City Council - Regular Meeting

San Marcos City Council to order. Today is 04/21/2026. Miss Trevino, let's see who's here.

Yes. Mister Rodriguez. Here. Mister Bissell? Here. Miss Garza? Here. Here. Mister Scott.

Here.

Mister Mendoza. Here. Mister Gonzales. We have a corn present.

Alright. First, we have citizen comment. Time period, the city council will hear comments at regular meetings, work sessions, and workshops. There is a sign up process. If you are online, watch your screen for the pop up because unless you respond to it, you won't be able to comment. Speakers may speak once during citizen comment time period, may not yield time to others. When it's your turn to speak, state your name for the record. You'll have three minutes. When you begin speaking, the timer that we see here will be in the green. When you have twenty seconds left, you'll see yellow, and there's a little ping sound.

When your time to speak is up, the timer will be red and a bell will ring. The mayor and council will endeavor to ensure that meetings are conducted in a courteous manner and in an atmosphere free of defamation, intimidation, personal insults, profanity, or threats of violence. If you hear any of those, you'll hear the gavel, and I will ask you to leave the chambers. Or as a sign I saw the other day says, you all are welcome here, but you gotta act right. So our first comment will be Alex joining us online.

Hi, Hello? Yes, we can see you and hear you. You can start.

Thank you. My name is Alex Caddell. I'm a resident here in San Marcos, and I have been most of my life. And I just wanted to take the time to bring up an issue that I'm interested in. I would love to see more public and affordable housing built in San Marcos.

I know that there's a lot of pressure to prioritize off campus housing for the university, but I would love to see more attention on public and affordable housing. I did send an email about this. I sent some, like like, research articles and a website about how to prevent homelessness because that is an issue that is growing in San Marcos that I care about. And I believe building more affordable housing and public housing could be a good solution to this. And I also attached a national bill that was introduced that I found really interesting, h r forty eight seventy two, just as, like, maybe inspiration, just just something.

I'm not an expert on these things. I know there's a lot of pressure in many directions for these things. But, yeah, I would love to see more of that. I grew up here, and I have, like, witnessed the change in, like, the you know, when I grew up here as a child, I I never saw anyone living on the street. So it's really heartbreaking to see how many people are living on the street currently.

And that's about all I have to say right now. Thank you.

Okay. Our next speaker is Davis Jones. Is Davis Jones online? Okay.

Yes. I'm here. Can you hear me?

Yes. We can. And we can see you. So please proceed.

Okay. Hello. My name is Davis Jones. Thank you all for the opportunity to speak this afternoon. As we review the proposed amendments to the land development code, I'm encouraged by the thoughtful ideas brought forward by council members Rodriguez, mayor Houston, and mister Gonzales.

The focus on conservation from expanded zero escaping to sensible data center water regulations moves San Marcos in the right direction, but to truly secure the future of the San Marcos River and maintain long term affordability, we need to lean into the blue economy. I'd like to offer three additions to the LDC that would position San Marcos as a leader in water technology and resilience. First, we should evolve optional rainwater harvesting into a comprehensive net zero water standard. I recommend mandating on-site water reuse systems such as gray water and advanced rainwater capture for all new large scale commercial and industrial developments. This aligns growth with our natural systems while creating opportunities for local businesses.

Second, we should build on the proposed stormwater regulations in chapter six by implementing a targeted industrial stormwater drainage fee. This would create a dedicated fund for water resilience projects with fee offsets for businesses piloting innovative water saving technologies. This approach strengthens our path towards water independence while supporting local industry and careers. And finally, I agree with councilwoman Rodriguez on prohibiting data centers from using potable water for cooling. I suggest expanding this into a broader non potable water mandate for all heavy industrial uses.

This will reduce pressure on raw water sources, support Edwards Aquifer recharge, and help preserve of the affordability of our water supply. Upgrading city standards through the LDC should be viewed as an economic driver. By integrating water technology into our code, we can protect vital resources while building a more sustainable and affordable San Marcos for generations to come. I have legal research supporting the proposals I've made here and would be happy to share it upon request. Thank you all for your time and for your service to our city.

Okay. And that concludes our citizen comment for our 03:00 meeting. So, miss Trevino, would you read item one, please?

Receive a presentation whole discussion regarding the results of the twenty twenty six point in time count for the population experiencing homelessness in San Marcos. Miss Reyes.

Good afternoon, Baron Council. Today's first item includes a report from January in time count conducted by the Hays County Homeless Coalition in partnership with local agencies and volunteers. This is an annual initiative to assess homelessness in our community and throughout Hays County. Today's 's briefing will be provided by homeless coalition members Lisa Young and Nancy Heights. I will now turn it over to them for the presentation. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you for allowing us to come and give you our annual report on how things went with our point in time count. I do want to thank Isabella Viejo and Erica Rosa who took over the co coordination of the count this year. They were brand new and did a really excellent job and it was nice to have new leadership taking that on. Am I clicking or are y'all clicking?

Oh, you're clicking. Okay, answered that question quickly. So for those of you who may not be familiar with it, the point in time is done annually and it's mandated by a housing and urban development, fondly known as HUD, in Washington. And this is a national count that's done on the same week. Some areas do it on different days, but it has to happen within that January that's mandated by HUD.

And when it says point in time, everyone is using the same night as the date for where you locate, where you're asking people where they're sleeping that night. So that is the across the board uniformity of this in asking about that same date. And so we did use the twenty second as our point in time and we did surveys during the day. It's a twenty four hour time period. Everything has to be done before midnight on the twenty second and it can start at 12:01 a.

M. On the twenty second. We do daylight counting. We don't feel like it's safe in this rural area. Once we get out of San Marcos, then we don't wanna send volunteers out where it wouldn't be safe for them to go.

So I think I pretty well said that. The reason that HUD does this and everyone participates because this data that's collected from the annual point in time count is recognized as the direction for HUD on how their funding goes. A lot of times they'll designate a certain population. I know when I worked in Houston in 2015, they designated homeless veterans and a lot of the funding from HUD went toward solutions for homeless veterans. So it can vary but this is what drives the direction a lot of times for how the distribution of funding from HUD is made based on this data.

On that, for the point in time, we do two forms of counting. Unsheltered count is looking for people that are staying in places not meant for habitation on the night of the twenty second, so sleeping out, sleeping under bridges in places that don't have utilities, an abandoned RV. So it can be cars, we are seeing more people that are staying in their cars because they're holding onto their cars so they can work, So that becomes their transportation and their housing. So there's more of that happening. The other is sheltered locations and we would be counting emergency shelter.

In Hays County our emergency shelter that was included for this year was the Hays Caldwell Women's Center. We don't have, that's obviously a special population, we don't have a general population emergency shelter. Transitional housing, South Side community and then Marla's Place, again for the designated population with domestic violence. And we didn't have hotel motel stays this year. Some of its funding had gone away.

Some of it is just not the request for it for that night. So the definitions and scope, again, what it won't tell us is or what it does tell us is kind of what the snapshot of homelessness is like. We know that we're not finding people but just because we don't locate them doesn't mean they're not there. We have to engage with them so this isn't historical for organizations like Southside that will see people in and out every day that are unsheltered but if we don't find them on the day of the count then we can't collect that data. Also if they don't happen to be sleeping out that night, we had a gentleman that we had located in Wembley and it turned out a friend was gonna let him sleep at his house the night of the count.

Now he had been homeless for off and on for years, and he probably will be homeless again, but because of the requirements, they have to be unsheltered or in one of the two types of shelters to be included in this data. So it's just trends is what we usually get from this so we can kind of see how the numbers are going as we look back over the years but it's obviously not, it's not the full count. Some people say this is a shortfall but this is the best that HUD's been able to come up with and this has been used for quite a few years. So you can see we just went back to 2024 so you can see the trends of the, if you can make sure that you see observations or when our volunteers saw someone and we're giving criteria, they're giving guidelines about who, when they see people that have certain things, indicators, that they can observe them so they can be included. That's when the data points are gender, race, and an estimation of age.

That's what is collected in observation. No conversation, just finding people on-site by site. If you'll see the numbers between the unsheltered and sheltered looked like a large gap in 2025. We had more sheltered people because that was a cold weather night and on cold weather nights, South Side becomes an emergency shelter. So then that qualifies for all populations, anyone that's staying at South Side on a cold weather night and then you see this year how it kind of, the numbers flipped where we had more unsheltered and less sheltered.

Again, it was not a cold weather night and so that changes it. People that we might have found if the shelter, if it'd been two days later when it did get to cold weather, then again, all those variables can make a difference for the numbers. But you can see we're kind of holding at that same, in that number range. Observations are included in the number that you see for unsheltered. So observation isn't a separate number. That's not added to what you see in the other two bands. So what you see in unsheltered includes that blue number for observations.

Ms. Hydes, these numbers are at the state office, correct?

They're at the state and they're also with HUD. This is what's on file, yes.

But the point where I'm trying to get is that there's reasons why these things have changed, cold night, more people sheltered, etcetera. Are those notes included by year so that five years from now someone will know what happened and someone who's not in San Marcos will know what happened? We're not relying on people's memories?

Oh, Lord, no, we're not relying on memory. We keep the notes and we do make observations to THN. It won't be reflected in their reporting. When you look on their website and see Hays County, it doesn't show you what we're talking about. It doesn't show the reflection on that.

So where is that data kept for us?

We keep that

on Who's we

and who It's is on in our records, in our digital records with the homeless coalition for Hays County. Okay. So, and we can share notes from previous years that we've made if you need that. We also can share with you is the raw data report. What you're getting today is a simplified, easier to read, but if you want the complete drill down for gender, race, all those, and see, a lot of it will even give you like the questions that were answered and show you how people answered questions, some of the specific questions in the Accounting Us app that we use.

So we can offer that to you as the council if you'd like to see the raw data report for more specifics. And we do share that with our organizations because that's the kind of information they need when they're applying for grants. They need details depending on what they're going asking for funding regarding. So the age summary, you can see that where it kind of starts in the higher number in the 25 age range and then goes on up to the 64, kind of running higher in those bands. And you can see the unsheltered number versus the sheltered number.

So we're still seeing quite a few people that are unsheltered in these point in time counts. But this is all strictly for this year that we're looking at now. Gender, it does continue to be more male than female in our gender identification. We did have some missing data and they were working with the company that manned accounting us to see if they could locate missing, it was gender and race were the two things that kind of something happened with the reporting of it and it didn't get all collected. But you can still get a significant idea of this is accurate what you're seeing in these numbers.

The other thing we'd remind you of is when there, if you were looking at the numbers, there's not necessarily answers for all of those things. Data points like that are required, the age, gender, race. But other than that, people can choose to say I don't know, I prefer not to answer, information not collected. So there are ways where that's not collected at the time of the survey but that's based on cooperation with the people that are being surveyed. Oh and also in the, you can see Hispanic and white continue to be the higher raceethnicity.

Additional populations are what they call their specific populations, and that includes your domestic violence, people who say they've had HIVAIDS, substance abuse. You can see the different populations, domestic violence, and so you can see across there what was taken. Again, this is information that is provided by the people that survey. They self identify and so we're not asking for documentation. The one thing that we know about domestic violence is that all that information is taken by the shelter, their staff.

Generally we're not speaking to people on the street that are experiencing domestic violence. So the majority of them are going to be sheltered because they're here at Hays Caldwell. This is the map that shows the distribution of where our volunteers were all over the county and they were there from 06:30 in the morning. We had three hour shifts and they were there from 06:30 in the morning until about seven that night. And we continue to have San Marcos obviously as our higher survey location and that's just based services are here and the concentration with the river, the availability of the river and other things that attract people to San Marcos.

Wimberly, we did not locate anyone but we did locate evidence that there had been people camping. Again, that's not good enough to say oh there's three sleeping bags so there must have been three people there. So we, again, if we can't engage with people, Dripping Springs, we did not locate anyone. And for those areas of further, especially Wimberley and Dripping Springs, we concentrate on the early, early part, the 06:30 to 09:30, and then the 04:30 to seven because we felt like that's when people, especially the early morning, if they were parked in the parking lot, then maybe our surveyors would locate them and they'd be willing to visit. But we didn't even have that this year.

We do get information. We spend a lot of time in advance of January of trying to locate where, talk to people all across the county, talk to obviously San Marcos, the HOT team is very helpful. Sheriff's department can be helpful. Constables are helpful and just people in general in the community where there might be certain places where people seem to congregate. And so a lot of times we use that information to direct our teams to get them started about where to look.

Libraries are always a good spot for them to locate. So you can see the trends we've been doing the count since 2020, and you can see where the peak is and then how it drops off a little bit. Again, we feel like there were some concerns this year about with ICE being in the area. Not that it would've affected them but just the fear of some other group out asking questions may have made people a little bit more leery about talking to our volunteers. Observations were higher, considerably higher than last year.

And so we felt like that could have been part of the issue. And also the cold was starting to set wasn't officially down in the official winter cold weather but it was cold enough where we thought people may have been kind of hunkering down and not moving around as much. Because a lot of times we're finding people when they're moving around, not necessarily at their campsite or where they'd be sleeping that night.

Good afternoon, I'm Lisa Young. I'm the co chair of the Hays County Homeless Coalition, and I'm here to say, but wait, there's more. I have a parcel of kids, and every school year when they were all in school, you'd get the big old envelope full of papers to fill out. Some of you know what I'm talking about, some of you this is like, oh, what? But one of the pieces of paper that's in there that you have to fill out is a questionnaire about your living standard.

Do you live in a house that you hold the lease to, or that you own? For me, it's me and the bank own it, but sure. Or are you truly, like you're identifying as unhoused? Are you doubling up, I'm sleeping on my sister's couch. So it's capturing both the truly unsheltered, but also the housing insecure.

For example, one of my adult sons lives with me, he's got no lease. Any month I could say deals over, get out. He is not housing secure because he does not hold the lease to the place that he lives. So these numbers are taken at the beginning of the school year, like I said, and they are not updated through the year. So just like we have an imperfect pit count, we have people moving in and out of a McKinney Vento situation within the school district too.

So someone who said yes, I have a lease in September, it would probably be a different answer in March. They could have moved into housing and security and vice versa. So these are the numbers as they were in the fall at the beginning of school year. So here we have a chart for you showing you the different school districts. So when they say Hays total, they mean the Hays CISD, not the county as an entity.

So you can see here, looking at San Marco specifically, besides the people that were counted on the day of the pick count, we have a 105 school age children, that's pre kindergarten through senior, that were living in homelessness or on the verge of homelessness when the school year started. To me, this is one of the most important numbers of this presentation because it provides so much more context. The PIT count, which again as Nancy said, it's imperfect, we all know that, but all the PIT counts across America are imperfect. So kind of, HUD knows that and builds that expectation in. This number too, it is self reported.

So some people may have been reluctant, some people are feared of CPS, and may have not said, I'm living on the street with a bunch of kids. But some people did so that they could get services from the counselors at the school. But the reason I think this number is so important is because those 105 kids do not live in homelessness alone. They live with the family that is not included in these numbers. So we can extrapolate all of these numbers across the board from all of the school districts.

It does not include children that aren't in school yet. I also represent the state of Texas in a group that's for the welfare of the ages prenatal to three. The most, and what they have determined nationwide, the most likely person to be evicted is an infant. Because you figure if I'm evicted, everybody who lives with me is equally evicted, right? So even though baby's name is not on the lease, they're going with me.

Other counties, not in Texas, but a lot of counties across the country, their eviction court captures this data. What I'm trying to do here is to have volunteers maybe do it for my self report view, because again, you only have the data from eviction court that Lisa, who was on the lease, got kicked out, but so did Jacob, so did Daryl, everyone who lives with Lisa, the dog, everybody equally were kicked out. Some of them enter into a doubling up situation, infants are most likely to do this where grandma says, I might have let you go to the street, but I won't let the baby, so come live in my sewing room or whatever, you know. So, infant is most likely to be evicted, the age from two to five is second most likely to be evicted. They wouldn't be in this count, not until they're about three or four years old, maybe if they're in a head start or preschool program.

Also not in this count are the adults that lived in the house, and that includes parents and children who have aged out of this. So if you had an 18 year old that last year was counted in the McKinney Vento, your situation hasn't changed, they're not counted this year because they're only counted if they're registering for school. If you look at one really good example of this is Wimberley, where the PIT count identified zero people, but there are 11 that self identified the school district. That's 11 children that are in Wembley living in homelessness that we did not see on pick count day. And this is very, very common.

Those of us that are parents, anyone who's traveling with children, you know that you would do your best to not literally be on the sidewalk, and so people are, besides doubling up with family members, they're in cars that move around, they are in encampments, they are in RVs with no running water and no electricity. As most of you know, I'm also the director of the food bank, and we do travel to those encampments to bring food, and we absolutely see children there. So it's very heart wrenching and startling, but these are the numbers that we have for the McKinney Vento report, and I ask you in your mind at least, even though this isn't the way they're laid out, to couple that with the pit count numbers. So if you're looking at 144 people identified in the county on pit count now, there's another minimum 105 that were also living in that situation. Now last year, as we made our little town to town dog and pony show, We asked each municipality and the county.

We identified as a group, the homeless coalition group, what our most pressing concern was that municipalities and government agencies could help us with. And we asked last year, a year ago this time, for a more intentional sit down, round tables, meetings with everyone to improve, to explicitly include homeless people planning in our emergency planning. Because even though it's a small number, they're most likely to die in a severe weather event, and I do not wanna be the city that waits until a mom and four kids are found frozen to death in a car. I'd rather be the city that planned ahead of time, and that never happened. And I'm very pleased to report that it took a year, but we have made some real strides with the county planning and with the city planning, and I'd like to thank you for the work that you do here, and I know that some of you sitting on this dais now were instrumental in moving that planning forward for the city of San Marcos.

But we wouldn't leave without asking you for something else.

So we have a couple of things to ask you to consider for this coming year. One, it actually started before I moved to the area a few years ago, and at one point you had funding for the homeless management information system licenses for organizations that were providing services. They could use that for their start up to get their license and for data collection. And we do have currently have several organizations that are using that. But we feel like to build a stronger network we really need to have, there are certain agencies that are missing from this and a lot of it may just be funding for that $455 is that correct?

$4.55, it's in the $4.50 range for the license and that's for one user. So those are managed by Texas Homeless Network. They oversee the homeless management information system for our continuum of care that we're a part of. And so I would ask you if there's a way to reinstate funding for that. The coalition board has been talking and we're really, we've had some conversation with Texas Homeless Network and are gonna do some Q and A with organizations in May to encourage them to come on to that system.

We need that data. That helps other organizations that are doing the work when you can see that shared data and it's again, the clients give permission to share their data so it's not infringing on any kind of personal information. They're willing to share it and it saves them having to tell their story over and over again when they go for services between multiple organizations. But it also builds a network. If we come to the point in our county where we can do coordinated entry for housing, then that will help make sure that the people who are at higher risk that are again at greater risk of dying on the street have the opportunity to have housing or to be offered housing.

So I would ask you to consider that if there's a way that you can do. However, I don't know how you did it before if there was an application process or what you did but we would encourage that. We're already working on that. Y'all are psychic.

Yes ma'am. Perfect. Mayor though, would you mind if, so miss Nancy, we were actually as a myself, mayor, and miss Garza on the homelessness committee we have here. This was the conversation we had at our last meeting and maybe mister Migal can speak to he was planning to attend the next homelessness coalition. I know this was an ask identified in those meetings and so maybe mister Migal can speak a little bit more on what we've got going on.

Yes. Hayden Migal, director of administrative services and I have good news. We can fulfill that request very quickly. As Council Member Rodriguez stated, the homeless committee has been speaking about this. We still have about $9,600 in it's coronavirus relief funds that are actually freed up general funds. Anyway, there's no deadline for whenever that funding has to be used, but we have about $9,600 We have a slightly modified, a simpler contract, or not contract, application for the organizations to apply for that funding, and we're planning on presenting that at the May.

Nice to see you.

Was easier than I thought it would be. That's great, that's wonderful because that's a real gap. Data collection is critical because it's that data that helps in so many ways. When we come to you with this data, we're not saying we guess there's so many people. You're saying what it is and saying what their circumstances were.

And in the case of services provided, then you can see this helps you know that there's someone that's in trouble when they're going between agencies needing the same service. It may be because they can only go back to one agency every three months or every six months or whatever. But when the need's there, there's an issue. And so the whole point is not to catch them in repeating the request to meet the need. The purpose is to identify what the problem is and what missing resources are in your area, in our area, that could resolve that for people?

Is it, as the young woman that was on the public comment, affordable housing, but what HUD refers to as deeply affordable? If you don't like the term low income, use deeply affordable because deeply affordable, when you hear people talk about affordable, that's not affordable for a lot of people that are working minimum wage. And so we have to be, you see areas that are having really great results around housing and they're getting creative. Their cities and their counties are looking for ways to do maybe multipurpose buildings where economics facilities are on the bottom and then up on the top is housing. So you can do mixed rental type of things but just look at what's being built in San Marcos or look what's being built all across the county and you see more apartments.

How do we get creative about finding where some of those are designated for people who have a voucher? Maybe they've qualified for a Section VIII voucher or a veteran that has a VASH voucher. Making sure landlords, we've got landlord engagement and that really, I know that the housing authority does some of that but again I think we have to think about being creative and think about what you can do in your policy making or in different things that you can affect how developers come in and operate in our county, in San Marcos specifically for y'all. The other question that we had was if the city of San Marcos has ever applied for ESG solutions grant funding from TDHCA, Texas Housing, Department of Housing and Community Affairs. Does anyone know if y'all have Because I had a conversation with Texas Homeless Network, their development coordinator, and he said there's funding being left on the table because people aren't applying for that.

And this is for city government, county government. They can apply. I don't know, this doesn't look like there's the same formula as the community block development grant. It looks like it's more based on need and kind of an assessment of what your need is, if it fits their priorities. But it might be worth looking at because that's direct funding that applies to preventing homelessness or providing supporting supportive services that respond to homelessness.

So those would be the things that we hope that when we come back next year, maybe we'll come back in six months and see how the, I think the next funding, there's a couple of ways you can compete with TDHCA and there's something, I think there'll be a NOFO that'll drop July think for the notice of funding for ESG but it would be worth looking into again for a funding stream for y'all to disperse. You can manage a competition or disperse it but it would give you a way to fund what you're trying to do. Obviously you all, San Marcos has invested the most in our county in a lot of ways for what you're dealing with in your zip codes. But we need to think about, we're trying to, and again, we're talking to every municipality asking them to consider finding some way where they have some funding, whether they can hold onto it, and I don't know that ESG has a time limit, but again, your grant writer will find that out. But to find some funding that creates some sustainable funding so when that's needed, then they would know that they can come to city council or they can go to the county and request that because sustainable funding is what will have the longest empowerment for change, which is we know is greatly needed.

Do So y'all have any questions for Lisa or I?

Right, Mr. Gonzales.

Yes, ma'am. So I have a question specifically about the McKinney Vento data. I know you mentioned, I guess, fear of ice, but I pulled up last year's presentation, and it looks like countywide, the numbers are down and SMCISD it's down sixty five percent. And I'm assuming sixty five percent of our students didn't find housing and or graduate. So do you suspect why

It's only anecdotal. And

I

can definitely tell you from my seat at the food bank that we have had instances that when it hops onto Facebook that ICE is in town. We had two of our distributions in Buda and Kyle, a 100 fewer people than usually come on those days. So a distribution that would have usually two fifty households would have a 100 households or a 110 households. And we can see what's happening there. So that's purely anecdotal.

But yes, there have been a lot of reluctance with people fearing really filling out anything. Even at the food bank, we've simplified our application down to like the federal minimum that we have to take. Because we don't wanna be holding everybody's addresses and things like that if we don't have to. We like the data, so we're just like, could you just give me the zip code? But we don't wanna keep anything that makes people fearful or feel unwelcome or afraid to come, because we want them to get the assistance. So yes, ICE definitely was I think a factor this year, but we can't really prove it. What's always a factor, but this would be from year to year, is a fear of CPS. But that wouldn't have changed from last year. That one's unfortunately very robust.

Yeah. And I guess my bigger concern or question is, could this potentially affect funding too, like the ISDs? Because it looks like homelessness went, or homeless students went down 65%.

I'm not sure that it directly would in real time affect that. One thing that would be, you know, the two things that we've talked about, Hayden told us the good news about, you know, maybe getting more people on those HMIS like systems. And of course through the school, we used the community liaison and parent liaisons. Having more information that's through there, even if it weren't literally more information than what we could get just by asking, those are really big factors in those grant applications. So having those numbers through HMIS would be huge for both the school district and organizations to keep sustainable funding going.

And these forms, or this count is from that packet in the beginning of the school year?

Yes. This is the only That's the only data source. For the McKinney Vento? Yeah.

Yes. It's what they have to turn into the state in October or November.

They're

mandated to turn

There's no date or semester noted on that slide.

Do what?

There's no date or semester or even year noted on that slide.

Okay, okay. We'll add that because it's for the twenty five-twenty six school year. '25 semester. So it's taken when they enrolled in August or September or whenever they enrolled and we asked them to try, we were trying to get updates even though it was beyond their report date officially. But for us, we had asked them to give us what they showed in January, but we didn't do that this year because we were finding over the years that we'd done it, it wasn't really changing. I don't know if they were spending that means they have to engage with a lot of people, counselors. I wonder if

the lack of parent liaisons in the fall was one of the reasons why they didn't get that information. Because I know sometimes, I think it varies based on schools, but if some of the forms are missing of that beautiful big packet, it'll be like the teachers and or the parent liaisons like tracking them down. Because I do think that that's like an interesting anomaly or like that was released.

Overall staffing in the school is lower. Right. Not just in the parent liaison but school secretary, all those people that we encounter that are the ones who move the salon. The helpers. So you're correct.

Note for this year. Yeah. As people look at, as Mr. Gonzales did, it went down. That doesn't mean let's go out and celebrate because there's reasons why the count But may be that needs to be noted somewhere.

Yeah, we will take that.

And again, we don't have any way to prove it. We're just giving our own impressions in the

notes. Just like, yeah, observations or potential theories.

But we think that when we give these reports, whatever the numbers change, there really isn't a lot to celebrate.

Because because there's people still who need So

the fact that and to remind you that in the McKinney Vento, the reason those numbers aren't included in the number that we show you for the point in time count is because they use those separate categories. We're just using unsheltered and sheltered, and they have those special categories.

From McKinney Benton.

And we don't engage with people on the day of the count to get that because that's considered Historical data, yeah. For their enrollment. But yes, think I that, to your question, I don't think that the funding is that fragile for a year in a change like that. We would hope not because there's too many factors that affect that.

It isn't done by a formula. Like you have so many dollars for each child reported. It isn't done like that. So like Nancy says, it's not like the attendance based one that if we're not counting those people, then it's a per capita funding. So what is it based on? I don't know how much it varies from school to school, to be honest with you.

Don't know what their formula is for how they calculate.

Maybe on school population or something.

Well, and I think, too, the school districts themselves make their staffing decisions based on not literally these numbers, but how big they perceive the problems that are not just this problem, but many problems that are mitigated by the parent liaisons when they just do their overall staffing budget. And we're definitely not expecting good news about any of our county school districts budget for next school year. So we're looking at everybody scrambling right now.

And free lunch obviously is a major indicator. You're gonna see a lot of free lunch really indicates. Right. Numbers. Yeah. Good point.

Mr. Gonzales, did you have anything else?

No, I think that's it.

Alright, miss Garza, do you have anything else? I'll go around the rest of the table and see. Anyone over here? Nope, nope, y'all good?

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Thank you. And thanks to all who went out and helped count because that is not an easy thing. So thank you. Miss Reyes, is there anything that you need from us? I

know last year that that was the same same ask was the ESG funds and miss Griffith did do some research on that and it sounds like we weren't always entitled to them based on our population but with the updated census that is something that we've been looking at so we can provide an update on that so just wanted to let you know on that on that piece. Okay

That ends item one and we will begin item two. Miss Trevino. Receive an update from Southside Community Center on the implementation of recommendations from the comprehensive needs assessment study and recommendations on homelessness funded through the American Rescue Plan Act and provide direction to the city manager. Estrella's?

Our second item this afternoon is a presentation from Southside Community Center providing the results of the funding agreement that was approved with them in August 2024. The purpose of the agreement was to implement recommendations from the comprehensive needs assessment study and recommendations on homelessness. Funding for this agreement came from American rescue plan act monies. Miss Jessica Kane miss Deborah Vielpondo. A south side's of neighborhood engagement and executive director will provide a final report on the funding agreement as well as our sustainability plan for the future of the housing stability program. Thank you.

Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you, council. Thank you, mayor, for having us here. I am Deborah Villapando. I'm the executive director for Southside Community Center.

Hi, everyone. My name is Neha Campos. I am the housing program manager for Southside.

I am Jessica Kane. I'm the director of neighborhood engagement at Southside. Is it okay if we hand you a handout? Are we allowed to give that? Okay, Neha's gonna bring

Thank you.

Give them to Ms. Trevino.

Perfect. Excellent. Thank you. So the handout that you're receiving, and there are enough I think for the staff as well. The handout you are receiving is a summary of everything I'm going to give in the presentation because it is a lot in the presentation because y'all have given us $850,000, so we wanted to make sure we talked about all of that. But the the handout then gives you that summary information, kind of the executive summary, the overall, and the program that we've established with this money. I'm going to start the presentation. You're welcome to interrupt me at any time. You won't mess me up if you interrupt me, if you don't wanna save questions till the end. So just a bit of history.

I know some of y'all were not here when this project began. So in 2019, there was a strategic housing action plan created through the city with the San Marcos, Texas for all project. There was a final meeting of that task force that created that plan in 2019, and it seems like we weren't really sure where to go from there. So in 2023, the city did hire doctor Marbitt junior to provide consultation on homelessness initiatives, and his comprehensive report included a recommendation to expand South Side services and provide the funding to do so. And so in 2024, the city did direct $800,000 in ARPA pass through funding to Southside.

This funding was used to address the three major action steps identified by doctor Marbitt, which are to stop the growth, improve existing systems, and expand capacity. A $50,000 kick start was also directed at Southside. So when you look at the numbers later, they do reflect 850,000 even though the ARPA funding was 800. So in 2024 in April 2024, we began phase one of the project. This was designing our programs and piloting them.

So this was led by our ARPA project manager. This work included building case management, developing standard operating procedures, hiring and training as housing stability program team, and launching a pilot program serving a selected number individuals through rapid rehousing. So if you've heard this project called rapid rehousing, that's because that was the first thing that we did. This phase produced a strong program direction. It strengthened relationships and the capacity of community organizations, and it also revealed the limitations of local housing resources.

So we took data from phase one, which showed that we could serve more local families more efficiently by preventing homelessness, and we made several key adjustments to the housing stability program, including a stronger focus on eviction prevention. We also shifted a lot of staffing during this phase, which began in May 2025 and moved them from program design to direct service. So during this phase, our staffing shift included the departure of the project director as the program was built, the departure of the director of housing, which was a position that supported rapid rehousing specifically, and the addition of an intake coordinator to better execute program application, appointment, and management needs. So we are here today to present this final deliverable, a proven housing housing stability program that's ready for community adoption. While the ARPA funding will be exhausted in the next few weeks, Southside is working to develop long term financial support for these programs that we see as essential to both the city and the community at large.

So the project purpose, as outlined by the city and doctor Marbitt, was to address and identify growth in homelessness and housing instability and multiple disconnected efforts with gaps in service provisions. The three key major strategic action steps, as I said before, are to stop the growth, to improve existing systems, and to expand capacity. It's very important to also talk about what we didn't agree to do when we took this money, what y'all did not ask us to do, which was to solve homelessness, to do everything by ourselves, or to sustain the status quo around housing in San Marcos. We did identify target populations very early on in this project. And as you can see, our primary target population is residents of San Marcos families specifically.

So two or more individuals, especially families with children. Since we were just talking about all that McKinney Vento data, we are looking primarily resident families with children who are either at risk of homelessness or experiencing it for the first time. Secondarily, we look at families who are experiencing those situations in a recurring fashion. And then third, we look at individuals who are either at risk or experiencing homelessness for the first time or episodically. So the deliverable from this project is the housing stability program at Southside Community Center.

This encompasses three different programs, and I'm going to explain those in detail on the upcoming slides. They range in, just a little bit of intervention all the way up to a lot more and longer term intervention, starting with assistance, then eviction prevention, and then our transitional housing program. So this was the overall outcome of this funding, keeping, and establishing permanent housing for our San Marcos residents. So I'll go a little bit more in-depth on each of these, like I said. Emergency assistance is a program that Southside has had previously.

We do receive funding from the city through various grants to help support this program, but we have expanded it in the housing stability program. So emergency assistance is a onetime payment. Folks can only come to us once every six months. That payment is $50 for utilities, a $100 for any sort of rent or mortgage, usually rent. And then we work with community partners to help folks take care of bills that are up to $800.

So the emergency assistance program was supported by the ARPA funding because we brought on a part time case manager to work only on emergency assistance. And that case manager is actually part time with us and part time with community action working on TBRA. So she has a lot of knowledge of the full scope of housing issues here in San Marcos and then focusing really specifically on emergency assistance, helping us build those partnerships, which is the improve existing systems. And then obviously, emergency assistance helps stop the growth by keeping people not only in their homes, but also with their utilities on. In our emergency assistance program, 77% of over 400 applications every year are approved by Southside, and then those bills are covered.

Of those who receive funding, 75% of them are San Marcos residents. We like I said before, we cover bills up to $800, and one of the things we're most proud of that was supported especially by this funding and this project is that we work with all of these other community partners. So we have a $36,000 budget for emergency assistance, but last year we were able to support people with $68,000 of assistance because of those community partnerships. So before we enter into the eviction prevention program, I just wanted to highlight one of our success stories from the eviction prevention program. I'm not gonna read the whole thing because I know y'all have this.

I just really wanna highlight that kinda middle piece. The this is one of our recent eviction prevention success stories. This was an individual who had been at their job for almost a decade, 66 years old, and got laid off in a company transition. They applied for 200 jobs over the time from being laid off and coming to us and working with us, and they were really on the verge of becoming homeless despite all of that effort. So they entered our eviction prevention program, and as you see there, they said, if it wasn't for Martine at Southside Community Center, I'd be living in my car.

I can't thank her enough. They were the only local help that helped with rent and electricity and referred me to a place that would help me with my cell phone. I can never say thank you enough times, literally saving people's lives with ways and means to keep them living safely. So now I'll talk a little bit about what eviction prevention does. So this program is brand new.

We started it in July. It has been 100% supported by funding from the ARPA grant throughout its life cycle so far, which means that everybody who has received funding from eviction prevention is a San Marcos resident. So this is a multi step process. Folks apply for eviction prevention with us. They meet with a case manager.

The case management team meets once a week and approves or denies or refers folks who have applied for the program. And those who are approved receive one to three months, not just of financial support, but also case management support. So the real intention is to catch folks who have had a a one time event happen that is likely to lead to homelessness. So we see a whole variety of things. We see people who have been ill or had children who are ill.

Their cars broke down and they weren't able to get to work. They lost their job. They got a new job really fast, but they missed two weeks of pay in between, and now they're behind. And all of these things without some sort of catch can lead people to being evicted, and eviction causes causes a cascade cascade of other events. Once you've been evicted, it is more expensive to get into another apartment because you have to pay higher deposits and fees, and you are not trusted, and your credit takes a hit.

So even if you're able to immediately turn back around, it's very costly to be evicted and obviously very disruptive for a variety of reasons. So the whole goal of this program is to stop that before anybody gets to that point. This helps stop the growth of homelessness in our community because people get to stay in their housing. It improves existing systems because it addresses a gap that existed before we started working on it. B r three t does a little bit of eviction prevention, but they have very limited funding for it.

So there was this big gap between emergency assistance and homelessness services. So we were turning a lot of people away in our emergency assistance program saying, well, we really can't help you because your bill is too high and you're not homeless. And there's this huge range of people in between an $800 bill and being homeless. And instead of waiting for them to fall into homelessness, we're trying to address that gap and meet them before. And, again, this expands capacity.

It's a brand new program, and it's possible entirely thanks to the ARPA grant. We have prevented 81 evictions since July. Our goal is that 85% of those folks stay in housing, 100% of them stayed in their housing, and only two of them have come back to us with any further need after that three months of case management. Direct payments from or for eviction prevention were 14% of our total spending, and it cost us about $2,100 per family to prevent homelessness. Now tell one more story as we move into the the rehousing rehousing piece of this program.

You may have seen Lisa's story because it was featured by the Texas Homeless Network, and we're very excited to be a part of Lisa's story. Lisa and her family came to us when they were unhoused. You can see it through the pictures. They started in a hotel. They moved into our transitional shelter. Great picture there. The third one of them getting their keys to their home, and then they were in our last batch of rapid rehousing graduates in March, stable after twelve months and really doing great. I encourage you to go find that story from THN, but I'll read just that last part from Lisa. Southside didn't just offer us shelter. They offered us dignity, hope, and the tools to rebuild our lives.

We will always be grateful for everything they've done to help us find our footing again. And we are grateful for Lisa. She is one of our Southside ambassadors, so she goes around saying great things about us. Alright. So now we are in our rehousing pieces.

There are two slides to this because we started, as I said, with rapid rehousing. Our original aim with the ARPA funding was to start a rapid rehousing program, but in, April, we started to realize that it really wasn't delivering in the ways that we wanted it to, not at the pace nor at the cost that we had anticipated with that goal of stopping the growth of homelessness. There's a variety of reasons that this program was not working. San Marcos does not have the infrastructure to support a rapid rehousing program. Rapid rehousing follows a housing first model, which means we need to have housing that we can put people in whether they can afford to pay for it or not.

And aside from our shelter and the Hays Caldwell Women's Center, which obviously has its own specifications, we don't have shelter like that in San Marcos. We found that it really was not an effective use of the funding, and it was unsustainable for us to try to house every person who came to us by any means necessary. We saw a huge increase in burnout and staff overwhelm. As I mentioned with eviction prevention, we were turning a lot of people away. 75% of the meetings that our case managers were having were meetings to sit down with people to tell them that we couldn't help them because they had bills that were too high and they were not unhoused.

And so we started to turn away from this. The other piece that, the city, doctor Marbitt, all of the folks at Southside were looking for was that a rapid rehousing program is an easy place to get federal funding, but there is no federal funding coming from HUD for programs like this right now. And so we made a transition in April 2025, and we'll talk about transitional housing. Yes. So moving away from the rapid rehousing program allowed us to begin a more stable and cost effective approach to serve our unhoused neighbors.

We take folks in in cohorts in transitional housing. So they come into our shelter for thirty to sixty days, moving in in the same week and moving out in the same week. This creates a major source of stability. Whereas before, we were using our transitional shelter as kind of a revolving door. Somebody came in, they went out, a new person came in into that spot. Now folks get to know each other. There's stability within the house. There's stability within the program. And it also allows us to improve those existing systems. So we're partnering with a bunch of people to do a variety of things.

During their stay with us in transitional housing, folks get classes with SENACOR, and Security State Bank and Trust. So there's the social emotional side of things. There's the financial side of things. And then b r three t does housing navigation. So they get all these different supports, and then we obviously resource to a lot of other places as well, but those are the consistent ones.

A case manager from us, a housing case manager from b r three t, social emotional support, and financial support throughout those thirty to sixty days. Our partnership with b r three t increases successful outcomes and takes some of the burden of case management off of our team and also allows for folks going through this program to have their first or their deposits paid as they're moving into permanent housing. One of the other reasons for our change to this cohort system was that Doctor. Marbitt recommended that we separate men and families. So Southside Shelter used to hold up to four men, up to four women, and then two families.

So we had adult single males and children and adult single women and children all in the same house. And doctor Marbitt said that we should stop that immediately. So we tried two different ways. We did get a rental property where we put men in a transitional shelter that was separate. And it was okay, but it was extremely costly.

It was costing several thousand dollars a month to house a few people. So this cohort system allows us to really navigate the needs of the moment in the community and move back and forth between cohorts of women and children and cohorts of men. Since October 3, we have had three cohorts enter this program. We are in the middle of the third cohort right now. Half of them have stayed for the full sixty day program, and of those, 71% have transitioned into permanent housing.

This program costs us about $600 per client unit. Rapid rehousing was costing us $6,000 in payments alone, and the total cost ended up being about $18,000 per client unit. So we're very confident that we made the right choice in making this shift to transitional housing. Housing. These next few slides are just a few of the other objectives that we had in this program.

So, we wanted to work on coordinating community based services. You heard a little bit about HMIS. That's definitely one facet of this. But we are also working with a variety of partners to provide supports to our clients no matter what program they're in. We play well together with others and have helped to bring many community partners together for the sake of our neighbors.

This collaboration has not always been the case in San Marcos, but we're really excited about the partnerships that we've been able to build over the course of the last two years and the ones we're continuing to develop right now. Doctor did identify us as a key organization, and so we're really trying to live into that center and community center aspect of being Southside. We have one story I'd love to share about these partnerships. So I don't need to tell y'all that transportation is a challenge in San Marcos. It is one of the biggest challenges that people face in receiving any of the services from us or any of our partners.

Home Center received a vehicle from the Red Cross, another one of our partners that's not up on this wheel, and they have been using that to help support our clients as well. So we're able to call upon them when we have people moving out into permanent housing. We're able to call on them in times like in January with the freeze. They used their vehicle to deliver meals from South Side to people who were staying in hotels who otherwise wouldn't have been able to make it over for those meals. So lots of collaboration going on these days.

We also have this objective of community capacity capacity building. Building. Part of that was on Southside specifically adding appropriate staff and training for those folks at Southside. Part of that is building that network that you saw on the previous slide. And then through these things, helping to identify gaps that are existing right now and working with those partners to reduce the gaps, and on the other side, working with those partners to make sure that we're not duplicating services.

Nancy also mentioned HMIS can be helpful in this, that we know if someone's jumping from organization to organization, they're not receiving everything that they need, and so trying to figure out how to reduce the gaps but also not do the same service in every single place and not help them with other issues. And then the final objective, it was to improve community based physical infrastructure. We worked on our shelter specifically with funding from ARPA. We were able to fix years of deferred maintenance in one fell swoop because of this funding. When our contractors went into the bedrooms in our shelter, they peeled up a layer of flooring.

They peeled up a layer of flooring. They found mold. They peeled up another layer of flooring, and that is just emblematic of the kind of work that happens on a very small budget with great volunteers over and over. So we were able instead of slapping a new layer of flooring on top of all of those old ones, we were able to really fully ripped everything out, started from the ground up, and now we know that we're providing a healthy, safe, and welcoming place for our cohorts in transitional housing. Alright.

Now I'll talk about the dollars. So if you remember way back from the beginning, we had phase one. Phase one went from April 2024 until April, May 2025. That is when we were really intensely focused on rapid rehousing. It was the only program that we were running with this money at that point, and you can see the breakdown of the funding.

We spent over 50% of our funding on staff. We didn't even hit a quarter with direct payments, and those would be direct payments specifically to the rapid rehousing clients, which like I said was about $6,000 per client unit. We that orange one is HMIS and supplies. Initial cost of HMIS is in that phase one, obviously. Southside shelter expenses were 5%, and then I talked a little bit about having that separate men's shelter.

Because there is not availability of housing for folks to move into that's free, we were providing the men's shelter. We were also putting a lot of folks up in hotels, and so that was almost 12% of that phase one spending. The total that we spent in that year and change was $411,537 and we served 38 families. Phase two, we made that big shift into transitional housing, not rapid rehousing. We added the eviction prevention program, and we focused on that aspect of prevention rather than trying to catch people when it's already too late.

Here we spent less than 50% on our staff, and that number is continuing to decrease actually as we continue these programs. We spent 34.6% of that funding on direct payments to San Marcos residents. Again, HMS and HMIS and supplies. We had the men's shelter for a tiny bit of phase two before we closed that program out. And then the majority of those south side shelter expenses in phase two is the renovations.

So in phase two, we spent $394,182. We are still in phase two. We have a little bit of this money left to spend, but we served a 100 families in San Marcos with that money. Just to break it down a little bit differently, expenditures by category, case management and program staff was roughly 50%. I think it's 51.1 up there.

Men's shelter and hotels cost us 6.7% of the money. The south side shelter was 10%, and almost every dollar of south side shelter money went to renovations. Utilities are already in our own budget. HMIS and supplies was 2.5, and direct services to San Marcos residents was 29.6, almost 30%. Like I said, we haven't quite spent all of the money.

This is as of March 31 because as you know, that's when we wrapped up our financials for the month. So we have spent almost all of it at this point, but we will have a little bit lingering into May. And then by program, I think this is the most telling slide or telling graph of why the shift from rapid rehousing was the right choice. Almost 60% of the funding from ARPA went to rapid rehousing, which served 38 families. Eviction prevention transitional housing served a 100 families.

And emergency assistance, I don't have the exact numbers for that because only part of that came from the ARPA funding, but we serve over 300 people with emergency assistance each year. This program. Like I said at the beginning, San Marcos does not have the capacity to sustain a successful housing first approach at this moment. That doesn't mean it's impossible for San Marcos, it just means that we will have to have more housing that is available today for someone who is homeless today. We learned that committed program participants are imperative to ensure successful outcomes for our families.

Those who really want to work through the situation that's brought them to the eviction prevention program or that has led them to transitional housing, those folks are much more successful when they're on the ball, they're willing to work as hard as they can. Prevention is much cheaper and much more successful than catching people when they already in entered homelessness, and investing in local effective community organizations is deeply important. And then kind of the bottom line, what did we learn? Solve the most solvable problem first. Stop people from becoming homeless, and it will help stop the growth of homelessness.

Any questions? I brought other people with me to answer any of your questions. Okay. Go

ahead, Mr. Frisso.

My gosh. I do have a couple of questions. So looking at the housing stability program within regards to the eviction prevention portion of that, super excited about that. But I'm interested to know, how does workforce solutions come into play, and are there any additional partners that you work with to help people land jobs, etcetera? And how do you cross that boundary?

Yeah. So we currently have a curriculum for our folks that are entering the transitional housing program. So each week, they're meeting with a different community partner. So that includes workforce solutions. They're doing resume building and interview skills with them.

Senecor, they are now working on social emotional health as well as anger management. We also partner with Security Bank and Trust who are, doing our budgeting workshops as well as, like, loan assistance, talking through all of those aspects. What else? A lot of different organizations, but yes, there is a curriculum. Methodist is doing, blood pressure screenings, eye care, diabetes screenings. We have the health the county health department coming in and doing indigent health care applications for them as well or with them. So yes, a whole slew of organizations that are coming together to help people get back on their feet.

When I saw the circle of all the organizations, was like, man, that's a bunch going on there for sure.

Oh, yeah.

Which led me to my next question. Is there a shared database amongst your partners to where that information can be put together and used?

Yeah, so that's something we're working on right now with this HMIS system as well. So getting more folks on the HMIS system will really help with those referrals. But other than that, it's very much we're still, you know, calling each other, hey, do? So we all have a pretty good network of just relying on each other.

Okay, and then the second question, I apologize, I won't take too much time here, but workforce solutions also helps pick up a portion of the childcare narrative ish. Could you explain that to me a little bit?

For the childcare narrative, we are working on that portion of it. We haven't introduced that quite Right now it's just getting folks in for that interview skills and the resume building for With our transitional housing, one of our requirements with this cohort system is that folks have some sort of income or employment. So, making sure that we can take them to that next level to be able to sustain permanent residency moving forward.

Perfect. Yeah. And then and you mentioned before, I just want to verify but these consultations are done at Southside?

At Southside. So we are trying to, like Jessica mentioned, we're trying to get back to that community center feel. So if we see the folks every day, we're just bringing folks in house. So they can see them there, they can meet with them there, and that's really what we're trying to get back to. So everybody comes in and rotates through our offices and, you know, sees meets people where they're at. So usually most of our folks will come during breakfast or dinner time. But other than that, we'll have larger workshops or fairs. We have a health fair coming up in June where we'll try to, you know, connect people with all different services that they may need.

Thank you. Okay.

I want to get back to a question. I think what Mr. Paseck was asking is what childcare is available through workforce solutions when people are looking for a job, etcetera. There's some, but I don't know what the extent of it is.

Yeah, this is something that's new to us. We're still trying to meet with everyone and trying to learn. So that is something that that will be in the works.

And the reason I'm asking, I've had some interactions with

Yes.

Them before and and work with Workforce Solutions, but the majority of their left in their programming and money's granted is with regards to childcare.

Okay. If you wanna send them my way, I would love that.

Yeah. And I was trying to think partnerships. You know, their office is located over there. I think it's McCarty. Right?

Oh, no. It's on Posey.

It's Posey. Excuse me. Yeah. But they can they're a huge player in the game with them regards to being able to help. I'd love to make some

Aren't they going to community action once a month or couple of times a month to talk make appointments or whatever to talk to people about what they can do or for solutions? We're not too sure. We're not too sure. I think they they are. So At the library? Okay.

Yeah. If you wanna reach out maybe after this, just an email or something like that, I can make some introductions. Yeah. Think Kelly Marino Kelly Marino was running their community awareness program. Yeah. I think they just gave it to somebody else but I can get you the details.

Yeah. Thank you. Thank

you, mayor. Thank you all for coming and giving the presentation. I know you all are a small part of the team at Southside. You sort of on it in your presentation, but as always, just my sincere appreciation for all the work y'all do. I feel very blessed to have seen it in person over the course of the year, to meet many of the clients, some of which are featured, and to just see the work for myself. And so I appreciate y'all's hospitality in that as well. My question is sort of like the overarching question I have. I understand we're at the end of the funding. I think y'all said it should be finally depleted next month. So I guess the golden question really is, what do the future of these three primary services look like?

And do you feel that they're sustainable at this point? And if not, where's the need?

I was told not to ask for money, but I do have a sheet if anybody is interested in what our funding plan is. We are fairly solid with these programs through the 2027. We are applying for a variety of grants from the city, from the county. We have been to the county and received some additional funding for this year through them. We're working with the McCoys Foundation, and they're helping introduce us to some other folks where we can hopefully get some nice granted funding as well. But yes, we're we're solid through the beginning of next year with all of these programs and we're confident that given the fiscal year here and with the county that that will continue to be fairly solid. But we will be asking for money every year.

Sure, sure. I appreciate that. It's good to hear. And it's also good to hear y'all are diversifying sort of the funds coming in and making this operation more sustainable. So that's good to hear. I appreciate. That was sort of the extent of my question.

Okay. So

this is a great presentation. The very first presentation that you guys gave with an update was also really nice. And it was nice to see a very organized structure where we could actually compare the growth. But yeah, I just wanted to say thank you so much because when this funding was first proposed, I and a few others expressed concerns, not necessarily about investing in Southside, but whether we were pairing that investment with the level of structure and accountability needed to deliver the results and to help build out a stronger operational game so that you guys can have outcomes and results to share out in your effort to secure external funding. But I think what we have been seeing, because I do know that you have been pretty good at giving our city staff kind of updates.

Just as you guys are out and about, I know you have stopped almost all of us just to invite us in and show us all the good work that you're doing. But I think that's what I was hoping for. That's what the homelessness our city council committee was hoping for and what we expressed on the dais when we initially gave that money and more, I feel like and more. Yeah, so we asked for the coordinated systems. We asked for data tracking, case management frameworks was like a huge thing, clear outcomes.

And the biggest for me was pivoting and reflecting on grows and glows. I feel like that pivot between the different, the rapid rehoming and all that, I think that that is just like a great example of intentional reflection and like what is the goal and how can we move things to make sure that we're doing it in the most responsible and the best bang for our buck kind of way. So I just want to say thank you and thank you Councilwoman Rodriguez for asking that question. Even though I know you were told not to ask for money, I think it's important when we invest in our community partners, I think we see the results and it's benefited everybody and appreciate it.

I wanna thank you for what you do and also for seeing that if a program wasn't exactly working the way that you would like it to, to change to something that was going to work better. So thank you for being brave enough to do that because that's sometimes hard to do.

And to admit it.

To that

growth, yeah. And we're still here.

So anyway that was good but thank you. Checking to see if anybody over here has got questions, and it looks like not, thank Thank you for the presentation.

We're always available. Please page stop

handout, yes. And the

health fair that y'all mentioned, do you have

a date for that yet? June 24. June 24, cool.

Y'all know like my infographics

Everything and my info is very great, the testimonials, all of it. Yeah, thank you.

Thank This is good, thank you. Miss Reyes, anything else you need from us? Okay, so Miss Trevino, we will go on to item three.

The San Marcos City Council will convene an executive session pursuant to the following sections of the Texas government code a section five five one point zero seven four personal matters and section five five one point zero seven one consultation with attorney to deliver and receive legal advice regarding the appointment of a new municipal court judge. B section five five one point zero seven one consultation with attorney to receive legal advice regarding the arrest of two individuals near Ocarina Springs Drive and Charles Austin Drive on 03/14/2026. See section five five one point zero seven two real property and section five five one point zero seven one consultation with attorney to deliberate and receive legal advice regarding the lease of city owned real property located at 201 South LBJ Drive. See section five five one seventy two real property to deliberate regarding a request by the San Marcos Greenbelt Alliance to lease city owned property for a location of an office and facilities related to parks maintenance performed by

the alliance. Okay. I need a motion. I heard one from Mr. Scott. I'll give Mr. Busselk the second.

Mr. Trevino? Mr. Busselk?

Aye.

Ms. Barza? Aye. Mary Hewson? Aye. Mr. Scott? Aye. Mr. Mendoza? Aye. Mr. Gonzales. Aye. Mr. Rodriguez. Aye. Okay. Motion passes seven to zero.

And we will go into executive session at 04:30. Council, take about a five minute break. If food is available, you get a few more minutes. Alrighty. Then we have concluded part of

our

executive session at 06:07. No one signed up for Q and A with press and public. And there being nothing else on our agenda, we will adjourn the 03:00 work session meeting. And then we will start our 06:00 regular council meeting in about five minutes. Control room needs a few minutes to change some stuff out.