Remarks by Senator René Garcia
43 remarks on the record, newest first · Page 1 of 2
- Play at 0:45
“Board for May 27th to order. Madam Clerk, can you please call the roll and announce the presence of a quorum?”
Behavioral Health Advisory Board · May 27, 2026
- Play at 1:01
“Yes, I'm sorry, I was looking over there. I apologize.”
Behavioral Health Advisory Board · May 27, 2026
- Play at 2:40
“Thank you, Matthew. Can we please rise for an invocation led by Claudio and the pledge by Lourdes?”
Behavioral Health Advisory Board · May 27, 2026
- Play at 3:46
“I think Amanda's running a little behind schedule. I think she was at a meeting, so we will just continue with the agenda. We are now, let's see, roll call. We got the reasonable opportunity to be heard. Anyone from the audience who would like to speak? Don't worry about it. We have other opportunities to speak, whatever items we have. We have some new members. Mateo, do you want to introduce the new members?”
Behavioral Health Advisory Board · May 27, 2026
- Play at 4:35
“No. elia is not here at this moment mr chair okay okay perfect and then we have um yes would you like to say a couple of words i'm just grateful for this opportunity to join this board i'm looking forward to working with you all perfect thank you welcome thank you for for your time to this point we really appreciate it's a lot of good work that we need to do on here all right so now we have special presentations uh let's move on to the community needs assessment by thriving minds Do we have any presentations, any community presentations?”
Behavioral Health Advisory Board · May 27, 2026
- Play at 5:24
“All right, perfect. Let's just go on. When I was asking that, we had some community partners that were doing a presentation. But since we don't, we'll go right into, Renee, just stick to the agenda. So let's go to community needs assessment tool by Thriving Minds. I think the next mission for us is to come up with some community assessments to figure out what the need assessments are for our community. And I know Thriving Minds, you have a lot of this information. But I want us to be very attentive to this because I think it's going to be the crux of what we as a board are chartered to do is…”
Behavioral Health Advisory Board · May 27, 2026
- Play at 15:21
“Yeah, that's a serious problem. And during, right after COVID, something similar happened to the hospitals.”
Behavioral Health Advisory Board · May 27, 2026
- Play at 15:27
“where they were with the nurses. Nurses were just rotating around and around and just checking up the cost of the salaries. And that could be something that I can see potentially have been happening here as well. And then we're not receiving additional dollars. So how do we manage that? I do have a question on the silo funding. What does that mean? And I know everything is in buckets. My understanding when we rewrote a lot of the behavioral health laws in the legislature was they tried to eliminate some of those silos when it comes to, well, mainly on beds, I guess it was. What do you mean by…”
Behavioral Health Advisory Board · May 27, 2026
- Play at 19:34
“Maybe what we can do is, For the next legislative session, take a look at that and and see if we can add that to this board, make a recommendation to the county commission to add that as a priority work on. And I think we might be able to. I understand there's a lot of fraud in the system I get. I understand why these were created to make sure we narrow the narrowly. tailored but maybe now that we exist here in Dade County we might be able we have the state here we have you here we have great providers smart people on this board that may we might be able to craft something that we could try…”
Behavioral Health Advisory Board · May 27, 2026
- Play at 22:02
“So this is the goal of this board, and this is why you all pretty much handpicked. So I appreciate, yes, the answer is yes. And I don't think we need an action on the board on that, but we'll get together and do that. That's the whole goal.”
Behavioral Health Advisory Board · May 27, 2026
- Play at 27:40
“Absolutely. What are the rules for peers?”
Behavioral Health Advisory Board · May 27, 2026
- Play at 28:17
“I mean, can we add that to a conversation piece for the next meeting on peer specialist? I guess our peer. Counselors because. Especially when someone with the addiction side, I would think, and maybe not so much as behavioral health, and I don't know, correct me if I'm wrong, but having someone who's gone through it is very meaningful and impactful, but to see that we have to do 500 hours for someone to be able to talk about my own experiences, and this is how, I'm not here to be a therapist, I'm here to tell you this is how I went through it, it has to be hard to get peer specialists to…”
Behavioral Health Advisory Board · May 27, 2026
- Play at 29:25
“I'm going to put that on your bucket to do. Can you figure out how we can streamline that process and what changes need to be done? Or someone.”
Behavioral Health Advisory Board · May 27, 2026
- Play at 30:02
“Talking to the mic. Guys, we're up here talking to the mics that you have, so the people watching TV can- Mr.”
Behavioral Health Advisory Board · May 27, 2026
- Play at 31:55
“That's something I see a little subcommittee here. All right. So it'll be it'll be you guys if you can help us with that. And again, there's no, no, nothing in concrete that this is going to happen, but at least we can start having conversations with our friends. In Tallahassee, so we can try to maybe figure out a way that we can either get an exemption for day county as we. Clearly have a trying to get a robust system here together, or try to do a pilot for Miami-Dade county. So there's ways we can craft that drop in this pencil, I guess.”
Behavioral Health Advisory Board · May 27, 2026
- Play at 33:21
“I personally would love to see something statewide, but now in this role that we have, we could try to push that and then just maybe focus it to Dade County. I think it would be an easier sell for the rest of the state for some of the professional boards and so forth that we try to mess around with some of their crediting systems that we just make it for Dade County.”
Behavioral Health Advisory Board · May 27, 2026
- Play at 37:05
“Is there any other questions? Great job. You talked about the standardizing protocols for handoffs. What do you mean by that?”
Behavioral Health Advisory Board · May 27, 2026
- Play at 38:08
“those of you that are providers is that I mean I'm assuming it's true I know it's true talk to you Lord is can we all we can when we with we are the board and we'll bring it back to the Commission can we come up with some protocols for take County on these handoffs?”
Behavioral Health Advisory Board · May 27, 2026
- Play at 39:05
“I think we can do it. Sure, we can. And we can make that as part of an ordinance in Miami-Dade County. I don't think there's anything that precludes us. We'll figure it out when we get to that point with the attorneys. If you don't mind, start talking to our attorneys. Figure out how we can do that. I don't think that we can. And if not, we'll just try to encourage all of our providers to set up some type of standards. So, Bill, do you want to work on that?”
Behavioral Health Advisory Board · May 27, 2026
- Play at 43:22
“Vicki, so how do, give me, what is the recommendation? Is there a recommendation? I mean, because I know that's a lot. How do we get this information?”
Behavioral Health Advisory Board · May 27, 2026
- Play at 46:23
“All right, so then we'll come back with some recommendations so we can put this but to Apply it to Miami-Dade County.”
Behavioral Health Advisory Board · May 27, 2026
- Play at 47:51
“Laura, why don't we do this? If you get stuck with any of these agreements, please call me. You have friends all over Miami-Dade County that will be willing to pick up the phone and make some phone calls.”
Behavioral Health Advisory Board · May 27, 2026
- Play at 48:04
“Because they all need some help in other areas. Sounds good. So you could try to put the... Listen, guys, this is the pressure here. We have this board, then we have the county commission, then we have our legislative friends, and we need to use them if we're going to really transform the system. It's not going to happen with one of us alone. so thanks bill that's uh that's a good way to look at it and you're absolutely right about that all right i think we're good right for me thank you all right so we got a couple action items out of this all right we have um i'm going to try to standardize…”
Behavioral Health Advisory Board · May 27, 2026
- Play at 50:55
“When we look at the state and we look at private organizations, they're all licensed, correct? No.”
Behavioral Health Advisory Board · May 27, 2026
- Play at 51:32
“It's a multi-agency needs assessment that needs to be tried to coordinate all this. Okay. All right, Amanda, I think we'll talk later to see how we can try to do a comprehensive, I mean, using what Thriving Minds already started off with, because this is obviously it's a really good work product. But figure out a way that we can try to do a comprehensive and more comprehensive approach and we do have some funds available. That's what those funds are there for too. So we'll come back and if you guys have any thoughts, ideas or suggestions, please or. Entities that can do this. I think that's…”
Behavioral Health Advisory Board · May 27, 2026