has identified, especially for individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities, the IDD. We have people in our jail that are severely have severe mental health issues and are mentally ill, And they're in there because of the criminal justice system. We had a thorough discussion of the Applewhite dual diagnosis facility.

This is a good example of where we made an investment, a multimillion dollar investment where we invested to expand the capacity for mental health and substance use diversion. But we understood today it's about process. And because of the process, we can't get that thing online, and I've ordered the county manager and budget office fix it, figure it out. But this conversation is bigger than a discussion about facilities. Let me repeat.

This is bigger than a discussion on just facilities. There is no one building, no one program, there is no one shot silver bullet solution. This is a complicated multifaceted problem. It is gonna take collaboration of policy programs, facilities, which the county has been steadily investing in And a good discussion, commissioner Moody, about where do we go. And you have been very involved in that.

So I appreciate your dedication on trying to improve our criminal justice system. Above all, I believe that process and stakeholder coordination will make the biggest difference in improving diversion and deflection. If we build without doing this foundational alignment work, we will not get very far. So with all due respect to your analogy, you know what? We can keep those old vehicles with 200,000.

We just got to change the oil, change the tires, and make sure it runs, and those cars keep running, and so long we don't run them in the ground. And that's what we have to do because the effect is how it affects the people that are in our system. And that's been made very clear today. Obviously, dual magistrates is another perfect example. If we build a new facility, but we're working under separate magistration system by the city and the county, we lose key diversion opportunities, and you've explained why.

The city system is a duplication of services that can be corrected to assist with budget challenges, and I believe we are starting conversations at this time. And I appreciate sheriff Salazar in starting those conversations. We must come together to eliminate double magistration. The county has worked with the experts, with our community partners, with our studies, and we basically have brought all the experts to the table, so to speak, and we have much much more work to do. Near the start of my term, I started a public safety action committee with the city, which helped coordinate the necessary stakeholders.

I'm gonna reconvene that stakeholder committee in order to have these discussions in regards to where deflection and diversion and how do we make the process better. In the remainder of my term as county judge, I am committed to continue to lead the way on reforming and increasing coordination within our local criminal justice and community health systems. And I look forward to working with the judicial system. I've always recognized that our judges, especially on the criminal justice side, have worked very hard to move those cases. We have worked with the district attorney's office to provide the funding, the staffing to deal with the backlog.

And quite frankly, Commissioner Moody, you've always pointed out we still have a backlog. So we still have much, much work to do in order to provide an effective system. I want to appreciate the work of UHS because they stepped in to work with the GIA there, the magistration system, and we are continuing to look at how UHS can continue to provide support, and you are a very, very valuable partner. Thank you. I think we heard a discussion that we need some medication issues over at the Applewhite.

So I'm sure knowing my conversations with Banos, we're gonna get things fixed over there. So with that, I wanna leave with a note of optimism, with hope, and with the order to this court that we must continue to fix the system. It needs to be fixed. Thank you for everybody who's made this presentation available. Thank you for all that participated today. I thank the colleagues on this court for their participation and involvement and their input. Alright. I believe we're at the lunch hour. I'm gonna have I'm declaring a recess at this time. I know we still have citizen to be heard. I know we still have business to do. Let's take about a forty five minute break, guys. Right? I don't wanna eat. Yeah.

Let's let's let's and we and so court, let's take a recess and we'll come back and take there we go. Alright. Time is now 01:33PM. Court's back in session. We finished the time certain. Commissioner Rodriguez, you had something you wanted to bring up to the court's attention?

Oh, just when we get to item seven.

Item seven. Alright. So, court will take up agenda item six, filing for the record the following legal administrative documents directing criminal district attorney to take action if necessary, with, subsection a. Court takes note. Seven, approval of commissioner's court minutes for Tuesday, 04/14/2026.

Yes, judge. And I'd like to make a motion to approve the minutes with one amendment. There's a typographical error in the minutes on item number 43. The dollar amount should be $1,820,000 rather than $1,800,000. So I make that amendment and a motion to approve.

Motion by commissioner Rodriguez. Is there a second? Second. Second by commissioner Moody. With that stipulation of correction, all those in favor, signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstention? Motion carries. We'll now go to agenda item number eight, citizens to be heard.

We will start with mister Keith Wilson. I will note for the record that I have one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. Additional speakers, I I will call them out. All have indicated on their note that they yield to Keith Wilson. So, Keith, if you'll just allow me. Kara Schneider, just wanna She make sure

had to leave, sir.

Alright. She had to leave and she's yield she has to leave. Yes, sir. Kristen Green. Are you yielding your time? Okay. Damian. Are you yielding your time? Got it. Gary Lockhart. Are you yielding your time? Gary Lockhart. Okay. You're yielding your time. Eric Bowden, you're yielding your time.

Yes, sir.