Community Services - Regular Meeting

Wish they at least would back up or something as opposed to just keep walking towards

people's tonight. Yeah.

They're too Yeah.

Can tell that someone's feeding them too. Like, they'll walk right up to you, like, expect look. Where are you gonna give me some

food? Yeah. So You know, we can

make it work.

I've actually been

It can bluster right.

Because So are you.

I'm gonna have all this You're changes

in your life. What's the

next mahogany Oh, really?

There's a lot of

pill sizes. And,

yeah, I'm watching carefully my Amazon to the stuff. Sure. They're not sure. Yeah.

You're totally fine. Honestly, everything No. It's I'm so smart.

Yeah. I did break into one because I wasn't paying attention. Anything were like, oh,

a new teapot for me.

Yeah. Perfect.

Thank you. Thank you, Perry.

That made my day.

I need to install the recording just in case. But yay. Me.

I don't think Tyler's gonna be on.

I'm looking for his name. He was Is Lisa on?

Out of the country. She has left us on her own. Oh my. We're very competent. Because only she's like Speak for yourself. Out of the country. Hello, everyone online. We are just about ready to get started. Give me just a quick second.

All

right. Yeah. Video's on. Audio's on. Okay. Everyone online can hear me. You can see the back of my head. I'm waving towards the screen even though

You're facing it.

I'm facing it. The the setup of this room is super weird. Thank you for the thumbs up. I appreciate it. But all of the tech has been fixed, and so this meeting is being livestreamed to the public. So that's exciting. Oh, wait. I gotta start the Recording in progress. Alright. Now we're going. Alright. But the meeting is being livestreamed, so that's really, really great on Granicus. We will do role and then introductions from the members of the public. Let's start with folks in the room. Can I start on this side, we'll go

around? Sure. Margarito? How

are doing today?

I am doing fantastic today. If

you're not doing fantastic, Keith, you

can answer another question.

So

I'm sorry. I was waiting at 03:30.

Oh, sorry. Yeah. We moved down here.

Oh, no. That's fine.

They kick you out of that meeting number? No.

They said they were just there till twelve, and then somebody else found out from you guys were here.

Awesome. We'll we'll get to introductions after we do, health council members.

Celeste Raffin enjoying

the beautiful.

Fantastic. Jilda Haven, also enjoying.

So we can't have this outside.

A nice

party end.

I'm Jessica Strong, social services manager, staff liaison to the council.

Jeremy Martinez, Los Alamos County social service health care specialist. Member. How

are

you doing today? Oh, great. Absolutely great.

Leslie Wallstrom, member. This came from registering voters at the Farmers Market. Yay.

Fantastic. Oh,

hey, that's one. Yeah. Absolutely.

All right. I was trying to read your stuff.

It says keep calm and vote. Indeed.

Let's jump on because everyone else is a member of

the public. Let's jump online.

If you are a member of the Health Council, you want to unmute and say hi, and how are doing today?

Good afternoon. Giselle Martinez, and I'm doing just fine.

Hi. This is Joyce Richins hanging in there. Thanks,

Joyce. Thanks, Giselle.

Hi. Hi. I'm Leticia Martinez, and I'm just at work on my lunch break.

Hi. I'm Leah Blackwell,

and I'm doing great today.

Any other members of the health council I may have missed. All right, let's start with members of the public who are here in the room, and then we'll jump to the online. I'm not sure I think microphones I don't know, you might just have to speak up. Natalie, do you mind starting, Brandy?

Hi, everyone. I am Brandy. I am the program manager for the Los Alamos Community Foundation.

Am I new to anybody?

Yes. And my neighbor.

It's a small town.

We

got the secret meetings on-site, He could. Totally.

And there could be adult beverages involved

if we

do Oh, in white meat.

The county meetings.

Crystal Archuleta. I am a health promotion specialist for Rio RIIBA County. And I do work with Jessica Strong. So good to be here. Thank you.

And then sweeping, I'm Elizabeth Ibanez, just here as a member of the public, although I also have

an application in to be a member of the council. So we'll see

what happens with that. And I am not here in this capacity, but I am a federal employee drifting in and out of furlough.

So I'm

going go with Joyce Meyer of I'm

hanging in there.

Hanging in there. We will get to that in just a second. And for members of the public online, if you want to unmute and tell us who you are and maybe in what capacity you're here and how you're doing, we're interested in how you're doing too.

Hello, everybody. This is Jeremy Spinosa. I'm along with Crystal, I'm with the health promotion team in the Northeast Region with an MDOH. I'm working with you all to support you. I'm the Northeast Regional Community Epidemiologist, and I am doing okay. Oh. Happy to join you today.

Thanks, Jeremy. We're glad you're here.

It's it's almost Friday. Right?

It is so close to Friday. Twelve hours? Yeah. Twelve hours. Oh, yeah. Stephanie?

Hello, everybody. This is Stephanie. I'm with Aging and Disability Resource Center here in Santa Fe. I'm also a New Mexico SHIP for the Northeast Region. SHIP being State Health Insurance Program.

Thank you, Stephanie. There is somebody on whose name is just listed as iPhone, and there is somebody else whose name is listed as White. Either of you want to introduce yourselves?

It's a secret.

Good afternoon. Valentina White with the Northeast Regional Health Promotion team as well.

Hey, Valentina. The person with the iPhone, would you like to introduce yourself? Maybe not. Maybe your phone stays muted. Well, welcome anyways.

Now we will I was totally just going to jump into staff report. That is not next on the agenda. But public comment, would any members of the public like to make comments at this time? Brandi Yes. Already told me she wanted to. Yes.

You want me to go to Is

it live from the speaker?

Folks online, can you hear Brandi when she talks from where she's currently seated?

I can also talk a little louder. Is there

a thumbs

up? Can you hear her? Or yeah, no, just move

up. Yeah.

Just come on up.

I was like, now you can see me. I'm kind of entering. I wanted to inform everyone of some events happening with LAUNCH Los Alamos Uniting for Community Health, which Jessica is a part of as well. It is a program that many of our nonprofits in town are working on to promote better health and wellness in the community. And Cora de Camera, one of the amazing choir performances, is doing a fundraiser for launch on October 16 at the Duane Smith Auditorium. It is completely free, but donations are welcome. And if you do donate, it does go to launch to help all of those things. We're also having an event called Paint the Tunnel for Mental Health next Thursday in the afternoon. So that's free to come to. It's free to join.

You can paint a little square for positive mental health because art is a great way to support mental health. And then if there's anything that the Health Council would like for coordinating events, we are happy to help coordinate some of those mental health events. And that is pretty much all I have for a public comment. And I do have a flyer if people would like to see it for the event. Can pass that around.

Could I keep it and I'll scan it in and send it to everybody?

But if anyone would like to pass it around for now. There's more than just the event on the sixteenth. They're doing multiple ones. But the one on the sixteenth is sharing mental health stories.

Can you resay what launched it?

Los Alamos Uniting for Community Health.

And if any health council members would like to get more involved Email me. Yeah, email Brandy. We had more health council involvement through Jen Bartram. The suicide prevention initiative that you've heard me talk about was really spearheaded by her reaching out to the health council under some of our work with the New Mexico Department of Health related to suicide prevention. And then it just kind of took off and became this joint collaborative effort through the Anchor Foundation that has money for health related initiatives is the reason Brandi is the program specialist, kind of overseeing a lot of those projects.

So if any health council member wants to be more involved, yeah, email Brandi, email me. I just

have a quick question. Yes? On the paint the panel, what day was that? It is October 9 October 9. Four to 6PM

in the tunnel by the color.

So it's paint the tunnel, not paint the panel. Sorry. I'm not hearing you. No. No. You're fine.

If you

if you wanna if you wanna get me a blurb, yeah, I'll send it out.

Give you both of the flyers. I'm sorry. I'm a dork. October 9. October 9 for when

do I?

Four to six.

Four to six. Oh, I love that. I go through that tunnel all

the time. I love that tunnel. I love that whole path. Stephanie, feel free to go next. I was hoping you would have some updates to share.

I do. I wanted to announce our fall open enrollment that's coming up October 15 through December 7. Will be present at the two senior centers, the Los Alamos, Betty Earhart Senior Center on October 15 for one on one enrollment, changes to Medicare. And at the White Rock Senior Center on October 17, the site coordinator there does have a sign up sheet for folks to meet with me there for Medicare changes.

What hours on those dates?

Ten to three, both days.

Perfect. That's October 15 for Las Colin.

Yes. Yeah.

Screwed up and missed.

Thank you, Stephanie. You. I do have a flyer, Jessica, if I could send them to you. For this, please I'll try and upload them there up here.

That would be great. Or feel free to email it. And then tomorrow morning, I'll compile all of the handouts and send them out to everyone who's here.

Great. Thank you so much.

Absolutely. Crystal.

Hello, everybody. So really quick just to make this quick announcement and just to make everybody aware of it. We have the Safe Sleep program going on. And I know you guys have heard about it, but I did bring some materials. They have the QR code. And I'm I'm gonna give these to Jessica. If if these aren't working, can send you another form. Nope. We just wanna make everybody aware of it. So when they do sign up online for it, it will get kicked to somebody.

We'll take care of the distribution or telling them where they can pick up their cribette. Also, what I want to make everybody aware of is the alcohol and cancer risk in New Mexico. And this flyer does have the QR code with it. So if anybody wants information on the resources out there to help with this, you know, initiative, feel free to get the to scan the QR code. I have a couple of mouse pads for Jessica for the 988. And if anybody needs 988 resource little cards, I have plenty. I can get them to you. So just let me know.

Fantastic. Like, can we get them in bulk? Like, if you wanted them at a work space?

I can get you guys like a stack each, and you guys can have them with you. All right. Here you go.

Thank you, Crystal. Thank you. This is Reverend Tiffany Hollams, who will be speaking after we do our member roundtable. Yes, just on my homework. Take care of whatever you need to. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Any more updates from any member of the public? Any public comment?

All right. Moving on.

I remembered to put the staple feature on the minutes for today. I can hand those back to you. And then folks online, I sent copies of the minutes earlier. I will say I found a typo. Christine representative Christine Chandler's name. Somehow an h got deleted from that, so on the very, very bottom of the first page. So I will make sure that gets updated for a moment. But any other edits or changes or additions needed to the minutes from last month's meeting? It was the fourth meeting.

I just have a question. The woman who's going to speak, is she actually an ordained minister? I believe so.

And if so, it would

be nice to put reverend in front of her name. You have Doctor. Tyler Taylor. Are you on Tiffany Hollams on the front page?

Oh, I see. Yep. Yep. We have it on the agenda, but not on the minutes. Thank you for catching that. Shows respect 100%. We will get that changed. Thank you. Any other changes or updates to the minutes? Can I get a motion to approve the minutes with the two noted edits before we make them into the official record? A second? Second. Thank you. All in favor?

Nayed.

Thank you. Thumbs up or eyes on line. I was making an assumption that there were heads up. Biggs. Any opposed? All right. Thank you. The minutes are good. Next on the agenda, we will jump into the member roundtable, which I know we didn't do the past two months because the agenda was so packed with the Community Health Action Center discussion. So it'll be good to kind of go back around the room and hear updates from everyone. But can I start on this side?

Well, so I've never seen one done, so maybe I shouldn't be the first.

Well, it's super easy. Three minutes, give or take. I'm not going to do a timer.

Whatever you want to say.

And whatever any update, things going on, things the health council needs to know about?

Well, I was going to say something previously, so I'll just say

it now.

Go for it.

So the League of Women Voters is planning on doing a health forum with Brandy Weiss's efforts through LAUNCH and the Los Alamos Community Foundation. It's this is all tentative, but probably late February. And it's going to be concerning the health care situation in Northern New Mexico. So we're helping get a panel of various speakers, experts. That'll be open to the public. So

we don't

have a location. We don't have an exact date. But we're in the planning stages. But if you have suggestions for speakers, please talk to me or Randy.

Will there be more voter registration events to the League

of Women Voters? So first of all, you can always register to vote in this building, assuming everyone knows that. And we try to go to the farmer's market occasionally.

I'm not

saying there was any time.

When does the farmer's market end? I

believe the last one is Thursday, October 30. So it's another solid month.

My

interest and the reason I wanted to join the health council always has to do with resources available for our community in all forms, whether it's doctors, nurses, in home care, etcetera. And we've recently, as a family, experienced a very ill relative with ALS and have been in a whole another state, a whole another environment that it made me realize and want to find out about, which I cannot report on today because I literally just got home. I have not had any chance to research it. What are in home respiratory therapy, etcetera, resources we have here in our county are elderly, or even not elderly, that end up with even if it's a short term situation where they're going to need respiratory therapy.

I was

going to say, Leah, I'm sorry to put you on the spot. Do you know about whether there are respiratory therapists at visiting nurses?

I don't know about that. I'm so sorry. My area is with the chaplaincy, so I don't have as much knowledge about the clinical, but I can definitely reach out. Find out more?

Thanks. Yeah. I assumed it was maybe kind of a split that you might not.

Well, primary care doctors can do the HME and get them set up with in home medical equipment and things like that. And then for any time they need further care, people to actually

come out, we can

set them up based on their choice with visiting nurses. Or Presbyterian comes up here now. And there's some other ones. So I can get you information on

I'm thinking about emergency situations and whether that's on my mind.

You

asked You asked us to speak. Yeah.

It's almost like we need a directory.

I think you should ask.

We're not there yet. I think you should ask. But, yeah, we can try to make some connections and see it. Welcome back.

Sheila Haven. My day job, commercial real estate. My other day job, all things health council. That's good. That's a good thing.

So like pushing water

out and Yeah. Oh my goodness.

One thing that I would like to put on the agenda for a point in time, I heard on Tuesday at council that there's approximately 50 housing vouchers that are left unused. I'm sorry. That doesn't work for me. And so I want to figure out how we can connect. We get 100, and we only used, apparently this is Dan Osborne making the presentation. So I'd like to figure out how we can be the we want them all, but we'll take what you'll get us kind of moment because those are seriously good things

to do. So I am happy to arrange a meeting. Dan Osborne came and spoke to the health council last February or March.

And I'm happy to send him an email and just say, give us the inside scoop. Because we see people that are looking for an ability to afford housing up here

And I would be very interested knowing more. My understanding is there's something like 170 people or so from Los Alamos County on a wait list. And so I wonder if it's actually on the supply side if we don't have enough landlords who will accept them, if that's where they're sitting. It would be very interesting to

Well, that's a fix.

Well, if you could encourage people to accept a housing voucher at the rate of whatever it currently is, $10.80 for a studio or whatever it is, if it has more bedrooms versus $2,000 from the lab, right? Like if we could encourage that, that might be an interesting thing to look Yes.

So I just when I heard that,

because there are definitely people who need housing.

So anyway, and again, I'm happy to reach out to him and just go explain to me why we're leaving 50 on the table. And apparently, this is a consistent thing. So if it's landlord motivated, those are phone calls that can be made. Otherwise, we use them up. I wonder

what the cutoff is for how much they can make. Because I have two people that work at our clinics who are lower at the G scale. And they didn't qualify. They were able to get low income housing where they're on this scale. But it was not it wasn't a lot.

Well, I guess for me, when I heard that, that said to me, there's a moment of fix, Whether it's us fixed, them fixed, multiple people fixed. But that's resources that we need to use every dime. And I'm ready to do it. Yeah.

Yeah. Just copy me. Okay. It comes up all the time in the office.

So So

I'm Celeste Raffin. We actually started working on the health

care gathering. Fantastic.

What I have figured out so far is there are a ton of resources. And they are in Los Alamos, they're in Espanola, they're Albuquerque, they're in Santa Fe, there's even some up in Taos. And what we're wading through what we're doing right now is we're doing two things. First, we're just trying to find what's out there. And second, we're trying to figure out how we're going to compile all this and present it in a form that's A, usable, and B, easy to use, and C, easy to amend.

And I'm still very passionate about having both an online and a paper directory. And my dream of dreams is that we are able, close the year, to just update and distribute this directory to the public paper. And to anybody that wants to tell me paper's not as accurate as online, I will not say the word. I'll just think it really loudly because it's not true. I have found so many mistakes. Like, for example, in Sharon, New Mexico, they're still listing the monitor. And as we know, the monitor's been gone for five years. So I don't believe it.

You

cannot convince me otherwise. It's not updated.

So I really believe that we want

to have the best where we do both. Marna is also she's not helping me because she's better at this than I am by lunch. And if anybody else would like to help us, we would certainly love to help. The I

good thing was getting us both together is figuring out what it should look like. And I think for my part, I'm working on doing the online section where we have a giant list that's on the front page. And then each line item feeds to a different area of resource. So we're going to have different tabs for the different resources. And that front page will feed it.

Can I jump in with an editorial?

Thing. Because we are a working group, we would love non council members to join us because we only have we have to have less than a quorum. And I don't know how many council members we have now.

We have I know this. We have 12.

12. So we can only have five council members. Correct? Yes.

But we

can have as many. So anybody from that's not council public or whatever, we are calling would love to help.

Fantastic. I am so excited. So and I'm sorry, Jessica. One of my coworkers, Nykellen, she you know, we we compiled the binders for each health council, and we laminated all the PHO services that we offer to the offices state PHO offices. And I will give you that binder. Have the That's great. And all of the resources through our PHO office will be in there. You could just go through it. Oh, you're not. Fantastic. And Kelly was a huge help in this. It was not me. She started it. I just kinda help you with that name.

Fantastic. Super old fashioned. I'm not a computer. And so my eye is big table. It's up this size, And it is now full of color coded index cards. Big stacks all over the place. It's really exciting. I mean, of course, we got an algo and verify and make

sure this is

For sure. For sure. So just to bump up a quick higher level, one of the items in the action plan from the comprehensive health plan was responding to the need of people who constantly say, I don't know where to find resources. And of course you don't until the crisis happens, right? Whether it is a drug and alcohol related emergency, physical health related emergency, medical teams, you don't know until you're in it.

Right? And so we had put as one of our action items to work on a directory of health related resources. Celeste agreed to take that on. When I had a coffee meeting with Marna, she said something about doing some work on the side, just because people come into the front desk where she is and they ask about resources. And I was like, resources? Are you keeping a list? And so connected those two, which doesn't mean other members of the health council can't help. It just was this perfectly aligned moment.

I'm very good for asking for help. Just didn't For sure.

You think about I think there's been this idea like the the county puts out a quarterly activity guide, spring activity guide, winter activity guide, And the planning happens way in advance. So two or three weeks ago, September, because it's already October, but we had to put in for the November, December, January activity guide. Right? And it has colored photos and calendar. You know, there's a lot of information.

It's it's kind of handled by the program specialists in the rep office. But we put that out quarterly, right? The the health council does get funds from Department of Health. This fulfills our comprehensive health plan goals. And I will say just to your point about a paper based, one of the first things that we always run out of at our farmers market table is the activity guide. Not our information. No offense about nine eight eight or, you know, any of the other swag we put out. It's always the activity guide. Like, people love having like, could you Google when is the you know, whatever at the pond? Sure. But people love having this physical thing. So, hopefully, Mike wanna come on that. Thank you for the update.

Are we allowed to talk if it's not our turn? Sure.

It's like I've broken, like, seven holes in the air.

That's why we like you. I

don't know if anyone told you about self help, the local nonprofit that has, I think, a guide for mental health providers already. So maybe you've tapped into that.

The answer is, like, sort of. The thing is is right. Enough, my father was one of the founders. Wow.

Self help.

So I do know about self help. But it's I was thinking it must be like this little thing. And I'm like so excited because what I'm finding is is I'm digging. I'm like, gosh, look at this. We've got all this stuff, and nobody knows about it. And so my feeling is it's gonna be more like a yellow pages, and we're gonna have to abandon the activity guide and have our own thing. And so so we do have self I do have self help on my list. And the way I'm doing it is I have categories. And so every time somebody like housing. So self help is in housing, it gets a card in housing.

And if self help is in counseling, it gets a card in counseling. And if self help is so there's a lot of repetitions. And my hope is that we're gonna figure out a way to, as you so well said, branch it out. You know? So you get if you wanna, you know, start acting counseling and then boom, self help, so and so, so and so, so and so, so and so comes up, you know, whoever's offering it. And then as a on the online thing, we can even help with the list. The yellow pages when we obviously can't be, But they'll have websites. So if somebody sees it in a paper copy and they see the website, they can go on to the list. Does that answer your question?

Well, kind of.

I just hope you understood that self help doesn't provide mental health counseling. Right. They have

the list. Exactly. Yeah.

And I have I have a copy of it. Okay. Yeah. And I have that along with the one that the hospital had. Like, there's I've gotten those lists from a bunch of different places, and so that's part of it is consolidating and getting one Master. Master list that we can go back then and give it to everybody. I got the lists from, and they can update theirs to have everything

in it. It's a resource, though. So if you can't find a counselor you like, go into self help.

Yeah. Yeah. Oh, sure. Are there any other

oh, sorry. One more thing. We do also have a resource binder that we put together at social service that you can go and check out. I've been going to a lot of, like, outreach and making connections with other resources and. So if you guys are interested in that, we've been going to, like, events and all over the place. So the event.

There's a gap in something in detox, basically.

One of the hard parts, I think, is how far are we gonna spread our net? Yeah. You know, we're stay.

That's Some things are not available. Some things just aren't.

Just simply out of it. I mean, do we just but then if we go too far, then we leave people out. And so I'm sticking to the ones that say, specifically, they mentioned Los Alamos in there. And so Los Alamos people are qualified or whatever to go.

I I volunteered last week at the old results network summit, and all of the speakers were wonderful. It was a great event, but they talked to me a little bit about how the attendance is dwindling every year. So I feel like that would be something to address maybe before the close of next year to get the word out a little bit more to get more people in because the amount of time they spent, the speakers and all this stuff and to have attendance out of the people that signed up, I think 65 to 70%

showed up. Okay. That's a great idea. Thank you. Can I just call on folks online to give updates? Joyce, do you I'm just gonna call randomly.

Sure. Hi, everybody. There we go. I just wanna kinda update everybody on our drive through flu vaccine clinic that we had. It was extremely successful. Unfortunately, we did not get the amount of vaccine that we had expected. There was something going on with manufacturer. They didn't get them out to us. We ended up scrambling that last the week of had somebody run down to Las Cruces and get vaccines from there, but we ended up getting it at ten by 10:30, we were gave every single vaccine we had, high dose and our regular doses. And it was more than we gave last year just in that short time.

And last year, we were there for four hours. But with that, we are gonna be having another vaccine clinic drive through. We feel like people just love the drive through. We did start doing kids this year, excuse me, nine and older, and we had I we had more kids than I thought we would. We had over 50 kids. Excuse me. Sorry. And we so we're gonna it's planned. We don't have it totally firm, but I'm pretty sure it's gonna be the October 18, which is a couple weeks from this Saturday. And we're gonna do a nine to twelve, not an

eight to twelve, but we'll

do nine to twelve. Same thing. I think, you know, people really I we did a lot better advertising this year, I feel like it, and the word just got out. And I think people realized how convenient it is for, you know, kids, for anybody, for elder people. It just was really people are so grateful. It's it's really fun to do them. So, hopefully, the weather will be nice on the eighteenth. But I will be sending once we get our flyer, I will be sending to all of you again and or just to share. So really appreciate your help with that. And if you haven't gotten a vaccine yet, come by and get one. Just So that's pretty much my What was little update.

Thank you. What was Yes. Know the total number of shots given? Can you screened out by 10:30?

Four hundred and sixty.

Wow. Amazing. 460

total. Last year, we gave 408 in four hours. So we probably turned away. We stood up at the top of the hospital and turned away people apologizing, you know, and and we probably turned away at least a hundred or 200. So we're gonna we're gonna get those people vaccinated.

Fantastic. And just so that everybody knows, I gave Joyce a bunch of health council materials, nine eight eight materials, crisis crisis ones, how to recognize signs of an opioid overdose, all of our DOH materials to put in the swag bags that they were throwing in the backseat of cars. So hopefully, at least 200 people got that information. We only had 200 of the social service rack cards because we forgot to order them. Mhmm. I forgot who was coming up. That was Yeah.

It got me.

But at least Sorry. Heard of those folks got our information, so that's really good. Thanks, Joyce. Yep.

We ran out of those, so we continued. Yeah. So we did give at least 200. So yep.

Nice. Thank you. You. Leticia, any updates from you?

Not a whole lot. Still struggling at the jail, but they don't even wanna be seen now. So they they're refusing me to see them. So that's their priority I mean, their prerogative, I guess. So I still don't have a solid person to refer them to. I don't know if there's updates on that for psych for counseling. No updates on that. We're trying

to schedule something with her by that head of detention.

Okay. And I'm do I am seeing a lot more people coming in that you guys are sending us that are homeless, but they miss their appointments. They don't show up. I just had one lady tell me that she was told we give free medicine. We give free everything.

I don't know who's telling her that, but she was very upset when she came in because we don't give free things. We offer discounted things, and I don't have medication here in my office to give out. So I, I mean, I I don't know what to do with those patients because they are refusing to go to the emergency room now, and that's where they need to go sometimes. But so I am seeing more and more types of those kind of patients coming in.

I don't know that we'll get that question answered, but maybe in the conversation around homelessness in the region that we're gonna have in five minutes, maybe something will come out from that. Or else Okay.

Care of. Yeah. Because I don't know. I like I said, I don't know where they can get help to get pay get their medication paid for if they don't have insurance. I don't I don't know those resources, and maybe you guys can provide some of those resources to me.

For sure. For sure. Thanks, Leticia.

Thank you.

Leah? No updates from me. I'm the most boring member. Sorry. I find that impossible to believe, but I don't think you're very boring at all. But It's okay to also not have an update. Suzelle, any updates from you?

Not from first one. That was easy.

Alright. Counselor Reidy is at the counts the county council and senior management. County management office is doing a big two day retreat setting priorities for the county. So I will, I have two minutes, give a couple of very quick updates. The social services office is monitoring the federal shutdown as best we can, which just involves googling a variety of sources because it's not like something official has been put out.

Our understanding is that social security payments that people are receiving, security, Medicaid, and veterans benefits and SNAP benefits should not be impacted for at least the first thirty days if the shutdown goes that long. People's payments, like if you are receiving SNAP, you should receive your SNAP benefits this month. I've not been able to find reliable information about WIC. It is funded through a different source. It's not funded out of entitlements.

One, k o a t, had something about like WIC benefits may only last for a week, but I couldn't find like an actual from the department. WIC stands for Women Infant and Children Supplemental Food Assistance. So I don't have much information on that. The Social Security offices should still be open. My understanding is plates processing of new applications may be slowed, But that, yes, New Mexico, the health care authority in New Mexico is still open and still processing everything.

IRS verification of income may also be slower than normal. Take that one with a grain of salt. But right now we are not seeing any immediate impacts to the people we are currently serving through those programs. If the shutdown goes on longer, there may be more repercussions, obviously. So we're staying on top of it as best we can for that.

And if you have any specific questions, by all means, out. Most of the contractors under social services also do not have federal contracts that are impacted directly by this. So most have state contracts and county contracts, but we're trying to figure out for the ones that do receive federal funds where those might be impacted as far as delay in getting reimbursed payment. So any other questions, feel free to to shoot me an email. I attended a ton of meetings last month.

That is no different than normal. If you want an update, let me know. And our new health care specialist started. Lori Padilla, former health council chair, started in a part time casual position. And our program specialist job posting is up with interviews scheduled over the next two weeks. So that's really exciting.

For social services. Okay. Oh,

October 21 is a Tuesday. County council starts at 6PM that night. Lisa and I will be presenting the annual health council update. Each Board and Commission presents annually to county council. It's a pretty, I'm gonna jinx it. It should be a fairly brief presentation. What have we worked on in the past year? What are we looking ahead to in the next year? We stand for questions. We generally have good relationships with all of the county counselors.

But if you would like to come and sit in the audience or watch online, that would be great. So the twenty first and we probably won't go on until like seven or 07:30, but anyways, that's that. Okay. With that, I'm going to introduce, we have three speakers today. Thank you all for agreeing to come.

Lisa had reached out to get a broad overview of kind of needs in the region, homelessness in the region, what people may be struggling with. Four speakers, hi. I I don't I didn't really have a sense of the order of how people should go, but I know Rob mentioned he has a meeting right after this. So Rob, do you wanna go first? Can I put you on the spot?

Yeah. No. Not at all. Go ahead.

Thanks for being so gracious about it. But it does occur to me, if you

need to jump off,

you certainly can do so. So we have Rob Veehil, Jake Stockwell. We have Reverend Tiffany Hollams, and we have Doctor. Tyler Taylor. I will let you each do introductions on what you're all working on. But if you all want to take ten, twelve ish minutes, and then I'll leave a couple of minutes for Q and A at the end. But we would just love to hear what you do, what you're seeing, what we should know, how we either as a health council or the kind of broader we as the Los Alamos community, what you need from us. And with that broad introduction, Rob and Jake, I'll turn it over to you.

Okay. Hello everyone. Thank you for having me this afternoon. My name is Rob Vigil and I work with the Espanola well, for the Espanola Pathway Shelter. And I'm the program director of Eagle Village, which is our recovery transitional housing program, located in the, heart of Espanola, actually, right across from the Santa Clarin mo hotel and right next door to Allsop.

So we are that, old motel that, resides right there. So what I provide is transitional recovery housing for clients who are getting out of residential treatment. I require a minimum of six months in recovery or verifiable sobriety in order to get a unit at my program. Now with that, my clients come to me fresh out of residential treatment, and I assist them with job placement. Most of the clients come with basically the clothes on their back, get settled into a unit where they pay $500 a month for their unit.

We call it program fees. We don't call it rental. And they can stay there up to eighteen months which really allows them in their recovery to form a foundation, recover what we call recovery capital and start building back on their lives. Right now, I have a total of 14 units there on property, but only nine clients. And the reason for that is we are undergoing a renovation project part that was partially funded by the governor's office through a cost of connections grant a couple of years ago.

And that will allow us to hopefully do some upgrades to our plumbing, our septic, some fire suppression. And right now, that's that's kinda it for for that. But it will allow us to then open up the other units for clients who are getting out of treatment. And primarily my referral sources are Darren's Place which is a local residential treatment center here in Espanola. About 85 to 90% of my clients come straight out of there into my program.

And the other clients are made up of department of corrections, probation, and parole clients. And we have had a couple of clients referred directly from our own shelter who are one of whom is doing amazing right now. So on property, I have nine clients and that includes a client who resides there, but is also a employee of Pathway Shelter. So he is sort of the twenty four hour, seven day a week person on-site available to clients when I am not around. What what I'm seeing is just the lack of affordable housing which, you know, I work really hard on to try and get my clients placed.

We also have within EPS is a fresh start rental assistance program that is funded by the health care authority and it is part of the opioid settlement the state received to fund clients with OUD disorder, opioid use disorder. So there is a pot of money that is available to these clients to get them placed in housing and pay up to six months of rental assistance or eviction prevention if we have a client that fits that criteria and they are on the verge of eviction, they might qualify for our eviction prevention program. So what this does is allow clients to sort of build up back their collateral, and we pay the rent up to 6 months or $10,000, whichever comes first. So it it's a huge, program to get people back in in the footing of, affordable housing. But again, in in this area, we've seen such an increase in the prices of rent.

A lot of our clients get priced out of the market. And, you know, a lot of the housing that was here, I don't know if you all are familiar, but there was there was a closure of a huge housing program here, the Santa Clara Apartments that closed now a couple years ago and displaced a lot of people in our community. And and Jake could probably speak on that, but we saw the overflow of the unhoused coming just out of that closure of that apartment complex. For for me personally, my goal is to keep these clients in in their sobriety, in their recovery, and then build that foundation where they can get housing on their own and start back on their own on their own feet. I I'm proud to say that over the past five years, I I've been with Espino Pathway Shelter for close to seven years and at Eagle Village for pretty much seven years.

And in the last five years, I can say we have about a seventy one percent success rate. And that is huge knowing where the area that we are. We are directly right next door to All Slopes where bad things can happen twenty four hours, seven days a week. And we're right across from a casino, which also can come with its own problems. What I'm proud to say with a lot of my clients who graduate my program is they choose to remain in the Espanola area.

And they are working, some of whom right now who are operating and managing big box stores here in the Valley. So now they are responsible for hiring other people within the community. So I I call it, you know, our our paying paying it forward reward system. So all I ask of the clients who complete this program is that when they have an opportunity to pay it forward and give somebody a helping hand back in the recovery that they do so. I myself am in recovery.

In two weeks, I will have seven years sober. So I tell my clients I know what it's like to sit on both sides of the desk. So with that, I will have a hand it over to Jay. Thank you all.

Congrats on years from seven years sobriety and congrats on the seventy percent success rate. Both amazing achievement.

Thank you so much. Thank you very, very much. I appreciate that.

Hello everyone. My name is Jake Stockwell. I'm the shelter operations director for Espanola Pathways Shelter. Thank you for inviting us to speak with you all. It's it's a privilege to to share what's going on here in the valley in terms of homelessness and and really the front lines of of addiction and and the humanitarian crisis.

The shelter. So he he like Rob explained, EPS has an umbrella. We have several different programs that are encompassed in that. One being the shelter that I oversee. We are an emergency low barrier shelter.

That means we do not bar from entry any preconsisting conditions or or active use of care in our facility. We started out as one time a week and now we're up to two. We have 12. She serves around twelve twelve people a week and she also has counselors and training that come with her. Then we we partnered with Porchlight Health, which if you don't know, Porchlight is a medical assisted treatment clinic.

They're mostly in Colorado but they have clinics all over New Mexico including Espanola. And they are a comprehensive treatment program that it's not it's not inpatient detox, it's an outpatient detox program and and they they offer both behavioral behavioral or mental health and the addiction and they treat both simultaneously with the same provider. They're able to give out prescriptions to medications that can simultaneously treat multiple conditions. And we they allowed us to start a pilot program that's on demand inside the shelter so that we don't have to transport. And it's all a huge sorry.

I'm emotional about it because it's, yeah, it's a game changer. Transportation is a huge barrier to getting people into treatment. And even if it's across town, it can make or break somebody's start of recovery. So the MAT On Demand is a portal that they can link to a telehealth provider and and they can start that journey within a half an hour. Lastly, we've Oh,

I was gonna give you like a two and three.

Okay. Yeah. Sorry. Let me drink some water. I'll be right right with you.

Lastly, we partnered with La Familia Healthcare for the homeless in Santa Fe and they have started to come down into the shelter to provide on-site primary care with nurses, case management staff, peer support. They're they can they're really flexible in what they're able to do. They can do street medicine which means they can just go out, meet people, and and start treating on the street or in our parking lot. Or they could come inside the shelter and do more brick and mortar clinical services inside and they have we have private rooms and an exam table in inside the shelter that they can set up at. Their case management team can do the preliminary work and start them off and then they can start seeing the nurse practitioners.

We also have a caravan with Southwest Care that comes to our shelter one time a month and that does HIV and hep c testing. What else? Oh, the Mountain Center comes once a month and provides harm reduction services. So they're a needle exchange program and so they bring their their mobile unit and they will disperse Narcan clean use the supplies and they will also provide drug testing on-site which is a fairly new and really informative practice in which drug samples are given to them and they're able to test rapidly what people are actually using. It's very really informative in terms of the fentanyl crisis because a lot of this a lot of these pills that people are using or powders that people are using, we have no idea or we did have no idea what they were and they could be a very fatal combination of tranquilizers mixed with opiates etcetera that some of them are go against Narcan.

Right? Xylazine, for example, was a tranquilizer in which Narcan can't be used. So we need to know what what's in these drugs and the Mountain Center has been a vital partner in providing these on-site services. Hey, Jake. So that is what we're what we're doing. Can I ask one

more question, Jake, before we move on to the next person? How many Yeah. How many folks do you serve, let's say, in a month at Pathways?

Well, we were serving we were serving around 80 individuals, unique individuals. We're now at 25 individuals

and

we're we're expecting that to rise. It always rises in the winter months. So I I imagine in the next couple of months, we'll we'll go up to around 50 and those general numbers.

Yeah. Thank

you. Thank you for sharing. That's an amazing amount of wraparound services for the people in your care.

Sure thing. There's yeah. Go ahead.

Oh, no. No. That's all. I'm not sure how to flip a coin. Who wants to go next?

I'm gonna be talking about will will somewhat dovetail with that. So.

Go next. Yeah. And then

you'll you'll close us out. Ten minutes or so.

I'm Tyler Taylor. I'm the coordinator for the Interfaith Coalition on Homelessness here. We've been in existence only fifteen months. 13 congregations that are now participating in their work and about 50 people who are in one way or other active in this. I was I misunderstood. I I thought I was gonna have thirty minutes.

So Oh, I'm so sorry.

What, ten? So I'm gonna figure out somehow how to shrink this down. Send it to us,

and we'll get We're we

Well, it's always should come to

the interfaith coalition meeting. That's right.

We have a couple of our members here. So in 2024, early in the year, we decided we really wanted to see what could be done about homelessness in Espanola in a much bigger way than four congregations had been trying to do before that. So thought we'd give this a shot incredibly well there. Hope

I think

there's a people coming on board. And so we've ended up I won't give you all the history here but we've ended up with a very structured organization now with a steering committee of five people, three action teams, one that works on carrying out projects that we've chosen to take on, which is now about seven. We have a financing team that will look for money. We need that for some larger project. We have a community education team which is focused more on how do we educate Los Alamos County people to sort of raise levels of awareness and empathy and readiness to help.

So all of those are kind of felt run unfolding as the months go by in paces. Projects that we chose to work on some focus on prevention of homelessness, some focus on helping those who are already on house and some focus on substance use disorders, which is a huge factor in a lot of coming on house or staying on house. So we have been working very aggressively with the Presbyterian House Presbyterian Espanola Hospital. They've got three things they said if we were willing to work on those that would be a real help. They all made sense to us.

And so we said we'd do all three of them. And then we've been working with McCurdy Ministries and they've got so much going on at their campus. There was good places there for us to plug in. And then with the pathway shelter and trying to continue to support them in terms of meals, staying in regular contact about things that they needed, getting close there, renovations there, building, so forth. One of the projects we thought made a lot of sense was a cell phones project where we would work with three different clinics.

The hospital was one. Port Flight Health, if you ever mentioned, was one. Anyway, was. Center. Center. Thank you. They were all going to be handing out phones to their clients who were in treatment in thirty days of service and that would get renewed each time a person came back. So we thought that was great and we phrased the money to do that. The Mountain Center started it and then their doctor who was prescribing MAT moved over to the hospital. So we're shifting that program. So there'll be one portion light and one at the hospital.

How much money raised? How many phones?

How many

people? We needed 9,300 to do it, and we raised about 11,000. And and our way of raising money is to ask congregations, would you help with this forward usually? We don't have a website. We're creating mechanism already exists, but it's not known yet.

People will be able to volunteer to work frontline organizations in the valley. And we're gonna tie that in with volunteers for. So that you can sign up in either place for volunteer activities. The the real not the crack is this one around transportation. One that's And then I the about a dozen social service agencies in Espanola, we really understood what the need is where where the gaps were.

The giant gap is people being able to get to facilities. And so particularly with the hospital opening this huge new clinic where they will be able to offer MAT to 1,900 individual 1,900 plus all the other places in town that now offer MAT. So we proposed a transport system that would be free, that would be reliable, dedicated just to health for health needs and would run seven days a week. And every two hours do a loop and just go through all of the medical facilities and pharmacies and counselors offices and the PA clinic. And we've been trying to sell this to RTD since the spring.

And it's kind of like, you know, we're hinging along, making progress. So we think we might get to talk to the board at RTD next month about that. They'll come on board or not. I don't know. We're looking at other options if they don't. But we've talked to Coram Foundation. We've talked to Leo Jaramillo. We've talked to a wide number about that and and try to stress the urgency. Every month that goes by without this is people. There's a whole lot of people not getting treatment for not only their addictions, but you know getting over for their physical therapy, getting to their pharmacy, getting to their PCP.

This is a big one for us. We think this is a place where we could make probably the biggest difference of all. So it kind of fits with us being catalysts and advocates. That's how we've come to sort of see ourselves not as a direct provider of any kind of services. So now the other really big one on our radar is that many of you know, the Fenella Pathway Shelter needs a special use permit in order to stay in operation where they are.

City Planning Commission denied that at their last meeting. And so this means that the shelter needs to has needed to appeal that. It will go before the city council of Espanola on October 14. We thought it was gonna be the twenty first. It's been moved up.

For us, this is a five alarm fire. This has been one of our main partners in an organization we think has played a huge role in dealing with, you know, 250 unhoused people in the community roughly. And so we formed an ad hoc group within the coalition. Said, you know, let let's figure out how we can respond. The good news and the bad news was that people had a lot of ideas.

So we ended up saying, well, there's nine things we think we might be that might make a difference. You know? And it sort of ranges from letters to the editor, people on street corners with signs, full page ad in the paper, radio ads, interviews on the radio, letter from clergy the editor, getting social service agencies in the valley to speak up together. So we're trying to do all of that, but, unfortunately, now we're in this real time crunch. So I guess I want you to know about that.

It's a big deal to to us. I think it's a huge deal to that community. And if we really need some volunteers to help just in the next two weeks with the outside and getting petitions signed that will hopefully become part of this full page. I had in the paper a lot of signatures have signed petitions. We need people to hold signs on street corners for a day.

We need attendance at the October 14 hearing that there's a lot of support there for the shelter. Need somebody who's got a really nice voice to do a radio spot for us. This is a thirty second spot recording. So that's those are the big things that are really on our radar right now is saving the shelter and that's what we're calling this campaign save the shelter and trying to get this transport system.

What was the reason that they that planning said no?

The reason the five hour hearing. And the reason they gave at the end was the shelter hasn't sort of lived up to the city's expectations and specifically open seven nights a week year round. The real reason it was very obvious from listening to all the candidate, counselors, the commissioners speak, was why in the hell did you allow this shelter, this encampment on your property? Why did you keep it going? Why didn't the city shut it down?

You're really unhappy about all of that. Whether you get a permit in the future depends on how you behaved in the past. We don't like how you behaved in the past. Got it. That's that's.

Now we're gonna write our gnosis to.

Thank you for a huge overview and a very condensed amount of time. As someone who has been to a number of the ICOH meetings, there's there's such an energy and and people just jumping in. And if you or you have a congregation that's interested in getting involved, there's lots of work to be done. Yes. If you send me some of the volunteer stuff in the next two weeks, I can also get that distributed. Like Meet me up. Break this or meet here.

In the next week.

Yeah. But if

you send it to me, I'll I'll get it distributed tomorrow.

Everybody understands. The fourteenth is the year

Don't ignore my email tomorrow when

I sent

this. No. That's That's

what we mean.

Seven days.

And I know it's not enough time to cover McCurdy Ministries, but I feel like we'll start and then, we should have everyone back for, like, another meeting to dig into it more. But you had stepped out to use the bathroom. Leslie had noticed on one of our things, I did not have reverend Tiffany Hollins on the agenda, but we will get it corrected. But I know. But it like, it's part of all of it.

So welcome. I'm excited to hear about McCurdy. Several of us toured McCurdy in preparation for the Community Health Action Center. And we've heard you speak at the Unitarian Church. Jeremy and I went on an event that the Interfaith Coalition hosted, and now all the health council gets to hear you. So

Well, one of the things that I see happening and just in in the the Valley is that we have amazing people, as you've heard, you know, from Pathways, the Mountain Center, Rackstop. You know, there there's the the soup kitchen. I mean, oh, again and again and again, there's these amazing nonprofits and partners that are really banded together. And for McCurdy, we were a school for one hundred and twelve years and then launched the school and had this really important moment where we had kind of sensed could we could we go into providing affordable housing? There was a lot of pushback in the community and the city.

And at that point, we really made a thousand degree turn and said, okay. We don't wanna spend what time we have left doing ministry, fighting people. What what is really our heart? And the heart of McCurdy has always been kids and youth, always, and education. And so what we have kind of found over the last two years is that first of all, the nonprofits and the people offering services in Espanola, in the valley really were were I were a very isolated.

There wasn't real places where people could come together. And so McCurdy just was like, you know what? We have space. We have buildings. We have the Cole Community Room, which was heated, was one of really one of the only heated rooms for a while. And we just told people come and have your meetings here. And when you go to use the restroom in the freezing cold building, we hope your urine doesn't freeze. And so there there was that. And what really started happening is that McCurdy made this very strategic decision that we were gonna move from looking at scarcity and all of the things we don't have, all the things in the valley that that people don't have, and look at abundance and generosity. And we're like, you know what?

We have space. It's welcome to you. It's not gonna be perfect, but it's open. And so

it really began with the Rio Reba Health

Council needed a place to meet. So we said, meet in the cold community room. How much does it cost? Absolutely nothing. And then we had United Way of Northern New Mexico come and say, we need a space. We had one of our casitas that was our administrative office. We said, sure. We'll clean up junk out of this room, and you guys can office here. How much? Whatever you can do. And my board at that point was kinda like, this makes no sense, Tiffany. Like, we're circling the drain right now. And I'm like, I know. But if we're gonna charge nonprofits and things like that, maybe we deserve to circle the drain. So then, you know, slowly, Los Compress, the grandparents raising grandkids group was like, hey.

Can we meet in your room? And I say, sure. Can I help with anything? Hey, we need someone to help with the kids. And that's when I realized there was a group of grandparents in the valley that there were 30 to 40 sets of grandparents that had been meeting since their kids were in therapeutic preschool.

And now those kids were 14, 15 year olds. And when you met with them afterwards, it was a little bit like Lord of the Flies. And I know because I lived to tell after two I mean, two years of helping. And that was when I really started looking into what if McCurdy was a safe and loving place for these families to come? Because what I started hearing as I talked to the grandparents, as I talked to the kids, the the the opioid situation, the drug situation, the unhoused situation, these families and these kids were basically directly related to that.

And so you know they would all have stories of either you know someone in their family overdosed, someone in their family was on a house, somebody in their family was in the justice system. I mean it was just over and over and over. And when I began asking the grandparents what they needed, they said we need clothing. We need clothing for our kids. Most of them do not have official custody or guardianship of the kids. What has really happened is when I first got to The Valley, my background is in child welfare.

So I would work

for foster care agencies for treatment foster care. So kids that had blown out of multiple foster homes, kids that were coming from psychiatric care, from residential treatment, from juvie, from sex offender treatment. And so I began asking in The Valley, what about CYFD? And when I first arrived, there were no CYFD caseworkers. And we were just coming off of a global pandemic.

And there were no counselors in schools. And so I'm putting the pieces together realizing holy cow, we have this huge issue of people that are on house, people that are having opioid addictions, and then as a result, their kids and teens, their grandparents, the neighbors, the aunties, the siblings are taking these kids in. And the city has valley has not had the resources, the you know, agencies help. Have been left to their own devices and what these grandparents and great grandparents and they are stepping in this gap. And there is the whole beginning of a whole another wave of this crisis two point zero, three point zero, four point zero at magnitudes that

are

impossible to to even predict. And so I just went to our board and said, hey. We have to stop figuring out how we're gonna survive, and we have to begin loving our community. And I think that we need to have a clothing pantry, and I know Locker five zero five in Albuquerque, and they wanna come down. And it just kind of began this tsunami, right, to where all of these agencies start locating with us.

We now have CASA, Corte Pointe and Advocates. We have Northern Youth Project to provide training in like very centuries old agricultural skills that have really been lost. We have United Way with their youth leadership. We have Ria Riba Health. We have Los Combres. We have Nelba. We now have Gerard's coming to join us for grief therapy. We are looking at Dream Tree, which offers transitional living to have their offices there. And then the state came to me and said, would you consider applying to be a family resource center? I was like, that's great.

I've never written a grant. This will be my first. And they said, okay, we need your application in a week. So we just start doing that. And it we we opened officially seeing families in our family resource center in March. We had our grand opening last May. We began having Locker five zero five have ODiC every Saturday. They would come starting August 2024. And then we would just, you know, use a grant that we got to bring the locker five zero five staff down. We had it on our campus.

They were there free of charge and just started realizing the families that were coming. The grandparents, clothes. They needed food. They needed and so we created the lighthouse, which is now open to all families, all individuals. We have we've given, you know, clothing to pathways to to individuals from Pecos Valley to families that are coming in through the Family Resource Center.

And when families come into the Family Resource Center, they receive, you know, loving and compassionate navigation to help them connect with services. We just hired a therapist that will be on-site to help us because we get some some pretty intense crisis. And that's what we've seen is none of the families that come in are not in crisis. And and what we really see is that our our place in this puzzle as McCurdy and the nonprofits is to provide prevention, but also to provide future, right, to where we stop this cycle. So that's why we have Lair that is a literacy based initiative where we are providing reading buddies for every second grader in Elementary starting next week.

We're setting up little libraries all over the place. The interfaith group has provided almost 20 little libraries that are

gonna go up all over

the valley. And then we also have a food pantry, a diaper pantry that is original. Project Carino with free mental health services for kids and youth. And then one of the things we're really looking at is an internship program to where we're able to provide housing, training, mentoring for young adults that they not only learn skills but have safe housing and learn things such as educational skills, trade skills, social work skills, health needs skills, you name it. Need the help and can train them.

And so what is really kind of happening is really cool in the community is that we're just all coming together and saying, you take this piece of it, we will take this piece of it. And for McCurdy, it's the kids and the teens. And, you know, I think one of the things that we are really looking at is what happens five, ten, fifteen years from now when these primary caregivers who are not only the primary caregivers to their grandkids but also to their adult children, right? As they come out of mat, as they go into recovery, they're coming back into these homes. And so how do we support these families?

And so it's it's really exciting. I mean, have had so many families come to us. We've had almost a 115 families. We've had 50 individuals, and we have a 170 on our waiting list. So just since May's grand opening. The

The meta message here is between what's happening in community, what we're getting involved in, what's happening with the competence growth at the shelter. Michelle Freire is a social service person at the city and who's very much a go getter. MAT is very likely to be a huge game changer. Everything could be different in Espanola over the next couple of years.

It will be different. It will be different. And that's what we are telling the families who have come in and have no overtime.

But questions from health council members who are left if people have time.

So I'm just wondering what your relationship now is with the Greater United Methodist Church, and do you get funding from them?

And do they We So supplies. We are really housed under United Women in Faith, so we get very little money from United Women in Faith. As far as church donations, I mean churches are have have kept McCurdy alive. The split in the UMC was really difficult for us. I mean it really put us in a position to where it's like we don't know that we'll survive.

And so we've gotten really creative with where we're getting funds. I mean, I've written four grants this past week Right. In collaboration with our I mean, it's just you get scrappy. Right? And what I'm finding though is that as we share the story and share things that are happening, those givers are kind of like, oh, okay.

You

know? And so, yeah, it's the met United Methodist Church incredibly supportive and they are really proud. We years ago, we had asked if we could come under the New Mexico Annual Conference, but they were like, woah, I don't know. And so it's funny now they're coming to me and saying, maybe? And I'm like, yeah, no, we're good. Right? We're good. And and so part of it, I think, is like a mind shift, right, of where it's like I I think what really is happening with McCurdy is that we're we're we are infusing life and joy and hope into the church now. So

And do you work with the Espanola pain center? You're a sponsor of other Y?

We we have not. I've I've talked with them occasionally about possibly opening up a branch with us, but our facilities just couldn't. You know, it's like we have to figure out how to heat it and make it accessible. And and those things we are working on. But yeah. And I think the challenge in Espanola is we really do. You get in your silo. Right? And it's it it is very challenging to make sure that, you know, we see all the different places. You know, it's like for me, I was so silly.

And we were struggling to get referrals for the Family Resource Center, for the lighthouse because there aren't any counselors in the schools. There aren't nurses in the schools. There weren't a whole lot of caseworkers. So I just used Espanola Gossip Facebook pages and posted my phone number and my email. And now it's like I get, like, 500 emails every two days. And so now I'm having to figure out, holy cow. You know? But it's like that that for me now is the challenge of how do you stay connected to all the different things that are happening. But Yep.

So I have another question. You raised the schools, And I just don't understand why the Espanola or Ria Ribe County schools don't at least have counselors. Because I I know something about how schools are funded in this state. It's like, most almost schools have

counselors. Student population. All the schools in Espanola I mean, there's they're looking at, what, three or four schools are getting ready to close down because the school population has gotten so small.

I think there has to be inequities. I mean, there has to be. There's no reason.

Right? Like, from knowing other school counselors not in Los Alamos, it it could be a supply issue. There just aren't enough counselors.

It's a really hard job

with just really high turnover. So I don't think it's that they don't have the funds and they don't have the need and they don't have the want. It's hard to keep that position because it's not just I mean, become a social worker for the family, really. And it's, the pay isn't great. And it's the reason we've lost counselors in all sorts of fields.

Because again, if you are licensed as a social worker or licensed professional counselor if you can find a way to charge people $200 $250 an hour for one on one counseling The love you would have to have to accept a $22 an hour job at a school where you're also dealing with school politics and families you know. Right. Like it's it's I it might just be it's hard to keep it filled. I don't that would be my total guess, knowing what I know about the Pittsburgh public schools. Nail on the hood. Yes.

Yes. There are many, many, many, many issues. Right? And many, many inequities. And and I think some of it is the is the reputation that Espanola gets. You know, when I say I'm in Espanola, people think I'm like a saint. And what I found is there are amazing people in Espanola. It they have come together to save each other and we cannot keep up with the donations that

we

get. You know, and so I think some of it is a morale and a and a image.

Yeah. Right? Yep. Fracturing community is really fractured in many areas. You know, a big loss of GRT for a lot of the city services.

It's a mess. I mean, I I think if if Espanola stays alive as a city versus just fading into the sunset, so to speak, because it's already so below the resource level really can maintain a city even if a water main breaks. It's it's a hard thing to watch, but maybe it's better to split it into the the because Rio Riva has got some money. It's just the city of Santa Fe. I mean, of Espanol.

So in my previous life, I was a family physician. And MAT is a really big deal. It offers far better

TNC. Medication assisted treatment for people with opioid use disorder.

Yeah. And not even opioids for some others like alcoholism. Sure. So

if you

go from between that and the community to 10, including a bunch of you that are addiction medicine specialists, a whole teams team of. Yep. It is very possible that this what I consider the elephant in the

room Right.

Is about to be.

Oh, that's good.

That's how I'm looking at this. Yeah.

With that, I thank you everyone for hanging out. I have a call I

have to jump

on in fifteen minutes, so I am gonna close the meeting. Jake, thank you for being here and sharing about Pathway Shelters, Shelter and Eagle Village and all of the other programs. And give my thanks to Rob as well and Doctor. Taylor, Tiffany.

Thank you, thank you, thank you, health

council members and public for sticking around. I'm gonna end the recording. Everyone online, we'll see

you soon. You.

Recording stopped.

Sorry. I just know there's usually,

like, fifteen minutes of chitchat, but I gotta jump on a call too. I wanna be able to chitchat.

I'm glad to see it.

I hope, like, health council members and and I know now I just ended the meeting, and We're not allowed to, like, do that. You know, before, it's fine. But this was part of like, when we when we toured, it was, you could co locate facilities that make it easy for a family in crisis to not just fill out paperwork and then send them to the next place and the next place and the next place. It's how could we envision clothing and diapers and food and the paperwork. Transportation.

It's always the barrier. Up here in Espanola, across the whole state, probably across the whole country, solving transportation is like knocking down the first domino. Like, that is what makes

all

the other things

We're making your services not require transportation Right.

Because you've co located Yep. Yeah.

We can take Espanola with its

But We need to review the transportation because I was gonna connect you to doctor Taylor about the transportation ideas. Can't my I grew up

with one system, so right?

But I talked to my daughter from Kentucky.

Oh, thank you. K. All the papers. You're heading back to the office.

Yes. Because

I'd like to pick up the transportation thing again. Because a little of a stormy boss.

It's like one of my second mother.

Okay. What was place?

Yeah. I'm gonna talk to her about the history. Okay. The county She's writing books. Yeah. She's writing a whole history. Fortunately, my father's passed

her at the pond, 8AM, 08:39. Project. Lowlace. Hello. President Curian. Yes. Sorry. I, like, left you. Right? Sorry. I don't care if your appointment's at one.

You can

jump on. If you I mean, No. No. That's no man. Like, for them. A whiteboard. Like, maybe there'd be

Maybe your staff, what you put in

your budget is you need bus drivers. Well, that's make or a contract for somebody who says, I'm willing to take on, but the county will have the liability. Right? Yeah. Do wanna help solve transportation?

Do I want to? Yeah. What'd you say?

Do you wanna help solve transportation?

Well, I am a grant writer. So It's like just like Good help.

All places deal with this all

the time. Or, you know, do you start some kind of pilot

type of thing? So that's just kinda what you were talking about. So that's what Corey and I talked about. Three vans sit at the pond. They have set times. And instead of a loop in Espanola, this one's going to Albuquerque facility. Leaves at 8AM. Your appointment might not be till one. This is what we got. Right? Or, you know, whatever. One is going to Espanola, Rio Reba County, one's going to Santa Fe because we're never gonna get enough specialists up here. But even short of specialists

data that shows people wouldn't use it.

No. But we have the opposite. We have the number of people who marked transportation as a barrier for getting off the hill from the comprehensive health plan. Yeah.

So not Los Alamos. A lot of those people say, oh, but I'm not gonna ride a bus to Albuquerque.

For sure. Right? And so is it a because it's Los Alamos. Right?

Is it a county driver? Is like, I don't know.

But I will tell you, Corey, who's head of community services, my boss, he and I brainstormed. I mean, the risk of sounding really crass. The county has funding. If we wanted to propose a pilot Yeah. We have other drivers. We have insurance coverage.

Yes. The drivers of the insurance coverage.

Or or the things. Right? So, like, give me one of

the buses sitting

at PCS. Exactly.

I'll I'll take the green trolley. I mean, it won't be me driving it. Don't have a CVL. Maybe I would. I don't know. Cap.

And that on the bus that goes to Albuquerque, you have case managers that are on that bus that go with you.

CHW. CHWs can be reimbursement Medicaid. Yep. Right? Like, there are all the pieces. I have so many ideas for this. I need, like, a week of no other things. Oh. But, great, if you had a CHW, help me to fill out social determinants of health paperwork to follow-up

at social services after tablets that can connect with Medicaid and Social Security and Yeah.

This is doable. It totally is. Alright. So we'll put Leslie in charge because she's the last one here. Yeah. But are you talking about

Los Alamos County, though, or Espanola?

Los Alamos getting people to these places. Right? We currently have social services clients who can't get to porch light for their medication assisted treatment. We have people who we know sorry. I just picked up my heavy bag, but now I'm still gonna rant. The Atomic Eye does not do glaucoma testing anymore. It's only at their Santa Fe. We know there are the there are no physical therapists for teens. It's in Espanola. There are people that can't get to the services. Uh-huh.

So let me throw out this wild idea.

Do it. Bring the services here. Oh, well that's the other one is could porch light mobile come up here? Sunflower Health out of Santa Fe, we've talked to them. Could they bring it up? The problem with that is what we hear over and

over is we don't

have enough numbers to make it regular. Right. Right? I was contacting Sunflower Health to help with health care services in the jail. Leticia and I have met about this a couple of times. There might be three people at the jail. There might be 11 people. There might be seven. It like and so we it's

hard to know. Like, one day a month to where they come and they can show that they have the numbers of we have 50 people scheduled this day. And it could be, but then

So here's what if we succeed in creating an amazingly good health care transport circulator bus system every two hours it goes around stops at everywhere you might want to go And you've got these feeder lines that come into Espanola already from Blue Bus. And if that greatly improved transportation ends up meaning a lot more people are now getting health care that were not getting it. And you start getting riders to start opening shop in Espanola instead of us thinking we need you know how do we get more people here, how do we get more people SB-one to take advantage of the great transports?

A 100%. I don't believe we're gonna get more specialists up here. Like, don't think that's a recommendation from the health plan or I I don't think it's feasible. I think, right, we would have to either make sure the blue bus stays staffed to get them to the hub to catch the two hour circulator or develop a black heart service that gets them there.

Yeah. Me and the problem is that this is where people have great insurance. Right? And so this this is where providers are gonna tend to come, but that doesn't mean Not if they can't afford to live here. Yeah. Please. Or they just won't stay.

Yeah. And there's no housing in Espanola, and they're like,

what? The housing

in Espanola, the cost. My gosh.

Because it's the fallout from not

being able to live up here. Yeah.

It's all connected all the time. Been yelling at Everywhere all the It's all the time. Every time.

So I'm I'm Leslie, by the way.

Nice to meet you. I've heard a lot about you. Well,

it's not true.