Community Services - Regular Meeting

I wanna snuggle babies.

I don't

have any grandbabies. Sometimes the

traveling and everything makes things harder.

Well, and Karen, you you were BabyNet. Right? Did they just change the name?

BabyNet did change its name to the Los Alamos Early Childhood Collaboration in March at the March

But your function is still the same?

My function

is still the same. So the whole idea is to have a net of services, see how we're holding the community, and look for the places where there's gaps and try and close those gaps.

And as a group and a community,

we can do that together more easily than me by myself. Yeah.

And also, are you going to continue to maintain your directory of providers?

Yes. That is a priority.

Service. I'll have to tell Chris and Lauren about that. But yeah.

We developed a new parent resource guide, and new as in I'm new to parenting or I'm new to the community. And I'm looking for all of the services and resources that people raising young children might want, prenatal through age five is Right.

That's our

scope of work.

How do people

do it? Right now, it lives on Google Docs.

Okay. So it's kind

of hard to find, but you can go to FSN's website or website, and there's a link from both of those places. And we have a postcard with the QR code that I'd be happy to share Okay. Digitally and physically.

Well, and think it's an opportunity. Part of the goals have always been to this organization to break down some of the us and them moments with lab, new employees, and the rest of us, you know, how to kind of remove some of the Scary place to move up here.

It's different. It's culture shock And for

I just see Heather joined us. Hi, Heather. So could you introduce yourself and just if you have any updates for us or any news or just anything to add to the roundtable?

Hi. I'm Heather. Sorry that I'm late. I was doing VBS, so hanging out with a whole bunch of kids getting wet today. No real big news. I am enjoying all the emails and keeping up to date with y'all.

Thank you, Heather. Okay. So I think that's all the members. That is. All right.

Now we have quorum.

Although we have nothing to vote No. We have nothing to vote on. Good to have quorum, anyway. Good group here. Okay. So now it's the chairman's report. So basically, not a whole lot to report. Our working group is working and doing a lot of work. We have suspended our weekly meetings for the summer, but we're hoping to kind of have one more meeting of the group to pull together the recommendations we have at this point and then to present to the health council on our August 2 meeting.

Explain what the working group

is. Yeah, the working group

is to

kind of identify what the requirements would be for a community health action center, what Jessica's team does now, and then more perhaps some nonprofits, food distribution, all kinds of support type services in a facility if they were to acquire a facility. And we're not really looking into where or what kind or not, but just what the requirements would be, what kind of rooms would be needed, what kind of services, Veterans Affairs, just a variety of different services. So we've been working on that since March. Joe's on the team and Heather's on the team as as well. And Tyler.

So we have four people from the health council, which is less than a quorum for our working group. And so we're going to come together one more time to present recommendations to the health council. And then social services will probably take it from there. We do have a couple outstanding things. We're looking at basically doing some more site visits. We did have a tour of social services, Las Clinics del Norte, and the Department of Health. So we appreciate Jessica setting that up just to see what their existing setup is like. And they really need help. What's working?

And what's not?

They really need help, but they're doing a great job. And we're going to also try to go down to Espanola to look at Casita De Camida, which is kind of a food distribution, grocery store type for people in need. And also, we're going to look at McCurdy Ministries, which Jill has visited already. But we're also going to look at perhaps Samuel DiFonso has just built a new community center. It's not exactly a health center, but it's a community center that they use Indian Affairs division's capital money for.

And they built it fairly quickly. And we just want to see what's going on. There's also another health center that's run by Presbyterian Medical Services out in Estancia, which is near Moriarty. And it's called the Esperanza Health Center. So we may want to take a look at that as well.

In addition, Jordan from office is putting together a little survey so that we can get public feedback so that we have had the community input for what services, how their experience was that we're going to send it out to former clients of social services and ask them what their experiences were like and what worked, what didn't work. Were there additional things that they felt like they needed? And then we've got a couple of case studies that Jessica's team have put together just in college. When you have case studies and we're going to just individual situation kind of thing. And we're going to kind of run those through our model and see if we missed anything.

Tyler jumped on too.

Tyler. Hi, Tyler. Tyler's also on our team.

Sorry. I'm on the beach in California, so sorry about that.

You're alright. Stop there again. It.

Thank you. Do you want to do a quick introduction? We have two candidates for the health council online right now. And in person? Oh, in person and online.

Yeah. Do you want to

do a quick?

How are you guys doing?

What your day job is?

My name is Tyler Jones. I work for a law firm with visiting nurses. I'm a fireman. I work with the emergency room in Los Alamos in in Santa Fe, and I helped start a group in Santa Fe called, at the time, was called MIHO, which is like a crisis response unit that ambulances, police, fire, and and case managers and social workers, we respond to calls. It it's now become kind of the ARU.

It's a it's an ever evolving kind of process in Santa Fe that we're working on, but so I wear a few hats. Obvious. One's a beach hat. But nice to meet everybody. Sorry for getting getting in a little late. No worries. My daughter's learning to surf.

So We are glad to have you. I am gonna mute you. You it was a little bit choppy, but as long as you can hear us. And now you're totally frozen. Life is rough, man, on the technical It's

probably the cat.

Oh, and there's Leticia.

School is out, people are on vacation.

Hi, Leticia. Welcome. We already did introductions, but we're still on round table. And we visited your facility when you were not there last week. Anyway, thank you for that. Could you just do a quick introduction and then any type of roundtable update that you have?

I'm actually out of town. So it's very loud where I'm at. So I'm Leticia Martinez. I'm a nurse practitioner. And I work for Las Clinics del Norte.

It is good to have you even briefly while you're on vacation. Thank you. I know lots of people are juggling lots of things. So I appreciate it. I just have

a few orders of business right now. And then I'm going to turn it over to Jessica. She's going to loop into kind of what Tyler was talking about. So that's kind of neat. There's a grief support group that started Tuesday. But I think you could still join. It's Tuesday afternoons from three to 04:30. I think I sent this to you guys via email, but I'll pass it around in case anyone's interested. It interferes with my bridge game, but I was actually going to go. The other thing is I was gonna just kinda go through the lineup. We have Katie this time.

Illegal. Illegal.

And then we have no meeting in July. And then August, we are having Tyler Taylor, is with the Inner Faith Coalition on Homelessness, working a lot with our community down in Santa Fe on substance use, homelessness, just all kinds of relief. How about your labs?

I'm gonna mute you.

And then I'm gonna do a presentation on the working group results that I just discussed. September, we're gonna do scams. We're gonna have Larso and the LAPD, and we're gonna just talk about, you know, what what the latest issues are related to scams. And this ties into the I think I sent you guys the scam workshop that's in June that the senior center's putting on. It's on the what is it?

The Or is it the book club?

No, the book club. But there's also a Friday lunch. I think it's Friday the thirteenth. Lunch and learn. And you don't have to be a member of the senior center. You just have to call the senior center and sign up. You don't have to be a senior either, I don't think, to go to that. The lunch, you'd have to pay for if you're not a senior, like $10. But it's gonna be a good presentation. It's called impostor scam.

And then October, we're looking at having Liz Martin know, and this is kind of a new thing, from the Los Alamos Community Foundation where Brandi works to talk about the community foundation as well as their launch program. Los Alamos Uniting for Community Health. For Community Health. And Brandi's put together a really cool logo for that.

Although Brandi could make a presentation, it's like the week before your wedding. You won't be stressed at all. You could just give a whole presentation.

Yeah. You would have us work

that out.

I'll make him

know and talk to Liz about

that. I

wouldn't be the one to tell you to come. And then November, Leah had talked about doing some kind of a discussion about grief and dealing with grief. She's a member of the visiting nurses. She's the chaplain as well as she does a lot of grief workshops with Amber from your funeral homes. And then in December, we're just going to talk about where we are on the action plan, our recommendations from the Conference of Health Plan, because we've

been working on it all

year by then. And then also do our work plan for FY 'twenty six.

How year '26. Year '26. It is due from all the boards and commissions to county council. So last December, we were busy working on the CHP. So we were a month behind. We got it done in January. But this year, we're going to be planful and get it done in December. Look at us, guys.

That's chilling off.

So that is all I have. I am going to just pass around. And I guess I will send this out to just health counsel of the articles that we're doing. Jill, you had signed up for July. Celeste had signed up for fall's

June, but for

the July.

Last week of the month is when

we We had signed up for June, but we took it back to July because Beverly we skipped May, basically. Awesome. Okay. And then Celeste is doing August on falls prevention. Joyce, you were doing September on the viruses and flu season. Leah was gonna do grief and dealing with the holidays. And then Jeremy from Jessica's office wanted to do grandparents and kinship care. So if anybody wants to do an article in December, just email me, Jessica.

And we'll probably say yes.

And so that is all I have. Fantastic.

Thanks. We will move along to the staff update. I did want to say hello to Katie Twitz, who's here from County Legal. She will be giving here after the staff update and the county council update. So thank you for jumping in. Do you want to

Don't take me yet. You haven't heard from me.

But I imagine it. I've attended your trainings.

You have a laptop? Do

you want to send me the presentation and I can load it up? You can take my spot?

Or

do you

want to

No, it's fine. I can send it to you.

Because every time I touch things, all the technology disintegrates. Again, like I'm not exaggerating. Last time we were here, when IT plugged in this to make it work, the mouse stopped working. And then when we plugged in an external mouse, all the sound went out. We stumped the IT. Nobody knew how to

fix Sachs' phone number. But now we do.

Have IT's phone. We're good. We're good. So I attended a conference in May, a national conference that was in Philadelphia. I don't have slides. I don't have a presentation. You just get to listen to me talk. But I wanted to share some updates from that conference, but more importantly, how it fits into social services and to the work of the Health Council tying it into the comprehensive health plan. Because so many of us have talked about crisis and services and what's needed. We're building this view of the entire health ecosystem.

And so I thought, if I back up a couple of steps, talk about what I learned at the conference and how it may fit into all of these steps. I should also point out the reason that Karen and I get along so well is the idea of a net to support people, right? But nets have holes, and people fall through those holes. And so we're always looking for ways to tighten that net, strengthen the safety net, right, as we're fond of saying. And that is really how all of this came about.

So just kind of hold that in mind. But I made myself some notes. So in social services, in the health and human services world, nearly everything exists on a spectrum. So when we talk about mental health and substance use as just a concept. There's a whole spectrum from, depending on which way you're facing me, prevention all the way to other interventions, treatment that is like detox and rehab, and then post treatment supports.

And much of the work that we do in a lot of our lives exists on this spectrum. If you are a prevention based organization for example, we had the presentation last month from Christine and Sylvia. They are the prevention specialists at the schools through a contract with the county. The schools do not provide detox. There is no drug detox facility at the schools. Their work is on one end of the spectrum prevention. There are other players along this path. Ideally, we collaborate. New people join the ecosystem all the time. We're always trying to learn more.

There are others that do targeted interventions. If you've heard of intensive outpatient, IOP, we sometimes refer to it as are post treatment supports. There are places that are sober living facilities. You've exited from some type of Uh-oh. You guys, I totally jinxed it. Oh, man. No, I don't want to leave meeting connecting. Oh my gosh, we lost all the Wi Fi in here. Without fail, I was so optimistic.

Well It's

working really well. I know.

I'm so sad. Seriously,

nobody would believe me if you guys were not also here with me. You'd be like, Jess, you're exaggerating. Surely, it works all the time. I'm still connected to the website. I left the meeting. Zoom, really, I didn't.

You're hard to argue with.

Guys, I was just hitting my groove.

Oh, well.

Can they just call back in?

Well, if I can

Open the door.

Get zoomed back up.

The timing cannot be more comical.

They may still

be here. Right. Maybe I just left. Is not even with the Zoom with all the meetings where I can

wonder if the county forgot to pay their bills.

Lisa would never.

They might have dug up that I need kick you.

Again, also true.

That was

terrible. That's

incredible. I

did just joke there. Yeah.

Let's test our security.

Don't

It was a test case. How long can people live without any kind of connectivity?

One day.

One day. Yeah. We were all pushing the limit.

How far do you have to

drive? Yes.

Heather just texted.

Heather just texted. Lost

Detect the case. He was unable to detect the camera. All right.

You have to join the audio too.

Good on audio.

But it

should be through here.

This is why Jackie doesn't have.

Call Zach. I totally am.

Told you. We got his number just on. Just in case.

Okay. You might just have to give your presentation off the fly.

My gosh. You sell the corn?

Sorry? No, because we have two in person and three in person, four online.

Have to come back in. Three in person? Yes. We needed more for your presentation.

For a meeting at all. That's for my yeah, you'll learn nothing in German presentation. This

is IT. This is a

quorum. You're going first.

Let's vote people in really quickly.

Can we do your interview now, Christie? Yeah.

Standing members for the day.

What's it doing?

Well, our IT guys' voice mailbox is

full. Oh.

So sorry if he's

walking See if this connects. I'm just going to run up to the 2nd Floor real quickly, guys. They went off the bathroom.

I'm putting Yeah. I'm spray. So what do you do with the web? So

I work

Recording in progress.

Come back to this meeting with

I can't do this. See what?

It's good. Something bigger.

Nice. You guys are so busy.

Yeah. They even She's

on her sister's license.

They did.

Oh, good.

Guy named Jeff Sims. I actually applied

for it.

Right? I know.

Get that done.

Named Jeff Sims.

Is he coming from outside?

Yes. But I think he

was on ASD. A couple

of years ago.

He just sent a message. He had audio, but

I don't know.

I remember Slack. He was at ASD, and I think he was somewhere in Michigan doing something recently in the. Okay. But, you know,

Mark Something.

So Mark Mark is Doesn't always know me, but I always know him.

That was his pick, and I have a great deal of faith in Mark Davis.

Okay. Good. Experience. Okay.

That's my opinion. And I don't know Sims from anybody, but

I yeah. I showed Mark some properties that

Can you

guys owns in his Can you hear us? Industrial use. And then I work with people on the counter. I

can hear you guys.

You can

hear us?

Okay. Kinda slow. Yeah.

This is Tyler.

I can

hear you.

Mean, guys, there's so much to do.

Because sometimes the camera off

helps the the gesture.

Okay. So

We've just kinda

But it still says just hear us, and we can see and hear you.

It also says the connection's still unstable. So Yeah. Hit the button.

Which is not ideal.

Jessica is trying to track down the IT guy. I mean, if it works,

kind of.

Yeah. Which video I have on.

No. You won't have the video on. Okay.

No. You know what look like.

So much, and I

You left it and almost immediately started working.

You guys, it is me.

No. Don't screw anyone. Come in.

Those are pictures.

On your computer

only and not on it. It seems to have a visual system in the room, though.

Can you all hear us?

I'm I don't know

it well,

but I just Okay.

As long as it's lagging behind.

Marna, I'm ready.

They still said that connection was unstable, so I think they're having trouble

Hearing us.

Hearing us consistently, but also their videos are freezing,

which also signals that.

You can't leave. Sorry.

Yeah. The video

keeps freezing. Do

you need do you want to Okay. Let me get out of the way.

I'm sorry. Has already started?

Not Okay. Monday. Okay.

Were in the middle of such a good spiel.

It was. Like, I know my stuff, guys.

Is great.

And your

dad is like, nay, you do not know Internet stuff, and it is true.

Expecting business as a government

structure. Just You

didn't join.

Why do we do this?

I was here to come in. I

I literally just got one saying, like, look at everything working. Like, this is gonna be great.

Not all to say that again.

Yeah. Just don't say that

again. All

right. Everyone on Zoom, can you hear me? Thumbs up? I see you nodding. Okay. IT came and maybe fixed it. I am so sorry for jinxing it.

We'll see

if it works. We got like forty five more minutes. What could go wrong?

Oh gosh,

you did it again.

That's why I'm just sitting and

saying shit.

I will try to do mine in the next five to ten minutes. And then Counselor, give you a five minute counsel update, we'll jump over to the presentation, hopefully. Okay. So everything exists on a spectrum. That's where I was going with this. I don't know where else. It also exists in partnerships and collaborations. Social services is awesome, obviously. But we are five people, and we cannot possibly address all of the needs of every single person who comes in. So we have built these other partnerships. The Department of Workforce Solutions can help people with resumes, job coaching. They conduct mock interviews in person and on Zoom the irony now that I say that.

But they can help people

who maybe aren't used to Zoom interviews. That doesn't need to be on our plates. We just had a training last week from the Esperanza domestic violence shelter in Santa Fe. We do not need to screen people for risks of domestic violence. But if they mention something around those lines, whether physical, financial, etcetera, we can then warm hand off to their clinical supervisor.

And starting this month, we're already in June, their person will be in our office twice a month to meet with people. So it's a lot of partnerships and collaboration to fill in some of those gaps in that net. One of the things that has come up multiple times has been how does social services work with the police, and to some extent the EMTs, and the hospital in this ecosystem. We are kind of used to our silos. At one point, when I spoke to one of the officers, Camilo Bras, he said they get dozens of well checked calls every week, usually from adult children living not in Los Alamos.

Can you go I had to talk to my mom. Could you go check on them? The police can go and knock on the door. But if you don't want to answer the door to an unknown police officer, you may not do that. Even if they do answer the door and something is wrong evidence of a hoarding situation, evidence of maybe malnutrition or food instability then what? So we've been working social services and the police have been working. They have our materials. They refer in. They come to our office. Can somebody come out and help us?

A very manual process, right? How do we connect these dots? We definitely don't want to go out when it's unsafe. We don't want to walk into a situation where there may be weapons or an unleashed dog or whatever else you can imagine. So we're building these partnerships in our whole constellation. But partly related to our conversation just last month. May? When did we talk about the was ER. Last month. Yeah, was just last month. Yeah. Time flies. Where somebody had called

988,

which is the mental health emergency response line. Right? 911 is separate. But now nationwide, we've identified 988 for mental health or other crises. Somebody called 988. Somebody felt it rose to the occasion of needing an ambulance to the hospital. The person was seen at the hospital and could envision kind of a different type of crisis response. In other communities, there are lots of different variations of this that may involve a social worker going out with the police. It may involve different types of professionals, mental health professionals at the hospital itself, etcetera, etcetera. It was such interesting timing because I left that meeting

in May.

We meet on Thursdays. And on Saturday, flew to this national conference in Philadelphia on establishing crisis response networks. And one whole track was on, especially for rural areas. How would we envision something that operated 20 fourseven? The answer is we probably wouldn't, because in rural communities, that's very hard. We are lucky that we are small geographically. Some of them were like, our Montana County is 80,000 square miles. I'm like, oh, the book. How would

you do that? But they

went through lots and lots of different models, funding streams, how the software connects. Do you have a different dispatch system for mental health crisis than you do for when there is a fire or a heart attack or other physical response? There were lots and lots of these things. And then my brain was full and my notebook was full. I should say there's a total asterisk that in a lot of communities this has been funded by Medicaid labor dollars, which in our current federal administration are likely being cut.

And nobody had an answer for how these will continue to be funded moving forward. So stay tuned for that. That's probably next year's conference. But it was fascinating to see all the different ways that people engage in this. In some cases, there is a three part system with EMT or firefighter, police, and a social worker.

The social worker is in a full police vest. Like full gear goes through the same kind of active shooter and other trainings. The police vehicle rides along is on the scene. And in other ones, they want the social worker to not look like police. I joke because I work in the social work

a

nice person in a cardigan. Gender neutral doesn't have to be a cardigan. But they would show up afterwards. Police are on the scene. EMTs are on the scene. And once that is resolved, then the social worker comes in without the police vest on and is not he doesn't wear the tactical gear, for lack of a better word. So there's lots of different models out there. Part of where this fits in now, if I'm building this entire system, a crisis response is one intervention. I have spoken to several police officers who are very much engaged and want this to happen. One helped work on crisis systems when he was in Baltimore. I helped do this when I was

in Pittsburgh.

Those are obviously much bigger systems. We talked to some of the fire and ENT, right? Like, there's interest. So that's the first step. That's really, really good. It's also in our comprehensive health plan. That's also very good. But then as we were talking, it was like, well, if someone is in a mental health crisis, then what? Do they come to the medical center? Do we have a bunch of therapists on call that we reach out to at two in the morning on a Monday night?

I don't have the answer to this. But we started brainstorming, then what? And so there is a bigger conversation happening regionally with my counterparts in Espanola and Santa Fe. We will likely wrap in a couple of others for what would a regional behavioral health triage facility look like. Right now, if you go to the medical center and their ED does a full behavioral health screen, then you are waiting to go to Santa Fe, another transport, another wait of time, right?

If you're imagining someone maybe actively suicidal or having a schizophrenia episode, whatever that might be. So in Pittsburgh, the system I came from, there was a twenty four hour again, much bigger geographic reach, but a twenty four hour we called it the DEC, the DEC Diagnostic and Evaluation Center, which sounds very generic on purpose, right? But it was a twenty four hour psychiatric or mental health triage facility. Psychiatric nursing would kind of get you all sorted, etcetera, etcetera. Could we envision that regionally where if Rio Riva County is working on a crisis response, where would they send people?

And if Taos is working on it, it wouldn't necessarily be a Los Alamos, but a bigger regional problem or state is going in their move to just out of this legislative session, having five regions in the state, Bernalillo, Albuquerque would be one, and then Northeast, Northwest, Southeast, Southwest having regional behavioral health they keep calling them quadrants, but there's five. So I don't know really what to call it. They keep like, we're going have five quadrants. And every time I'm like, stop calling it quadrants. Four quadrants and then a center.

So the health care authority, Nick Bucos, who has come to some of our recovery events, they're really moving towards these regional things. And so there's a lot of pieces, but I hope it kind of has a vision of how social services would work with our county partners to help address this. That fits into a multi county collaborative that fits into what the state is going for. I don't have a roadmap yet because really,

I came back

from that conference. I had a high schooler graduate, just getting into college. It's been this has not been my sole project. Wait until you guys all join. You'll see how many banks are on the social services thing.

But but Tyler on our health council has helped build crisis response systems as has this woman, Kristen, who helped build the Santa Fe one, I think, with. And, I'm only laughing because Barbara is also planning to join the health council, and she and I had tech issues last week. Anyways, just continues. That the right people want to be involved in envisioning how we can make this happen. One of the things Las Cruces has a for the last eight years has been a very active crisis response team.

They call it the mobile integrated health unit because, as they've noticed, it's not just a mental health crisis. It's, same as we see at social services, usually tied to lots of things. They have a beautiful model there. They invited us down there for a field trip. I was like, not in June, July,

or August.

We will all melt. But maybe in the fall. That sounds lovely. It'll still be hot. July in Las Cruces. Was like, oh, wow. Thanks for the invite. I'm busy the entire time.

But the idea is that

we would keep all of these aligned, right? The comprehensive health plan with its action items, right? And then we who gets assigned that responsibility under social services and, likely, the police and EMTs? How would we get a pilot started? What would we be able to do with existing staff? How would we connect it? Etcetera. Existing dispatch, blah, blah, blah. And then, you know, kind of begin from there. So

You need another person in social services to

manage this? Well, that's all in my brain for right now. But we'll just clone me. We'll Counselor Reidy will ask the funds for cloning. I'm sure that's totally legit legal request.

But there's much more to

come on this. The conference was just fascinating to see the differences between Miami, Florida. You can imagine a giant metropolitan area, huge international population, multiple languages needed, and then literally a presentation, the very walked down the hallway, it was rural Montana. But we know, especially I kind of think in the post COVID, people's mental health needs are really great. It feels like there's a lot more.

But there are so many ways in which we can envision interventions helping kind of all along that spectrum. So thanks. I would be happy to take questions, except I do want to make sure we get to Counselor Rite Aid's update so that we can also get to the legal one. So email me. I will chat about this all the time. But I think it's really exciting to imagine how we would be able to roll this out in Los Alamos County in the next years. Two. Two. Okay.

Counselor Reidy, do you want to tell us about the symphony in Vienna or something?

I would like to tell you about that. But I'll try to keep myself brief. So make sure you get your training today. Yeah. I just wanted to touch on a couple of things. And so I wanted to just a logistical thing. Are we having a meeting on July 3?

No. We we typically do not meet the week of July 4.

Okay. Okay. That's what I figured. So we'll see

you in August.

Yeah. On the I I was so at the launch kickoff a few weeks ago, we were having some discussions about different groups that need help, and it kinda relates to, you know, this, you know, crisis response and other kind of more long term response. But it was talking a lot about, seniors that are homebound as being one population. I know that's identified in the in the health plan, but I just wanted to highlight that. And, obviously, we we understand about different populations that need help, but that just seems like a particularly difficult group to reach out to, and it would just be interesting to see what what we can do there.

Absolutely.

And then the other thing that's related to health, because we had presentation on housing. Right? So, in I think it's July, we're gonna have a council discussion about, a tax increment that would be dedicated towards housing. I guess I'll call it towards affordable or work more workforce housing. So that's something that this one alert people to that's coming up, that if you have opinions about it one way or the other, it'd be we'd like to hear those.

But the idea would be to have an additional we're we're talking about having to have an additional increment just for some decrease in GRT from our primary taxpayer, you know, DOE, Landon Triad, and and at the same time having an increment that would be a kid to of housing. That would really, I think, hopefully benefit everybody, including people that, you know, need housing that are struggling. And then the other thing that occurred to me when Jessica was talking about the crisis response and related to people that

are

seniors, just the people that are experiencing so we could have acute, you know, behavioral mental health issues that come up. There's also people with long term health issues or another group that I was thinking about. And just in terms of just trying to come up with a system that can get people steer towards resources that they need. So just those are some things that occurred to me. And just keep it brief today because, you know, like I said, make sure you have if there's any questions or comments right now, I'd like to hear them.

I have a question. So you said that it was, it's not property tax. It's a increase in the GRT. Correct.

Right. Did I misspeak? It's it's a it's the Mexico. Our

our revenues Yeah. Are gonna decrease. And so we're wanting to offset that to help with affordable housing to a rate.

Yeah. There there's yeah. There's yeah. Two pieces to just be real clear. Yeah.

So it's a gross receipts tax, and there's actually been a state a decrease to the state increment, over the years. But locally, the the taxes being paid by Llano are decreasing a bit. So we're we've been talking about having an increase to the rate of a quarter percent. So right now, the total is, I think, 7.2%, I'll call it, while rounding off. So but then there would be another quarter percent increase to help pay for help fund affordable housing, and that would be monies that we would have available that we could basically leverage with bonding potentially.

So there's a lot more options we'd have if we actually had a continuing supply of money in that category. And it would be more informal that the council the increment would be added, but then it'd be and then more informal, but by ordinance, we would say we're directing that to housing, and then it would be something more around $7,000,000 a year with the current revenues we're getting. And that's approximately, I'll say, 80% paid by.

Okay. Thanks. And we can follow-up in August on this as well. And I just had one more comment. I didn't want to take too much of Katie's time, but I did notice today when I was at the senior center that they actually had a sign for their customers that come into the senior center for their members. Would you like a call every day, like a wellness call from us? Just a check-in call or to remind you to take your medications or to sign you up for lunch or what have you. And I didn't know they did that. That's very cool.

Real quick. Folks online, can you see the presentation?

Yep.

If I

make it go forward, does the slide forward?

Yep. All

right. Yep. Ask me why Can we get through thirty more minutes with popcorn,

We'll see. So

am I up? Is there

You're up.

All right. Do I need this? Nope.

Nope. Just went dark. But they are seeing that now.

Just make sure the page is turned. Yes.

Okay. Hello, everyone. My name is Katie Tweets. I'm the deputy attorney. I feel weird because I can't see people that are online. So if you cannot hear me or you have questions, I guess I can see the raise your hand maybe. I'd rather you just shout out to say I can't hear you or

I have

a question. Looking at the screen, it's kind of a weird set.

You can look at all of

Yes, I will

look at everybody in here. So I was asked to actually, me I bought some handouts, but I'm not going to have any for those online. But I can get them to Jessica, she can send them out. And I can send this presentation out if you actually want it, but just to have it. But I was asked to give a brief overview of kind of like how to run a meeting essentially, which is governed by state law and some county actions.

So I'm gonna get some free training on that. And if you have questions, makes it a little more interesting because it is very legalistic and it's very contrary to any other business that you've done outside of government. So the two laws that govern how to run a meeting essentially for local government and and state government is the Open Meetings Act and Inspections of Public Records Act. They are known as the Sunshine Laws. Almost every state, I believe every state, has some version of Sunshine Laws.

The purpose of it is everybody's entitled to know what their government is doing. Right? So entitled to the greatest possible information. It doesn't want government business to be done behind closed doors. They want everybody to know what their government is doing. That includes our governing body, which is county council, as well as our boards and commissions and here, the health council, which is a little kind of hybrid of a board and commission, but it is subject to those same laws that boards and commissions are subject to. It talks about having meetings of the quorum. So we kind of talked about that. If we lose our quorum, we're going to have to stop our meeting. And that plays even if

we're not voting on anything? Yes.

Really didn't know that.

Just Fantastic. Thank you. Like I said, it's very different in nonprofits or other not even nonprofits. Board of directors. Usually, they can start a meeting with a quorum and then people can drop off, but two people can be there and take action. That does not happen here. We have to have a quorum of the body. So that's all under Open Meetings Act. And then under IPRA, which is the Inspection of Public Records Act, that law presumes that everything is a public record except for enumerated exceptions and that the public has the right to inspect all of the public records. So we'll go over that a little bit.

So in order to hold

a public meeting, there's four elements. We have to have a quorum. We have to have notice. We have to have an agenda with specific items so the public can know what is what the body is gonna be discussing. And after the meet after the meeting, we have to have minutes available for the public within ten days.

So we're we're gonna talk about that. So what is a public meeting and when are you conducting public business? So this is the quote the citation from state law, which is under chapter 10. All meetings of the quorum, members of any board, commission, it goes on, policy making body, the agency or authority of the county municipality district. But for us, members of a board or commission.

So whenever we have a quorum of the body talking about public business, in this case, the health council, it has to be an open meeting. It has to meet all of those four criteria. So what is public business? Jessica asked a great question because it's very that's usually the thought is that once you it's only when we take action. So if we're just having presentations and discussions, then we don't have to have a quorum. That's not accurate. So the law says that it's held for the purpose of formulating public policy. So here, we're just an advisory board to the council. So you're not formulating public policy. You're advising.

But so it's not the development of personnel policy or rules or regulations. But here's where it is. It's underlined. You're discussing public business. So once you're discussing it as a presentation, as a body amongst yourselves, once you're discussing public business and a quorum, you have to meet all four criteria and have it open to the public. And once you lose that quorum, we have to stop and say, okay, we'll be back at another time. So what constitutes a quorum? Under county code, we define a quorum as a simple majority of the total number of appointed voting members of the board of commission. So under the resolution

Oh, keep they're just one off. The

most boards and commissions are covered under chapter eight of our We're good.

Just a sec. Tyler, can you mute yourself?

Alright. So most of our boards and commissions are governed under chapter eight of our county code. Because this body was created by resolution, I provided you copy of the resolution, you're not gonna be able to go to chapter eight and find the community health council or the county health council listed as a body and with your duties and inform. It's all governed under this resolution, 1928, which I I've quoted some of it, but it I did provide it to you all. So it the the council did declare that this health council can be up to 15 members, and it designates designates who is able to be appointed by the health council.

And so here, for the definition of quorum, it can be up to 15. So a simple majority of 15 is seven. Do want math? Or is it eight? Eight. See? I went to law school, not math school. I like to What is that?

If we have 15 members.

So it's so if you have 15 appointed members, then you would have to have eight to conduct business. Are you fully we're

at nine.

We're at nine now. So let's do the math. A simple majority of nine is five. So if we lose any more than five here or at any other meeting, we have to say we're done. We're done for the day. Cool. Once you get more members, it's gonna be a simple majority of those appointed. So it could be up to 15, but however many are is really nice because other boards like, well, a governing body like county council, even though there's seven, we could

have

a vacancy at any time. They have to have four to do meetings and do business no matter how many are appointed or elected. Same with planning and zoning. It's a it's a designated number. So for our other bodies, it's a simple majority of those appointed, not the potential of who could be on there.

So here and I put up here county code chapter eight, section eight. It says no business, so public business, shall be conducted by a county boarder commission in the absence of a quorum. So if we were to lose a quorum today, the only action that we could take is to set the the date and time of the next meeting or an attempt to achieve the quorum by calling people and saying, hey. Are you gonna make it? We're gonna kinda wait around to see if we can get them online or get them to show up. But that's all we can do once we lose a quorum. Is

there a definition of business?

Yes. So that I uh-oh. Can I Yes? So here, it there's a lot of things, but we're it affects you and all of our boards is discussing public business. So once you're discussing the the public business of the health council, which is we're gonna go over a little bit more, but what's in this resolution, your duties, anything that you're talking about in your duties under this resolution is considered public business.

So you might hear the term or you might hear Jessica or me. Sometimes I get copied. I don't I don't think I'm copied on this distribution, but on other boards and commissions, I am. And, you know, we'll send out some emails saying, hey. We're having a meeting. This is gonna be what's on the agenda. And you'll see something at the bottom that says, okay. Please don't reply all. Right? When you do that, when you reply all, you may be engaging in what's called a rolling or a walking forum.

And what that is is you have a quorum of the body on the email. And when you reply all, you're talking to the quorum about about public business on email, but it's outside of the public view. So because we don't have the we do have the quorum, which is one of the four that we have to have, we didn't post it, and we don't have the public available to hear or to see what you're talking about, and we don't have minutes that are gonna summarize the actions or the discussions that were taken, that could be a violation of the Open Meetings Act because you're discussing public business outside of a public meeting and outside of the public. So and that that could be a violation of the Open Meetings Act. So it's very contrary to how

the rest of the world

does business. Business. Right? It's it's not efficient, and it's not meant to be efficient because we need to give the public the notice to be able to show up and know what we're talking about and have its time to say, oh, I didn't know you're gonna talk about this right now in an email. I would have chimed in had I known. So it's the ability for the public to know in advance of what the the body is gonna be talking about and the ability to be here. And if they aren't here, to look at the minutes to see what you guys talked about. So it's very contrary. Usually, in in any other business or any other, board of directors or nonprofit, you know, we send emails, reply all. So everybody's in the loop and talking about it, and we're getting we're it's efficient.

Right? We're getting business done. We can't do that here. So that's that's one example is, an email, because it's probably the most common example. By phone is also so if, if Lisa were to call one of you and then you call the next person and talk like, game telephone.

Right? And talk, once you get to, what we say, five is the forum, once you start talking to that fifth person about the same thing outside of a publicly noticed, meeting, that could be a potential violation of the Open Meetings Act. So we just need to be really careful about that. It's it doesn't preclude you from hanging out and doing things outside of the health council business to go to coffee, to go, you know, see each other at the pond or at the grocery store. But once you start talking about the health council business,

you

need to make sure you don't have a quorum.

So for a working group, that would apply?

No. Working group is a sub quorum, and we create those on purpose to be able to kind of do the work of the body to then come to the body with the summary. But once you have a quorum in a working well, you shouldn't have a quorum in a working group. But if by chance

you're at a

coffee shop, restaurant, and you're in a sub quorum, and then another member shows up, which can happen, it's a small town, right? And you go, hey. We're just talking about that. No. No. No. So you gotta stop it. Can't do that because then you have a quorum, and you're not in a public meeting.

And if we had somebody drop off the health council, we'd have to reduce the number of board members that were on

the working. Right. Yes. Yes.

If you

get more, then you can add more. Right? So it it goes both ways. But you have to be really conscious about that. And for our elected officials, that can be hard because, you know, if you're in a group, like at concert or somewhere, you know, in a public setting and start talking to you on, hey. Did you go to that meeting? And then you start your it's normal, right, to just talk about your business. But you have to be really conscious about how many is here, how many are we talking about, and I need to make sure that I'm not going from this meeting to the next meeting and talking to other board or council members about the same thing. Because the whole purpose is that discussion should be in front of the public. Right?

So it should

be done behind closed doors. Even if there's no intention to withhold information, the the purpose of the Open Meetings Act is to do it all in the public so the public has the ability to see what's happening. So it's very different than probably anywhere else that you've been. So then the third or second prong is notice. So what's required notice for a board or the health council meetings? So under the law so we call it OMA or OMA, that's Open Meetings Act. It's a state law. The state law says that the body determines annually when the public notice is. So that's the second document that I gave you. It's the the county council resolution.

So every year, the first meeting of the the year, our county council passes or discusses and passes an open meetings after resolution. And in there, it has all of the out the requirements for all of the bodies, for council and his bodies, boards and commissions of what they need to do. So it's outlined in this. And then the attachment, there's two attachments. One is

oh,

it didn't print. That's weird. Oh, no. It's sorry.

It's on

page two where it talks about what bodies are subject to this resolution. As you'll see, midway through, it says Los Alamos County Health Council. So it's very clear that not only is council adopting this for itself, but it is including all of its other advisory bodies what has to follow this. We follow the state law by council says, this is what we need to do. And then council adopts the resolution.

And then this is what all the bodies have to follow. I'll go over it a little bit in detail. For those online, this is that section I was talking about where it says all meetings of a quorum of the bodies and the health council is included has to follow these outlined what's outlined in the resolution. So for regular meetings, those are, you know, your monthly meetings. So the resolution says, shall be given at least ten days notice in advance of that meeting date.

So I'm guessing that you guys adopt your calendar at the beginning of the year? Yes. So that complies with way more than ten days. Right? We say the January, these are our meetings, and it's whatever this Thursday is of the month. First Thursday. Yep. First Thursday of the month. So you're you're complying with that, you know, well well, more than ten days in advance. So so we've done that. So check one. So then that's a notice. So for special meetings, which are gonna be outside of the calendar, and just for reference, the back of the resolution is the county council calendar. So they do that as well at the beginning of the year and say, these are our regular meetings. These are our work sessions.

And they do that in well in advance of ten days and give the public notice for the entire year. That's not to say that things happen. Maybe we'll cancel a meeting or maybe we'll move one. And that may fall under the term of a special meeting. So special meetings

Great. To read the conference of health plans.

Special meetings aren't going to be on your calendar because it's going to be something you have a project or you have business that you need to take care of outside of that. Or maybe if you guys needed to meet in July, since you don't meet the week of that the holiday, maybe you'll set a special meeting because you have business that needs to be conducted in July. So with that, you don't have to go back and amend your calendar and go, okay. Now we need to have a meeting and amend our calendar. All you have to do is give seventy two hours notice.

So it still requires notice to the public, but it's three, you know, three days to say we're gonna meet, you know, on let's see. We're gonna meet next Tuesday. We don't normally do that, but we're gonna do that because we have business to do. That would be okay because it's at least seventy two hours notice, and it's outside of your calendar. And then we have posting requirements. So for regular meetings, I don't know well, now you have to come in through that door. If you came in through this

door, you

wouldn't see it. Going out is this the west door? Facing west, there is when you go out, you'll look, and there's two little window vestibules? Yeah. Like, something's on the wall. Where we post all of our don't know those words. Shadow box where we put all of our notices that are locked. So you can see what

what the county

council is doing or what any other boards are doing within the next seventy two hours. We put them in that. So that complies with this where it says, it's a date and time posted in a conspicuous place in the vicinity of the front door in the municipal building. So that's out here on the West Side.

We also put it on

our website, provided our website is functional, which 99% of the time it is, but I'm not even gonna speak it into existence. There may be times where it's not. But when it is operational and functional, we have to put it on our website. Same thing for special meetings. You just have to have seventy two hours notice. We also posted out here on the West Side and on our website. So that's the notice. So that so we've got quorum, we've got notice, and now we have to have an agenda. And there must be an agenda for all meetings. The state law requires what needs to be an agenda.

It has to have information including a list of specific items of business to be discussed or transacted. So discussion, obviously, it's, you know, discussion presentation or transacted. That's where you take action and say, we're gonna vote to council that we're recommending x. Right? So we include that in all of our agendas. So

here,

this is our agenda for today. You know, it's called to order, public comment, communication, old business, new business, preview of next meeting. So we we provide that to the public so that they that they know what this body is gonna be talking about. So we we have to provide that within no less than seventy two hours. So if on Tuesday, you know, Lisa came to Jessica and said, hey. I just had this really great thing that I wanna put on the agenda to talk about with today. We can't. We can't amend the agenda within that seventy two hour period. We have to either say, hey. I wanna talk to you at this meeting.

I've got something that I wanna talk to you about at a special meeting because it needs to be done in this month, or we'll put it on the next month's agenda. So you may hear, like, if something comes up and you say, oh, I wanna talk about this and put it on the agenda. We can't if it's within seventy two hours. The exception to that is we can remove something. We just can't add something. But I wouldn't recommend we do that because the public may see it, you know, on Monday. So it's yeah. And then we take it off. They may not know. So what I would recommend doing is if something you did have to take off, that you do it at the meeting and say, we're moving this from the agenda because of x y z.

We're gonna put it on our next meeting agenda or in two months when we know that more people are gonna be here so that the public knows, you know, when that item will be discussed again. And it'll have to be on that agenda.

So I I'm sorry. I have just a quick question. Absolutely. Is at seventy two hours, are they business hours, or are they just regular hours? So you could post something on Saturday for a Monday meeting.

It it it's a great question. It is regular hours, not business hours. But Saturday would not be well, depending on when Saturday. So if it's a if it's a Monday lunch meeting.

But for us on a Thursday.

Right.

If I decided to work on a Saturday, could I post it Saturday for our Thursday meeting? Because that's Yes.

It's well lower than 72, and it can be amended all the way up and until, what, Monday at noon?

Monday at noon. Yeah.

So it is seven seventy two consecutive hours from the time of the meeting, so not business days. Good question, Heather.

It is great. And then one other question. I'm sorry. No. That's For posting, is it just posting on, like, a county website or in it via email? Like, do we have to post it to the public?

Yes. Yes.

The agenda. Is considered public? Yes.

So the the registrar so on we have two two things on our county website. At least two that I know of. There's one where there's the page specific to the specific board that has its own calendar. There's a boards and commissions page that has a calendar with everybody, all of the boards and commissions on there. And then we have the link to Legistar, which has all of the meetings and the videos and the minutes and the agendas. So we cover at least three bases, generally. But yes, it has to be to the public. Does that answer your question?

Yes, it does. Thank you. Sorry, I was

talking I about can't. Let's see, we lost Marla.

She's an applicant to the health council who was attending as a member.

But that's a great question. So please continue to jump in because I can't see you. So the other piece of that so not only do we have to publish the agenda within seventy or no less than seventy two hours, the public knows what you're gonna talk about. It also you can only talk about those things on the agenda. Right? So it goes both ways. So if there's something on the that's not on the agenda that we kind of like trail off to, like we're talking about,

let's

say, Open Meetings Act, but I then start talking about bicycle safety. Right.

Or I'm talking about a crisis and people start talking about police systems or the hospital systems or other things.

We have to stay on topic, which can sometimes be hard because we're having a really robust discussion that could lead into other topics. But the reason for that is, again, for the public. Right? The public has the right to know what we're talking about. And if they looked at today's agenda and go, okay. Yeah. None of that interests me. I don't wanna hear from Katie. I don't you know, I didn't wanna hear about the topics. But then we start talking about something that may have interested them, but we didn't put it on the agenda.

The public didn't know about that. They didn't have the opportunity to be here, to log on, to provide comment. So it's all in the name of the public having enough information to decide whether or not to show up to the meeting. And if we stray from that, that's not fair to the public, and it's actually against the law.

So and that's why we have the public comment for items not on the agenda prior to going into the agenda, and it's also limited to three minutes for council.

Right. Yeah. Whatever the usually, I think it is in the boards and commissions handbook. It's either three or four minutes, but it it's also up to the chair to decide. So long as it is fairly applied to everything. So you can't say, oh, here comes Katie. You get one minute. At least it hits five. Right? So it has to be fair and equitable across the board. You can't just say, I don't want to hear from Katie today. So you have to talk about what's on the agenda. You can't talk about what's not on the agenda. Except for Except for the public comment. It can only be what's within the board's authority.

Right? So going back to the resolution nineteen twenty eight, these are the duties that county council has tasked you all with to do. So if you were to put something on your agenda that says, you know, we're gonna advise council on Cleaning and zoning. Finding the zoning matters and how to update chapter 16, the development code. Right? But that's way outside of your authority. So even if you do put it on your agenda, you don't have the authority to do that. So it has to be in the agenda and within your authority. And I put I just copy and pasted some of the duties that are on the screen. For those that are online, these are taken straight from the resolution.

We are at 01:30. We can't see who jumped off. Speaking of quorum. Heather, Joyce, Leticia. We have five. We're still good.

Okay. We're still good. Try to wrap it up. Sorry. If you have to leave, I will send this out. So these are this is your your duties that our counsel gave you. And you need to act within your authority. Within the boards and commissions handbook, I everybody get one of these or if you haven't, please reach out and let us know.

This

is somewhere this is actually the last page of the handbook where it gives a sample agenda that talks about how to structure your agenda. And then we also so we post our agenda. Like I said, we post it outside the door of the municipal building, post

it on

our website. And then for those newspapers that have requested, which then we give it to them to to put on there as well. So sometimes you might see in the daily post believe it's sometimes in the reporter that there's notice of, hey, this meeting's coming up. You can get the agenda here. Or if a meeting's canceled, it's also we

we can find it as well.

So the fourth the fourth part of having a meeting is the meeting minutes. So it's the like, the who, what, and kind of the content. So the law the state law says you have to have written minutes. It has to include the minimum, the date, time, and place of the meetings, the members who attended, those who were absent, the substance of the proposal, so essentially the discussions, and the record of any decisions and the votes. So that way, if I, as, you know, Katie Public couldn't attend, I can look at the minutes and go, oh, okay. So, you know, so and so discussed this. They've made a motion, and three people voted for it and two voted against it. And I get to know who who voted which way.

She's staff.

They need to be prepared by staff. So staff prepares these, as members, don't have to worry about having to prepare that. The law says they have to be prepared within ten working days. They're open to the public once they're prepared. So if somebody wanted to submit a public records request, they could get that even though it's not

approved

yet. And they have to be presented at the next meeting where there's a quorum. And then the board, takes action to say, We're gonna vote this or we're gonna make changes. This didn't accurately reflect what I said. They're not official until they're approved by the policy making body. There have been some discussions in other boards about, you know, doing, like, secret ballot votes or anything like that goes fully contrary to the Liberal Means Act. Right? So the public needs to know how each member's voting. So, can't submit, you know, secret ballot. We everything is in the open. The public has a right to know what the government is doing and who's doing what.

Is transcription sufficient for that?

It is. That would be kind of to the extreme. Right? Like, it's every word. What what we do now is what we call action minutes because we record our you know, we have the video and audio. So generally, I haven't seen the minutes of this body, but, generally, they follow the agenda. Right? So it's gonna follow the same structure of the agenda and say, you know, Katie presented on the Open Meetings Act and IPRA. There was a discussion. There was a motion. So and so motioned. So and so seconded. The vote was this. I think for this body, it's mainly discussion and not votes.

The exception of the health plan or an advisory action.

Yeah. So generally, we don't do transcription because we do have the video and the audio posted on the registrar page. And that's why we do the action minutes. So we could go and say, oh, what happened real quick? And if I wanna see the discussion, I'm gonna go to the video and audio.

Transcription would be like

There's just so many tech tools these days. Right? You take Teams transcription, paste it in a chat GPT, say summarize, and I can have it all. That can be my Yeah. Meeting minutes and ten seconds. I just wonder if that's sufficient.

And sometimes, there there were others who have discussed, could we do that?

Well,

not too much information. It already exists. And so to ask staff to do additional transcribing, and even when it's not perfect, and then you're correcting steel and I steel and

would have the tool to

do it. Okay.

It's just a question.

Oh, that's what Oh, no,

no, no. But Emily was a big fan of, like, we record all the minutes, transcribe all of them into the minutes for the full But then we were editing Otter dot ai's capturing of acronyms. And it was like, this is now taking hours when just to meet the goal, we can do action minutes, and then you can watch the video.

So

if we had more staff.

And there's a even if it's AI, there's going to be that person or the software interpreting what was said and summarizing it. So sometimes that could be interpreted by somebody else and say, that's not what I meant, if that's what I said. And so it it could the best thing is to have the video and the audio and the action minutes.

But if we needed to and people using other languages in addition to English, it doesn't it can't do that. That's what I noticed in a meeting yesterday with transcription.

There was board.

With a hearing deficiency could follow along more easily. And so it was really interesting to watch

it. Yes, bud. Yeah, what happens if we don't do it?

I've three minutes. Okay. So what happens if you fail to comply? So the reason we're training you on this is because the liability lies with the members, not the county itself, which is very different than majority of government action. Right? Usually, it's the body that is responsible for its, actors. But in this situation, it might I can only guess as to why the legislature created this is because they want the individuals to follow this. Right? So if the liability lies with you, you're going to follow it versus us, we can't control you, your volunteer members. And so that's my presumption.

So not only are you responsible for it, so if you are found, if you are charged and found guilty, it is

a misdemeanor. Who who determines that? That you violated the

It is a state law. So any it could be the attorney general. It could be a police officer. It could be the DA's office.

There has to be some legal entity.

That, like I've our thirteen years, I've never seen a not only a charge nor a conviction, but it is a serious offense. I mean, a misdemeanor. Right? Like so I mean, it's not a felony, but a misdemeanor is still a crime. So it it is a serious offense. And then if the body took an action in violation of it, then that action is going be invalidated because you didn't do the four steps. Right? I've got two minutes because we're going to lose somebody. So lastly, Inspection of Public Records Act. So that was all Open Meetings Act.

IPRA is about the so Open Meetings Act is about conducting business in the open. IPRA is about the documents that you conduct business with. So every person has a right to inspect public records. Public records is a very, very broad definition. It's all documents, papers, letters, books, maps, tapes, photographs, recordings, other materials, regardless of the physical form, that are used, created, received, maintained, or held on behalf of the public body and relate to public business.

So anything that is evolving this health council is public business. So your emails, your texts, your notes. There are exceptions under the law that says they can be redacted if it's got social security numbers, birth dates, HIPAA health information of a patient or a client. But the presumption is it is public. So what I recommend people do that are on board, because we don't give them a county email, is to create a new email that said, you know, kdhealthcounselwhateverdomain dot com, and I use that for my public body, my public business. I'm not using my own personal email because if and when I were to ever to get a public records request,

you

can, but you have to go I get so much junk email that's not it's junk that's in my inbox that doesn't go to junk or spam. So if I got a IPRA that said, I want everything involving health council, I'm gonna have to filter through everything in my personal email box that includes shopping and kids appointments and all of those things versus just having a I mean, emails are free. Right? Like, to create your own email just for this. So if you were to get an IPRA, you just go to there and go, hey. This is the parameters. It was from January to now. Here it is. Boom. And you don't have to search through everything else. It's not required, but it's just one of those recommended things. And and the press has

and will.

Do. Or the press or any individual that wants to know what are you guys doing? What are you guys talking about behind the scenes? Right? Are you doing that rolling or walking forum? The answer is no, because we're gonna tell you don't reply all. But people might wanna say, know, I I saw Katie was talking to them. I wanna see what she's talking about behind the scenes. Lost the It's 141. There are I know we're gonna lose somebody. I'm sorry for taking so much time. I will get this to Jessica so she can send it out. And if you have questions, let's see, I saw a chat. We still have five.

Can I ask a quick question about the resolution? So boards and commissions have to have a balance of different political parties, including this one, which in my opinion is absurd. But because of this resolution, does it have to comply with the same thing as the other boards and commissions as far as the political parties?

How could we change that? I'll answer the question for the group. We have to stop talking about business. It's more of a legal

Oh, did someone drop off?

Yeah. So we strapped off.

So if you look at section four of resolution nineteen twenty eight, it says the health council shall adhere to all applicable laws and guidelines governing county boards and commissions. Okay. So that restriction is in the charter, which has to be changed by vote of our people, which is like the county's constitution, if you will. It can't just be changed by the legislative body. It is also in chapter eight. So we would have to change both eight and the charter.

Changing the charter is the county council use?

No, the charter's a vote of the electors.

It has to go on a ballot. You have to do

a line item on ballot. Yeah. Because it's hard

up here. And that's And your boards That's ridiculous. And other health councils do not have this

requirement.

But all of the boards and commissions of the county do?

Yes. Of this county?

Correct. Of this county.

Okay. And that thing is so that the charter is what was kind

of the the will of

the people in 1968.

And that's

what we operate under without until it changes by a vote. Yeah. I will

get this to you so you can

send all of it I'll her cum.

That would go. I know that was so fast. I'm sorry for the tech troubles. She's being up in room here.

Okay. Perfect. Perfect. Alright. We're gonna see everyone online. Bye.

Thank you, Barb.