Community Services - Regular Meeting

To call the meeting to order now, please. Randy has a gavel. Awesome timers.

You need

to get the gavel from Counselor Reidy, right? Hi, welcome. Just want to remind you guys this meeting is being recorded. And afterwards, we need to kind of leave the room once we adjourn so that the IT people can come in for the next meeting. And since it's a public meeting, we don't want to keep on recording after we adjourn. So welcome. Let's do the call to order and roll call. I have an old list, and we apologize up front about the agenda. There's a separate database that keeps track of all of our members. And so unfortunately, that is being updated right now.

So Elizabeth, I know we made progress. We lost you. And so Trevor and Rebecca as well, you guys will get you back on here.

No worries at all.

Thank you. Sorry. It's just and Lentestar. And what else are we working with here? Oh, just the presentation. We're going to get the presentation No, I mean the systems that we Oh, yeah. And this is a template, as you know. So the information's put into it, but the template itself is just whatever it is. So first of all, I have some kind of sad news. Leah Blackwell is no longer going to be with the health counsel.

She apologized, but she's just got so much on her plate. She's taken a new job with the senior center. And the senior center is also going to be closed for eight or nine months due to some very necessary deferred maintenance. So it's really sad. We're going to miss her. But it's understandable. So thank you, Leah, for your service. Let's go ahead and take roll call then. I'm here. Laura is not here yet. There she is. We couldn't tell who you were. Thanks, Laura. Jill is here. Tyler's not on yet.

Is Tyler on yet? Nope. Leticia was not gonna be here today. We know Giselle is no longer with us. She's here in spirit. Heather's here. Barbara, Celeste. I'm not sure if there are people in the waiting room. Anyway, let me go through the rest of the list. Joyce was not able to make it today.

And Elizabeth is here. Trevor's going to come late, and I haven't heard from Rebecca. So let me see if we have quorum here. So now we're down to 11 millimeters. We have 1234567. So I think we're good. So we'll call to order.

Just waiting to see. Yeah.

So do we have anybody visiting? We have Jamie from social services. We met her a couple of months ago. I think everybody else is counselors or staff or county council. And then this is our guest, Stephanie Archuleta, who's going to speak with us in a little while. She's from SHIP. Public comment. Do we have anybody? I guess we don't have any public, so there's no public comment. Hi, Jordan.

Jordan came on. Okay, so approval of the agenda. The only thing I would like to do if we could on the agenda, and I think it doesn't really matter because this isn't a real heavy duty one, but I'd like to put the member roundtable, which is the last item under reports and updates before the chairman's report and before the county council liaison report. But we'll still make sure we leave enough time for you, Counselor Han. Is that Okay with everybody? I really would like to hear from all the members. And I think we've had so many meetings where people aren't able to tell us what's going on with them. And now we do have some time. Can you all hear me online Okay? Heather, can you give me a thumbs up?

Or Jamie? Lorna? Lorna can hear me. Okay. Thank you. Okay. So is everybody good with the agenda with that one change? Okay. The agenda is approved unanimously. And the minutes, the minutes that Jeremy made a copy of and handed out to you were updated.

We had a slight error in last month. We had my report showing twice, it was missing Jessica's update. So the minutes have been corrected. So the paper copy that you guys have in front of you. And if you guys want to look on Legisstar, the only change we made was we put Jessica's presentation back in there because she did do that last month for the quarterly report.

So does anybody have any changes or corrections additional to the minutes? Okay. Then the minutes are approved unanimously. And now I'm going to introduce Stephanie. We're ready for Stephanie's report. Let's see. Wait a minute. That was immediate minutes. So Stephanie Gonzales is a SHIP representative from Aging and Long Term Services division or department?

Division. Okay.

And if you want to come here and actually, I'm going to change places with you if you'd like. And then you can see who's online. And if you look there, the people online can see you and recording. And then you've got people in the room. So is that Okay if we This just room is

a little awkward for recording.

03:30 is a little bit better. Can everyone see the presentation? Could you tell us a little bit about yourself?

I didn't have

your resume. I'm sorry.

So hello, everyone. I'm coming from the Santa Fe office. Our main Aging and Disability Resource office is housed out of Santa Fe,

the

Tony And I Building. I am a social worker. I've been with aging and disability for three years now. And I am a SHIP, a state health insurance program counselor. So our SHIPs, we have five in New Mexico. Every state has a SHIP. So if you have someone in Kansas and we sound wonderful, you tell them to call their local SHIP. And that's who helps folks navigate Medicare and Medicaid. So aging and disability is one of our one presentation out of several that we have. This is introducing you to the agency itself, Aging and Disability Resource Center for the whole state of New Mexico.

And I fall under this agency. This is me. We're free and unbiased to Medicare beneficiaries in helping them navigate Medicare and Medicaid. That's our goal. And the other mission is to educate our communities of how aging and disability and SHIPs are available to them within the state. One other program that's side by side with SHIP is Senior Medicare Patrol.

We help

folks navigate Medicare fraud. If indeed it has happened, we help them navigate through it. Not only that, it helps us report it nationally. If the nationals here that we, New Mexico, are reporting fraud, then we can help assess and help these individuals navigate through that and also report nationally. So our mission is to help folks protect, detect, and report on Medicare fraud.

And that goes hand in hand with your Medicare summary notice that we all get, is learning how to read it. And as a senior Medicare patrol, we also distribute health trackers, which help it's like an appointment book. You get to compare your notice to the appointment book and make sure you're getting charged only what you went to the doctor for. No more, no less. I just wanted to share this real quick, and I think I'll leave some.

This is a postcard that the agency, Disability Resource, we distributed in hopes of catching folks before they turn 65. So we can share and educate about all the different options that you have when you're turning 65. Many times we'll say, oh, we go down. This is how Medicare works. This is what you can do.

And we lead them to medicare.gov. That's how we're free and unbiased is that we lead them to medicare.gov, how you use it, how to use plan comparison and plan finding for these changes that you need or to enroll for the first time. So this is kind of like we find out later, well, I didn't know I could have done that, right? So if we could talk to you before you turn 65, that would be great.

And you do go to the senior centers and

We'll go into any community that's willing to host us. Senior centers, absolutely. But what we find at the senior centers is that the larger public says, oh, they're just there for the seniors. And so we won't have your

We don't get the Medicaid.

We don't get the full public to come in and hear what we have to offer. So we do I went to the social services office because you have the partner agencies that we would like to partner with and support them in navigating Medicare and Medicaid. So senior centers, definitely, we do open enrollments for any time you get a letter. If you're having trouble with your medication coverage, that's what a SHIP counselor is for. So this larger brochure kind of talks about this overview, the different agencies that we partner with.

I did already mention senior Medicare patrol. And the bottom one that says other cost saving programs is to remind folks how Medicare and Medicaid work together. So low income senior would qualify for assistance to pay for their Medicare cost. And that's your Part B premium. You're at 20%. So those are the way we help navigate Medicare and Medicaid is to inform folks how the two work together. I described that already. And one other thing is, like, if you see any of the old brochures out there, you could take them down and throw them out because these are brand new. These are our new branding. Purple.

The other one used to be white with red letters. So if you sit anywhere, could

just sort of Viking colors.

Right. Right.

So is that number that's a good number for everything, the 800.

Right. This is the one-eight hundred number that you usually see advertised everywhere. The first person that you would get is an options counselor. They will determine what direction to point you in. Is it an APS call, Adult Protective Services? Is it someone dealing with care transitions transitioning from a facility back home? Is it Medicare and Medicaid? If it's Medicare and Medicaid and the option counselor sees that it's going beyond just a simple answer, they will set up a short term referral for us to get back to that person and go more in-depth about what your Medicare or Medicaid concern is. And like I say,

we have

five throughout New Mexico. So if you're in Los Alamos, most likely they're going to connect you with me so that we can build that relationship. So when I do come to the senior center, we can meet again in person. So that's how they try and connect us based on our regions. One of the main benefits that we help with is the home and community based waiver.

It is category. So when you hear seniors say, I have Medicare and Medicaid, it's this Medicaid that we're looking at, the home and community based waiver, or the one I mentioned earlier, the Medicare Savings Program that helps low income seniors pay for their Medicare cost. So that would be the two Medicaids that go with Medicare. And this is one of them. This one for the home and community based waiver, we the aging and disability, we do the initial assessment.

And we keep the registry for the state of New Mexico. Ultimately, the income eligibility goes through the health care authority. So they would have to be income and assets eligible. What we determine in the initial assessment is, are they eligible based on their daily living abilities? There's six daily living abilities. So that's where the assessment starts. And that's where the registry starts. Just so you know, a person should always update their registry. If they got on it and a year later something changes, they should call and update. That would help them move them along on the registry.

This is what our website looks like. Again, it's newer branding. If you see over the couple, there's the different tabs. We are the consumer elder rights division. That's where these programs that I mentioned earlier all fall under the Consumer Elder Rights. You can see Adult Protective Services tab. And then the Aging and Long Term Services tab has different programs. So Aging Services, the purple. And the Aging Services is the larger umbrella. And then we fall under them.

We have a chat. So when you can't get through or if we do have someone that mans our chat daily. Ship, that's kinda going into speaking more of what I do as a counselor at Ship. We're free and unbiased. We're not an agent. We're not a broker. We're not going to tell you Blue Cross is better than Presbyterian. We're going to lead you to medicare.gov and inform you how to shop and do a plan comparison yourself. Senior Medicare patrol, again, is this red one where we're just kind of informing people fraud happens. Be on the lookout.

Don't the call that you get that it's time to get a new Medicare card, that is fraud because the Social Security Administration would not call all of us to say it's time to get a new card. So just those kind of things. We have flyers that will on my next health council meeting with you, I might present you with one of the fraud flyers. And that's kind of one of our missions is like we go out in the community and we have the fraud information as it comes down the line to us to inform the larger community.

So they have official pamphlets that they're handing out to scam people?

No. For the card, it's usually over the phone. Yeah. Yeah. The fraud usually happens over the phone.

And then we will disperse to the larger community, hey, look out for this or this. This is what we know is happening. Prescription drug assistance is one of the programs that we assist under aging and disability in the sense that someone may call and say, I just can't keep up with my medication cost. It's just too much for me to handle. So prescription drug assistance, we have a staff that mends that program itself?

It would help connect that consumer with application process to apply to the different manufacturer's assistance program to help with those high cost medications. Under aging services, the umbrella are these different programs. Long term care ombudsman are advocates that go into different facilities to be a voice for seniors and that are in facilities. So we visit different facilities and someone could approach that ombudsman and share a concern. And we'll be the voice to start any process that's needed.

You all have heard of New Mexicare? So that falls under the aging and long term care department, one of the tabs. New Mexico is going on its second year. They opened it up to all 32 counties now. So that's one of the newer services that's available. And then the next few pages just shows the front page. Yes, New Mexico is where Medicare savings comes from. It's the state program, the other version of the Medicaid someone might have. And this is what the face page looks like. And so we kind of, like, lead them and kind of advise them how it works.

But that's ultimately who they apply to. This is what the face page for medicare.gov looks like. And these are the different tabs that we would utilize as tools to help educate how Medicare lets them do their own comparison. And this is ssa.gov page. You can also go into SSA and apply for benefits, which would be Extra Help.

Extra Help helps low income seniors with medication costs. So you always have your out of pocket. If you qualify for Extra Help, you get some assistance with your out of pocket. National Council on Aging is one of our partners. They are advocates for senior services throughout nationally. They advise us. They go Congress for us. And they've just been great partners. They feed us information when we need to know. And some of your local agencies or partners could have a National Council benefits office underneath them.

And so that's another way of someone being able to go to a hospital and being able to meet with a benefits person other than your local health care authority. Help New Mexico is just another resource. I know that Espanola Help New Mexico really aims at helping seniors. The one in Albuquerque might do something different. The one in Santa Fe does youth. So but we know for sure that Espanola for my region helps seniors quite a bit. So it would be one of our referrals and connections. And, of course, we just check with them. Have you checked with PNM? Have you checked with New Mexico Gas as far as getting help with, utilities?

And I think that's it. And remind them about their local food banks if they're struggling with

I was going to just ask you.

And them. Right. And in the near future, we're going to partner more with them and kind of being there. At the we already go out. Like, for myself, I already go. Like, I'll follow the I see the Espanola one San Martin has food distribution, and it looks like they're covering Los Alamos and Santa Fe a little bit more. So as a form of outreach, we try and be there. You know? If the person's gonna go to a food bank, we try to be there to disperse and and just inform them of what we also offer. And this is my contact.

That is a work cell for me. Jessica has my work cell. The health council has my email. Feel free to do a referral if anyone came to you. It's not a secret. So like I say, you all fall under my region. So I'd be more than happy to help you with any constituents that might come to you when it comes to Medicare.

Are you seeing some specific needs and wants in Los Alamos County as it goes to Medicare, Medicaid, that maybe as a health council we could help or provide info or whatever?

Not necessarily. I haven't had people really come to me with a lot of issues. Now that I met with social services, we saw that it was a more Social Security Administration sort of stuff. So this is state agency stuff. And Social Security Administration is just a whole different benefits piece of it. So we're going to try and help support them more with clarifying the way the two agencies work together.

I've noticed there's some docs up here that no longer will take Medicare patients.

So I'm just Many changes have happened in

the past year.

Yes, it's

not good. It's to Medicare because, like as you said, a lot of doctors are not wanting to work with Medicare. So they're no longer being what is the word for that? So what we really tell constituents nowadays is before you get you're going to get referred to a doctor. But call them and make sure, do you take my insurance? What's my co pay going to be for any service? And do you take Medicare assignment is the way to ask. So just because the doctors are available, you still want to make sure they are taking Medicare assignment. And they take your insurance. From one day to the next, they could exit out.

A carrier could exit out. That would be Part C. So your Humanas, your Blue Cross are all your Part Cs, the carriers that are contracted with Medicare. And there has been a lot of changes within these Advantage Plans.

And second question is, the AARP, UnitedHealthcare, have you seen some pulling out of markets in the solar and Mexico?

They definitely made a lot of changes. And the best way to go in is to go to their web site, right? And see what they offer as far as plans. And on medicare.gov, you put in your zip code. And it's going to pull up all the plans that are available to you in this area based on the zip code. So these Medicare Advantage plans are built on your zip code, and then more importantly around you, an individual, because of the meds you put in. So what might be good for you may not be good for her because you have different providers, different meds. Same ZIP code, but different individual needs. I'm sorry to interrupt.

I was just going to agree very much with your comment because we can do what you just said, the fact that we did when we were ready to register for Medicare. But we also checked by providers. It didn't matter what we signed up for. Even if it said it was available, there might not be a single provider that's available. And in a market

like this, where there's a lot of times specialties, there's one doc.

So when that

one doc doesn't take Medicare, that means everybody's got to go off the hill. And I was just curious. And I also watched Medicare premiums double this year, up here. When I called, they said Yeah. That you're in Los Alamos.

Why is that?

Because it's expensive. Docs, again, are pulling away from it's not enough. The coverage that they receive is not covering their

folks get informed by mail. They get informed by Medicare if there's changes. UnitedHealthcare, if they're going to make a change to your plan or drop a medication off their formulary for whatever reason, they should inform you. And if they don't, then you call us and you ask for help. And we'll help kind of navigate and navigate through that.

Pharmacy. Gosh,

that was amazing.

Gosh, May was taking it, but nobody says it wasn't.

It got worked out.

But it took a while.

Thank you, everybody,

for your time. Do we have any questions online for Stephanie? Mona, you refer people to Stephanie a lot, don't you? Do you work with Stephanie?

Familiar. What agent is she with? She's with.

Can you unmute yourself?

Yes. Marna, if you have any old brochures, you can dispose of them. And where are you located? In Santa Fe?

Here. Here in Fresno. So 720. We have a primary care clinic at a. Okay.

I'll get your address from someone here, and I'll take you our new brochures.

Awesome.

Did I see Tyler join us? Is that Tyler? Thank you. Okay, good. Welcome. Does anybody else have any other questions for Stephanie? I have a question. So when a person is on the state Medicaid, low income, not senior, know, look very low income, maybe they're out of a job or whatever, and they are able to qualify for Medicaid and SNAP, how often like if they do get a job, how often do they have to report? And what are the income levels?

For the Medicaid itself? For Medicaid, yes. So each year they kind of do an adjustment, too. So it's always best to check back with the health care authority or your local health care authority office.

So you don't have to report right away? Like, oh, I have a job? Do they review

I would suggest if the income is extreme change, I would report it. Well, they how

long do get taxed?

And then if not, then you have your annual research You

will get taxed.

If you

take a state benefit and really fill out of the category.

Now see, that's a problem too. Because if they take a job that's just like a gig job with no benefits, now they have income. But is it enough income to get them kicked off of Medicaid? Because the job doesn't offer benefits. You see what I'm saying?

And when you have to reapply for these benefits annually, I think they might even make it every six months for an adult that's able-bodied. That's the new change also is that they went back to that, that if you're able-bodied, they want to see proof that you're trying to get an employment. That's definitely specific for health

care. Helps shield a little bit because medical insurance is just so expensive.

Well, and most employers in non professional jobs don't offer it. And so it's sort of a catch-twenty two. You get a job, you make money, but you're not getting any.

Do you folks have a local health care authority here in Los Alamos? Or what's the closest for you all? Yeah. Would say just keeping informed. And you're with what agency? I'm with social services. Oh, Okay. Okay. Yeah. I would say being informed. I know that we carry around with us the new income limits for Medicare savings. Because a lot of folks got thrown out of the Medicare savings program recently because the Social Security went up by however much. Even $1 could throw you out, right?

That's a catch-twenty two.

But we recommend that they reapply because the Medicare Savings Program has the three categories, right? As your income goes higher, you may qualify for the next category, the Medicare Savings Program, which would at least help you pay for the Part B premium, is the biggest cost on Medicare that seniors deal with. It's $2.00 2 this year. It's $2.00 2 and $0.90 for the Part B premium.

It went from $1.65 to $1.75 to $2.00 2?

And you skipped year one eighty five last year. Okay. That's horrible. Well, at least you went back three years now.

Yeah.

And we are now at $2.00 2.

And then if you start working again, you have to pay more depending on your income.

Your Irma under. Medicare. So I was telling the folks over at social services, if you really felt like a handbook, like a Medicare and You handbook would be handy. Or a lot of folks just dispose of that.

Or if you

have an extra one to bring in to partner agencies like social services. It's just a really guide. They're timely send you. I

think it'd be nice to do like a fall, did you know, around Medicare and Medicaid up here? Just a

I'll look for the invitation.

Yeah. I mean, I think social service, I think that would be very powerful for people because we have a high population of retirees.

We do do that with the senior centers. We have at least six different presentations, Medicare 101, Boost Your Budget, this one that I presented today, SMP Bingo, to kind of help remind them how fraud happens. And there's a lot of facts that come in out of there that they wouldn't know. We definitely are looking for partner agencies to host us

We could

do something week at the same year.

I do know Larson's planning the health fair now in June. I'll Someone invited us. Yeah, did Leanne invite you?

Someone sent an invitation.

It's going to be in June.

Excellent. And I invited some of our partners like Care Transitions, the other department that helps folks transition from a skilled nursing facility back home. So I think two partners might be with

That's a huge gap here. We'll talk about that all.

And they also are willing to do presentations too. And more and more, they're wanting to come out and do awareness of their programs too. We're definitely working.

So we'll see you there in June, if not before. The And seniors loved this last year and the year before. So I think Jordan and I did a table last year. That was really fun.

And not only presentations to the public, like through the fair or through yourselves here, but also your human resources office. Because for all of those that are preparing to turn 65, I know there's some agencies where I just can't handle all the questions. I don't want to steer them wrong. So we would present either in person or virtually. And then now that you're going to turn 65, you have a bigger picture of what your options are. So we definitely would be able to do such a thing.

And the chamber of commerce, too. Their members would probably benefit. Because I know has their own program and group of people that you can consult with. But the smaller businesses,

that would be very helpful

for them, I think.

When you do a presentation, is there an aspect where people can get individual questions answered? So there's a big presentation with a lot of information. And then people can ask general questions. Is there an opportunity for people to speak with you individually when you do that usually? Is there sort of a workshop afterwards that they can come and have things that they don't necessarily want to ask?

We could definitely set it up that way. Because it's all depending on the crowd or the presentation that I'm doing. But we definitely could set that up. Later.

Can I send your presentation out to the health council? Absolutely. I'll get that from what's been shared in the chat. Yeah. Okay. All right.

And feel free to share it with, like, a partner agency. Is it Mara that you introduced Mara? Mara? Mara? Can share that with any of your network folks that you feel would benefit from it.

Yes, Jerry. I just wanted to mention that recently I've seen a lot of commercials on TV about Medicare and they're basically talking about call us now because there are all these other food benefits and other benefits that you can get, but you gotta call now because those benefits are going away. Urgent. And I've noticed that the numbers are different, you know, because I, you know, saw a lot of these commercials coming up. So I called one of those numbers, And, you know, it it's like an agency that works on behalf of Medicare.

It isn't actually Medicare. And so, you know, they wanted to get, you know, some personal information. You know, I I didn't know, you know, how many people

So

I give them that personal information? I didn't give them anything. I said, I I just wanna find out more about your program and how this works. And then I called Medicare. And I talked to them about it, they said, well, this is relevant to people up here in Los Alamos. There's a white population that work for the lab, and they get PPO supplemental type of insurance that goes with Medicare. Apparently if you try to sign up for some of these benefits that they're advertising, you can jeopardize your PPO plan with the lab. Well, thank

you for sharing that. You

know? And so, you know, I didn't know how Medicare is addressing that or whatever, but I I thought that was kind of scary because there are people falling into that where they go thinking they're gonna get all these great benefits and then they actually are jeopardizing a better plan that they may have, like if they work for the lab.

And they would have to do like you did. Do do your homework. Right? You called that person you called

Yes.

On your own.

You made

the attempt. So but that's also the tricky part because if you call, that's kinda like their first, oh, she opened the door. Right. Came in. Right? Yeah. And asked for the benefit. I wonder how many But you don't. They cannot change you until you give your Medicare number. And you don't want to give your Medicare number until you feel absolutely comfortable of who you're talking to.

And that's why medicare.gov exists for all of your Medicare needs. Social Security Administration and medicare.gov exist for you to be able to handle all your health needs in that one site. So anything that you go out beyond that is you're taking a chance with a product that you have to decide. Right? But the thing too is that they're incentivizing you to change.

That's what the UCard is and the grocery card. And you're gonna get assistance to pay anything you want, your groceries, your utilities. But it's all you have to earn it in a sense. Like, that first month, they might give you a certain amount. But then after that, did you well, what have you done? Have you gone for your well check? Have you gone for a screening?

Require that.

When's the last time you went to your doctor's office? You know? So they want to see you earn the cash that goes into the card, which is a little bit different than the over the counter card because that's another incentive they're giving you to be with them. And that one's a little bit more simple than the You card. The over the counter card, there's a booklet they send you. And they say, this is for all your medical of things that you need that aren't prescribed, your alcohol, your Band Aids. And it's great. A lot of people have a lot of good things to say about it. But stay in the catalog, right? You can't just go and get some outside of the catalog.

And when it comes to the cash, it's a reward for doing your preventative services or your annual well care visits. But they just don't tell you all that. Fine. Thank They don't. If you

guys have additional questions, I'm going to send out the slides because I'm not on the chat. If you can email me the slides, I'll send them out. And it has all Stephanie's contact information.

Thank you. And ability to do a survey Thank for

you. Thank you very much. I'm going to switch sides. Yes, absolutely. Are we on the AV? When Mariam was

talking earlier, I didn't feel like I could hear her very much. Are they

hearing us on the mic? Can they hear us? Yours? Is this yours? Okay, Betty. And you're welcome to stay, but then you have to go. I understand. He's not. She's up to a lot of our meetings, which we

appreciate those different numbers coming up.

Okay. Let's move on to the next item. We're doing good on time. Time for us, our official timekeeper. So I just wanted to update you guys for about ten minutes, thank you, on what the feedback I got based on the last meeting of we were talking about projects, teams, etcetera.

I really did not get much feedback or anyone else that was very interested in participating. So basically, what we've done is we've just gone ahead and set up these as tasks. And if we'll just kinda go down the list of what we Jessica and I felt were tasks. And then below that are liaison opportunities. If anyone wants to volunteer at this time, I'd be thrilled.

If not, we'll just sort of go with what we have, and we'll put a pin in it. And if you guys do end up attending any other board meetings, or if you're interested in being a liaison to other boards or commissions, or even any other types of organizations. And I'll let Counselor Han maybe address this during her staff update, but the regional housing and transportation. And I think, Jill, you've been involved in that as well. So maybe you guys could talk about that. That's one I really don't know anything about. I'm going to tell you a few things in my staff update about some of the boards and commissions and what's going on with them. But I mean, the care update, sorry. The staff person is not here. She's on vacation.

But we have a license. Are you going to do an update or no? Okay. Basically, I'll just go down the list of projects, tasks, and just briefly talk about liaisons. So we have still the directory of providers.

Marna, you're online. We didn't get any additional volunteers for this. I'm not sure where we are on this. That sounds like kind of labor intensive. So if anybody else is interested in helping Marna and Celeste out, if you could just reach out to them directly.

Is that okay, Marna? And we'll just leave it with you and Celeste right now. And then maybe next month, if you want to give us an update on where you all are after you meet, that would be great. Okay. Thank you. The second one, grants. That did come up. Somebody suggested having a person kind of send out information on grants. I didn't get any volunteers for this. But I did send you guys an email with certain mailing lists that you could get on, like the Community Foundation.

I do send you the Alliance of Health Council information. I noticed because I had just signed up for the county line and all their other publications as kind of a test. My husband's been getting them. And I thought I had signed up, but I never got them, so I did. And the county line is cool. It even has adoptions on it, which I love. So they had something about a grant as well that could be applied for. And also the Chamber of Commerce. I just joined the Chamber of Commerce myself for the health council, but as an individual. Was the League of Women Voters.

I would go for them sometimes too. They have like a monthly breakfast that has this morning they had Representative Chandler talk about the last legislative session. And it was very healthcare intense. So there was a lot of information there. Anyway, so if anyone wants to go to the chamber breakfast, just let me know because I joined.

So the Health Council now is a member of the chamber. Press outreach, I didn't really get a volunteer for that. I know Jill helped me last year with articles and stuff like that. So if you wanted to kind of help us out on that, press releases, public service announcements, and then articles. I sent the sign out sheet up. Barbara, I had you tentatively for and it's right in front of you, Jill. The sign up sheet, the table right there.

There's changes in our state now for day care. And so I thought in summer to early fall would be a good time to have by then, the state would have their act together as what their funding and who's eligible and different cutoffs and what daycares we have in our community, etcetera. Just an informational article only.

That's awesome. And Chris Taylor mentioned that this morning as well. So it's on her radar. That would be excellent. If anyone else would like to do an article, we had several from Joyce. Jill did a great article about the role of social services. I did an article about the role of the health council. I did a call for people to come to one of our meetings in December. Leah did one on grief. Celeste has done about three.

So if anyone else and you do not have to be a professional journalist to do these articles. You just can write, and we can help ghostwrite for you. And that's what Jessica has been real helpful doing. So Tyler, did you do an article last year? You did an article on aging, didn't you? And Jeremy did a fantastic article for us as well on grandparents and kin raising children. So anybody, just jump in any time. We'd love to have that. Jill, I'm going to add you to this list. Is that Okay for that one?

And then weekly happenings, I'm going to kind of let you guys fish for yourselves on that. I did send you links, I sent you mailing lists you could get on. And the biggest thing, I think, is if you follow the newspapers, either online or even the paper copies, that's probably 80% of what's going on. The newspapers, local newspapers, and even Facebook. If you're on Facebook, the events, pretty much everything, all Arts Council, Arts Fair, any health related events.

And Jessica and I will still try to keep you informed as well. And then a speaker coordinator. Barbara, I put your name with a question mark. We just basically need somebody to go to people like Stephanie and say, would you like to speak? And then we have kind of a meeting that mirrors this meeting. You still have to go through all the steps. Well, we could also do a press release on that. Jill and Jessica and I could work on that.

Question on it is, are you looking for speakers for our meeting? You say second Thursdays. Are you looking for, as we're the first Thursday. So you're looking for a new community presentation.

So what we have found in the past is pretty much every health council meeting, we'd have some kind of a speaker. And we just really didn't have enough time. And it didn't do them justice. And we felt bad because this time we were able to give Stephanie, I hope, enough time. But if we have a lot of business items on the agenda, we just really run out. And so we were looking at having additional meeting, not every month, but just whenever for example, like Doctor. Eric Ketchum, I'd love to get him up here with PRES. And even what's going on with Christa St. Vincent's and that sort of

So I'm wondering if every month, though, is too often. It is, probably. Where people are out.

Just whatever you were able to do it. And then we could if know we're doing something in May, like the second Tuesday in May, which is twelfth or something. Second Thursday.

And what are you calling it?

Just the health council speaker series or something

like that. Know that. When I get on there. They are big. And it's a lot of trying to accommodate presenters and still do their health counseling.

Well, this one, you already have a venue, right? And you'd already have you guys could help us schedule the meeting.

And then the partners that are presenting learn, again, from each other. Whoever is presenting, I would take

something from Yeah. And it's open to any health council member. It's open to the public. It's not a mandatory thing like this meeting. So I don't know if you want to take

that on

or not.

I'll give it a shot.

So we're coming to ten minutes. So I don't think we're going to need 25 for the roundtable, since we're a little light on a time for spring break. Yeah.

I got into a little too much detail on that. Well, and then that just the other one is outreach and education volunteer coordinator. And that would just be, you know, kind of getting names of people who are interested in tabling at events. We've got the Earth Day coming up with Peak, and I'm not sure if social services is going have a table. Do you know? I should ask Jamie. Jamie, our program specialist?

Okay.

And so do you know other events that we're planning on at this point? Or if we got somebody from the health council, could they just coordinate with you on that to find out what you guys are doing? Okay. For now I think it's me and Jessica. But if any Rebecca White mentioned she might be interested.

Barbara, that might be too much if you do. Okay. Okay. I mean, and we don't have a ton of them, but I do know, and I'm going to talk about in my report about the health fair, the senior health fair and some other things coming up. So right now, Jamie, I'll just work with you. And then if we get anybody else, then we'll move the math. Okay? Thank you. And then I'm not going to go over all these liaison opportunities because you guys can read. And I'm going to talk to you about the I'm going to talk to you and my chair report about the Health Action Center and also about the inclusivity task force.

But the other ones are just many of the boards and commissions. And Joyce is our coordinator for the early childhood. Leah, who unfortunately is not with us, she's still with the senior center. And Marna and I attend the elder adult network meetings. Jill found family. Rebecca said are you attending their meetings now, Jill, that found family?

I never heard back from anything.

Okay. So should I just cross that one off?

Okay. And

Jessica knows. She'll mention that we cap people if they need help with that. And then Elizabeth, can you talk for a second, since we have a little more time, about what we talked about with the jail recidivism.

I think this is something that I would maybe reach out to Tyler and have a chat about where we think we could be useful or what we think that role might look like. And so it's an interest that both of us have. But I don't think we've defined it beyond just an interest in the issue and maybe having a discussion about what role we might have on the council versus independent of the council, that sort of thing. So I think that will be for me and Tyler to put our heads together and see where we are on that.

Perfect. I think it'd be interesting to get an update from the county on where we are with the facilities that we spent a year last year. Giving me recommendations.

I'm going to give you an update on that. Do you want me to do it now, or am I staff No, no. I was just No, I can whichever forum let's just We do

it be on the list.

Okay, so we submitted we had this fantastic working group, and we submitted our recommendations to the Health Council for

That's it.

Thank you, Dil. We'll look forward to more about

your project. Does that

mean I'm playing, they can't disclose all yet.

Yeah, I hear you. Okay, thanks. Elizabeth, we had a fun meeting on Friday for new members.

We had my new member orientation meeting on Friday, which was very helpful. Elizabeth Ibanez, I currently work as the lease administrator for the lab. That's a fairly new position for me. So frankly, that's been taking up all of the air in my room. So I have not been doing a lot of activities that are probably directly relevant to the council. So I will reserve some time for other people who are doing more interesting community things with their time to

five up.

Thank you for being

our time. Your kid pays the rest of our bills. Barbara,

the only thing I've done that's directly related to any council events is volunteering the evening of the youth what was it called?

The summit. The youth summit. Thank you.

And that was a wonderfully attended event by the kids in the high school. Very well run, terrific presentations. We had overflow in the program. So that was a very good evening.

What was your biggest surprise with that? Because I've heard a couple of different stories that there was moments.

Two things. I noticed a large number of kids that came for the meal and then scooted off your Didn't stay for anything I was very impressed with the number of kids that went to the program for Narcan and the number of kids that asked for a package to go home. We had a lot of juniors and seniors that are preparing for college and so forth, and a lot of other kinds of they had a lot of questions about that, a lot of other places in their lives other than just Los Alamos and our high school crowd. And you can see that they were thinking forward into, what am I going to be like when I'm on university campus? What's my roommate going to be like?

What if this happens and I'm at school and I come home and it's my roommate?

And

many more questions about that kind of thing than here in town.

And speaking of NARCAN oh, those were great. We volunteered as well. We sort of tag teamed. And the suicide prevention one was great, too, the ABC. Because Christine Kobeletz, who's the bridge that's just spoken to us before, and Sylvia Diehl were both there. And they tailored it. So I took the regular ABC training. And then I sat in on the one for youth. And she really tailored it. It was perfect. I think she really reached the students. And there were two sessions of each of those that were completely full. And then pizza was good.

I will throw out that we have about twenty minutes left. And we still have the counselor's report

and a few more pieces. So I just wanna make sure we're Perfect. Giving everyone their moment. Roundtable. So let's go online.

Marna, can you tell us what you've been up to? Working and working and working. Well, thank your people from our people for giving us more providers. We appreciate it. Okay.

Heather, can you tell us what you've been up to? Okay. You and I can stay connected on that one. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Because our husbands are both on transportation. But yeah. And he made a recommendation. My husband did. He was visiting a neighborhood. And a woman who had lost her sight was having trouble getting her cats to the vet. So I know he's mentioned something to, I guess, the project management division. Are they over transportation? Think. Public works.

Public works. Okay. And VSO stands for Veterans

Service Agent or

Service Organization. Officer. So the fact that they are coming up It's great. And I I actually saw the same flyer on the chamber of commerce. So that's it peaked for me because I had listened to Albert who came up from Santa Fe.

He's in charge of all veterans affairs, I think, for this region perhaps. And he was talking about the mobile vehicle. So that's great. That's a new is that new? Thank you, Heather.

This is great. It's really that's an area of people or a group of people that often slips through the cracks. There are a lot of them out there. Thank you for that. So we have Jordan and then Tyler pop, I mean, Trevor.

And then Tyler popped back on. So I will just defer my time, let you guys talk for a few minutes, and then we'll have Counselor Han close us out. Is that Okay with everyone? I just had announcements about things, but I can send them to you in an email. And I guess the only thing I wanted to tell you was that the Inquisitor Task Force presented its final report to county council in a working session a couple weeks ago.

White Rock was pretty remarkable and amazing. What came out of that and correct me when you speak, but they want to establish an inclusivity board. And so they're looking at doing an ordinance for that, I think, to establish that. And so I'll let you talk about that, Counselor Ham. But that was big because they overlap with us a lot in their mission and the things that they do. And they did a great job with not a lot of people. Trevor, hello. You speak for a minute? Tell us what you've been up to. Welcome again to the Health Council.

Excellent. So we have an inside connection here now. That's awesome. Thank you, Trevor. Is there anything else?

That's it.

Alrighty. Thank you. Tyler, can you tell us you bounced out for a minute and then you're back. Do you know what's going on with the crisis response initiative up here, miss Thomas? Has anything moved forward with that?

Send me the information on that. I think what I'm going to do is put together a table like I did last year with all the upcoming events, and then whether you want health council volunteers. And I'll work with Jamie on that. Okay, perfect. Thank you, Tyler.

I think go ahead, Marna. Yeah. Thank you, Tyler. Okay. Counselor Hand, you're on.

Sorry to make you wait till the end. We haven't had an update from our counselors in a long time.

Well, that was very helpful. And I really appreciate learning more about what everybody on the health council is doing. And it's very exciting to know some of the things that you are involved in. So I look forward to hearing more about some of the things that are going on. So I'll try to be quick.

For our

meeting on well, first I'll mention the item that you had talked about here. So you had talked about the inclusivity task force where basically they are finished with their activities and they provided a final report. And the motion on the floor was to develop an ordinance to make the inclusivity task force. It would be an ongoing board. And so the only initial thing that would happen with that is that county staff would provide an estimate for how much it would cost the county to sustain that board because it directly impacts staff allocations and assignments.

And basically, that would mean that the county needs to devote that time to a new board versus whatever they are currently assigned.

It would mean more staff hours or whatever.

Would not mean more staff. It would mean that they would be using current staff. Yeah. And, you know, if they are supporting this, you know, we've had county staff already supporting this effort. Well, it was a task force.

So it would just be an ongoing thing. And so we just wanna hear from the the county to say, how is that going to impact you to have a permanent board? How is it going to impact other things that are already on your plate? And that will be presented, as I understand it, when the ordinance is presented for a vote by counsel. So we're just in the stage of preparing an ordinance to get this inclusivity task force turned into a more permanent board.

And we'll have a decision of whether or not we're continuing or how that will gel to something that is feasible, you know, from a budget standpoint. So on March, this last Tuesday, we had a significant amount of items that were on the consent agenda to keep the meeting a little shorter and under control. But we did have some presentations. One of them was from Atomic City Transit about the Saturday service pilot program that was held last fall and also a Bandelier service update. You know, the the bottom line is the biggest issue with having this Saturday service available on an ongoing basis is driver availability.

You know, we can't get drivers. We're competing, with not only the region, but the laboratory on how to maintain drivers. So I think that the overall program was received very well by the community. I think some of the things that were suggested is having even shorter wait times between bus routes. I think it was thirty minutes and they wanted it like fifteen.

But, you know, they're basically looking at overall costs, you know, to to have this service provided again. You know, we went over a number of dollar amounts for that. We also talked about what about self driving buses maybe in the future. I don't think we're gonna do them anytime soon. But, you know, it was mentioned.

If we don't have drivers, maybe we can get a self driving bus. But I I think, you know, we need a little more technology events before we get to that point. Let's see. So then we we had a public hearing on an ordinance that was authorizing the lease of a restaurant space at the golf course. And this new restaurant, you know, their June their start date would be June 1.

This is going to be a lease for space versus a service agreement. So it's going to be different than the kind of contract that we had with the the previous restaurant, or food service that was provided. The community room, which is off to the west side of that building, is now going to be controlled by the county. And people will be able to rent that space. And they don't necessarily have to buy food from that restaurant. They can bring in other food and drinks, you know, from outside. So, you

that was very good, and it was really expensive. Itchy.

Yes. So, yeah, so those things, you know, I think were, you know, in a response to some of the feedback that was received about the way it was working the the previous way. Let's see. We also had there's going to be some regrading of the road over by Rendea Canyon through the Sinai land. That is just some of the preparations that we're doing for the fire prevention and

It's an emergency route from off the hill.

It could be an emergency route if we needed to use that. We are in the wildfire management prevention time frame. This is when we have a lot of wildfires around New Mexico. There's already been a couple. So we just need to be aware.

And let's see if there's anything else that I need to mention. Oh, we also had this local and small business engagement update. And county just reported on the different funds. It's called LEDA, and I wish I remembered. It's economic development. I can't remember what LEDA is like, local economic development. Initiative. Something something with an a. I don't know. I I'm sorry.

I I wish I remembered what the lead is stood for. But but basically, there's a lead of retail and a the regular Lita, which is for other types of businesses. And they just talked about the different businesses that are applying around Los Alamos and status of their applications. You know, Citi's work is supposed to be a program where we