Human Services Advisory Board - Regular Meeting

Alright. Good evening, everyone. I'm gonna go ahead and call this meeting of the human services advisory board to order. It is 10/01/2025, and it is 06:01PM. Carol, will you take the roll call?

Lucy Gonzales? Yonce Aravolo? Present. Elias Martinez?

Here.

Linda Parker Williams? Let me

check out just to be thorough. Yep.

Okay. Ethan Gravis?

Here.

Sherif Gusis? Here. Lucy Johnson? Here. And Alisa Ramirez?

Here. Okay. With six of our seven voting members in attendance, we have a quorum. Next up, we have citizen comments. We invite all local residents or interested parties to come up and speak during our citizen comment period. We ask that you limit your comments to three minutes each. Carol, is there anyone wishing to speak in the attendees section?

I would say if you are wanting to speak at this point, will you please raise your hand?

I think they're all presenters except this one. So okay. I'm okay. Alright. There being no one wishing to speak, I will close with some comments. Next up, we have the minutes from the September 24 meeting. Do I hear a motion to approve the minutes as presented? Motion. K. Motion made by Yancey. Is there a second?

I'll second.

Okay. Seconded by Ethan. Any discussion on these minutes? Any questions for Carol? K. Carol, take roll.

Okay. Yancey Yarbalov. Yes. Elias Martinez?

Yes.

Ethan Graves?

Yes. Sherif Cussies?

Yea. Lucy Johnson? Yea. Alisa Ramirez?

Yea. Alright. Motion passes unanimously. K. It's time to move right into our presentations. We will now receive a ten minute presentation by the applicant agency for each program that was listed in this evening's agenda. Each agency will receive a thirty second warning as the ten minute time limit is approaching, though the time limit is somewhat flexible. Each presentation will be followed by a ten minute question and answer session between board members and the agency regarding the program or application. Members of the public are welcome to listen but will not take part in the discussion or the question and answer session. Carol,

take us away.

Okay. So first up, we have Anybody Can, another early childhood intervention program, and here to speak to us is Guillermo Lopez. And so, feel free to start, and let me know if you need to share your screen because sometimes it's easier if I make you a cohost.

You have time? I might show a video. Thanks for asking, Carol. Appreciate it.

Okay. I'll make you a cohost so you can show it.

Okay. Good afternoon, everybody. Good evening. Thank you all for taking time to to hear, about any way we can, and, also, thank you all for the support over the years. Again, we're an early childhood intervention program.

We provide services for children with developmental delays between the ages of zero and 36. And and, really, we also provide services for children who have medical diagnosis that impact development, have visual or auditory impairments that could also impact their their development. We we are under IDEA part c, and really we are part of kind of the school educational system. And the way we provide services again is through the educational model, coaching families with techniques and intervention that they can then embed throughout their daily routine. We've been part of we're one of 39 programs across the state of Texas subcontracted by the Health and Human Services Commission to provide these services, And and, really, our team is built with occupational therapists, physical therapists, speech therapists, specialized skills training that also provide case management and and SST services.

We we we get referrals from the local community from San Marcos. We probably had about over a 160 referrals from this community, and we probably qualify about 40, about 40%, 38% of those qualified either because of the medical diagnosis and sort of automatic qualifiers, and the other, we have to do eligibility requirements. And that means we have to do a standardized testing using the developmental assessment for young children, which is the DAISY or the Battelle, developmental, inventory, the third edition that is administered by the team, and the team is usually a therapist in that area of concern with also the the case manager or the service coordinator for that case. Each case that qualifies as enrolled in our program does have a case management services that are administered by the service coordinator. The team is really built on the coaching pyramid and how that works is really when we meet families we take a we do we do a lot of listening.

We kinda hear what what the family has to say about their daily routine and how the child functions in that in that environment throughout the day. When we find eligibility and that they do we are eligible for services, then we build the the goals with the family to discuss and say, hey. You know, how do you want to show improvement or positive outcomes for your family with the guidance, of of course, as a therapist? Our goal attainment over the last five years has been remarkable close to eighty eight to eighty nine percent. We also at the federal we do also federal outcome goals.

That means we're comparing our children that we serve here in San Marcos and and our program to other kids across the state and other kids across the nation. And for the most part, we're either meeting at the same level of goal attainment or a little bit above on on on one of them, the social emotional piece. The the program also has wraparound services, and and we've really expanded our counseling type program that we have for our in house patients for for therapy, and we provide those services there at the village of San Marcos on on Rymer Street. We created a little plate therapy type office, for them to provide, the counseling that they need either for the infant or the child or for the parents if they're needing, counseling services as well. The program is unique in that even though it's a federal contracted state contracted program, only meets about 48% of the budget.

The rest of it comes from medical billing and then about 10% part of the state legislation is the community appeal to local governments for support such as the Marcos, you know, and so forth for for the other portion of that support. And and that's just kind of it's about community supporting the the local families that we have. We also transition our children to the school systems when they turn three at age three, and we prepare them for the school system to be part of the, again, early childhood intervention services in the school systems when they turn three from three to five. The transition goes smoothly. And, again, we as you all know, that the earlier the intervention, the better the outcomes overall throughout life and and education.

Do you have any questions for me?

Did you wanna start the whole question period now, or did you have a video that you wanted to show?

Gonna show the video. Yeah. If that's okay with y'all.

That's fine. You still have about five minutes to go in your presentation period, and then we have another ten set aside for questions. K.

Oops.

Let's see if

I can do this, guys. Let me see if I can do this share. Do that okay?

Yes. Yes. It's really not coming through very well. The we can't hear the sound, and it seems to be glitching.

What's that?

We're not able to hear it, and it seems to be glitching.

That's okay. I'll I'll stop. I'll I'll know if I can fix that. I'm not technical enough to try to fix that. Never mind. Let me see.

You got to the screen sharing phase of it, so that was better than some.

Yeah. I'll stop. I'll stop. I try I'll try I'll I'll get better at that portion of it. I'm not sure how to I figure out how to share the screen. I'm not sure how to share the audio. But but, again, the the biggest piece is that we do work with local communities. We we do partner up with community actions. We did the building blocks and and play activity at the San Marcos library. Again, that's part of a health fair to help identify children that might need services and also to kinda talk about the local services that are here in San Marcos.

We we are pretty much anywhere and everywhere that people need us. If if daycares are needing some support, we go to the daycares. We also have consultants now that provide, consultation support to early head start or daycares if the professionals needing that extra support. So all that is kind of everything that encompasses, the early childhood intervention program with Any Can. And, again, we've been part of this this we've been part of this community for over thirty five years, the ECI portion, and for anybody we can since '28 2018.

We've been, again, in that building in in the village of San Marcos on on Reimer Street. But, you know, it's grown a lot. It's just grown a lot over the last eight years. The the amount of individuals that have moved the number of enrollments that we have now in in in our in our program that are are eligible for services. Over the last five years, we continue to see that growth.

Again, we probably have forty forty families about about eight years ago. We probably have over 150, I think close to 160 families were served this last year. And, again, I I I don't know if it's I I think it just has to do with growth. Again, percentage of children that qualify is is standardized. So there's there's nothing we can do about that. But the number of families that we're evaluating and the number of families to grow. And and, again, I just say thank you all again for the support to the families that we serve, that we're all serving here. And if there's

Great. Thank you. Our director had to step away, so I will ask, is there anyone on the board with questions for Yama? Go ahead. I have a question. So in your application, it was mentioned that that, you know, you'll have you have 100 with Texas to meet the expected goal of 14,000 individuals. Does that change year by year, or is that, like, a set number for the whatever contract period you have?

It it changes year to year, but sometimes it changes every two years. It's it's really the legislators that appropriate the funding every two years for our program. And from that, it used to be on monthly enrollment for this last year. They moved it to served and how many we have to serve. So for right now, maybe this will be a little bit easier just on even on the monthly enrollment for our program. We we're contracted to serve 840 families a month, and that includes, you know, all of Hayes, all of, most of Travis County. Right? And San Marcos is about 10% of of the population that we're serving. From from we know now for the last month that we have an official, count. We served about 871 families.

It's about it's about 40 families on top of the contracted rate. So the 1,400 that you're seeing is is really kind of the the projections that the state kinda says this is kind of what the funding we're gonna give you. The reality is for this last year, we served over 1,700, families. That's about 300 more families than we were actually, contracted for. Federal rule does not allow us to put a waiting list on.

Federal rule does not allow us to turn anyone away or put in, or not evaluate anyone that's eligible for services. There's timely metrics that we have to meet at the federal and state law. We have forty five days to do an evaluation, and then we have twenty eight days to provide the first intervention services. So what ends up happening is, you know, part part of, we have about a 9% staff retainment. This agency has really done great and amazing job at recruiting and retaining staff.

But, also, when we have tipping points where we say, hey. It looks like the projection is showing up. We we have we went from a 180 referrals to 200 referrals to 225 referrals, then we still have to hire staff to help with the the the need that's out in the community. So that's kinda, the breakdown of how that looks like. The the 1,400 is contracted, but the reality is we we do serve a whole lot business last year.

And if we look at last year, I think it was over 200 and something families, but it continues to grow. We have yet to stop growing over the last eight years. Yeah. The pandemic kept us kinda a little bit flat, but now you're starting to see that growth. And and and what's been tough about this last year, the Medicaid, there's been a lot of, Medicaid reenrollment that we've had to help, and and therefore, they're needing more resources as well.

Sometimes, you know, if if they lose funding with Medicaid or any kind of insurance, we still have to it's not, you know, it's not we can't build a family, and we won't build a family, but we still have to provide the services. We don't put any services on hold. We can't. So, you know, so our team is always trying to make sure that the families are, you know, are keeping up with the the resources and and the rules that they have put in place for them so that they can be enrolled as well. So it's it's a little bit of everything that we do, but at the same time, we also communicate with school district, you know, when they turn 27 to let them know, hey.

Make sure that on your on your planning, we have 10 kids that are probably gonna go to your school. 10 kids for special education might be at least one teacher for that classroom. So they also have to do their planning and their budget processing, prepping, and that's the kind of communication that we have. So when they do turn three, the school's ready to receive them. They know they got it's coming, and the family's ready to it's already you know, there's all the testing to see if they're eligible.

Most of the time, about 99% of the time, they are eligible. Sometimes some families say I can't at three. I just need a little break, and and that's understandable. Sometimes they don't think their children are ready for school based services when they I know I went a little more detailed, but I hope I answered your question to a level of of where that number came. Also,

Guillermo, I'm not sure why it's happening, but, occasionally, you, go mute just for a couple of words, and then you come back. So you kinda just check your settings. But, we got, you know, most of the of what you were saying, so I didn't feel like I should interrupt.

Okay. I'm I'm looking right now. I'm showing good connection. And

It should be okay. Like, it was really okay, and we just cut out on a couple words. Alyssa, did you have a question?

I do. I do. Hi, Guillermo. Thank you for your presentation. I have just a couple questions. First one, I noticed in the application when talking about other funding sources. So it seems like the funding from the Health and Human Services is for Hays County. Correct? And that San Marcos the city of San Marcos and the city of Buda are typically funders.

Maybe us.

That that that's correct. Along with

others.

Other entities don't maybe don't have funding opportunities like this, or is there is there a reason, I guess, why it's just these two counties out of everyone in Hays?

Right. Again

I mean, cities. Sorry.

Yeah. The city of Kyle used to support about ten years ago, maybe fifteen years ago now. And then I think they've they've they ran into some complications, and and they stopped funding us. But I think it was more at this I don't think it's I don't think the city of Cal is funding health and human services, any kind of grant block that they like, we do in San Marcos. So I think that's that's part of it, and dripping screen is kinda similar to the same way.

Our we we do our advisory committee reaches out to some of the local people like Wimberley, like, people in Wimberley or or or smaller little, cities or towns to help, you know, with fundraising and support like that. Sometimes what we have and they help us again with with the little small pieces that for each community. You know, again, everyone gives at a different level depending on on on what they can. Again, some of some of it is not through a grant block. So with a grant block, have outputs that we have to, you know, adhere to when there's, sometimes when it's a gift, like, a gift from the from someone, from from the like, like, let's say, Wimberley, it it it's just a gift or or support, right, or donation.

So that's a little bit different. There's no outputs to report. So but it's still counted part of the local community support for their area. Again, there's the state doesn't tell us how to collect or how to request. Just we just say, you know you know, again, to ask and then to receive that and then document it. And we also send that to HHS. The this budget is not just it's, you know, it's it's audited, like, three or four times a year because it it's got federal money. It's got state money, and then our own our internal process to make sure that that that everything's in order. So everything's already always very detailed on on the accounting side.

Sure. Thank you for that. And then the other one is kind of so I know that, you know, you mentioned case management and case managers. And so and then many of these the the children are, you know, dealing with medical issues. So do your

case

managers also help them navigate other social services? I mean, I'm assuming. So and if so, do you know, like, what is I don't know if there was, like, one or two other things aside from medical needs. What would you say are the other highest, like, needs that your families are facing? Do you know?

I think I think part of the resource navigation that like I mentioned earlier, there's a a higher percentage of families with Medicaid in in in this area that they're also needing support, you know, connecting and make sure that they're eligible. If they are eligible as a services to make sure that they are enrolled, then, again, we talked about transition to this local school systems. But beyond that, like, you know, you know, if if if if they're having needs such as electricity or or rental assistance, then we can you know, we connect them with community action. We were connecting them with them for a while to make sure that they have those resources. Again, the food bank, and they're gonna talk about a little bit in a bit.

But, you know, again, just making sure that there's partnership with them so that if if there's a food, driver or hand or or there's food available to families where and where and what place and what time, again, it's always something that our service coordinators do to make sure. If they're needing specialists, believe it or not, and I know that's a medical need, but sometimes developmental specialist, in in San Marco. Sometimes they do have to drive, but then just kinda helping them kinda navigate that or transportation for that as well. So but, you know, all all those little pieces add up. If they have autism, some a lot of our children do have autism, figuring out how to also connect with ABA services.

It's different if it's self pay or if it's you know, again, if you have Medicaid or no pay, how can you still get access to some of those services? And that's that's, it's a tricky path to have. It seems easy when you read it, but actually trying to access those services are a little bit more difficult. But that's that's a lot of the work that our service coordinators do, just to make sure. And then like I mentioned earlier, the biggest thing right now is, there's also, you you know, there's also a risk assessment for the family, and whether

Guillermo, I cut you off just a little bit. I wanna let you know that we're out of time. You know, I want you to finish your sentence, but, and then if there are other questions, maybe we could slide them in real quick, but we are out of time. And I put you on mute, but I think you're gonna have to unmute. There you go.

But I did. I did. So, So, yeah, I mean, the the counseling piece is is is something that we started doing, and it's really supportive of families. We also do group counseling, you know, so just for for newborn moms or and just, you know, it's it's a lot of a lot of stuff that we do from the from the source coordination side.

Alright. Well, thank you very much. Any other burning questions? I don't wanna cut you off. But I just started

going really fast, and it was about the referral process. Are those referrals coming from kind of, like, therapists and, like, medical professionals, or are they referrals also from, like, family and community members as well?

I have about 65% referrals come from medical providers. Okay. And then about 70% of them come from providers in San Marcos. And then, again, you start to look at the ARC system in Kyle and and Christus, then they're the other big medical clinics that send referrals to us. But day care's parents, you know, can also refer to us. So that's about 30% either an early head start. I know we get referrals from early head start or just a day care that has had a child that receives services from us, and they say, hey. Call in you if you can. They can come. You know, we have concerns. The mom has to agree, of course, that for an evaluation. So

Alright. Okay. Thank you very much, for joining us, and I'm gonna move you back to being an attendee. You're welcome to stay, of course. But the board will not have any additional questions for you at this time.

Thank you, guys. Thanks for the question. Again, thanks for taking time to do this. Appreciate it.

Thank you.

My make attendee. He disappeared anyway. Okay. Now we have Francesca. Okay. Next, we have, Community Action of Central Texas and specifically, their San Marcus Senior Center program. And here to present, she's kinda moving over from being an attendee, is Francesca Ramirez.

Before she presents, Carol, I'm still I'm gonna go ahead and exit out. I'm still showing us a panelist. I'm gonna go ahead and see if I can exit

Oh, thank you. Yeah. I don't see you. That's interesting.

Okay.

Oh, I I can, yeah.

Okay. And here's Francesca. Okay. Got it.

Okay. Great. Okay. It looks like April's there too. So, please introduce yourselves, and then please feel free to go right ahead.

And, Carol, I have a presentation. So am I gonna be able to share it in a in a minute here?

I mean, it's easiest if I make you a cohost. So let me do that. It seems to pop something up where you can easily

share that. Okay.

Good evening, everybody. My name is Franchesca Ramirez, and I am the community services director for Community Action Inc of Central Texas.

Hello, everyone. I'm April Huggard, and I am the center director for the senior center under Community Action Inc of Central Texas. Mhmm.

So let me see, if I'm able to bear my screen. I'm horrible at this, so give me just a second.

You're in good, honey.

Well, that did not work, I don't think. Trying to

Look at the tab up at the top

here. Presentation. It. Sorry. Little slow. Technology. Then how do I okay. Here we go. So today, we're gonna be presenting on the San Marcos senior citizen center. We're located at 810 Arizona Street here in town.

And then oops. Sorry about that. Just to talk a little bit about community action, which houses the San Marcos senior citizen center, our mission statement is helping central Texans improve economic self reliance through a wide range of services and community partnerships. Just to kinda give you just a little brief background, this is our organizational chart. And if you look at the orange under community services, that is where our senior citizen center falls under, that particular department.

Community action is run by executive director Doug Mudd, and this is our board of directors. Five are from private entities, five are from public officials, and then five rep are representatives of low income, families, neighborhoods, individuals. So talking about the San Marcos Senior Citizen Center, it opened back in 1971, so we have been in service for fifty four years. The center is open Monday through Friday, 8AM to 2PM. And here with us, April is the center director and has been since 2015.

Neither her or Erica, they are full time, but they don't work forty hours a week just because of funding, But they do each put thirty hours a week in. Erica Porter is our activities and volunteer coordinator, and she's been with us since 2019. And then we're fortunate enough to have, a few volunteers. We definitely need more, but we have five to six volunteers a week, contributing two to eight hours. The only qualifications to participate at the center is that you need to be over 60 and over the age of that and be independent.

So, or have a caregiver with you, so to help you go to the bathroom and things like that. So what the San Marcos Senior Citizen Center offers is a safe and welcoming family like environment for seniors to meet others, for them to socialize, receive assistance with accessing a wide array of services. Some examples of that include, and April does the majority of this, is that she assists the seniors with filling out community actions, utility assistance application. She makes referrals to the area agency on aging in Austin, referrals to the food bank for additional assistance with food, and SNAP applications. And then just kinda depending on the circumstances, she can kinda help fill out Social Security forms, Medicare applications.

The seniors are able to receive hot lunches every day. That's provided by Meals on Wheels, And what is a huge draw is that they are able to get groceries, food bank on Tuesdays, with our partnership with the Hays County Food Bank. Some fun activities, that the center offers the seniors, every day, they play loteria. They do arts and crafts. There's a gardening club and walking club, health screenings where we have, nurses that come in and take their blood pressure, educational presentations.

There's a clothes closet where the seniors on Fridays can, pick out free clothes, monthly birthday celebrations. And then with any major holidays, there's celebrations as well. Fortunately, we, again, partner with the Hays County Food Bank for Thanksgiving, and there's a holiday meal dis distribution the week before, the week of Thanksgiving and the week of Christmas. April and Erica, out of their own pockets, sometimes they prepare a lunch for those seniors that don't have any family to go to. And, you know, the center closes for a couple of weeks at Christmas and for half a week at Thanksgiving.

And so, you know, then the seniors are all by themselves. So, they do a great job in preparing a kind of a lunch celebration for those seniors. Some of the sponsors that were fortunate to come to the center, include the Methodist Health Care Ministries. There's some senior living, apartments, things like that here in town, that provide some resources, home health providers, hospice, funeral arrangements. There's some different insurance companies that come in and offer different options, rehab facilities, doctor offices.

And just to kind of give you an idea of how many seniors are attending or how many are registered, and April's gonna talk a little bit more about this, but in the last couple of years, we've definitely seen an increase in those seniors that have enrolled, and she'll talk more about attendance. But, you know, from 2023 up until, you know, just last week, we we've had over I don't know what the number is, 25, 35, more attendees, per per month or per year than we're used to. We're just we just keep seeing those numbers rise.

And along with the enrollment, that's kind of our annual enrollment, but we're seeing an increase in our daily attendance. They're coming more often, daily for different services that we offer, whether it's the fellowship, arts and crafts, whether it's just food bank, or receiving a lunch. The daily attendance has definitely increased.

So kinda giving you an idea of where our funding sources come from. Our operating costs to run the senior citizen center has increased from last year, 16%. So to run it, about a 106,000. City Of San Marcos contributes 21% of that funding. Hays County, another 21.

The Area Agency on Aging is our our biggest funder with 48%, and then a small percentage comes out of a federal grant from, the Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs. It's called the Community Services Block Grant, and so that kinda fills in the gap. We also do a couple of outside fundraising campaigns, that we started just a few years ago, but it's definitely filled in some gaps where we've collected, like, extra arts and crafts, extra, personal items to give to the seniors or what they can win from loterias such as, you know, shampoos and conditioners, toilet paper is a necessity that they need every day, things like that. So our big Christmas in July runs from the first through the thirty first. And, fortunately, since it's, began in 2023, we've collected over a thousand items each year.

Mainly, that's an internal, fundraiser. We we do promote it externally to the public. You just don't get that many donations. And then we've also done a heater drive, the last couple of years in December where we'll collect little portable heaters that, we give the seniors in January. And those are just some pictures, from this previous July, our Christmas in July campaign, just to kinda show you an idea of what our staff members here at Community Action from the different departments collected.

And that's what our Peter?

This is kinda your forty five second warning Okay. To get to the ten minutes for your presentation, but we're kinda flexible. So I just thought I'd let you know.

Okay. This is my last slide, and and I think, April wants to share, like, a two minute, I don't know if we have time, story. But we are requesting 22,000, from the city of San Marcos. It is the most that we've requested. In previous years, we've requested 20,000.

But because our operating costs have increased, we are asking for a little bit of an additional funding, and we did get news that our biggest funder, the Area Agency on Aging, because of federal cuts, they are cutting us by 30%, roughly around 15,000 for next year that we're losing. So having this increase from you guys would definitely be important to be able to serve more seniors on a daily basis And, you know, the costs, obviously, to maintain the center have risen over have rose over the years, including the increase with the increase in attendance, the increase in utilities, and supplies. I don't know if we have time to hear April's story.

We're at ten minutes, but I'm guessing the board would like to see the story or hear the story. Is that what I'm Yeah. Seeing the story. Okay. So, yeah, please go ahead, April.

Sure. Thank you. So, just to

give you a little bit

of an idea of what we see, and I to to use the word regularly, we do see this, often. But about two months ago, we had a gentleman aged 60 come into our building needing some assistance, and, he's always been a hard worker. And, August 2024, so almost a year to the date, he unexpectedly had a stroke and was unable to work. The doctor told him he's unable to work. And with that, Bill started coming in.

He walked in currently, almost evicted. Utility is about to be cut off. His transportation was about to be repossessed, and very little food. And so we started helping him, as best we could with utility assistance, insurance referrals with community action, things like that. And so we are helping him to the best of our ability with those things.

Unfortunately, he's still having to be evicted, because he doesn't have assistance with that, but that's kind of what we assist with and what we see are our 60 and older seniors who are facing financial struggles and burdens on the verge of, eviction. And those that are fortunate enough to have housing, they are struggling with just everyday, food, just having food and their electric bill paying paid. So just to give you an idea of what we what we assist the seniors with.

Great. Thank you. And then I'll just open it up for questions from the board. We have eight minutes. Plenty of time.

I had a question regarding your funding. I noticed plenty of government and and nongovernment entities on there. Have you considered going, to foundations or nonprofits or doing your own fundraising?

Yeah. Good question. We are actually, in contact with one foundation, The Berdine Johnson Foundation out of Buda has invited us to apply for funding this year, fortunately. So we will be filling that out. The deadline's October 15.

So, we were fortunate that three individuals on their foundation board granted us a freezer, for the senior citizen center, just when the freezer went out after having it for, like, ten years, three of those members out of their own pocket gave us a freezer, bought one, and, now they've invited us to apply. We're looking at another foundation, out of New Mexico. I don't have the name handy, but they do work with three different states and Texas being one of them, for seniors. So we'll look at applying for some funding with them as well.

You mentioned that y'all are facing a 30% budget cut of roughly about $15,000. Are you planning on as you, request resources from other organizations, are you all planning on kind of distributing that sort of deficit across multiple requests, or is this kind of the primary source for trying to, trying to address the gap?

I mean, I am going to request, probably 20,000 from each foundation, hoping that, you know, they award all of that or at least 15,000 that that we're gonna lose. I mean, we are looking at our budget and seeing where we can cut back as well. You know, can we we do price comparisons anyway, for our supplies, you know, whether that be Amazon or Walmart or Sam's or or what have you. But, I mean, like, I just got with April a couple of months ago. I mean, instead of making, like, four pots of coffee, a day, can we make two pots of coffee?

You know? Just the little things that may add up, I mean, doesn't sound like very significant, but, I mean, even if we could save a couple $100 a month so we are we are looking, like, in small areas versus big areas as well, I guess.

Sounds like you guys are being very resourceful. That's great.

Any other questions? Alright. Hearing none, that sounds like, that's all we needed. So thank you so much for joining us, and we'll go on to the next presenter.

Thank you so much. Thank you.

Thank you. Alright. That's good.

Okay. Okay. Next up, we have San Marcos Housing Authority. Let me bring him over.

Oh, it's

Maribel. Oh, I think it's both Nancy and Maribel. Here we go. Bring them over. See how we're doing. Okay. Okay. There you are. Okay. Great. So then, please introduce yourself, your title, and so forth, and then, please feel free to start.

Okay. Good evening, everybody. My name is Maribel Reyes. I'm the resident services assistant manager with the San Marcos Housing Authority, specifically the resident services department. I am housed at Chippewa Lepeque Homes, which is located between LBJ, Love Street, and McKee.

So San Marcos Housing Authority provides decent, safe, and affordable housing to about 611 low, low income households, which includes elderly and disabled. These families, are housed at either our Centimeters Allen homes, Allen Woods, Tupulipek Homes, Porter Homes, Scattered Homes, Springtown Villa, and also with throughout Hays County with the housing choice voucher program. So to give you a little information about our sites, Centimeters Allen has a 100 units, and that's over there on River Road in San Marcos. And Allen Woods has a 125 units that's kinda behind HEB. It's kind of closed between HEB and now it used to be Bobcat Stadium.

You have C Stadium now. And we also have Porter Holmes, which is off of MLK. It's at the dead end of MLK. It's at, eight units there. Chippelipe Homes here has 30 units, and we had scattered homes.

There are about 26 scattered homes throughout San Marcos. And, of course, our housing choice voucher program, that's a little it's it's separate. People can use it within, I believe, Hays County. The resident services department works to improve the quality of life, for our residents. That is our main focus.

If it's helping them become self sufficient or if it is, help them age in place, That is our goal, just to improve the quality of life for our residents. You know, we also with our programming, we try to help them, become independent of the welfare system. We really wanna empower our residents to take charge of their lives, you know, being making healthy choices and working, with us to improve our environment. Our resident services department, consists of six staff, which includes coordinators and management. We also include our volunteers.

You know, shout out to our volunteers and also our community partners that work with us to be able to provide this programming for our residents. And let's see. We have to work continuously to be innovative and to provide with all the changes to provide continuous programming for our residents. Because most of them are low income, we have to con we have to try to find resources for them. We always have residents coming into our centers to request assistance.

So we really try to network with local agencies and be in the know of what resources are out there for them. With our so the funding we're requesting is, for salaries for two of our coordinators. K? Those are the ones that are at the Allen Woods, Center, called Poder, And at the Centimeters Allen Center, that's called CAD, k a d. These are our bigger sites.

So as I mentioned, CAD has a 100 units, and Allen Woods, has a 125. And just to give you a little bit of geographical information that I have here, at our Allen Woods site, we have a total of 97 children ages newborn to 18. At our Centimeters Allen site, we have a 160. So really heavy there with the young families, Our youth, our after school program there, and our summer programs are super busy. And a little different for Allen Woods.

Allen Woods, there is sixty nine percent of residents at Allenwoods are elderly and disabled. So where we have a larger portion of our CAT center servicing our youth. Our Allenwood Center CATS poder is servicing our elderly and disabled, but we serve both of them at both centers. And this this the reason why it's like that is because of the I believe it's just something that happened when there was the flood in 2015 that we had to move all the elderly and disabled into Allen Woods to get them out of Centimeters Allen. We we have the after school program.

We we invite all children, even those that are in the neighborhood to participate. At the after school program, they come in. We really we try to enforce the handwashing, have them sit down, you know, after being on this hot school bus, you know, having our our center air conditioned, having some cool water for them, and a healthy snack. Then we move into whatever the program might be. We have different churches and community entities that come in to give classes to them.

And at our cat center, right across the street, we have, a lovely park that's provided by the city of San Marcos. We are so grateful for that park because the kids love it. They just love playing over there, and and they they request, can we go outside? Can we go outside? They they love it.

So we're very happy about having that park there. You know, at at our Boulder Center, we have less children, but we still provide the same service. We still have the after school program. We focus on, you know, with them washing their hands, giving them a healthy snack, and also programming. We do more of the indoor indoor projects there at CAD because the children are at at because the children there are younger.

With all this would not be possible without our volunteers and also our our Texas state our Texas state volunteers. We we coordinate with Texas state heavily for volunteering. That gives us more more hands and eyes to be able to make sure that the after school program is safe for our children. Also, community community agencies. Central Texas Food Bank comes to give classes to our elderly and disabled.

Hays County Food Bank, we work with Methodist Healthcare Ministries. They're at our poder center. They have a food bank. Our elderly because that's a heavily elderly disabled population, it's our food bank our food pantry is specifically for them. They come in, and they go we try to set up, like, a store where they can just come in and pick those items that they will use.

And this is twice a month that they get this. So very thankful for our our coordinating committee companies that come in to help us. We also work with long life learning. Different insurance companies come in to pro to sponsor bingos. That's something our residents love is our bingos.

That gives them you know, it helps them break that that isolation, that being at home. We encourage them to come to our bingo's. We distribute a calendar every month that shows the time of the activity and what the activity will be. You know, they sometimes forget it, and they have they they lose it, they come back for another one. You know, we always are having residents come in, and sometimes they just need to talk.

Our coordinators sometimes take the time to just sit down and and talk to them. You know, our our our centers have a computer, a printer, you know, office space, a place to meet where we can you know, if we need it, have private discussions with our residents, and we try to help them with any and everything that they they might need. It could be applying applying, filling out application committee action for utility assistance. It could be helping them apply for SNAP.

Just real quick. We are at thirty seconds before your ten minutes is up. It is kinda flexible, but, I just thought I'd give you that update. And then I muted you, Maribel, so you'll need to unmute. There you go.

Maribel, can I speak real quick?

Oh, sure.

Okay. Hi. I'm Nancy, Morales. I'm the operations manager for San Marcos Housing Authority. I do just wanna chime in a little bit and let you know that our coordinators work really hard, with their residents at each site. They complete an intake when someone moves in, and that intake is really detailed to what that family or individual needs. Whether we provide resources or services to the family, we really, strive to help that family. All families are different. Sometimes it's the youth that need clothes, the youth that needs things in their household. So whether it's food, clothing, resources, we document.

We take we have measurement tools that we use to make sure that we are servicing the families that are at each site. We also have a family self sufficiency program. So our coordinators are really hands on working with the families. If it's there at the site, at the centers, they also go into their homes, and we do provide services to our other sites, scattered homes, porter homes. Springtown Villa has their own coordinator.

With the youth program, we do and for you know, try to show them leaders leadership community, service, and we take them, with the core four to conferences, youth led positive environment, positive mental health. So we really are, trying, our hardest and working with our communities that we serve.

Okay. Great. Thank you so much. We're at about eleven minutes, so you have nine to ask questions, about this program. Y'all must have done a good job of your application. Any questions? Okay. Alright. We have no questions. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Thank you so much for the opportunity.

They were very specific.

Good. I don't wanna make people go back to. Okay. I'm gonna just pull over the next attendee. So our next one up is Hayes County Food Bank, with Lisa Young, and I am promoting her to Panelist. I'm having a little trouble. Maribel and Nancy, I'm having a little trouble sending you back to the attendees. So could you turn off your camera? There we go. Okay. So now we have Lisa Young with Hays County

Food Bank, and go ahead.

Well, hello. It's good to see some of you again, Carol, but some of you for the first time. I really appreciate your time doing this. I'm a community reviewer for the Austin Fund, so I know just how, of a little roller coaster it is. Right? Because it's so inspiring to see so many great programs, but then you just wish you could fund everybody to to their maximum. So I definitely appreciate your time and your thoughtfulness to this. Most of you already know us. We're we're a bit of a San Marcos institution, but we've made a tremendous amount of change this past year. In fact, I would say we probably changed our operations about 85, and the people who were most impacted by that are San Marcos residents.

The big thing that we did this year was we changed our, model. You've probably seen our drive through, especially if you've been on MLK on a Monday night, and you know that it's miles long. Every Monday night, at our Herndon Street location, We did a drive through, food distribution, and there would be about 450 households that would attend that each week. And I'm very, very, very pleased to say that the last one of those was August 4. So we will not have a food line like that in our city again, because we moved.

We moved to a much larger facility where Hays County Barbecue used to be. We have, purchased that building through financing with Shirts Bank. But because we have that space and that gigantic parking lot, we were actually able to convert to a client choice model. So instead of people coming through and lining up and getting a box of food in their trunk that sometimes they don't even see until they get home to know if it's something they could use or or or excited about using, people make an appointment and they shop at the market. They can do that once a month, but they can take 80 pounds, which is a very full grocery cart, 80 pounds.

I say that because most people don't know what 80 pounds looks like, but it's a very full grocery cart. So people can still attend the drive through ones that we have in Bute, Kyle, and Wimberley, and they can also go to our last mile sites, I'll tell you about more in a minute. But as far as their the bulk of their groceries, the monthly assistance, they can come do it completely by client choice in the market. We have regular grocery carts and regular shelves. The shelves were donated by the h e by HEB, but I bought the carts. And they push a cart through. They get frozen, meat. They get bakery items. They get cereal now. We've been doing a big cereal drive, and as far as and shelf stable items.

We also have a new agreement with HEB where we're picking up more food from them, five days a week. So we we've always done this, but the way they're now redone their policy, we we're getting it from every department. So we have hold coolers where people can choose those deli items, the guacamole, the already cut up pineapple. We get all of that. One of the biggest comments that, always makes me happy that we get a lot is that someone got a birthday cake, and they wouldn't have had a birthday cake otherwise.

Even as an adult, I'm happy when they post their birthday cake pictures because we do have a shelf where all those gooey cakes go. And, but the beautiful thing about having it be client choice is you can take them or not. You don't just get home and find out that you got a bunch of cake that you can't eat or lentils that you don't know how to cook. You've chosen it. So that way people can tailor their grocery experience for their health needs, such as allergies, diabetes, if they're eating a kidney, safe diet, gluten. It's their choice whether they take anything or not, and all of our food is labeled. We don't have anything in there that's just loose. Right? So and then flat out preference. You know?

I can give you the healthiest food in the world, but if your kid doesn't eat it, it wasn't worth anything. Right? It's only worth it if your family is gonna eat it. And we're all guilty of that. Right?

We all have thrown away some broccoli in our lives that got slimy because we had good intentions when we bought it. So I'm not saying a 100% of that food is not wasted, but a much larger percent now, I think, than was before. And the very, very, very first thing that happened when we opened that market August 19 is that that 450 people changed to a thousand. So we had 500 new people on day one call to set up appointments who had never used the food bank before, and that is all San Marcos residents. So the need in our city is great.

I'm really happy that that this has come to fruition. We see people using it. We see people smiling and getting their groceries. We're definitely fine tuning it. But people are taking a lot of food, and they're very happy about what they're taking. One of the best days for me recently was one of the teacher workdays. So it was a school holiday, but just for students. So a lot of kids were with their parents, you know, just doing errands in the morning with mom to get their groceries and the grins on their faces as they were helping wheel out the groceries to the car. Even just having the carts makes a difference since that is how people shop for groceries, right, is pushing a cart through the store. So now everybody's getting that experience, and they're thrilled to have it.

And like I said, if they don't wanna eat sugar, if they don't wanna eat pineapple, if they they just don't have to take it, there's plenty of other things for them to take. So we've been really thrilled about that. Even in this last two months, though, our numbers have gone up in two ways. First of all, we have distributed more food than we ever have month by month. September was definitely the highest month ever, because we are distributing food in this way.

People are taking more at one time, and the demand on it is great. The other is the demand. We expect the demand to go, to spike up in the next few weeks. We're working closely with Feeding America and Central Texas Food Bank to monitor the government shutdown. Whenever this has happened in the past, it has increased our need in spike.

There are some things that increase our need in a rise that never goes down, so it's not really a spike like, the sun setting of some SNAP benefits. But something like a shutdown usually causes it to go up and then come back down, hopefully. So that's something that the new building has really bought us is the ability to store months of food instead of weeks of food. So we are very, very full so that we can weather this out and even increase distribution as needed. And we really do work hard to work with our partners to make sure that those kind of things are ready to roll and would happen.

We'd we'd try not to wait for the disaster to hit, but to already be prepared for when that kind of thing happens. But the ability to hold as much as we can both in frozen, in cooler food, and even in dry good food, we have never been able to store this much, but we can probably hold about three months of food. The other program that we added is called Van Go, and we called it that because the van just go. It is, we have a program called Go Bags. Go Bags are a different stream of food than you might see in the market.

Anyone is welcome to shop in the market if they're eligible, but some people want a different stream of food. These are people with very, very low kitchen access, Our homeless community, others who maybe would not identify under as homeless, but definitely would still be considered in that category of no kitchen access. If you are sleeping on your sister's couch, but you don't really have access to the kitchen. And even car sleepers, even though they would be categorized under the federal rules as homeless, they often do not say that they are homeless if they have a car to sleep in. So we say low kitchen access.

And this food is for them. That is stuff that's ready to eat, easy to open. Giving them a whole raw frozen chicken does not help them. In fact, that would be a terrible burden. They need food that's ready to go because they don't have kitchen access. Sometimes they have a little more storage space, particularly if they're something like a car, dweller. But if they're on foot and they don't have anywhere they even have to think about how much they can carry at one time, loading them up here. Here's a year's worth of peanut butter would not do them any good if they can only carry a little bit at a time. So we've set up, they can come by once a week and get what we call a go bag, and that has that kind of food in it ready to roll for them. They are you know, the little thing of pineapple that's already cut up, not a whole pineapple because they cannot process that.

And some of that this is our most expensive food, and it is the least donated food. And that is the the ready to eat, like the beef jerky and stuff like that that doesn't need cooking or needs very little, like, maybe microwave cooking. So that stuff is not donated a lot. We do purchase a lot of that food, and that is where a lot of our money goes. So people are free to come by once a week and pick one up, and lots of people do.

But they have to come to the office in San Marcos to do that. So we started the Go Bag program in March, and it goes around like an ice cream truck with this food. We started it in Buda and Kyle. Our numbers have grown exponentially in the distribution of that food. We're now up to about 200 people a month that are being served by the program.

And I'm just gonna interrupt real quick. Sorry. You have about fifteen seconds in

your day now.

But, you know, it's flexible. So

Sure. I'll probably go one minute over just to tell you about the last program, and then I'll be ready for questions. Absolutely. So the last step the last phase of the van program is that it will now go in San Marcos now that we have moved. It will go back to the Dunbar neighborhood that we came from so that we don't leave anyone behind there that was used to picking up things there.

But even within the van, we do have choice elements, and they may seem very small to you or me. But getting to pick out what that produce is, which kind of granola bar suits your dental situation, picking out the baked goods actually is, has been really humanizing and really helping to build that trust relationship that we're going for with that community. I'm also one of the chairs of the homeless coalition and will be, using the van to do part of the pit count based on some of these relationships that we've built. And that will really help, elevate our numbers and our eligibility for HUD funding for the whole county. And the last program I'll tell you about is our last mile site program.

All of our programs are food distribution programs, so food assistance is what we do. This is other locations that are running a distribution for us. There are 32 other locations that are not literally at our place or in our van. Those sites come and pick up their food from us on whatever their schedule is. For most people, it's weekly.

They pick up the food, bring it back to their location, and do a very specialized drive. For instance, the women's center is one. The their clients are maybe not, fully going wanting to be out at a public place and be coming to the store themselves for their own safety reasons. Their food is done at a pantry at the women's shelter itself. We also supply Bobcat Bounty, which does about 200 a week on, Texas campus.

We also provide the food for The Salvation Army, for, communities and schools, and numerous other programs. Like, of them are, you know, maybe picking up once a month, particularly the school pantries because they keep dry goods that they just replenish as needed. And some of them are doing something once a week, like the women's center, Bobcat Bounty, The Salvation Army. But that's about, 40% of our food distribution is through those sites as well. So if you see food distribution, it might still be us even if it, even if it's at a church or at a school.

We do that for we call them last mile sites for two reasons. First of all, that last mile geographically is very hard for people to traverse sometimes, but also even, emotionally accessibility. Maybe it wouldn't occur to you to go to the food bank even though you might be eligible and need it. It might not even cross your mind or you might feel that there was some reason not to do it. But maybe if your school counselor or your pastor were to approach you about getting food assistance, it would be more accessible. So it's a last mile in that in that way as well. And then the last thing I'll say, Carol, we are now officially a bus stop. So send people to Route 5, the bus will come to the food bank.

Okay. Thank you so much. So we have plenty of time, about seven minutes for y'all to ask questions of Lisa.

I have one question really fast. For y'all, eligibility requirements. I guess I'll just, I don't know if it differs between program, but I guess I'll ask about, like, the client choice supercenter specifically. What is kind of y'all's if someone's showing up and wanting to apply, wanting to set up an appointment, what are they submitting to you guys for eligibility? Where are you guys looking at?

So the eligibility requirements are the same across all of our programs, and, and it's two there are two streams that you can go down. Pure financially eligible is a 185% above the poverty rate. The poverty rate comes out in June, so we that number actually changes every July. So every July, we have to ask everybody again, is this still how much you make? Okay. You're still qualified. Still keep coming. A 185% is is pretty good, and that's gonna I can't give you the exact number because it's gonna vary by how many people are in each household. Right? So, like, one earner with six kids, that number is gonna go down.

Mhmm. The way that they do it, the other thing is that if you had an emergency. So even if you were outside of that, like, you technically just made too much, but something has happened that affected your finances greatly, most commonly, it's medical, that, made you we've even had people like, if their power gets cut off and they lose the whole refrigerator full of food, they qualify for as an emergency. So if we bring them as an emergency, they stay qualified for six months until we have to ask them again if the emergency persists or if their job has changed and now they are financially eligible. If someone is already eligible for other benefits such as free lunch or SNAP, we can actually quit asking at that point.

We don't even have to gather any further information. They're already prequalified just like legal aid does. Now as far as what they need to bring to us, it is all self report. We do not ask for documentation. They do not ever, at any point, have to bring a birth certificate, a driver's license, a utility bill, nothing.

We don't geographically restrict it, so it doesn't matter where they're a resident of. We do collect some data about them, to use for actually grant writing purposes mostly and just what we're legally required to do. But we're not required to make them bring in proof of income. So it is self report. And as far as, like, even if you came in, like, you fill out an application and you flat out just do not qualify under any of the rules, you're still getting an emergency box that day.

Mhmm.

We're not sending anyone. There is no process time for the application. We would call people back if there was a problem with their application. But day one, when they come, they'll be getting an emergency box and being asked to make an appointment for their next visit.

Okay. Thank you.

Mhmm.

Next up is Linda. And, Linda, I put you on mute, so you're gonna need to unmute yourself.

Okay. Hi, Lisa. I have a question where you say they can't come inside and just shop off of the shelves. Now say they only wanted them to get canned goods or only wanted to get, you know, or something. Is there a limit of how many one particular item they can get at a time?

Yes. As far as, limit, so 80 pounds is the overall limit. Now what volunteers are instructed to go up to 86, we're not sending somebody back to put one can of tomatoes back. Right. But the if someone were way over, if it was to 86, then we have to, like, say, like, oh, this is really too much. However, there are some items that we're actually going unlimited on, like some of our produce items. A giant pumpkin or a cabbage is not gonna count against your 86 pounds. And then some items have a specific limit on them. Some of our meat, we only have one or two available per household. Boxes of cereal, we're saying two, eggs, things like that.

Mhmm.

As far as all of the rest of our items, the only limit is no more than five of one particular item. Don't want someone to come in and get 80 pounds of peanut butter, and that's all they get, and then no one else can have peanut butter. So we're limiting that to five. But like I said, when there's an overabundance of something, especially in the produce category that it might go bad, we're not limiting that at all.

Now are the shelves marked with those numbers?

Or Yes, ma'am.

The okay.

They are.

I've seen that happen before. Okay.

Alright. Thank you. And, Yancey, did you have a question?

Yeah. I just wanted to know how did your opening go for the market? Yeah. Is

the question how did the grand opening go?

Yes.

We well, I almost fainted. I had to excuse myself at one point because I have been going all day. Estimates vary on how many people were there. And if the fire marshal isn't gonna have access to this video, that'd be great because we think it was, like, 300 people. Our front parking lot is a 155 spots, and that was full.

Our back parking lot was probably another 50 or 60, and that was full. And then we had people just circling around, to come in. Nine news stories about it, in the in the paper and the TV stations. It was an amazing outflow of community support. We had a lot of support from our elected officials and also from our city manager's offices.

Oh, is that it? Okay. Elias?

Yeah. Hi. Thank you for the presentation. I'm curious about the last mile site program. You said that you guys you you have 32 other look. Is that across those 32, is that across Hays County as a whole, or how many of them are in San Marcos and roughly where are they located?

Sure. I think about 25 are in San Marcos. Most are in San Marcos. We do have a couple coming from Kyle, Redwood, outlying areas like that. But Redwood is actually I counted against it, but it's actually still considered San Marcos too because it is within the San Marcos school district.

Mhmm.

Yeah. So we have, like I said, we have The Salvation Army. We have a few churches. We have Access. We have Promised Land. We have seven school locations

Mhmm.

That are done through communities and school. We provide the food for Southside Community Center. Our biggest one is Bobcat Bounty and followed by Redwood that, really are distributing quite a lot. The the food insecurity on campus problem is actually getting getting much worse. Yeah. So we're looking probably so in this area, you would consider what's usually the report is about one in seven college students are suffering from food insecurity. I think it's closer to one in five in San Marcos. We also have about one in four children that are in that category.

I hate to cut it off, but we are out of time. Do y'all have any last questions?

No. No.

Okay. Alright. Thank you so much for coming in.

Thank you, Lisa. Thank you

so Thank you once again. I appreciate you guys so much.

And our next one is our final one. Texas Rio Grande legal aid.

Oh, sure. It is 719. Let's take a quick six minute break. Come back at 07:25. We're back. We're back into regular session.

Okay. Our next, presenter is, Texas Rio Grande Legal Aid. They have a program called San Marcos Justice and Stability Project, and the presenter is Sierra Ayala. And I'm sorry. I should've moved her.

Okay.

There she is. They're not there right.

Sorry. I forgot to click the button to transfer her over.

Hi,

y'all. Can you all hear me?

Yes. We

can. We're not able to see you.

I'm working on that. Just a minute. Sorry.

No worries.

Can you see me now?

I was thinking. Yes.

Okay. I do have a presentation if I can share my screen.

Okay. Often, it's best if I make you a cohost. Hang on a second.

Oh, I think I can do it here.

You may be able to. I think

it just Yeah. It helps.

There you go. Okay.

Okay. Alright. Well, good evening, y'all. Thanks for, inviting me to present about our project, and I will try and be as brief as possible. I know I'm the last panelist that you'll be hearing, so we all wanna go home and have dinner. Well, as you all know, I am here representing Texas Rio Grande Legal Aid. My name is Sierra Ayala. I am the director of the grants department. So let's see. A little bit about TRALA or TRALA is how I call it.

TRALA, TURLA, however however you wanna say it. We are a five zero one c three nonprofit legal aid organization founded in 1970. We serve the Southwest Sector of Texas, including 68 counties in our service area, which of course includes Hays County. Our mission is to provide high quality civil legal services and related outreach and education to low income individuals in Texas and a a few beyond. We have some special programming outside Texas.

We operate across 18 offices in our service area in Southwest Texas, and we have one branch office in Nashville. That office specifically runs our Southern Migrant Legal Services Center. They offer civil legal services to migrant workers, but the rest of our Texas sector is more broad civil legal services. As far as our staffing, we have close to 400 total staff in our entire program. That includes attorneys, paralegals, legal assistance, all the administrative staff, and all the folks that it takes to run the organization.

Our largest offices by far are the Austin and San Antonio offices in terms of of manpower and the number of attorneys that we have staffed there. And that is mostly because this is where lot of our need comes from. It's where our highest intake numbers are coming from, particularly Bexar County and the surrounding areas. And then just a quick snapshot about some of the the demographics of our our client base. This information comes from, calendar year 2024.

Every case that we close, we collect certain data points including demographic data. And so last year, we were able to serve mostly mostly women. Seventy one percent of our cases were on behalf of women. Almost half of those were cases involving some domestic violence. Twenty percent of our clients are seniors over the age of 60, and we do have a dedicated team who serves specifically veterans and issues that are related to veterans and their families.

So we do have 7% of our clients who are veterans. And then broadly, program right program wide across TRALA, we operate under six broad practice areas. And so those are you know, these broad practice areas are then kind of within them narrowed down, and so umbrella underneath the practice areas are more focused teams that, work on very specific issues. So for instance, within our public benefits group, we have, the veterans advocacy project that I was telling you about earlier. We have the tax team that focuses on tax specific issues.

And so within these six broad practice areas, I I wanna say we have somewhere close to 50 specialized teams that are working on any particular area of law. For this grant proposal, the teams or the sorry. The practice areas that I would highlight for y'all are the housing and the public benefits groups. Because within those, we have the the teams who would actually be doing the work that this grant would fund. And then just as a quick a quick little detour, in addition to these teams, we've got a few special projects and initiatives that kind of span across practice areas and across teams.

We have a medical legal partnership, the Southern Migrant Legal Services that was based in Nashville that I mentioned earlier. We have a Texas Foster Youth Justice Project. Right now, in response to the flooding in Kerrville that happened over the fourth of July weekend, we have our disaster response team who's working overtime in helping folks in disaster recovery with any civil legal services that might they might need. So I this just goes to show that Trollo really tries and stay involved in hearing what issues are affecting the community and then responding to those with specific initiatives to to help any way we can. And then focusing more on the city of San Marcos human services grant opportunity, the proposal that we submitted, seeks to to fund some civil legal services specifically for public benefits, housing, family violence, and mental health services, which are grouped under public benefits.

Our public benefits group, as I mentioned earlier, is broad, and there are specific teams that fall within that group. We across as many groups as we possibly can, we take a two pronged approach to delivering services to our clients, and that is, of course, direct legal services. But also there's a an educational component where we do outreach in the community. We work with community partners to try and educate not just the broad community, but also other other professionals who work with our client base and where there's overlap on just kind of getting folks educated on what their rights are and what resources are available to them through the legal system that could help folks in their situation. And so some of the teams in the public benefits group that we have are the advocacy for the homeless team, the federal tax team, as I mentioned, and the veterans advocacy project.

And then it's kind of the same model across groups. So our housing group seeks to protect the rights of low income tenants and homeowners, keeping them in their homes, reducing the number of folks who are forced into homelessness. And so we've got private landlord tenant issues that get seen. We've got eviction defense cases that get taken, federally subsidized housing issues. And then this is where we have a little bit of mental health oftentimes.

I won't say oftentimes, but sometimes we see issues arising where, a client with maybe who's struggling with a mental health issue or a disability is, you know, that sees seeps into other areas of their life, and so that might present itself as them being evicted from their home. And so we would step in and assist them not only with the eviction, but also whatever related services that they may benefit from. And so you you there is a lot of overlap among among our groups. Housing talks to public benefits, talks to family law because a client comes in and it's not a straightforward, like, this is my problem. This is how we fix it.

There's a lot of wraparound issues that we can help clients with. And so our teams attorneys from different teams and groups are constantly coordinating with each other and talking to each other. The family law group primarily focuses on issues related to domestic violence. We do see a lot of protective order cases, cases where there's custody issues in in divorce. And there's in the binational project, which was on an earlier slide, this is when it comes into play where there's parents on different sides of an international border, and so we do assist in those cases as well.

And then on this grant, in our proposal, just a little recap, our goal is to serve a 140 new cases, new and that's not to say clients, that's just cases for San Marcos residents and hopefully a 120 unique clients. Because as I mentioned, folks come to us sometimes with multiple problems. And so in that situation, one individual might have two or three cases tied to them. So I just wanted to make that distinction in case that was confusing in our proposal. But the services that we offer in legal service delivery are limited and extensive services.

Sometimes issues can be wrapped up with counseling advice that's tailored to their unique legal need, and those cases are are quick. And sometimes it's more complex and more time is needed, and so those are extensive services cases. The the legal advice is always tailored. Of course, post pandemic, everyone's operating virtually, and so we do offer virtual consultations, court appearances, and additional case case support as needed. And

the Just to interrupt just real quick. You're at, almost at ten minutes. And so I just let you know that it is a little bit flexible, but that's where we're we are

with time.

Sure. Thank you. I think this is my yeah. That's my last slide. So the outcomes might include maintaining or obtaining public benefits, maintaining or obtaining stable housing, preventing homelessness, and securing protective orders if it's a family case, for example, or a favor favorable custody outcome for our clients. And so done. If you all have any questions for me, I'm happy to answer as best I can.

Any question?

I have one question. Just out of those three kind of, like, broad areas that you mentioned of, like, housing, public benefit, and kind of, like, family law and stuff like that, which one would you say for San Marcos specifically is kind of y'all's largest issue area, or is it kind of, like, split pretty evenly between the three?

No. I would say by far, it's housing is number one. And then pretty close to there is family law second, and then public benefits. If you if you imagine, like, a chart, it's, like, housing, family law, and then public benefits is probably over here.

Okay.

Any other questions? No rush. We have plenty of time. Nine minutes.

Yes. I have a question. Can you talk a little the the ask is for 100% of the San Marcos program cost. Could you talk a little bit about that and how those costs are tied to the program and how other communities are supporting the program as well?

Sure. So we have our two largest funders are the Texas Access to Justice Foundation and the Legal Services Corporation. And then we have, like, a a handful, I would say, maybe okay. No. More than a handful of smaller other grants, and those are a mix of state and federal and some municipal funding.

And so I would have to go back into our budget that we sent. I'm not sure where that 100% figure came from. I do know that the way that we typically build our budgets is we look at the attorneys who are doing the work in the geography or in and in the specific service areas that we're looking to fund. And so from there, we have our staff list, and we look at the amount of time that they typically dedicate to these types of cases. All of our cases in our case tracking system Sorry.

All of our attorneys in our case tracking system log their time, so we're able to run pretty detailed timekeeping reports. And from there, we make just cost projections on how much, what is the dollar amount, it takes to to fund this casework in this geography.

Thank you.

I have a question, although it's more for you and Sierra. Can we get a copy of the presentation? Sure. PowerPoint presentation that you gave tonight? There was a lot of facts in that. I appreciate how thorough it was.

Yeah. So if you'll just, yeah, if you'll just email it to me, then I'll send it out to the board all at once.

Okay. That sounds good.

Any other questions?

Alright. Well, Sarah, thank you so much for coming and presenting tonight. We really appreciate your presence.

Thank you. Thank you for your time.

Thank you. That is the end of our presentations tonight. We'll now go to our action items. First up, we will now hold discussion among board members about follow-up questions to be sent to an app to applicant agencies and provide direction to staff. Who has questions that they would like to add to the list? And, Carol, do you wanna specify what questions you're looking for? Or

This was a request, excuse me, requested last week, and I'm sorry. I didn't check review to see exactly which, agency it was for. Y'all may remember. I've made it broad on the agenda so that if anyone has follow-up questions that they wanna send to agencies, you can do that at this opportunity just because we had it on the agenda. And I'm sorry. Can somebody queue me? Oh, wait. It's probably in the minutes. Hang on. Wait for it.

Ethan Gravis requested that the agenda for the next meeting include an action item for the board to discuss follow-up questions they would like to send to agencies, specifically SHIVE and Hill Country MHDB, and to provide direction to staff on a final list of questions to send. I have not received any questions yet, but it was it was Shive and MHDD Hill Country MHDD that the conversation was centered around.

This is after. But

Yeah.

Maybe so. That makes sense. Lost here. Oh, yeah. That makes sense. Any questions that y'all would like to follow-up in particular with those agencies or any others? This is kind of your, like, only opportunity.

I would say to be fair, because a lot of the agencies did have presentations, if you could ask all the agencies that did PowerPoint presentations to send those in, I think that would be the most fair way of getting them. Because I was thinking, well, I kinda want all of them.

That sounds good. And then, what I'll probably do is post them on the website instead of sending them to you individually, but I, I'll let you know when

it's all up.

Yeah. And particularly those that were having technical difficulties with some of their presentations. I know The videos. The videos. There was not just tonight, but on a previous meeting, there was a video that we didn't get the sound of.

Yep.

Anything else like that from the board? Okay. I don't think we really have to do a vote on that. Like, I was picturing that we were gonna have a list of questions, and I was gonna like, y'all would agree that, yes, we wanna ask those, and we'd send it out. But I can just ask all the agencies to send their Okay. Presentations.

Alright. If there's nothing more, then I will move on to discussion items. We will now hold discussion among board members on programs, agencies, and applications for the purpose of clarification, comparison, evaluation, and assessment. The discussion is public. However, it's only among board members. This time is meant to be a free flow conversation, but please make your comments succinct to allow time for all board members to share if they wish. Discussion will be facilitated by our very own Carol Griffin.

Y'all are funny. Okay. So it was kind of a long day. I did not come up with specific questions. I'm sorry about that. That's okay. Yeah. This is lot of work. Yeah. Thank you. This is, you know, kind of that last meeting, before you are creating your recommendations. I can clarify that the way I work the agenda, you are able to discuss any of the presentations in any of the agencies. It doesn't have to be only tonight. So if there's just something that y'all wanted to discuss as a board, this is your opportunity.

I guess I have a clarification question. Are we gonna get a break in between the big discussion and when we compile our scores?

So I can I was gonna talk about that in future agenda, but okay?

Yeah. We can just talk about timing and that. No. Let's see what's

Okay. So discussion. Anyone wanting to bring up some items for consideration or just, you know, talk, by the board related to what all you have seen over this period?

Once again, it looks like it's gonna be a hard

Now this one's easy.

Hard I mean, there's just so many that

because we

I wanna fully fund, though, and I still we still have there's a difference between, what is it, $1,200,000 requested and $7.50. So Yeah.

There's always more.

Yeah. It'll be easier than last year,

but not by a lot. Well,

it's gonna be a lot easier because based on when are we having the discussion follow-up?

So it'll start on the fifteenth. So I could go ahead

and You know what? Yeah.

Let's remind

y'all of the timeline. Let's just open up, item number eight, future agenda items as well.

Okay. We can Yeah. We'll be informal. So you have your calendar. I will send it to you again just so you have it, but I need your scores and proposed funding for all the agencies on the eighth. So you have a week to put it together, starting now till Wednesday, the eighth. And then I'll try to just all I do is compile it. I try to do, like, sort of low, medium, high if I have to to sort of even out the scores. But you'll get all the information that I get, and I'll try to get it to you by the tenth. And then at that point, your next meeting will be on the fifteenth.

And the way I'll post the agenda is you'll discuss at that meeting. And if you make a decision, that's fine. It'll be you can make a decision at that meeting, or you can have another one or another one.

I was gonna say since our next meeting is the fifteenth, And I know you need time to compile those scores. Do those scores need to be posted in the agenda, like, a week when you post the agenda? They'll come to

you in your board packet. And so I we're a little bit loose. Like, I usually post the board packet at the same time as the agenda, and it's preferred that way because that way the public can see it. So I'm asking for your scores to be into me by the eighth. I have to post the agenda super early these days. Yes. So the board packet may follow it on the tenth. Mhmm. But we would have it out for the, public to see at that point. Mhmm. Yeah. Does that answer your question?

Yes. I was just thinking trying to get board members the maximum amount of time possible. Yeah. I can

do no later than the eighth. Yeah. Y'all y'all really have to get it in.

That's what meeting on the fifteenth is for to discuss on. To discuss. Yeah. So there's no meeting on the eighth. Yeah. And the fifteenth is gonna discuss it.

I Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Correct.

Yeah. Okay. Once we are, you know, kind of at that meeting on the fifteenth, we'll have the opportunity to, like, our our funding proposals, like, after. That's just for our initial. Okay? I don't wanna, like, be locked in at whatever I say on the eighth. And then

Absolutely not. You can change anything, and then y'all will decide. You, as a board, will decide how you wanna go about it. Often, what boards end up doing is kinda going down the list Yeah. And talking about every single agency, and anybody can change their amounts or their scores or whatever you wanna do. And then we come up with that final recommendation at some point for city council. But it it doesn't have to be at that meeting. They we have space on the calendar for two additional meetings if you want.

Okay. That's

kinda how

it runs. Yeah. For those of you who are new board members, last year, we first agreed on, you know, a certain number of the highest scoring groups that we just wanted to go ahead and fully fund, and we kinda voted on that one group that this is what we're gonna fully fund with their request. And then for the remaining applications, we went down line item by line item and just discussed each application, how we felt about it, and kind of negotiated as a board, what percentage, you know, know, of their request or how much we would give them. And it worked out pretty well.

It was a lot of discussion because we had a lot of applications. Yeah. Yeah. Was. And Yes. We had less money last year. Money more. So there was, like, a lot of negotiation, and there wasn't a large group that got fully funded. But I would was only sorry. Was gonna say, I think it was only three that got fully funded. Yeah. So you're right. It wasn't a big. Yeah. So I would anticipate there being discussion on each of the applicants, over the next two meetings because we have We

have two like, we have the fifteenth and the twenty second scheduled. And then if you want to go to November 6, which is a Thursday, that could also

be happening. Yeah. We'll try to get the discussion through two meetings. I don't wanna have any meetings going over, say, two or two and a half hours. Mhmm. Mhmm. So if, if we need that third meeting, it's there for us. If we don't, then we don't have that meeting.

I do have a couple of announcements too just real quick while we're on the future agenda kind of thing. I finally did receive a list from, other city departments of so I sent them a list of the applicants for HSAB, and I said, have any of these agencies received funding through your streams? And so I'm gonna be sending you tomorrow a quick list of the ones that have funding from somebody else. So, for example, the Arts Commission gives out grants. Rough draft has received a couple of grants for the next year from the Arts Commission.

So couple of things like that. Southside has received, or or received last year in '24, $800,000 for their rapid rehousing program. I have a copy of their agreement. What I'm still trying to obtain is an update on what they've done. I I've been trying for a couple months. A little weird. But so I don't have an update for you, but I can send you that agreement just so you can see how it sort of ties in to what they're asking for from the board. What else?

That was about it. So those were all my announcements. Mhmm.

And I'll get that information to you tomorrow so you'll have it as part of your decision making.

Okay. So

on the present closures today, I just

had a couple of things before I forget. We'll probably circle back and discuss it again on fifteenth. But with anybody who can did you did you guys have a chance to look at their financials? Their so last year, they lost 350,000 or something overall. And then this year, they're projected to lose 290,000. So I can't remember let me see.

Sorry. Really quick. Just I don't have the financials pulled up in front of me. Is that lost 300,000 in funding or, like, they ran a a deficit? Deficit?

Yeah. They're operating in deficit.

Okay. Alright.

Where where I was going with that is I have concerns with their viability in

the future. Because if you keep losing money

they're requesting only 35,000, but last year, we gave them 30,000. And it's like, are we gonna keep tossing money into an organization that's gonna that's not gonna be viable in the future?

They're in the same boat as a lot of different organizations because they're they get almost 50% of their funding from the federal government. So we can anticipate that that's gonna that's gonna continue to decrease.

But last year, they're they didn't

And they've already if they're already in a deficit before these decreases, it's just gonna make it, it's just gonna make it worse.

So that my initial thing is we need to look at their funding from us because if we keep Tusk money and they're not gonna be there, we're wasting taxpayer money for some artists. That's And the other one the only other one that I had was the last one, what's it called?

Texas legal. Oh, Texas legal. Okay. Yeah. Correct. And this this was

the sticking point when we weren't here last time is the amount of money that some of these agencies were requesting, requesting 200,000 and a minimum of 100,000. Their presentation didn't blow me away. And a $100,000 for a 140 cases.

Oh. That's a little It's actually it would be a 100,000 for 75.

75 cases?

Yeah. Because they're initially asking for two hundred day, which was help a 140 cases, but half of that is half of that. Mhmm. Wow. So, so, again, those are just things to

consider when you're allocating your funds is, again, the board were supposed to go bang for our buck for the buck for the CS and markets and, yeah, look at some of these packets for sure.

And to to follow-up on Sherry's point with that, I think kind of in asking the question of, like, which of their services was the most, like, frequent, and they did say housing, I was kind of wondering where we could, I guess, be the most strategic with the funding in that way to kind of you know? I mean, how's legal the legal side of housing is no joke. I understand that. But alleviating some of the needs for legal services for housing through some of maybe the other organizations we can fund at, you know, a much smaller amount than a $100,000. Of course, they still do, like, amazing things in, like, the family law area and public benefits and stuff like that, but I I agree that the ask is big and that perhaps funding another or several other agencies that also handle housing concerns could maybe stretch a little bit further as well.

Speaking of housing, thanks for reminding me. The San Marcos Housing Authority, they're requesting 20,000, and they have a ton of

different places that they service. So that's kinda that they can stretch $20,000 with what

they're doing.

Mhmm. Cool. San Marcos housing and forty? Mhmm.

Yeah. They they have, what, like, seven or eight different Yeah. Seven or eight different Yeah.

But they get a lot of other funding also.

Say that again, Linda.

They get other funding also. They write grants at other places.

Right. Yeah.

I would just say and I work for a nonprofit, and we support other local nonprofits. Many, many organizations are running in a deficit. And the only other thing I would add to that is just looking at the longevity of an organization or a program. So Any Baby Can's been around for, you know, thirty five years or whatever it is. So I think that's just, like that's another tell for me to look at, you know, like, the health of an organization or the anticipated longevity.

And one of the big sticking points because I was looking

at the financials, but we're or while we're discussing it, you're running at a deficit both years last year and this year, but then you increase your personal cost by 500,000, which makes no sense. If you're running at a deficit, why are you increasing your personal? They did get more funding, 500,000 from some other sources, which, you know, we're not supposed to discuss other sources, I guess. But I'm like, you took in 500,000 from somewhere else and immediately put it to personnel, but you're operating at deficit. So that's, I mean, that's to me, that's not an organization that's being properly formed, honestly.

I would also say, again, just based on my experience and the current landscape in general, is that many, many organizations are having a hard time paying getting money for salaries. So many other grants will are for direct services or, you know, the things that that the organization needs for their clients, but not a lot of these groups are seeing money for salary. And so especially, you know, again, with the cuts and everything else, but it's it's a typical problem. And so I that's why I appreciate, Carol, you looking into the organizations that are getting funding in other places? Because sometimes what we see and, you know, you're gonna talk about confusing is that there are organizations that get funded, like, a ton of money for staff, and then they seem to not have, like, basic needs that you would think that they would have for their clients.

And so it's like, how do we offset all of these different costs,

you know, for these organizations?

And the housing authority, you know, maybe they're asking for 20 because that's what they need. They have you know, to Linda's point, you know, they have funding sources specifically for these other things directly to pay, you know, for these other services, which a lot there are some organizations that are able to to do that somehow, and then there are a lot of organizations that are struggling to pay their salaries. And so you can't have successful programming if you don't have capable staff, you know, to run them. And

just a quick clarification, the list that I'm gonna send you tomorrow is just other city funding. And the way I looked at it is, for example, American Rescue Plan. The city had a lot of options of how to spend that, and they've chosen some specific things that are the same agencies as what you're looking at. And so I look at it as all of these funds were at the city's discretion, And so, it's specifically from a city focus, just so you know.

I think, following up on the just the conversation about, like, you know, like, deficits and stuff like that, What the deficit on its face value isn't necessarily what my concern is. I know you said that that specific organization has been around for thirty five years. To me, that tells me that they may have a history with, you know, servicing debts or servicing their deficits or, like, figuring out a way to make that work year after year. You know, again, with them adding $500,000 worth of personnel costs, Who's to say how many of those were, you know, like, grant writers for long term grants or something like that of that nature? And so I think that's another thing to Alisa's credit where the length of an agency to me, even if they do have a deficit, tells me that they must have some skill in servicing that and and still making sure that the agency can deliver on its core services and things.

Yeah. They might also just have an endowment where they have a deficit. They're running a deficit every year, but they're just eating into their endowment to cover the deficit.

I I can only go based on what they said.

Yeah. And they didn't

And I'm not gonna Mhmm. Make assumptions of where else they're gonna be. If you have

because you're right. It doesn't make sense that Yeah. They would be carrying a balance that big.

I mean, I've I might look at last two years with their funding because we haven't been, like, generation years with funding because they don't ask for a lot. Mhmm. But at the same time, I'm like, this is not making sense for us, for for the city of.

Well

Some of them, it it's a lot easier, but then depend on, private donors that have been part of the organization or families have been helped. And they give private donations to keep them going, but it's not enough to always cover salary and other needs that come up. So that's where the agencies have to get creative and do fundraisers or apply for whatever grant they can find. Now there are a lot of students from universities that are learning to write grants that will write grants for the agencies. And so once they pop up and they start writing good grants, the grants that are on retainment or whatever, they start getting let go.

Then all of a sudden, things don't work, and they get in a deficit. They're threatened to be closed down, and so they have to get them back hustled again, start getting money everywhere they can to get back where they used to be.

Alright. I'm gonna let us sit on that for a while because it's at our date.

That that'll be discussion for the fifteenth. Yeah. But but, basically, this specific item is to discuss the Yes. The organization's metric. That's one of the okay.

No. You bring up a good point. Swap, dude. No. I'm I'm

not sure. Nothing personal.

Were there any other questions about grading or what is expected of y'all by next Wednesday? Okay. In that case, we will move on to our question and answer session with press and public. We now have an opportunity for the press and public to ask questions related to items on the agenda. Is there anyone present who has, questions?

So here in the room, we do have a student who's been observing the meeting. And I'm sorry. Tell me your name again. Todd. Todd. And, Todd, do you have any questions? And it would have to be specifically about this agenda. If you have general questions, I'll answer them after the meeting.

Yeah. Not about the agenda. Okay.

Alright. Then we have no one.

K. Welcome, Todd. We're glad you could be here. Alright. Do I hear a motion to adjourn? Motion. K.

Do I hear a second?

Second.

K. Okay. Roll call.

Here we go. Yancey? Yes. Elias?

Here.

Hello? We're we are doing a roll call to a German meeting. Sorry. I know it's kinda weird. Oh, you can't hear?

Yeah. I couldn't hear. But Okay. So we're doing

we're doing a roll call to adjourn the meeting because we're supposed to do roll call for everything. So are you in favor of adjourning?

Yes.

Ethan? Yes. And Sherif? Yes. And Lucy? Yes. Alyssa?

Yes. Alright. Motion passes. It is 08:10PM. We are adjourned.