Community Services - Regular Meeting

Twenty twenty five health council meeting. Let's see. I hit record. Everyone online, can you hear us okay? Can someone go off mute and say yes or give me a thumbs up? Thumbs up. Alright. I'll take it. Thanks, everyone. So I'm gonna turn it over to Lisa.

Shall we do the call to order? Lisa? Here. Jill Dehaven?

Here.

Leah Blackwell? I see your name. Can you

I'm here.

Hi, Leah. Hi. Tyler? Is Tyler here?

I'm here. Hi,

Tyler. Thank you. Leticia, are you here? I'm here. Alright. Thanks. Giselle? I see her notes.

I don't think she is here. I think that's Okay. An automatic pop up. Okay. And Heather? Here. Hi,

Heather. What a cute picture. I love it. Celeste? Here. Leslie? She's not here yet, but I think she will be here. And Marna is sick. I'm sorry. Marna? Chris Pearson. I don't see you yet, Chris. Barbara, thank you for showing up. And Joyce, are you with us there? I see your name.

Yes. I'm here.

Thank you, Joyce. Okay. So we do have a forum. You have how many? Nine?

I mean, nine.

Nine. Okay. And Leslie might show up as well and possibly Chris. Great. Okay. So I'd like to call to order. I think the first thing that we wanna do is see if there is any public comment right now for the health council not related to items on the agenda.

Including questions from the audience, I think.

Well, just public comment. Anything that's not on the agenda. I'm assuming Yeah. You might wanna comment on the agenda. Okay.

So what we'd like to do is approve the minutes from the June 5 meeting. Does anyone have any questions or concerns related to the June 5 meeting minutes? Okay. So the meeting minutes are approved. The next thing we'd like to do is first off introduce members of the health council, and then we'd also like to have the other folks on the line and in the room introduce themselves so we know who's joining us today.

I'll start. My name is Lisa Hampton. I'm retired from Llano. I'm a retired real estate broker, and I'm chair of the health council.

Sheila Haven, vice chair, I guess, is the official title. I'm a commercial real estate broker for Colliers International, and I oversee their Northern New Mexico projects.

I'm Celeste Drapfen. I'm a member of the health council. I am a retired emergency physician. Native here? Oh, I am a native of Los Alamosia. Also.

That's something to brag

about these days. Hormone. Barbara Phelps. I moved here in 2006. Retired school teacher. My husband has a company in town.

Thank you. Jessica is also a member.

Oh, is there yeah. We can do his stuff too. Hi. I'm Jessica Strong. I am the social services manager and staff liaison to the health council.

Jeremy Martinez. I am the health care specialist for Los Alamos County Social Service.

Thank you. Do we have any other staff online? I

don't think staff. No.

Okay. Other, health council members. Heather?

Hi. I'm Heather Muck. I'm a stay at home mom who homeschools three girls, and my husband has a local handyman company that we run together in town.

Thank you. Joyce?

Hi, I'm Joyce Richins, and I am a registered nurse. Been at Los Alamos Medical Center for thirty plus years right now. I'm mostly in labor and delivery, but most recently I'm doing infection prevention and employee health and I've grown up in Los Alamos. I'm a member

of the health council. Thanks.

Thank you, Joyce. Leticia, thank you for joining us.

Can you hear me? Okay. I'm Leticia Martinez. I'm a nurse practitioner and an RN. I work at the Las Clinica Del Norte, clinic here in Most, and I also do home health nursing still. And I live in White Rock, and I'm a member of the health council.

Thank you, Leticia. So who else do we have

the line?

Tyler? Tyler.

Hey. I am Tyler Jones from White Rock. I'm a nurse for Los Alamos visiting nurses, and I work for.

Thank you, Tyler. Leah?

Hi. I'm Leah Blackwell, and I'm a member of the health council, and I'm a chaplain with visiting nurse service and a grief group facilitator.

Thank you, Leah. And we also have Leslie Wallstrom in the room. I can see you soon, Leslie. Hi,

I'm Leslie Wallstrom and I'm a new

member of the Health Council.

Thank you. So we will go around the room. I don't think you guys are on video, but if you could just introduce yourselves, I'd appreciate it.

Crystal Archuleta, health promotion specialist for the Northeast

Region. Welcome.

Hello, everyone. Jeremy Espinosa. I'm also with the North New Mexico Department of Health Northeast region health promotion team. I'm the community epidemiologist. So everybody

So in person. In person. Yeah. It's great.

I know.

Thank you

for coming up.

I gonna say, I grew up in Espanola. So I'm from Espanola. So I'm familiar.

Great. We're looking at continuing to work with

Yeah. In Santa Fe, but

still fun to work with. Miguel

Jimenez, senior project manager with the county capital projects division.

I'm speaking with. I work for the National Park Service, but I'm not here in any sense in that capacity. I'm just here as a community member.

Thank you. We love community members.

I'm Sheila Brandt. I was actually born and raised in White Rock, and I just wanted to learn what else. I'm just trying to see what

Thank you. And we have two openings.

Has already received a link to the application.

Nice. Thank you, Sheila. Let's go online. If you folks could please introduce yourselves. I'm gonna start with Liz Martina.

Hi, everyone. I'm so glad to see everyone here. This is an amazing group. So I'm with the Los Alamos Community Foundation, and we're we're kind of spearheading the, launch program, which is Los Alamos Uniting for Community Health, and we're really excited to be participating with you.

And Liz will be our speaker next month. Maura, hi. Thanks for joining us.

Good morning. Happy to be here. Very impressed with the work that the council has been doing, and I have the Los Alamos reporter news page. And it's nice to see everybody. Thank you.

Thank you for publishing Jill's article. Stephanie Gonzales. Hello, everyone. I'm with New Mexico Aging and Disability Resource Center here in Santa Fe. I'm the Northeast region SHIP. We help folks navigate Medicare and Medicaid SHIP coordinators. Thank you. And we had asked that you would be our speaker too.

Yeah. Just confirmed.

Next month as well as Liz. You and Liz are gonna Thank you. That's great. Awesome. So we have Sebastian Salazar. He I invited him. He can tell you what he's up to.

Hello, folks. My name is Sebastian Salazar. I'm a researcher and community liaison for University of New Mexico. I came here to New Mexico from the East Coast, and I'm just happy to be here, learn, and try to communicate with everyone. Thank you so much.

And you're working on a research you reached out to the health councils?

Yeah. Exactly. So my research mostly is involving, you know, it's, well, it's in a collaboration with many individuals, but mostly, you know, try to get, rural health clinics and, many other things regarding, mental health and disabilities and, geriatric populations.

Thank you. Well, the health clinics are high on the list today, so thank you for joining us.

Thank you.

We have Valentina White. Good afternoon, Valentina. Yeah.

Hi, Valentina. Good afternoon, everyone. Valentina White with Northeast Region Health Promotion Program, which is under DOH, and I support all health councils in the Northeast Region. Happy to be here.

Thank you for joining us. I think we have one more.

Should I introduce myself? Yeah. Just Hi. I'm Eli Argo. I'm the director of Los Alamos Team Center. I work with

a wide Thank you for joining us.

I'd like to be a part of these in the future.

Awesome. Excellent. Thank you. Okay. Well, welcome, everybody. This is great. I don't really have much in the way of the chair report. I only have two items, and one is that I had sent to the health council a link to our legislator, the county's calendar. So and it's open to the public. If you don't have that link, please feel free to email me.

But, it's on the county website. And, basically, it's a calendar of all the boards and commissions and county council meetings for the entire year. So not only can you get information about when the meetings are and where, you can also get the agenda, see the agenda packet with any presentations. And after the meetings, you can see the meeting minutes as well as recorded a recording of the meetings. So please use that resource.

It's it's great. And, also, I just am gonna pass this around, and then we'll move on to the staff report. This is, just a table which I emailed the council to about a list of articles we're gonna publish for the rest of the month. And as I mentioned, Maura's been great in publishing our articles. I wanna thank Celeste and Joyce and Tyler and whatever person. Never mind. Jill, of course, for the most recent one. And then there was another article. And I think Giselle

Beverly Beverly Neil Clinton.

Published one for us about Medicaid personal Medicare, Social Security. Go ahead.

I would like to change my topic.

Okay. I'm gonna just pass to the fall. Yeah. So let me just pass this around and write what you want as your topic. And then if you're interested in doing them, like, starting next year, you can also make a note there. So that's really all I have for the chair right there. Thank you.

Awesome. Hello, everyone. I will give the staff report. I have a a couple of items to share. First, just as the health council, I wanted to, I'm not sure if everyone is aware, but one of our former health council members, died in a as a result of a car accident in June.

Jen Bartram was a great member of the health council. She turned off in December. That is, like, the most minor of all the stuff that she was involved with around town. She had done a great many things. She has a beautiful obituary out there.

But it it came as a shock to a lot of people. She knew a lot of folks in town. One of her last things as a health council member was spearheading the suicide prevention initiative that is now under launch present a as a collaborative effort between health council, social services, the community foundation, and then community members to learn about suicide prevention. So I just wanted to if other health council members weren't aware because some of you have started since she turned off. But there is a celebration of life happening on Friday, August 29 at 7PM at Fuller Lodge.

If you want more information, I can send that along to you. The interesting thing is that today is our first train the trainer for the suicide prevention initiative. Liz, Martino, and I were there to welcome folks this morning, and Lisa is taking the training. So we will have a health council member as a trained trainer. Our goal is to have lots of these trainings happening throughout the year.

There will be a lot more information to come. And if you're interested in just attending the training or becoming a trainer, I have all kinds of information about that. We've set a goal of what would it look like to have a thousand people trained in suicide prevention. And so let me know if you're interested, and I'm happy to talk about it all the time. I wanted to give quick shout outs. In addition to our article, Jill was also interviewed in BoomTown related to real estate needs in town. Tyler was on the news. I wanna say KOB. Is Tyler still there? Yeah. He's still there. Maybe KOB, Backpack Initiative?

It was yeah. KOB, we're trying to do, like, an event to get kids off their phones. It was called a back to school rush. So we just, you know, giving away, like, music, dance, those types of things. Excellent.

Thank you for that work. And Jeremy was also on the news related to kinship and grandparents raising Kincare, talking about some of the changes at the state level. So kudos to staff and health council members for not just this work, but out in the community getting highlights for the other work we all do. When I sent out the message to send me events because I know we for for Barbara and Leslie, we do normally do member roundtable. But since we have a big presentation that has to have a vote, we just said send me your information.

But the only one I received for upcoming events was from Joyce. The medical center, LAMC, is having its annual flu clinic. It will be Saturday, September 27. A little more than a month away, but Joyce, I'm going to make the assumption there will be flyers and more information that will be shared as we get closer. Oh, I saw you come off mute. Go ahead.

No. Just wanted to say yes. There will be. When I get them, will send them to you. Just wanted to put it out there. Thanks.

Great. And we last year oh, for Jeremy. Sorry. I threw it past you. It's okay. Oh, we'll come back. Last year, we stuffed swag bags and that had health council related information that everyone who came through the health clinic or the flu clinic received health council information. So we counted it as one of our outreach events. It was a way for us to very easily get information to people. So Joyce, we can talk afterwards, but let me know if we want to coordinate that again this year. We used our office as a staging ground for that, and it worked really well.

Yep. So and Joyce and I talked because we had to flip flop the schedule a little bit for the articles and said Joyce's article is not gonna come out until October. We could certainly do a press release for the flu clinic. I'm sure Moore would be happy to

publish that for us. And

then while I'm thinking of it, if there are other DOH health clinics or vaccine clinics happening, I'm happy to get that information and get it out to everyone as well as that comes through. Other upcoming events, I don't have dates for them yet, but Jeremy has been, we've been talking in the office about doing another recovery related event in September for recovery month. We did an event last year at SALA pulling people together, that was very successful. So stay tuned for details on that. And then October is mental health awareness month.

And, Liz Martineau, there will likely be some mental health related events happening under launch or or that the health council may wanna partner on. Just kind of a preview. Stay tuned for some other things coming down the pike

on that.

Quick notes about staffing. As you all know, Jeremy moved from our part time mobile homeless outreach position into the full time health care specialist position back in February. And I am super thrilled to announce we just got her position filled, the part time position. It's taken a little bit of time to get through HR. But Lori Padilla, the former health council chair, will be our casual employee helping with the mobile outreach piece, meeting people who are homeless out in the community or at risk of homelessness, getting people connected to services.

She has a background as a clinical therapist. And so we felt she could really engage with people on that hesitation to come into social services that we deal with quite a bit, hopefully shortening the time of connecting and getting them in to now see Jeremy at the front. So that is very exciting. We will have a position open hopefully in the next week. That was a direct recommendation from the health council in our comprehensive health plan, in our action items for an additional staff person.

The title, because it has to kind of fall under county established titles, is program specialist. It is intended to be our training and outreach and education person. Person. As we found in the comprehensive health plan, a lot of people want more education, more information about resources. During the budget hearings and budget presentation in April, made the case successfully to counsel that, for example, when one of our existing budget staff members like Denny goes and does a training, then that six hours she's not meeting with clients.

So we needed a specific position. Counsel agreed based on your recommendations. And so hopefully that position so it got funded. So then we'll get that position presentation posted and then have a person who will do all of our opioid overdose trainings, be trained in the suicide prevention outreach, cover our outreach hours at the farmers market, at the libraries, at other organizations, tables at Science Fest and and Earth Day and all the events that we wanna do. So it'll be great to have a dedicated person in that role.

So more to come on that. And then the last Post it note that I have is just a quick summary of what I have been up to. I know we don't typically meet in July, so the last time we met was the June. And just this is not all I've done. It's not just three bullets just so everyone knows. If you've tried to get in touch with me to plan a copy, you know this because I'm never available. But in June, I was really lucky to go to a statewide conference. The conference itself was really great. It was out in Portales, which is like a less exciting place, but the content was good. But it was a statewide conference with representatives from all the counties.

Councilor Reidy, Councilor Reiger were there. Several other county departments were there. And in the group that I was placed with related to health and human services, we ended up talking a lot about the support for the interstate compacts, which again is one of the recommendations that we put in the action plan. And so it's just kind of another building block that now legislators will know that the state conference of counties has recommended they approve the interstate compacts in the legislative session.

Possibly a specialist.

It it could be. I don't know if it's gonna if that's gonna be a part of the special session. But

They Nebraska's trying to get it to be part of

I don't know that the that this will will sway them any more than other things, but it felt really good to be part of, like, you know, a really action oriented group. So that was pretty exciting. Also at the June, there was a 50 or 60 person convening here in council chambers with national leaders from the National Council of Courts and organized by the first judicial district. That district of courts includes Los Alamos County, Santa Fe County, and Rio Arriva County. And the two days focused on creating, this is such a mouthful, sequential intercept mapping.

So normally we just abbreviate that to SIM.

No. Sequential intercept model mapping. Anyway they

use two m's. But what it looks at is how people with mental health and substance use and or substance use disorders interface with the criminal justice system. And so the I is the intercepts. Right? So, ideally everyone stays at intercept zero.

That we have prevention in place, prevention programs, people have great family and workforce supports, and everybody gets all the mental health and substance use supports that they need. That's the ideal. Right? We know that people may intercept with different court systems from less severe to more severe. May interface with a crisis response team, and Tyler gets called out in Santa Fe.

Or there may be diversion programs. Like if you think about if you've heard of drug treatment courts or mental health courts, there may be places where a court intervenes to suggest treatment instead of jail. They may end up in jail, in which case we want to make sure if they are receiving mental health medications or substance use medication, somebody like Leticia would be involved in that intercept to make sure they get the medications while they're being detained. And then when they exit the criminal justice system, if you imagine it as looping back, then we want to make sure they have those post detention supports so in theory they don't end up back in the criminal justice system again. Okay.

So that's the most cliff notes version. So we went through this process over two days. Representatives from social services, from police, from the detention center, from the courts, from community organizations, from the district court level, these national trainers. And then they package it up and they give us a report on kind of like a road map on how we could proceed with stuff that, because we are all very intelligent, some of we already have in the comprehensive health plan. They recommended having a crisis response team.

And we were like, yes. We know. We already are aware. They suggested having more peers, more people with lived experience involved. And literally at the time of this meeting, we had an RFP open to have peer support for people being released from jail. And we were like, yes, we're already on it. So but it was great to have everybody in the room together. And and so that was June. Then in July, we didn't have a meeting. I did get a vacation for everybody worried about my work life balance.

Went to nice tropical Houston. It was great. It was very, very sweaty. I cannot believe 7,000,000 people live in Houston. That's wild. Anyways, total side note, just because I keep thinking about this. We looked up the population. The population of the city itself of Houston, this is a total editorial comment, is 2,300,000, just the city, not the whole metro. And the population of the entire state of New Mexico is 2,100,000, and it just totally blew my mind. I've lived in Pittsburgh. I've lived in cities. But I was like, there are more people on the 800 highways than, like, our whole state. It just was a wild reframing. All those people just sweating all day. Okay.

So then when I came back, there have been a number of meetings at the state level that I've been really lucky to be involved with. The the judicial districts are gonna come back into play, and the sequential intercept is gonna come back into play because in the legislative session, they passed what is called senate bill three or s b three. You will hear about this a ton over the coming months and years. They have the state has allocated currently a $100,000,000, and we've all been promised more money to come, which we're all gonna believe is true because I want it to be true. But they've currently put aside a $100,000,000 to support regional development of behavioral health supports using the 13 district courts across the state.

So regionally, we will be with Santa Fe, with Rio Reba County, Los Alamos County, and then that also includes city of Espanola, the city of Santa Fe, Santa Clara Pueblo, San Adolfonso Pueblo. So we're gonna be working as a group. There aren't a lot of details. This one, I can't give you more details on yet. Like, does every district get a 100,000,000 divided by 13?

How will we all work together? How will we don't know yet. But we're all supposed to work together as a region to identify regional gaps using that SIM, using our comprehensive health plans, kind of this idea that we have long discussed here at the health council level that we can address things county by county. We have 10,000 people that live elsewhere and drive up here but may want to get their drug and alcohol services someplace else. We have not a lot of land for a large mental health clinic.

A lot of the focus is on all of the social determinants of health. At the one meeting I was at, we talked very openly. We could build 100 mental health facilities. And if we don't have the people to staff them, it's not going to work. So we need to talk workforce development, which goes back to the legislative issues there. Right? But where are those workforce people going to live if we don't have affordable housing? Which you know? So everyone is aware it's all connected. So there have been a series of good presentations.

Much, much, much more to come on that. And then today was the kickoff for the first cohort of training the trainers for the suicide prevention. We have 11 people taking the training. I talked to Liz, and the trainer said there were six more that were waitlisted, and that doesn't even get through that list of people who are interested from the launch event in May. So I am super, super gratified by people wanting to take on a pretty heavy topic to make our community healthier. Okay. That was as quick as I could do that in, like, sixteen minutes. So

know that question.

Hit me up if you have questions. As I offer every time, I am happy to talk about any of this in more detail. I know we have four new members. Lisa and I have met the we've done the one on one presentation with both Marna and Leslie. We have it scheduled with Barbara for next week and then working on scheduling it with Chris to get everyone up to speed. And so, yeah, just feel free to send me an email or a text.

So I put on the article thing that I volunteered to do another article at the very end of the year that actually says here's what we accomplished.

Right.

Because I think it's important for all the community to understand the heavy lift Thank you. Social services with a little bit of help from health, the health council accomplishes, I think as most citizens in this community, and I said this in the article, we don't know. This is an incredible moment that happens up here in this county for the most part. So I'd be happy to do that even if it's a January

That's great. And we can also do more than one article a month. We're not limited to that. So, Giselle, we're hoping that you'll let me publish your article at the end of this month.

It's a yes. Okay.

I'm just gonna volunteer. But what a great segue because what came up when we met with Leslie yesterday was getting copies of the comprehensive health plans Action. Action plan. I did not print the whole 45 page document for everybody. I will, if if you ask nicely. Yes.

You're

right. I just printed the action plan because Lisa and I had suggested Jill dovetailing really nicely. Okay. Yeah. No. Okay. Thanks. Thank you. You read my mind before I knew it. At the December meeting, we go through the action plan kind of when you're in, where are we? And so then to have an article follow

that would be fantastic. I just

think it's helpful. I've heard a lot of positive comments from the article, and I'm not that great of a writer. So I take that as a big step forward that people really are interested.

Are. Let me people need help, and they don't know where to go. Right? That's that's why we're here.

So action plan. The recommendations that we're implementing now will also inform our work plan at the end of the for for 2020 since. So So And I will be in Portugal, so you guys are gonna have to on.

Maybe we could all have a health company in Portugal. I'm just saying.

It's red in Portugal. I can check on more. Okay. Well, I'm gonna stand up for this just because I need a little stretch. If all you guys members of

the public, I'll meet with you too. If you wanna talk about health council and social services, you don't have to be a member of the health council. I'll meet with everyone. So We do have an all

your education for new. But

I'm always

It's great.

I'll talk to everybody.

So the next item on the agenda is near and dear to my heart. What we're gonna do, we've had a working group that we established in January, related to a community health action center and trying to identify what the requirements of this would be. So, the team has met. I'm gonna tell you all about that. I thought when I retired, I was done with all these presentations, but oh, well, here we go.

You can do one public Yes. Public input meeting and now look

Oh, yeah. See what happens.

We sucked you in.

Years later. So, in the interest of time, I'd like to go through this presentation, just sort of uninterrupted. I think I'll be able to present it better. And then after the presentation, we will have public comment. We will have questions from the council members, and then we can if anyone wants to make a motion to approve it or whatever the motion is, and then we'll have some discussions. So there's plenty of time for questions, comments, and discussion. So let me just jump in.

So if we wanna make a public comment

You're not a public commenter

because you're I was gonna finish my question. The public is here. If they wanna comment for ten or fifteen minutes

They get a three minute comment.

Oh, okay. And does the council also have a three minute?

Not really, but we've sent this out to you guys, and you have reviewed it. So if there are further questions, we'll take questions. When those are done, we'll take

how many come in? That should be

three minutes per person, either online or or in person, and then we'll request a motion at that point.

Okay. I just didn't know what the rules were.

That's, yeah, that's three for everybody? Yeah.

And this is similar to what the county council does. Okay. Okay. Thank you, Leslie. Ready?

So I wanted to kinda start at the top, and I'm gonna go through this very quickly because everybody can read clearly just to go through the introduction, the background, and talk a little bit about process itself, and then the meat of this is gonna be the recommendations. Mortar, as I would say. So we and I wasn't aware of this until probably the last year. The county has a strategic leadership plan, and they meet every year. This meeting is open to the public to look at, revise, update, and, you know, add to their strategic leadership plan, strategic goals.

Where we fit in can you zoom that just a teeny look on that one? I can do

that. Yep.

And then scroll down. Thanks. We fit in under the quality of life. And, basically, they have a goal for health, well-being, and social services. And so that is to improve behavioral, mental, and physical health and social services and amenities to address identified issues and promote well-being. So we'll drill down from that. Next slide.

Real quick. Everyone online, you can see this and the slides are changing, right?

Just say yes, somebody.

Yes.

Okay. Great. Thank you. Got me once. Now I'm burned forever.

Yeah. Perfect. Okay. So, basically, we have social services. Jessica and her team, will show you a graphic of it, but their main mission is through coordination and outreach to help people that are experiencing hardships and navigate through complex procedures to receive aid.

And they also manage the contracts, which I'm gonna show you on the next page, and other duties as required. It's kind of kitchen sink. They will never turn anyone away. Us as the health council is also related, and we are the ones that provide we serve we serve as an advisory board on health related issues, not only to social services, but also to our county council. And we develop recommendations about needs, services, projects, and programs that can affect the community.

And we work on the comprehensive health plan. We've done surveys, and we help to coordinate resources and collaborate with other organizations, nonprofits, agencies throughout the region. So this is one of my favorite diagrams. It shows the various legs of social services. One thing that's really important to note is that they oversee can you scroll up a little bit?

34 contracts with such organizations as the Family Y. Thank you, Eli, for being here. LARSO, which manages the senior centers, which is really huge. We have two prevention specialists at the high school. There's a contract with LA Caros, Family Strengths Network, and a lot of other JJAB, which is a huge one for the youth.

And they also manage CYFD grants. These are all the organizations. I'm not gonna go into this in detail because just basically for time limits, but it's it's huge, basically, what they oversee. And here we are as the health council, and there's the little working group that we're talking about today. They also have special projects, which Jessica mentioned, and their main mission is right here with the case coordination.

We team closely with social services as a health council, and we do a lot of fun stuff. So I wanted to just give you a little background on how we got to this point with the working group, and I'm gonna keep that brief as well. I've seen so many studies, and I've tried to get my hands on as many things as I I could. But going as far back as I could tell 2012, there've been a lot of studies. A lot of, consultants have been brought in, and they produce reports related to health care needs and what the services are that are available.

The big accomplishment that we had last year was that we submitted our final version of the county comprehensive health plan, which Jessica mentioned as well, and the action plan with the recommendations, and that was approved by county council. So that's what we started working on in January. There's just a little bit more about the comprehensive health plan. I'm not gonna go into all that. Yes.

So this is important. Maybe you can Zoom on this. The community health action center that we're gonna talk about today would provide to implement many of the approved short and long term action items in a colocated and sufficiently sized facility. So that's the actual physical facility itself, the brick and mortar. For fiscal year twenty six and even there was some funding this year, I believe, $909,150,000.

Which actually Miguel and his team is gonna be managing the project management on this with, Russell on under public works. But here is where we are in the county capital improvement plan budget and let me zoom a little more. This is really fuzzy. But, basically, what it's we have had 900 and whatever to date, 50. Sorry. And then 2,000,000.

So sorry. I was trying to Zoom and then

I don't know if you're gonna be able to get to that. But, anyway, 2,000,000 for 2027 and then the remainder in 2028 and beyond. So there is enough money right now available to kind of put out an RFP for architectural studies and and other things, which Miguel can maybe tell us a little bit more about. Just go

We went over that subject.

Oh, okay. I tried you. This slide's flipping out.

Yeah. I see.

Sorry. Sorry.

There's a in the Integrated Capital Improvement Plan, ICIP, which the county has put out, and this is hard to read, but it is in your in the It's in the handout. Handout that I gave you. We've received 950,000 to date. We have budgeted another 2,000,000 for next fiscal year, and then in the following fiscal year, 8,000,000. So there is $10,000,000, which is earmarked as a third priority.

One of the things that they look at when they're doing these priorities, Jessica mentioned, the state and support from the state is there are certain projects that we have a potential to get matching funds from the state. So that's really optimistic, and this is one of the projects that would qualify for that. Next. So a little bit about our working group. Basically, in January, the health council and social services identified the need for a working group to define the requirements for a community health action center.

There was a lot of kinda history to that, which I won't go into, but one thing that happened in December was the county was looking at purchasing a property on Diamond Drive for $9,000,000, unimproved, except for the current social services office is currently residing there, but it would have not necessarily covered all of the things that we have come up with and we're recommending right now. The problem, in my opinion, with that was that the requirements had not been sufficiently defined. So what we did was we decided to establish this working group to identify what the requirements would be. So this is just a little background. We set the agenda.

The working group actually started meeting in March and met every two weeks in March, April, and May. And here are all the members who have volunteered their time. Jill is our vice chair, Tyler and Heather, and myself. From from the council, we could only have four members. We couldn't have a quorum because we had nine.

Lynn Havel from LA Cares, David Israelovitz from the Community Foundation. He's also a former county councilor, and George Marston, also with family y YMCA, and Heather Muck, of course, as our other health council member. We also had a lot of consulting from Sylvia Syeda as a single parent and member of the community. So we tried to get a multidisciplinary team so that we could get the best information to be able to assess this. So we first defined the vision, which was, you know, kind of mom and apple pie, a network that provides guidance, connections, and access to necessary services in order to prevent a healthier community.

And then we developed a charter of the working group, which is only to provide recommendations. I, on the past slide, showed what the definition of a working group was, and it's just to collect information, provide assessments, and come up with recommendations as to what a community health center should look like, who the stakeholders would be, and what services would be provided. I just had an extra space to put a picture in there about science fair. Okay. So these are the things that would include eliciting input, conducting an assessment, and we actually did a survey of former clients to see what they liked, what they felt was needed, and so forth.

Public input sessions, I think that's gonna be in elsewhere when they down the road when they come up with some renderings and, you know, options and alternatives. Do not include initially square footage or what vacant property, how many buildings. This would be the role, blueprints, designs, anything like that. We have given them some suggestions on square footage, which are not in the slide, but we've passed those along as well. And so once this is approved, if it's approved by the health council, then we would hand it over to social services and public works.

The first step was identifying stakeholders after we define the vision and the charter and so forth. And so the stakeholders are defined as any individual group or organization that has an interest in the project's outcome or is affected by it and therefore has reason to be involved. I mean, this is kind of project management one zero one. You gotta keep get your people involved upfront in the beginning. And then we spent several meetings identifying who these stakeholders would be and who would be impacted and who would be on the periphery.

Now the stakeholders are not exactly the same as the building occupants, potential occupants. Potential occupants would clearly be stakeholders, but not all stakeholders would move into the building. Yep. Next. So here's what we identified. I don't know if you can zoom on that, but the green is the major stakeholders. If you're online, can you make

sure you're muted? Thank you.

The yellow would be the minor stakeholders, and then the red would be other people who are impacted by or have influence on on their cell center. Next. So I wanna talk a little bit more about the process. And so the one step that we felt was very critical in this entire process of identifying and coming up with recommendations was to and see what was out there. What was out there at, you know, nationally, what was out there at a state level, what was in our backyard, what was in Los Alamos.

So we conducted a lot of site visits. We joined with the staff to do the social services in Woodworks and the health council and also LA Cares who is very interested in hopefully having a facility to move into for their food distribution. So we actually looked, and we did a tour of social services. Leticia, we missed you, but we did a tour of Las Cliniqueas del Norte and the Department of Health, the public health office. We also toured LA Cares, and then we did a visit down to McCarty Ministries.

They have a huge facility with many different functions. We also toured Casita de Camida, which is run by the food depot out of Santa Fe. It's a grocery store type concept. That is an idea we've been trained with for a long time. Also, Corey Styron, the the community services department manager toured a facility in Glendale, Arizona, which clearly Glendale has 10 times more people than we do in Los Alamos, but it gave him some really good ideas of, you know, what we should include, what shouldn't be included, how they operate, who their customers are, and so forth.

We also looked at a center in Scottsdale, very similar to the one in Glendale. We didn't go there, unfortunately. That would have

been next time. Yeah.

Next, please. Okay. And so Jessica has helped identify other facilities which we've looked at in other areas, other cities, and and there's one in California. Also, Jeremy had, some knowledge about a facility in Oh, Roswell. So they Roswell. And so we we've collected input on that as well. Next. So this was our visit to social services. Jordan was not in this picture, but we've got a picture of her as well. And so you can see their teeny tiny lobby.

Reception area. You can see a very willing and helpful staff. And there's their teeny tiny conference room. And then this is Jeremy in the conference room. I mean, Jordan in the conference room. I'm sorry. This is Denny's office, and then that's Jessica's office in storage area and conference room, etcetera. And then they have a teeny tiny pantry to store all their emergency supply, and then there's the coffee room. We also visited LA Caris. Right now, they store all of their supplies in a storage room, which is under the teen center in town on Central, and it's about 500 square feet.

And then that their distribution is at Bethlehem Evangelical Lutheran Church. They do it once a month. They do have access to a kitchen and a refrigerator and a freezer that's needs defrosting and can barely hold all the meat they distribute at one distribution. So that's LA Cares right now. And, Leticia, I mentioned we toured the public health clinic and Las Clinica del Norte.

They're also pretty pretty cramped from what we could tell, and they're sharing a lot of spaces. So Miguel and Russell and their folks are on that as well. Next. McCarty Ministries was great. They have a huge, like, meeting area, conference room that they use for public meetings, their health council meets there.

It's their old library, and it has a kitchen as well. They also have a room called their part of their family resource inner generational family resource center that has infant areas where the children can be and the parents are also in there as well, toddler area, and then they can do a lot of their intakes there. That's Tracy. Tiffany? Tiffany.

Why do I keep calling Tiffany Holcomb. Yes. And she's the director of McCurdy Ministries, and we're gonna try to get her to talk in October. This is some other areas for food storage. They have a really nice area where they can have representatives from the state come in and meet with clients, or they could have any kind of, like, a job fair or any other things that like, computer training or anything that they would wanna host there.

Lots of cabinets and storage space. They also have a clothing bank. We are not recommending that at this point because we have so many thrift shops in town that are reasonably priced, and this is very intense as far as sorting and taking donations and having people to staff this. We do have a washer and dryer, and there's our hero, Corey Styron. He is Hawaiian. This is a visit to Casita De Comida, and, basically, it's run by the food depot. They get food from the food depot. They also get food by donations. They do distributions twice.

Once, three times a month. Three times a month, but a

person can only go to one distribution. So at each distribution, they have a morning and an afternoon, and they have 200

people. 300. A 100 per day.

Okay. Yeah. Okay. So a 100 per each time they're open. This is the kind of the grocery store concept. They have a limit signs with a limit as to how much people could take. They have freezers, and they have the open refrigeration areas. Okay. And that just is just another few shots. They also have adjacent to that, an area which is like a lobby area where people can sit when they're waiting to shop in the grocery store.

And that's Lynn Havel, and Beth Reicher is there with LA Cares. And as you can see, there's Jeremy and Jessica and Lynn and another LA Cares volunteer. And that's the lady who did our tour from Food Depot. So a little more about the process. We did the site visits.

We kind of collected information. We looked at what the physical requirements might be, but we needed to figure out who would actually occupy the building. So, basically, we had several lists that we went by. Jill had a list of all the registered nonprofits in the county that we called through. We looked at all the people that Social Services currently has a has a contract with on her chart.

We looked at a list of baby. Nat had has keeps updated. Actually, it's an online list. And we also looked at what resources were in Santa Fe, and they have online directory as well, which is Tyler was familiar with that talks about what resources are available there. So we had a very comprehensive list.

We put this list together, and then we coded it just in Excel. We didn't use a fancy database, but we categorized it according to what type of service the provider gave. And this is basically these were the lists that we came up with. And then we also categorized similar to the social determinants of health. This is how Santa Fe does it.

What the various needs were that were being met. Was it basic needs? Was it behavioral health, substance use, education, family, etcetera, public safety? And so each of these organizations was categorized according to this. And then finally, what we did is we ranked them as would they be primary providers, would they be secondary providers, or tertiary providers outside of the health center? You know, would they be someone that we would refer at a point in time? This is very busy. I don't expect you guys to see this at all. But if you could just zoom in just a little bit. I'm just gonna show you.

We did like I said, we did the who the sponsor was, what type of organization it was, what category it met, basic needs, behavioral health, employment, legal, etcetera. And then we ranked them as primary. These are just the primary and secondary. So these are some of the entities that we propose would either have permanent space in the facility, would have, just monthly rotating type space or, you know, they would they would actually see clients on on a regular basis. And I apologize.

That's not a really good slide to look at on the screen. So as I said, we followed all these steps, and then we also elicited input locally, regionally, and even statewide from representative groups. And I'm not gonna go through this, but I'm just gonna talk about a couple of the things that the health council and social services has been involved in recently. I actually did attend strategic planning this year. These are the folks that we have collaborated with.

The working group has collaborated with. Jessica and I have attended both the community collaborative forum and the state annual meeting for the health council. There's another collaborative forum online later this month, I believe. Think New Mexico presented not only what they were proposing at the League of Women's Voters legislative session, but actually what passed and what the impact of that was. Christina came back and talked to us about that. There's the SIEM. Is it a map model mapping? I I could have gotten that wrong. It's okay. But, anyway, it's SIEM.

And so as Jessica said, I participated in that with social services and all of our partners within the community. He's on the clock for timing. Okay. Perfect. Thanks. Wait. Go back one more just for a sec. And then we also as I mentioned before, we did client and we got results of the client interviews from Jeremy and Denny, and they actually came up with some sample kind of anonymous case studies of individuals as to what they needed when they were being taken care of by social services, and we cross checked that against our list of providers to make sure we had the money. Okay. Next.

Okay. Here we are on the recommendations. So, clearly, this is these are just simply recommendations of a working group. They have, you know, really no teeth other than the health council can choose to, you know, approve the recommendations, at which point the working group in my mind is done except for just providing consulting or answering questions or that sort of thing. We're looking at right now four separate spaces for kind of the meat and potatoes at the health center, and then we're also making recommendations on the clinic as well.

Other collocated facilities would be great, but this is kind of what we looked at and sort of where we stopped. Basically, we're looking at the first level or the first structure. We're not specifying if it should be one building or multiple buildings. The the one in Glendale Mhmm. Was multiple buildings because they had taken over a an old school complex, and so they were able to have separate buildings for different functions.

But, anyway, we will still need a shared reception and lobby area, front desk, recommending lockers like they have at Mesa Library to be able to give things to clients outside of hours, business hours, potentially a public health vending machine. I had to ask Jessica what all would be in this machine. So it would potentially be health kits, first aid kits, Narcan, fentanyl strips, hygiene kits, gun locks, and even contraceptive devices potentially. And, also, our team is recommending an information wall or an electronic dashboard, and we would have the rack cards available for people to take with them as well as way for them to look online and look up the various resources that would be available to them. There's a concurrent, project going on within the health council to develop a directory of all providers, and Celeste is leading that effort.

So if we actually had a physical, directory, such as a Yellow Page phone book or something like that, we would definitely have that there as well. So we appreciate Celeste continuing with that effort. Clearly, a comfortable space. Like I showed you, the couches at Casita de Camida. The third space was sofa and tables.

And I don't know if you all have seen the lobbies of some hotels recently. I was just in Mexico, and the lobby at the Hyatt has tables with outlets for people to sit and actually do their work in addition to comfy little areas where they can sit on. This is. But, anyway, we're also recommending for small meeting rooms where other some of the organizations could actually schedule meetings, and, clearly, social services or the county would be keeping that schedule, to meet with clients, or they could even have counseling sessions, like virtual counseling sessions and that sort of thing. And we're also recommending either two conference rooms or one large conference room with a divider between the two.

For training, we can have support group meetings there. We can have public events there. We can have tabling health fairs. That's there are a lot of possibilities there. One idea that members of the team came up with were having computer kiosks.

And, apparently, this is being done in some of the libraries, like in Berleo County, where they have five or six little soundproof booths where people could go into these booths. They have a little desk, and they do have a couple of these at the library, but we would want them right there at the health center. And they can connect online to apply for things. Also, our case consultants could be in there with them, helping them to make applications for SNAP and Medicaid and other services. We also identified a need for people out on parole with ankle bracelets to have a private place to be able to charge their ankle bracelets rather than having to go in the public library in front of everybody and do it.

And then, of course, bathrooms. We'll let Miguel figure that out, but we actually would love to have shower facilities and locker facilities for our homeless clients and parking. We're gonna let Public Works figure that out too next. So the second level can we size it up or just just Okay. Navy picture.

So the second area, which we're all really excited about, is something that McCarty Ministries has done, as I mentioned before, is a family resource center. It would be similar to if you all have been in Family Strengths Network, they have a fantastic area. Here's a picture of what they have right now. They use it for meetings. They use it for mom's playgroups.

They use it for, just informal hanging out, or there's a play area when parents are in talking with the guidance counselors and other people are keeping an eye on the kids at that point. They have classes there. They have kids classes, and they have adult classes, I think. And so this is kind of the concept that we were looking at. It would be sort of an intergenerational space.

And as we are all coming to discover, not all kids are being raised by their biological parents right now. A lot of kids are being raised by kids, aunts, uncles, grandparents, other adults. And so sometimes you'll see like, the grandparents, you'll see the next generation, and you'll see the kids all coming for help. And McCartney Ministries, they have about 50 families that they're working with, and these are intergenerational. And so to have a place where everybody could feel comfortable and we could also get the work done, it would be awesome.

So and I mentioned an area where we could observe the children when the when it's not appropriate for the adults to have them in the room when they're talking about maybe domestic violence issues or other issues which wouldn't be appropriate for the kids to hear. Also, we're recommending on this level working single offices for the self help organization because they don't really have any long term office space that's suitable for them, and social services works with them on a regular basis. We're also recommending two single offices for some sort of housing related services, whether it's the Santa Fe Housing Trust or Either regional housing. Any of the regional housing folks that that could provide support for for our clients. We'd also need a storage space, sorry, for diapers, formula, toiletries, etcetera, which you saw was very small in the closet that we have over at social services.

And then I think an area which the team recommended was, like, a laundry room with washing machines and dryers and a table for folding clothes. Of course, bathrooms and parking to code. Next. And then the third level would be primarily office buildings, 10 single offices for social services staff, which would be eight seven or eight staff or seven staff, an office for domestic violence related services, and then a couple of drop in offices as needed for, say, example, the social worker from Larso if she needed to meet with clients and that sort of thing for adult older adults. And then Jessica, of course, would need an office with an area to meet for with her staff.

And then four more small meeting counseling rooms for drop ins, recurring visits, or even family visitation. This would be suitable for that, and this is similar to what would be in the first structure. And then we also have a kind of an exciting concept that is being worked on within the county, and that is a crisis response team. So we felt like this could potentially house the team with the communications and be all the area for all of the administrative functions of the crisis response team. And as Jessica mentioned, that was one thing that they've been thinking about for a long time, but it also came out of the STEM modeling summit that we had and a supply room for them, etcetera.

We're also recommending in a separate but adjoining structure close by that we have some sort of a kitchen type facility, storage facility, and we'd have enough area for LA Cares to be able to move over there. I'm gonna cover LA Cares first. What they need is just an office for their director, another office for their administrator, a storage room, which, you know, would be about the same size or larger than what they have now at the teen center, and also a distribution area for sorting and packing and organizing. Because they actually in addition to having food distribution every month, they actually do distributions to their clients. So they have to have an area to be able to organize that.

And then as I showed you in an ideal situation, the storefront with shelves, refrigeration, and areas for clients to shop. Also, this would require probably a separate enter entrance not only for to allow the recipients to have some privacy, but also as for traffic flow. Let you guys figure that out too. The other part of this that Jessica and the team and I were really excited about was we would like to have some sort of an industrial type kitchen. This kitchen would have refrigerators, freezers, some sort of cooking facilities.

We're looking at this larger than just for social services or for LA Cares. This would be a community asset, and there are just a couple right now of kitchens that the county can use. And right now, Fuller Lodge is there, but they're not operational. Their kitchen is not operational. We do have some at Larso, but they're actually being used during the lunch hour.

So we're looking at this for just any type of county type events or facilities or even cooking classes, healthy cooking classes. What Food Depot does is they do a cooking kind of demonstration with recipes included of some of the ingredients that they're handing out that month. So we could have a local chef come in and come out for us. One thing that is really important is the self care for the employees. And so we're recommending a break room slash kitchenette with the just do the basic little kitchenette supplies and tables along with an outdoor patio because we know how important it is to to get out and get fresh air and just be able to take a break from your day from dealing with all the challenges that that the employees will have.

So that would be open to all of the employees in the building to be able to use this.

We did take out the sauna and

the hot tub. Yeah. The sauna and the hot tub the sessions. Soda refrigerator are not in your Wait. Go back for a second.

Oh, sorry.

So now that's a good exterior. We were looking at, we're gonna need a loading dock for LA Cares. Food Depot does a distribution or delivery every month to LA Cares, and they would have to unload that and put it in their storage room. Also, to receive any kind of office supplies, coffee, paper, anything like that, food distribution. And it goes without saying that first three, if they were colocated, the first three functions would elevator, service elevator, whatever.

And then parking for customers of LA Cares and then staff and clients. K. And then the final thing that we're recommending next slide, please. So wait. Are we missing this? You're right. Health clinics? Yes. You're here. Yeah.

Okay. So in the current health clinic, which I showed you, a floor plan of is colocated right now with social services. So we would hopefully be able to get enough space and have enough money to be able to relocate this as well. It would be similar to what they have now, but probably a little bit larger additional exam rooms, a little bit more storage. And then we also talked about a separate intake area for victims of domestic violence that would need to be a private, you know, anonymous type area where they could go in and they could be treated.

We did have a couple models for this, and I think Jessica could probably tell you about those as well. Parking. And we wanted to see if we could have, like, a big parking pad for mobile units such as Veterans Affairs. They have a couple of mobile units that they go out to some of the reservations, and they could potentially come to us. We have four people today in that suicide prevention training that are from Veterans Affairs, so we're working that one.

Mammogram unit, a falls prevention trailer that, LARSO is having them come in September. It's sort of a hands on thing you go through, and it simulates falls and trips and that sort of thing. And then potentially blood, you know, blood units, etcetera. And we are also looking at possibly having a safe parking area for unhoused clients, which could potentially have some facilities like restrooms and trash cans and that sort of thing. Okay.

So that was it of our recommendations. And the physical requirements, our team spent a lot of time identifying those. So, basically, the conclusions I have, and I'll go through this real quick, Comfortable welcoming lobby, ample space for social services, nonprofit, conference rooms, computer kiosks, private meeting rooms, space for a crisis response team, the family resource center, shower and laundry facilities, supply room for emergency stores, and a full industrial kitchen, and also distribution for food food services such as LA Cares. Breakroom is really important for the staff, and then approximate spaces. Is it the last one?

Next. Okay. So and this will allow at least fifteen minutes for questions, discussion, and so forth. So, basically, our next step, the working group, will be to gain approval of the recommendations, submit them to the county, basically, And then public works would solicit via a request for proposal, a competitive bid for an architectural renderings and help with site selection. And then the working group would be available to prevent present recommendations to county council if needed.

We could also have members serve on a steering committee as the project moves forward, and then we could attend the public input sessions to answer any more questions. Next. And that's it. Call us if you have any more questions offline.

And can I add a couple of things being part of this from day one?

Yes. But can I jump in really fast? As long as we have quorum one two three four five six seven eight nine. Okay. Still have ninth. Oh, because I heard somebody jump off. I I don't see Leah. I think Leah had to jump off. As long as enough forum can stay, we can go past the 01:30 to get to a vote if there's discussion.

But let's follow the steps, and there'll be plenty of time

for discussion. As long as we have seven.

Do we have just questions from anybody on the health council about what was just prevent presented? Yeah.

But I have a lot of questions.

Okay.

And I don't know if it's

gonna go past 01:30.

Okay. Well, can you limit your initial questions to three minutes? Jessica, try to answer. You can

chime me. But Okay. I just so I have a big push big big umbrella.

Okay. Well, let's try to yeah. Let can you

Then I wanna come down. Then I have some very specific questions about so my background is nonprofits. I don't know if anybody in this room knows this. I I know specific knowledge about a couple that you mentioned. Mhmm. But my overarching question is, what was your strategy with writing this report? Were you really trying to go for the royal voice of Yes. Community buildings? I mean, were you asking for everything but the kitchen

sink? Strategy was the Cadillac version.

Yeah. Cadillac

plus the car. Downscale it to the Chevy version.

You want to come in on that? But I think the real answer is to to meet the needs of community members that come into and this is this may align with what Joe was going to say. Yeah. When people come into social services, they often need more than just the staff at social services. The idea of a colocated model would be to have as many of the likely folks that we are gonna be connecting our people with to be as physically close to get them connected.

We know when we tell people, your next step is to call self help. Here you go. They walk out of our office, and we do not know if that happens. Right? Same with here's self or here's LA. Here's the number to call to get on their distribution list.

So I understand all of that.

Okay. Wait. Jill, why don't you jump in on that?

Well, I was just my comment was, your question, we started with the idea of everything and all things. Mhmm. We layered it with the reality that we're a county of 20,000 people. We have unlimited budget. We have very little space. We have very little buildings, which is why we tiered it.

Yeah. Sized

Primary, secondary,

just so very. And we tried to get as close as we could to apples to apples when we looked at things. It was impossible to do because this is a unique beast up here. And so we have no doubt that what ends up happening isn't gonna be that. I mean, I think all

of it perfect world.

Yeah. Because it's They saw in a population of

27.

Up there.

Okay. Next question.

A perfect world with endless amounts of money.

Well, that's up to the architects. We know we have or up to Public Works. We know we have Why

should it be up to Public Works if you're the ones who are recommending things after base?

Recommended. We're not, an we're not a county organization. We're just an advisory board. So we don't have and like I said, we don't have an. We just we established this working group. We said, hey. In a perfect world, what would the requirements be for a size, you know, specific sized population and facility?

Okay. It's just I'm concerned about the strategy as you approach the county council. So I think they're gonna look at this and and laugh because it's

county council unless, asks us to. Our handout

I just didn't notice

health council approves us. If they approve it, our working group is done. We're basically and it's still advisers, but we're not doing any working work. We hand it off to social services and public works. They take the next step. If they wanted to present it to county council, they will. If they wanna come up with three or four options like we did on Firehouse 4, they'll do that as well. It's it's really up to them because we don't have the authority to do that.

But we as a group have to approve what you have researched and and come up with. The recommendations. It moves forward.

So that was your three minutes. Ask one more question, and then we're gonna see if any of the other health counselors wanna ask questions.

Really fast.

I'm sorry. This

is just process. And this meeting, other board meetings are not limited in that time. So

I'm familiar with self help very intimately, and I know where they are where they are housed and where they're staffed. And I'm wondering, did you go to self help and say, hey. Is your your location is inadequate? Because your what I heard you say was self help doesn't have the room that they need. And yet what I know is the staff of Self Help, both of them don't live in Los Alamos. They work remotely. Right. I don't think they need four individual offices with doors.

That could be we would love to have them collocated with us to the extent that they are in town. Yes. So if they if we want to revise that recommendation and say two offices, but there's four blank offices that people can pop into, that would be

See, this relates to my first question. You know, you're asking for the Cadillac. Why I mean, I think you should revise what these nonprofits actually need. Another example is LA Cares.

These these are just suggestions. These are just recommendations. When the county is doing their scoping, and feel free to jump in the background, they're gonna meet with these different potential occupants. It's not really our responsibility to end.

So that's what I thought you did. Right. I thought you went to Diane Smoger and said, what do you

need? No. Because we one, we don't have a contract with Self Help, and we are absolutely not going to be in a position to there will be a process for determining what nonprofits get located in the building. So, hence, that one should probably say for a assistance related organization because we will likely have to put it out for bid, and an organization would respond that they need the space. Right?

Same as for the intergenerational resource center, whoever is gonna be in that could be any number of different nonprofits. It we are not picking one that would go into the spot. Right? What did you Anti donation. It should say an assistance related organization.

Which we have

Yes. I mean, the focus was

from what does social services

In an ideal world, social services is colocated with social services. Yeah.

Yeah. That was the list we got with

these nonprofits. Once again, if

you wanna get it approved by the next division and the county council, I think you should have it reflect reality at some stage. And that's impression of self help nor is it my impression of LA Cares. That's a total volunteer organization. They don't have an executive director. So now you're giving a volunteer is

the choice.

Okay. Let me just finish. Okay? You're giving a volunteer an office. So does every volunteer nonprofit that helps that contributes to the health of this community get an office?

These are good notes, Miguel.

Thank you. That's we

I mean, like I said, we Best of all possible worlds. Yes.

But

We met for three months. We did all the things that we identified in the process. We looked at every single nonprofit. Then we interviewed we looked at many other models of health centers. We interviewed, you know, potential users. We interviewed other people. We made the site visits and so forth, and we just had to make a judgment call and prioritize it. This is our recommendation at this 2021.

But it it could also be that it's a to keep it as open as possible, a food distribution organization. Because to your point, it may be that LA Cares wants to stay where they are in the church and a different by by the time this is built in three years, a different food organization responds to a proposal for a location.

What if we took out the names of the organizations when they're looking? I

think it'd be Yes. I think it'd be better generic because Okay. Each organization that you've listed that I'm aware of has a very different and unique situation.

Okay.

And, I'm also wondering, do you expect them to pay rent to pay

with nonprofits? Believe that will be worked out with legal in the future.

Yeah.

Okay. Because self help pays no rent right now, and neither does LA cares.

So our I think LA cares who is start paying rent. Under under the impression I don't think that's

But that's outside the scope of health counsel to determine.

If you look at I'm I'm just saying if the county council looks at this, what

How are they going

to feel about? If you go back to this, the estimating the cost or soliciting or make buy decisions or contracts or any planning associated with actually moving into the building is. We can take out all the names and make it generic.

I'm not sure. I'm just

You mentioned something. I think a lot of

those names on there were recommended just because those are the ones that already, like

we work with. Work with.

Yeah. They have served a lot of the community members. So those are people that if I were to reach out to them, those are people because I work with them, and they have helped our community. So that's why when she asked us to think of people who we would want, those are people I would want because those are

And we've heard that from the clients that come to you that they don't like having to go to different locations for different things. So this was just a perspective totally from social services and the clients at social services serves, which is the clients that the county They were overseas. But, I mean, you're bringing up stuff we it's not like we didn't talk about this.

Yeah. Yeah.

Well, that's good. And it's not like

I'm against the project. I'm not. I think it'd be amazing, but I also feel like you should be realistic if you're proposing this Okay. To people who control our tax rates. Rates.

Okay. Thank you for that. Any other questions from health council members?

Yeah. Like you, I have a lot of concerns. I I see this as a pie in

the

sky, and I don't see it as super realistic. And the problem with me is that our current political climate, money is a huge issue. And where in Los Alamos would you find the real estate to build this place? And will you be able to afford it? Because we just went through this big and you don't have to answer it.

This is like Let's let's Can I have my three minutes, please? Sure. And so that's problem number one. Problem number two is, I agree with you, I feel like putting everything in one basket, there are gonna be people that get left out. It's it's it's not it's big, but it's not big enough, or maybe it's too big. I I just feel like it's it's very pie in the sky, and and I I feel like, you know, organizations like Self Help. And I too my father was one of the founders of Self Help, so I'm pretty aware

of. Great.

And it's a great organization, And I don't think they're broken, and you're they need to be fixed. And do we need to are we just doing this for convene? What?

Yes. For the convenience of social service clients.

Should we

It does not involve fixing any of the nonprofits.

Should we instead of spending 10,000,000 doll I mean, and it's not gonna cost $10,000,000. I think that's a joke. I think you're gonna look more like $20,000,000 if you're lucky. So now we spent $20,000,000 to have a facility. But now what? Yeah. We got a facility, but now we gotta pay the people that work there. We gotta find housing for the people that work there. We gotta find The people that work there

are already either employed or they volunteer. There's no

I just agree with that.

Staff. And

then somebody to clean the showers.

Well, that's the county, dear. It's a county money.

That's I understand it, but they have to hire people.

Okay. That's more work. Okay.

It's like, yeah, that's the county, dear. Hello, if you have a whole new building, you have to have more employees, and then you have to put people that are maintaining the building, and you have to pay for electricity, not to pay for so all this stuff is great. It's the infrastructure. Yeah. Where is the money coming from? And then what's our return on the investment? Are you expecting a whole bunch more people to be served? Because according to your letter, yeah, we're helping people, but it's I forget what you said, 4% or something in the county. So 4% or 2% of 20,000 people.

Well, but that's not that's not including the clinic. And I think Leticia

So my question is and and, again, it's very pie in the sky, but my question is be better served instead of a building trying to improve our services. That is

And that's just my question. So Okay. You asked a Sure. But she asked a couple questions. One is about the cost in physical facility and how would it be supported and maintained. And then your the second question was

Well, I have a lot of concern.

Built environment that have infrastructure

Take that money and use it in a better way instead of just plopping all this money in a facility. And now it's like, okay. Yeah. We got this great facility, but where are we getting the money to continue at? We could have taken that $1,000,000 and used it in a better way.

The county has already committed to a colocation facility that's in the infrastructure improvement

your number three

We have been working to improve coordinated care across the system with the Unite Us software, with team based approaches to client care, with developing a better crisis response. Like, that's all the stuff that is in process. The idea has long been that what serves people yeah. And, Mara, thanks. I will read that comment in just a second. Joyce has to go in a minute, but says she doesn't have a question. We have been working towards this hub idea. It is already been shared with council and and been put on the the infrastructure

Capital improvement. That was Yeah. Budget that

I was I sent to don't know that the question is go or no go on building or no building. It's building is a go. We have committed resources to it. Where will a building be found? That I can't answer. That is that is outside of my knowledge. But my understanding is there are vacant lots and there are buildings that are that could be feasible. Is it going to be exactly three stories with one addition? Like, who knows what it's gonna end up? That's what we would have an architect help us with.

But the idea is that a social services hub is in the best interest of the community for the people who need help to not have to keep going from place to place to place. We do not have to worry right now, this as a health council, about where the funds will come from. That is other people's jobs.

For the physical building itself. Correct.

Do we get down this path in eight years from now? We have a half built building and like, I don't know. But but our job is not to fix any of the nonprofits. It is to fix the process of a person who is having a crisis and needs multiple the involvement of multiple organizations to get them back on their feet.

Can I just jump in real quick here? Joyce, can you hang out for a few minutes? Because we're barely at Quorum. And Leticia and Heather as well.

Yeah. Joyce Yeah. I have a few minutes.

Oh, I thought we had seven.

No. I could stay on too, Lisa.

Okay. Thanks, Sheila.

As we keep seven. Okay. We have to

have at least seven. So let me just hand to Miguel for a minute, if you don't mind, and you can talk about the construction part of the. Yeah. Is that okay? Yeah. Okay. Celeste I'm just reading your first question about

Yeah. So as Jessica said, there are sites or there are lots at the county that are potentially available for this. A decision on what site will be the right site for this will have to be made by based on input from the community, advice from the architects, and also input from other departments related to the availability of utilities. It's it's it's a whole inter depart department notes decision that that has to be made. Regarding the building size of or or the building the the amount of rooms, levels that the building can have, that will all have to be decided based on what is the budget that we have, what are the existing construction costs, like, how much budget the county usually has.

It it is still a process. We we we cannot commit to something that we cannot afford or might. So that's why this this decision has to move up from recommendation. Right? This is this is something that the health council identifies is is needed for the community, and they they will have to be presented to county council.

They will have to be able to keep their approval. And only then public works services department. We have a operating who even hire an architect to provide this design services for. That's that's that's roughly what the process is.

The odds of this turning into what the council approved is probably

Yes. And we anticipate

We were just asked to give the complete brain dump, which I think It would be

the ideal perfect world. What is your Cadillac based on a community of 20,000? Not 200,000 like Glendale, which is a great facility.

So you asked us to respond to what you'd written, and that's what I was trying to do so everybody knows.

Like very fun.

This is what I see, and I have no idea where the money was coming from and how you would maintain it. I mean, the county can't even maintain senior center right now. Well, it's a beautiful place. The county wrote or built. But, I mean, now the senior center has huge budget deficit. This is the reality in which we live right now. So how does this committee present itself to the next level and to eventually the county council?

Okay. Wait. Barbara has

a question.

Oh, but let me answer Leslie's question.

Well, I think we need to hear all the questions.

And then we'll Barbara's question. The senior center is a county owned facility like this one would be. LARSO is not responsible for the maintenance of the facility itself. The county takes care of that. They do the cleaning. They do the utilities. They do the maintenance. There is also a project underway, which Sevilla Syeda is the lead project manager for for the whole HVAC, HVAC. And the county determines when that's gonna happen, what the priority is. And they they they know about all this. LARSA's not responsible for that.

So I understand that completely.

Okay.

But I am saying this county run building is having huge issues. I know the county runs peak also. Maybe peak is great. But what's going on with the building that the county is currently running?

The concern is that how are we maintaining our current buildings if we're gonna add one more to it.

Noted. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

We just should be realistic. Go, girl.

Go, girl. Go, Barbara. Yeah.

I have been involved with nonprofits, and I'm on a nonprofit right now. Pretty pretty tied into this idea. Colocation facilities have been forever. Many, many, many cities and counties across the country have this. This was a this was a discussion I had when I sat on a school board in Oak Ridge, Tennessee in the nineteen nineties.

It's not it's not new. And, definitely, it makes it easier for the clients if everything's in one place. You can come in and say, I need this and that or, well, let's let me walk you down the hall to that person. And, absolutely, I understand the process. I agree with the concept. I like Leslie and Celeste. I'm sorry. This is my first meeting.

What? What a good one you chat with.

So just to stick with the process, is there a question?

Yes. Okay. I recognize that this is a Cadillac version as you were going through here. Had, oh my gosh. This is everything. I did notice self help was listed as a p, which is primary ranking, daily, and permanent as far as physical space that's needed. Using that one simply because Leslie brought it up. Have those groups that you've been listing as primary been consulted as to whether they wanted to be in this kind of a building as opposed to where they're currently sitting? That's that that that let me finish all my questions. It is just really quick.

I counted over 20 offices in this current thing. Some are there for as needed basis. There's a lot of office space compared to the number of organizations that are listed, especially organizations that would be there on a daily basis. Mhmm. Or maybe

only see one person. Okay.

Along with number of staff and offices, I didn't see anything in regards to number of clients. This is beautiful. It's lovely, but I didn't see any reference anywhere to how many clients actually get served

through your organization or pretty any one of yours. Okay.

And and whether it justifies the means.

Okay. So you're first question.

By the means is good.

Okay. I don't mean to Thank you for your feedback, and we can further do that during the discussion section. But to answer your first question, I believe every single client we've recommended has been consulted in one way or another, including the housing. Because I spoke with Dennis. So Jessica can answer your other questions.

Well done for the timing. You're you're good with three minutes. We did not ask. We it is impossible to know what the landscape of nonprofit partners will look like by the time a building is built. So we did not ask, in x years, will you need x services? When is your lease up? It was a conversation that came up. Should we start asking them? And the advice was no because we don't have a building. And who knows what organizations may merge, which may close because of lack of funding in this current environment, etcetera.

This was back to what we had said was what would when we look at the social service clients, and I can, after this meeting, get the information on the number of clients we see per year, what would serve the community for being colocated? So the advice we received was to not ask anyone specifically to keep it open to the possibility of who we would need in a space, not make promises of you know, then five years, it's different.

We couldn't do that. And the sec I mean, because one of our ideas was to send out a form to all these people and say, well, you can't make it. But, legally Yeah. We can't do that. Right? So And secondly, the office space, actually, probably, eight of the offices out of I'm not sure. Were you counting the meeting rooms as offices too or just the offices? I think it exactly says offices. Okay. So half of them would be for social services, and the plan for social services is hopefully to grow a little bit. They don't even have an admin right now. And so we wanted to plan for the future for social services. Did you have any

more Well, I was just gonna say, we've been talking about this over an hour, and it's obvious that there's a lot of questions. There's a lot of things that popped up. Truthfully, this is the first time public has seen this. You know? Yeah. We've all kinda had our heads down from a working group, to to get through. I think and correct me if I'm wrong, but I think what I've heard is hide ourselves too tight to specific nonprofits. We didn't clarify where the cutoff was between we want everything to here's the minimum. We need to clarify how many people we're actually gonna serve with this center, and we need to what was the other one that just it's fine. Matter.

But, basically, tie our limit to what we can recommend versus what we pass on to the county. So maybe it is worth Wait.

Explain that last part. Pass on. So all questions are the recommendation, but not the funding or the square footage.

And that I think there could be some more clarification of kind of the role you're gonna play because you to your point, you know, this county doesn't to spend money. Yeah. We've gotta be able to justify this. So maybe if it's possible, and I am absolutely at the top of the list of not being politically correct, but it's possible. I think it's worth cleaning that up a bit, sending it out to the board again, and if possible, we'll be on the thumbs up, thumbs down.

Okay. So that's one proposal.

So still in One more thing.

I wanna add one more

We're still in questions right here.

Your list of patients.

She can make

an And then basically gonna say ROI. Return on investment.

Well, we have But we're not looking But we can't do it.

Which you'll kinda have to beyond the scope. No. Let me

you're asking us to vote on a proposal, and I always ask myself, okay. And I I don't think you have to say extra money, but we're spending a or you wanna be proposing to spend a ton of money, or could that money be used to achieve the same goals better? Okay. And that's my question, and that's my huge concern. Okay. Could would that money be used instead of dumping it into a building, dumping it into the people we're trying to help? Or a

little bit.

Before we have any more discussions, what I'd like to do is see if there are just specific questions about the proposal itself that the council wants answered. And then I do wanna get input from any of the public, and then we will decide whether we wanna make a motion. Okay? Because we have

to I think we gotta cut off a time because we're gonna lose forum.

Okay. Well, does anybody else have questions about the proposal itself at this point? Because I would like to get public comment if there's public comment out there. And then we can make a motion. Okay?

No. That's my job.

I'm pointing to you.

Yeah. I got it.

Okay. I'm in a meeting it to have to go in five minutes, Okay. Joyce Let's read Mora's comment. Mora, can you give us public comment? Try to limit it to three minutes. Are you still with us? Okay. Before we read her comments, does anybody else public comment? When she Oh, she let me die.

This is not a proposal. This is a dream. And until it can become more specific and more palatable, I think

Not a community member. Right.

Would strongly influence the members to vote no. It's just not clear enough. This is as clear to me as the proposal was to completely reinvent the downtown. There was no real plan there. And and to me, it's great that we lost our community members. My history is social work and counseling.

I believe a representative has to be a What more specifics? Like, we have number of offices, number of It it looks to me like you're making decisions for the agencies that

I've not necessarily had that that you've had in-depth conversations with.

We actually we've toured Helen Cares. We've got to self help. We've got to get housing authority.

I do find, Lisa, that you overtalk. That is my impression. It's also very clear to me when this is Just saying that you're not responsible for the budget is not acceptable to you because somebody is thinking for this. And I think that

Did you have

I do have a question.

We're on public comment now, but we'll come back to you. Oh, I'm

not in the public. Sorry.

Mom. I mean, Moore. Okay.

Do you want to read Moore's

comment? I think Moore Here

she is. Okay. Thanks, Moore. Go ahead.

So I'll make this really short. So I've been working with newspaper work in Los Alamos County for over ten years now in different capacities, including working for the school district where there have been obviously issues that need to be addressed. This ball has been kicked down the road for ten years. All of the nonprofits got together at the municipal building for a big town hall meeting way back when, and all of the I was I was stunned at the number of organizations who wanted to be a part of this. Somebody has to start somewhere.

I've you know, I'm looking at millions of dollars being proposed for the renovation of a dorm from the from the Manhattan project. They've said all along there is no money. There is no property. We've heard that that we know now that that's not the case. It's time to move forward with this. We're the the mental health part of it is the probably the biggest factor of having this hub. And we are losing adults and children to suicide, and there's nowhere to send kids that have issues with drugs and alcohol. I hear this firsthand from parents who come and sit in my home. And and and I think that we have to give this a shot. Trust me.

When you present a recommendation to the county staff, they will hack and cut and divide it and say, no. That's not what's common for the number of offices you would need for this type of facility. There has to be a starting point with this. And I think that the the I would commend the health council for having brought it this far. People have been asking for years now.

Randy Riley has been one of the big proponents of of getting this health hub moving. And, you know, it can be a preliminary recommendation, but I I think the professionals that handle this kind of thing, including Miguel in that and and Jessica, of course. These are the people who can get the help through the county staff to know what it is is actually needed, and they can survey all the organizations. I commend the people who put this together. This is a lot of work for some volunteers to put together.

I've been involved with the homeless shelter in Espanola for several years now. Sit was just a concept, people meeting once a month at a little church in in Espanola. So please give it a chance. Move it on to the same level. Believe me, the county will kick it back if it needs to if it needs to come back or they will work with this. They've been expecting this to happen. And I thank everybody for your for what whether your comments were favorable or not, this is where it needs to go. There needs to be a lot of realistic discussion and just everybody take deep breaths because you're all wanting the same results in our community, and and let's keep working towards them. Thank you.

Thank you, Mara. Mara's also experiencing that for you.

We got it. I'm gonna say ten minutes.

We're gonna

set this at at two. And I apologize for over talking, but we've got a lot of, you know, skin in this game. And as Morris said, we've been working on this for six months. So I appreciate your input, but I'm gonna keep each other's talk. Would anybody like to make a motion at this point, or do we have more questions?

Yes. We

do. We're still at eight.

Am I

allowed to make a motion?

Yeah. You can make a motion.

I'd like to make a motion then.

We can vote. We can table it. We can make changes and bring it back to the September meeting.

Okay. So

Can I make that motion then? Yep. Okay. I'd like to make the motion that this report, as it is currently written, is tabled and rewritten to reflect some of the concerns that were brought up here and brought back to the health council.

Does anyone want to second that motion? Wait. Wait. Trying to write it down. Table the report, take into the consider take the recommendations from All the questions. And feedback.

Basically table it to some

From health council and members of the public.

We have to we can't do it forever. Yeah.

One second. Okay.

I'm sorry. I didn't hear that, but did, we put a date on when it's coming back?

I say we bring it back to the September meeting. Good question, Heather. We that we

Or we could have a special session.

But not if people are out. I say we just We bring to the September. It might take

a off first on the agenda.

Let's knock it out. That's just one month. Would

that work for your time? You're the guy that's waiting on us.

I wait. Well, that works.

Would that work? That we can anything?

Yes. We we we cannot engage on any design activities until

And is it allowable? Or I mean, you've now heard it. Is it allowable for you to give us feedback as as the working committee, or is that deep, dark secret?

Well, I think we need to be specific as to what the motion is first.

We're we're tabling the vote until September and bringing a revised report back. Do.

Jill can What is the revised report gonna be? How much

Oh, it's more specifics.

Yeah. Clarify the minimum that is needed. Include a projection of the number of clients that would be able to be served. Yes. Include in the report a clarification of the roles once it leaves health council, and just provide additional justification for what is needed in this space.

Also, I thought we talked about taking out specific names and making it more generic.

Yes. Thank you, Heather. Yeah.

In my motion, I did not mention the month of September. I can restate the motion.

I would like, yes, to just restate specifically what you want because you had a lot of things may or may not

But you're not a secretary for this committee. Like, why are you writing it then?

Because I'm the staff liaison.

Oh. And I'm

the one taking the business.

Okay. Yeah. Obviously, I have a lot to learn. Yeah.

So it was great handbooks that you can spend days for. There's so I'd

like to revise my motion that the report, as it is currently written, be tabled and revised based on recommendations that emerged and be brought back to the committee in September.

I think we need to specify what those recommendations

You just do. You just do. You have them all. And I got six. Okay. Yep. Recommendations oh, I did write too specific on the nonprofits. Guys, I did have it. Okay. To take out the specifics related to nonprofits, clarify the minimum space and requirements that are needed. Wait a minute. What does that mean? Instead of having here's the call for 20 offices or whatever that adds up to, the minimum would be eight, ideally would be x.

So you wanna do basic and then an enhanced

Clarify the difference between primary, secondary, and tertiary, basically. Yeah.

It's happening.

Projection from number of clients that would be seen kind of tying it to the ROI, what would we expect to see?

Cost benefit analysis.

I don't know if we can get a full CDA. Because because what if I may, and I know we're running out of time, the the cost benefit for helping a person who is homeless get a bag of food isn't going to be equal to $20,000,000. Like, the work that social services does is fewer people complaining on Facebook about somebody hand handling outside the coop. Right? It it is more intangible than we will this happens and this cost goes away. So I I don't necessarily wanna get into a a full cost benefit. But what would we expect the the clients to experience by having this co located? It's And how many could we basically serve? See. Right.

Clarification of the roles regarding what happens after this. Oh, Joyce, wait. Sorry. One, two. We still have

if there's

4567. Okay. We still got 7. Tyler.

Heather and Tyler are getting in there. We're almost done.

Justification, tying it back to the justification for what we need, right, and then removing the specific organizations. I do just wanna reiterate the con the vote is not on spending the money versus not spending the money.

Like, the It's on approving the recommendations. What

would go into a location that would co locate services. At a future level where council is making building purchase decisions or building renovation decisions or decisions to accept a state grant or back to this $100,000,000 fund under SB three because we think this might turn into, I am speaking way off the cuff, into a regional hub, something something that's tied to transportation. Right? Public comment can be given there as to what those funds could be spent on. But we do not have to

it's not our job.

Make decisions based on spending. Our requirements were to think of a colocation effort. What things go into this box? We do not have to decide on where that location is, White Rock versus Los Alamos versus in Pauquet because it turns into a regional or something. Like, we don't need to make those decisions.

The county has already expressed strong desire for a colocation with multiple services housed together. Those funding decisions will be left to council. We are in charge of the public works budget, although it is not unimportant to take that into account. Right? Like, that is not what our task was with this. It was

And it's in the charter. What what was and wasn't included in this. Do you

need me to call the question for a vote?

Yeah. Go ahead.

Okay. I will. Thank you. We we

have a second. You need to make a motion.

I did. Have the Okay.

Let's second. So I second

I second her motion.

We're gonna restate it one more time so we're all clear on what the motion is, and then Celeste had already seconded it.