City Council - Regular Meeting

And I will call this work session meeting of the San Marcos City Council to order. Today is Wednesday, August 5th of 2026. The time is 3.01 p.m. Mr. Trevino, let's see who's here. Mr. Rodriguez.

Here. Mr. Besok. Here. Ms. Garza. Mayor Hewson.

Here.

Mr. Scott. Here. Mr. Mendoza. Here. Mr. Gonzalez. We have a quorum present.

All righty. And do we have anyone on Zoom yet? Not yet? Okay. All right. Normally, this is our citizen comment time period. However, we have no one signed up, so we will go straight on into presentation item one. Mr. Vino. Yes.

Follow-up on City Council direction regarding advertising of the San Marcos River and provide direction to the City Manager.

Good afternoon, Mayor and Council. Assistant City Manager Rodney Gonzalez. Today's work session item is a follow-up which Council requested for the purposes of having a discussion regarding previous council direction on advertising the San Marcos River. Rebecca Ibarra, Director of our Destination Services Department, will review past council conversations and direction related to advertising the river. Rebecca will talk about how staff have followed that direction and balanced the direction with also providing river stewardship information to visitors. At the conclusion of Rebecca's presentation, I'll conclude with the remarks about how staff tries to balance the task of providing river stewardship information and not promoting and advertising the river as previously requested by Council. I will now turn it over to Rebecca Ibarra.

Good afternoon, Mayor and Council, Rebecca Ibarra, Director of Destination Services. So, This all started with a flood. We had a major flood in May of 2015. And at that time, people made the assumption that San Marcos was closed, that the San Marcos River was closed. So we were tasked then to promote the river and spend money on advertising the river and letting people know that we were open. so people could come to our city, spend the night in our hotels and spend lots of money and then go home. Well, that advertising campaign was very successful, very successful, which led to a lot of conversation after that. So in the middle of that campaign, in the middle of summer of 2015, we realized it was working too well. So we did pull back on advertising, on paid advertising, we did pull back on promotion, of river activities or tubing. So then come 2016, we did the same thing. We did minimal advertising, but we did have some, we still had promotion. In 2017, during council visioning, council, because we had a lot of people in our river and causing, bringing litter along with that, but it was just so many people coming to the river. In 2017, council directed us during visioning to diversify the advertising to focus on non-river, which we did. No paid advertising for river activities. Everything was, everything else that we had, but we still did promote the stand-up paddling in shoulder season. So that was October through March. So that we did. 2017, of course, there was a presentation There was a presentation by the Parks Department of the overcrowding, so it was an issue, a capacity issue. In 2020, we had a presentation of marketing and advertising, and so we continued the conversation of let's focus on everything but the river, because we still had a problem of overcrowding on the river. Next slide. Then in 2020, we had this thing called COVID. So then people stopped traveling, stopped coming, businesses didn't have the traffic. Our hotels were very, very empty. They were at 20% occupancy. So we came to council and we asked council, would you please consider allowing us to advertise the river but package it with other things to do? And council said, yes, please do that because we need the business because we all wanted to be outdoors. And so let's just package it together and promote that. So we did that. And that was in 2020. In 2024, we had the single-use container ban and we still had an issue with litter. And so therefore, U.S. Council approved the single-use container ban. And we continue to have conversations about promotion and not advertising the river and not advertising tubing. So that continued. And then in 2025, we had more conversation about reuse of the river. We changed the campaign where it was more direct of do not bring this. This is what you can't bring. And in addition to that, you directed us to do more stewardship. So we did that as well. So next slide. So just to give you an idea, this, when you go to our website, so this is of course not paid advertising, but we do pay, our paid advertising all leads to this. So everything else that we advertise leads to our website, and just to give you an idea of what we do promote on our website is, this is here, it's the river rules, river recreation, single use beverage, riverfront parks, and the rules and guidelines, of course, parking, and then the, of course, the new manage access and the fees for entry passes. So this is things that we do, and in 2021, when we got our new website, it allows us to do more with our website than what we had before. And then just, yeah, so continue, next slide. So we don't do this alone. We work with communications, we work with the Marshal's Office, we work with Parks and Rec. And going back to you as approving the managed access, that also led to less litter. So thank you for doing that. Thank you for allowing people to breathe and be able to enjoy the parks. and do that, so we just wanted to share the number of entry passes. Thank you, Jamie Lee, for providing that information. So as of July 26th, the number of resident passes, the number of wristbands picked up for residents, and then of course, day passes sold. 13,000 day passes sold. And what's nice about those day passes is people may not be familiar with where they need the day passes, So we are generating additional revenue for people that go to a city park that may not know that they don't need them at city park, but that's okay. We're benefiting from that, but at least they're prepared should they need that pass when they go downstream. Next slide. So just to give you a few examples of river stewardship examples that we have, we have different blogs that SARA, our digital, Marketing staff creates so these are just river tips I mean blogs on river tips what you expect on the river paddling other things to do how to experience it and so it's a lot of stewardship and You also need to pay if you park here. There's paid parking if you need a day pass This is where you go so all of those lead you to our websites in addition to the websites provided by the city on the city side and the parks and rec site and And then in addition to that, next slide, we have some amazing videos, stewardship videos, And the latest one that we have, which we will play shortly, but we have park rules, we have basically don't be a litter bug. And even though you may not think it's litter when something flies away from your table, it is litter. So little things like that, your flip flop flies off, that's litter, that's unintentional litter. So we have these great videos of river stewardship and we would like to share this one with you here. Thank you. I can't take credit for them, but our team can, yes, yes. That's what we're hoping for.

I can feel an energy at the headwaters. I mean, it is a place where people have been inhabited for thousands of years. The San Marcos River brings people from all walks of life together. There are so many people coming to this town that it's really gonna take every single person, whether they're local or a visitor or an outfitter, to do their part.

When I'm sitting on I-35, I have to remind myself that I am not in traffic, I am traffic. Basically the impact that we're trying to mitigate is our own. The culture around this river is honestly very beautiful. The people that stay here want to be here for a reason and that reason is flowing behind me.

There's definitely a river culture in San Marcos. There's a lot of community involvement with stewardship. I think it's everybody's job to be a steward. Anybody who comes out here, there's just so much work to be done.

There's so many individual groups that are working towards it. And so you have SMRF, you have the I's, you have SMGA, you have the Meadows Center.

from aquatic trash, trash on the land, bank stabilization, invasive fish removal, invasive plant removal. You know, if you love the river, then you love the habitat conservation plan, because that's what's protecting the river.

The Habitat Conservation Plan is a very large plan amongst a lot of different stakeholders and permittees to protect this river. Most people won't notice. They see the river and they think, this place is amazing, why does anyone need to work on it? And it's because of that work.

19.9. We're removing armored catfish and tilapia, which are two invasive species, as well as aquatic litter removal. The whole point of spearfishing is zero bycatch. We're trying to rebuild these native fish populations.

When you come to visit, or if you're a local and you enjoy this river, just know there's so much work being done behind the scenes to make sure that this place stays beautiful.

And all this is, it's habitat before it's recreation. And so for no other reason than that, we need to protect it.

It's habitat before it's recreation. I like that. And we always have to remind ourselves, which is my favorite quote out of that, when I'm sitting in traffic on I-35, I have to remember that I am the traffic. So all of that is just traffic in that direction. We had many people, they recognized several people, groups, our river guardians that collaborated on that. And there's still a few others that weren't included. And then those that also funded. So we will be making modifications to that to acknowledge those to acknowledge. And then, as I say, it's everybody's job. It's everyone's job to be present and to help be a good steward. So, right.

There it is. Thank you, Rebecca, and thank you for the videos. We appreciate that. There's not much more to say other than, of course, before question and answer, we wanted to share with council how we have a stewardship partnership role for the San Marcos River. We do try to abide, of course, by the council direction. There's a balance because we want to provide the information. We know that the San Marcos River flows beyond our city limits, and there are other recreation spots along the San Marcos River We know that the popularity of social media and social media influencers, they're posting videos about the San Marcos River, and visitors can mistakenly see those other sites, like Don's Camp, and think that they have all the information that they need to know about the San Marcos River in our city, but they don't. And that's where our staff comes in, because these are official city web pages, whether it's our Parks and Recreation Department, whether it's our Destination Services Department, we want to provide all the valuable information about when you visit the San Marcos River within our city limits and the rules that we want folks to abide by. So we also know that we can always improve our efforts and so we welcome council feedback and at this point we'll turn it over to council questions and discussion.

And I'll go first because I want to do some thank yous. Thank you to our Parks Department and all those folks, the volunteers who help keep our river clean. Thanks to the CBB staff and the communications. I also want to thank Amy Tamides and the folks that are working whenever it's a river cleanup. They're really good at saying what you drop here ends up. over here, we got t-shirts for that. And so, since we have so many volunteers who do want to protect our river, that they're working in the dry creeks and upstream various places. So I think that's been really helpful. When I went out to the website, I don't go there often, I don't know about the river. I was pleasantly, and I'm not going to say surprised, at what's out there. It's written in a friendly tone of voice. It's very instructional, but in a gentle way. I love the way so much of this is written is, hey, come into the river. Well, let's talk about some of the rules here and explaining why. And I just thought all of the pages were very well done. And they were keeping in mind with don't just say, come to the river, but hey, if you're coming to the river, here's what you need to know. I thought it was extremely well done, every page that I looked at, and I looked at all of them. So I just wanted to say that, and I think we're probably walking that line pretty well without advertising, Heaven knows there's a lot of other people that are advertising the river for us, so we don't need extra. But also, I'm sure that the hotels appreciate the year-roundness of it. And whenever I do a welcome at the conference center, I say, hey, it's a constant 72 degrees. We're a great place to come in the winter. You know, if you want to get in the water. So anyway, I was just, I was really pleased at what I saw. I just want to say thank you. Thank you. Well done. Thank you. Others? Anything? Anything? Anything? Sure.

Yeah, I don't think we'd need to specifically advertise it. You know, the river does a great job advertising itself. I love the stewardship conversation there and the positivity. Maybe we look at parlaying that in how to do San Marcos best, i.e., I'm going to come visit the river. What else can I do? Why I'm here? Just some transitional stuff. Hey, I like to go downtown and shop here or there. Maybe we can play off of that and just build some momentum there. But I saw those. I didn't know they were coming. I saw them on social media, and I shared them immediately. I was like, these are great. I don't know who's doing these right now. I'm not crying, you're crying type of deal. But I mean, really, so thoughtful. So keep up the great work. We really appreciate you.

Thank you. Just to give you, we contract with Joey Chapman and Steve Anderson within our office. He's the one that coordinates with him. Sarah is the one that writes all the blogs, which. For some of you that don't know, the one that's blushing there, that's Sarah. Yes, it's Sarah who writes all the blogs. She can't hide her smile. The whole time she's just like. And then, of course, Charlotte is everything else. Great job, y'all. We have a great team. Thank you.

Let me say something real quick. Someone has brought to my attention about signage, the river recreation areas. Are those where we want them to be? I will ask. Yeah, she was providing information about downtown, and I need to bring that to staff's attention. But are we good? Honestly, I'm not thrilled that we have San Marcos River Recreation Areas on the freeway. Okay. But I guess if people are coming, which they are, I guess it's best to direct them the most direct route.

So we do have, it is in the river. On our current wayfinding signage, there is directionals to... These are the brown highway signs. Yes, ma'am, the ones on the inner, yes. So you were asking if we... Make sure they're, I think they're in the right places and it was the downtown ones that I think there's one that's one exit. When it was during construction. I will work with SABAS to look into that. Thank you. All right, thank you. Ms. Rodriguez.

No, I just want to echo all the thoughts. I think that's why when that video dropped, it was so nice because you had so many different players featured, so many people who we all value their thoughts and opinions, and so that was lovely. It also just lets us know how much talent we have amongst our own team, and I'm glad to see that we're taking advantage of that. I know I had asked a question on the message board. Don't intend to make a big issue. I appreciate the city attorney for... Further clarification, I appreciate y'all's comments in the message board about the notification at the point of sale and just wanted to kind of give some feedback or I guess background as to why I asked that. So there are many times I see people, I know they're coming from HEB, I know they're coming from big retailers like Walmart. and it wasn't anything where I was trying to force a private business to do that, even though I had brought up the Bitcoin is just maybe a suggestive measure. Um, I guess like in terms of like recent, how, how recent have the discussions been with these retailers?

Yeah, we did that with Christie and, and, um, at Christie Marilla within parks and rec and Jamie's team. We did that when we passed the ordinance and she can give you more information.

Okay.

Jamie Lee Case, Director of Parks and Recreation. Councilmember, we did it to push only after the single-use beverage container ordinance had been adopted. So what was that, 2022? And so we contacted all the retailers, only had good progress with one. We provided them with some mock-ups that our... creatives with our tourist information center had mocked up for us. They took that, they made it for their store. I thought that we kind of had an understanding that they were going to voluntarily kind of keep that momentum going on an annual basis, but that hasn't been the case. Since then, the person that we were coordinating with has retired. So I don't currently have a direct relationship with that retailer's leadership. As I speak to you today, that can obviously be remedied to see if they would be willing to do something for us for next season since they were willing to help us out before.

Okay, cool. Yeah, I was just, you know, obviously you wanted to make it as voluntary as possible. Right. Because it could be perceived on the retailer's side that it's impacting sales, which I do get and I empathize with. I was just thinking in terms of like, you know, we're going to have Buc-ee's coming online. I imagine that people will go to Buc-ee's, to our river, things like the HEB coming on the south end. Kind of how we get people at that point to know versus... putting it all in our parks ambassadors to tell people, Hey, you got to walk it back or throw it away.

Right.

Um, and so that was sort of the purpose and perhaps, I don't know, maybe something that we could, we could think about as partnering with our chamber and maybe those conversations could be led by them considering they may have relationships already formed with some of these retailers. So I'd be interested in that and in pursuing that even further, like I said, just for the purpose of notification. Because I imagine it's not everybody's intent to bring these things in and they probably don't want to waste their money equally as much.

Absolutely. And I've worked a few weekends out in the park on Saturdays as well and been there firsthand to see as folks arrive. Our biggest violation as folks arrive at Rio Vista is styrofoam. They're using styrofoam coolers. Unfortunately, a lot of the times they are buying those at home and then transporting them with them as they're coming. At least everyone that I had points of contact with obviously didn't have points of contact with every single person entering. But I was like, oh, did you stop on your way? And they're like, oh no, we just brought everything from home. So that's kind of my conversations, but in hopes that if we can help further educate folks about, hey, plan before you go kind of situation, that would be really, really helpful all around for us.

For sure. But to piggyback on that, How far out is the signage from the gates? Because some people are parking at the ball fields. Do we have any kind of signage on the sidewalk as they're coming from the ball fields?

Not currently, no ma'am. All of our, kind of what I call our top violations, styrofoam, charcoal, glass, alcohol, those things, they're all in big red letters.

Why not have them further out while people still can turn around and go to their car before they get all the way to the gate.

Sure. That is something that Ms. Ibarra is telling me that we can work on and coordinate.

Down CM Allen also? Just where people park and it's a long way back to their car. That saves them the trek.

or having to throw it away absolutely right kind of like what you're what the experience when you go through tsa way before you get to the yeah you know you're already being told that way it gives me an opportunity to walk back to my car absolutely something like that even is favorable as well um and then second question and it was my last um in terms i did see this uh again great job on all of the social media i did see it on instagram i saw it on facebook do we have a TikTok? And the reason I ask is because there was some of us that went on a tour to our city marshal's department recently. And one of the discussions that we had in that tour was sort of how are people finding out about this gem that exists in our community? And I was sharing with the mayor, there are TikToks that go viral with millions of views. So I didn't know if this is already being done, great. But I didn't know if we had Or if that's even something the city can do. I will defer.

Per state law, the governor has banned the use of TikTok. That's right. I forgot about that. Hold the bottle. And so city devices, we cannot have TikTok on our devices.

Could you work with, we have a lot of local, I think, I guess micro-influencers at Texas State. Um, I don't know, I feel like maybe you could work with them and they could, uh, share some of the long content and make it short content.

We have some really talented, like locals who do like cover like a collab.

Yeah. Like that guy who covers all the food, Louise. Yeah.

And he has a large following of people that don't just exist inside the city. And even if that's like us as members who need to go create an account, even though I don't want to be on another social media account. to continue like whatever that partnership looks like. I wasn't aware of the preemption, doesn't surprise me. But yeah, however we can get something out there on that platform, because yeah, our river is constantly on there in ways that receive a massive amount of views, so. you know, maybe some creative way we can put that information still.

We will look into that. And, and Sarah, um, has a relationship with Luis, um, cause we are collaborating right now on deals and discounts and on other things.

So, yeah, so not surprised. Yeah.

So Sarah has that relationship and I wanted to be before you mentioned Bucky's I'd like to add. So today, because we have a kiosk, a visitor kiosk, it will be placed in the entry way, which, That's part of the development agreement that they have with all other communities in their new stores. So Sarah and myself and Joe went out today. Joe tagged along. And we went out today to Bucky's. And one of the things that Sarah noticed, because I noticed that there was a tubing sign and there was old signs. These are old signs, tubing and river. So I wanted to go back there to see what they had. They have absolutely no Styrofoam ice chest, no Styrofoam cups back there. Now, please keep in mind that their Bucky's cups, their 89-cent cups, they're Styrofoam with their logo on them. So that they do have. But as far as other merchandise, other River merchandise, and they don't have too much when you go into New Braunfels. they have like an entire section of just river. Ours isn't to that level, but there is, there is, um, river, uh, there are any twos, but there are other like ice chest and cups and so forth within that. Um, well, that's great.

It's a great, it's great to hear that development agreements can be leveraged to do things in terms of environmental protection in that way too. So that's cool. And I'm glad to see that our staff is proactive in that way. So that's good to know.

um yeah just be interested obviously i'm not expecting another work session for these updates but you know some of the suggestions that have been shared here today i'd be interested in helping it in whatever way so yeah sounds good thank you all for all the work you're working on with the local content creators that's really exciting i've been seeing other cities do it it makes sense why we haven't we don't have like a tiktok but i've been city seeing folks in other states like their visitor center like collaborating with micro influencers. Very cool. And I really liked the videos. I was listening. Thank you.

Thank you.

Anything else, counsel?

So just to make sure that we're clear on, so the direction is to continue with not advertising the river and can continue with what we've been doing. And I think the thing that we need a little bit more clarification on is even when it comes to like the rules and stuff, y'all are okay with that piece of things, but just not, to say, hey, come down and join us at the river. You don't want that kind of messaging. You want it to be more about protection and being more creative when it comes to the protection aspect, educational and informational aspect of rules and things like that, not necessarily highlighting that this is a gem, come see us. Right.

How to have fun here and how to use it.

I'm sorry, what was it?

How to have fun while you're here, but how to do it properly. I thought you said how to have hair.

I was like, what? I thought he said something about a nap. I mumble sometimes. No, no, I have. Yeah. Okay. But it's no paid advertising and no promotion as well, like even just the promotion. Okay.

I think you all are teetering the line really nicely. I think what you're doing is good. Okay.

This is another conversation, but if I was advertising anything, it would be local businesses, downtown, you know, stuff like that. and with the accent of the river being there.

And what's nice about our website is we provide a service for a lot of small businesses and a lot of Oregon that do not have money for websites. So they use our website as their website.

Yeah, restaurants and others.

Yes, yes. So we do the small business and local businesses as a service by providing that, including them. Yep.

All right. Then if that's it, we will close this one out. Thank you to all. Thank you. And we will move on to item two. Mr. Trevino.

Receive a staff presentation regarding the current status of American Rescue Plan Act and provide direction to the city manager.

Ms. Reyes. Good afternoon, Mayor and Council. Our presentation this afternoon is an update on funding received through the American Rescue Plan Act. funds were requested to be obligated by December 31st, 2024, with all funds spent by December 31st, 2026. As we have continued to implement and close out some projects, we have identified some excess funds that are available to be used for already existing obligations. Today we will present a proposed reallocation, receive feedback from council, and a resolution will be placed on a future council meeting for consideration. I'd like to recognize Director of Administrative Services, Hayden Meagle, for his outstanding and diligent management of this funding stream. With that, I'll now turn it over to Mr. Meagle for the presentation. Thank you.

Thank you, City Manager Reyes. Good afternoon, Mayor and Council. Hayden Meagle, Director of Administrative Services. We are getting close to the end of this.

And no one's happier than you.

I know you are excited to see me every quarter, but...

Yes, we are.

Going to begin with a quick update on the federal pandemic funding the city received, and I'm also seeking council direction on a proposed reallocation of ARPA funding. Hopefully the last, I'm not going to say anything though, because I'll jinx it if I do. The most recent council action was approval of a resolution in April of this year, reallocating funds. Want to take a quick moment and acknowledge where we currently are in the process. City Council allocated funding towards 78 projects and programs, and staff worked diligently to ensure that all of these were obligated prior to the deadline that we had of December 31st, 2024. We will continue implementing a few final projects to ensure all funds are spent by December 31st, 2026, and continue working with our consultant booth management to ensure we close out all the projects and have proper documentation. I've been trying to think of what analogy I can use for our point, I feel like we're on the airplane, and we are just about to land, and it can be a scary time, but we're almost at the destination. The first source of funding I will go over are the coronavirus relief funds. When this funding was awarded, the city placed it all towards staffing expenses, which freed up $2.6 million in general funds. Over 88% of those funds have been expended, and one of the projects completed earlier this year were the fire sprinkler renovations for Cuauhtemoc Hall. And here is a list of all of the projects funded through CRF. Shifting over to ARPA, this slide shows that we have spent over 96% of the $18 million the city received. The projects listed are just a few that had funds spent this past quarter. And these next couple of slides show the list of all the projects that were funded through ARPA. The more detailed update that includes a project name, description, amount allocated, amount spent, and amount available was also attached as backup to this item in the agenda packet. And here's the rest of those 78 projects and programs. I'll now shift to talking about a proposed reallocation. All ARPA funds had to be obligated by the end of 2024. However, guidance from the federal government does allow for a shift if more funding is needed for an obligated project. The first slide lists a few projects that have available funding. And this one lists the program that we recommend the funding go toward. As a reminder, all available funding must be reallocated to projects and programs that are already funded by ARPA and have an existing contract. And we'll go over each of these a little bit more. I'll start with the projects with available funding. Each of the projects on this list have some funding available as they have been completed or the cost came in below initial estimates. The total amount comes in just below $50,000. You can ask all the directors. They are ready to stop hearing from me because I've been pretty persistent asking, okay, if there's any money left here, are you positive you are going to spend all of this by the end of this year? Asking them, okay, like to the dollar. And yeah, they're ready to stop hearing from me. There is also some funding available from some cybersecurity positions. One of those became vacant. Actually, both of them became vacant, but one of them has been filled, and we figured out how much we would need for the rest of this year, and this is the funding that's still available. I'll now shift to discussing the program that we recommend receive the additional funding, and that is the BR3T Rental and Utility Assistance Program. Um, we recommend that they get a total of 49,879 dollars and 52 cents. Um, adding this amount will bring their total amount allocated to this program to over $308,000. Um, city council approved this agreement in late 2024 and they have been very, very successful in providing this assistance to our community. As of March, and we're gonna use that just because that was before they got an additional allocation, they had provided assistance to 74 households representing 189 residents. 92% of that was for rental assistance and 8% was on utilities. I also want to Just make a statement. I think that whenever we bring back the resolution for the reallocation, that number could rise a little bit because I'm waiting to hear back from a couple of other departments. Just to let you know, that's the reason why. The next step is to bring back a resolution with the reallocation at your next meeting. We will also continue working with our consultant. to ensure continued compliance and continue the documentation process for the projects as we close them out. The direction I am seeking this afternoon is if council is okay with the proposed reallocation of American rescue plan funding. And before I conclude, I do want to take another moment. Oops, went a little bit too far. And just thank Mayor and Council for your direction that you've provided throughout this entire process. And I also want to acknowledge the staff who have identified the projects and programs that help the community and who have had the responsibility of making them happen. I'll now be happy to answer any questions and receive Council direction.

I have a question. Go ahead. In your discussions with BR-3T, because I'm assuming you've approached them to see if they have capacity and whatnot.

Correct.

Can you share a little bit about that, the capacity and their ability to provide case management or whatnot?

That is actually something specific that they asked, if they could provide some of this funding towards case management with the previous reallocation that was made toward them. Looking at the agreement, I think that fits within within the parameters of this program. So it does sound like they recognize that as a need on their side just to be able to provide the assistance to the community.

Awesome. Is there like a certain percentage or like how are they going to determine what goes to direct aid versus case management?

It is, I believe it was, I'm trying to recall now off the top of my head, I want to say maybe it was a 60, 40 split, but prior to this, it's been like 85, 90%. towards direct assistance. They recognize that they need that case management to help within the community.

Yeah, I have been asking for, since the beginning, to have more ARPA money being diverted towards pro-social preventative services. I really appreciate the relationship that you have established with the folks at BR3T and also Grisel's willingness to also help individual neighbors who will post on Facebook or reach out directly, having issues navigating that process. I do think that sometimes neighbors do need some community support or liaison to help those folks, but we've seen success in that, so I just wanted to highlight that partnership as well. It seems like there's a good line of communication, which makes me excited and comfortable with supporting this. I think the case management part is also something that I think in the height of the pandemic, there was a lot of other orgs who could provide that. You know, they also were delivering the ARPA money towards that. But now we're seeing less and less of those other agencies that provide support being able to keep up with that case management. And I think that some of our neighbors are falling through the cracks, not being able to have that support. So I think it's cool that, yeah, I agree.

BR three T has been a great partner along the way. And we take the feedback that we received from them very seriously and even modified our agreement a little bit just so that we could open up towards deposits or some of the different things that they were hearing. They were hearing that no residents really need help in this area. Can we, become a little bit more flexible and have tried to work with them, but also seeing where we can improve and where we can help them improve as well.

I love it. Yeah. I felt like we've learned so much. Amanda and I attended a presentation with folks from Southside and BR3T and just hearing even every social service agency that provides that type of assistance ends up meeting some unanticipated barriers, like different fees that certain funds don't cover. I appreciate y'all's willingness to be flexible and to revisit and pivot as necessary.

I think that's one of the most exciting things about Griselle and her position, to also kind of be involved in those discussions, but kind of seeing that coalesce to where you can see, okay, this organization is really great at this. Let's have them focus more on that. This one is really good at this instead. and being able to direct people to the organization that can help them the most.

For sure. Thanks for naming that. I think we really needed that, that person, instead of it being like piecemeal hearing from individual council members, um, somebody who was directed at that's part of her, her jam. Thank you. That's all I have.

Yeah, no, I, if I may, I just appreciate real quick coming at the end of this, obviously y'all have worked most of this money and figured out what to do with it. And Hayden, you've been along all the way. But I do appreciate that, I wanna echo that, because I hope that this discussion can hopefully create a larger discussion about philosophically how we spend our social services money. because the ask that BR3 is talking about in terms of managing case work and case assistance is, as she just attested to, similar to every other organization here. And I know we've had a philosophy that money's only to services. And so I'm glad to see that it's working here, and I look forward to seeing how they benefit in our community benefits. So thank you.

Mr. Pissot?

Mr. Pissot? I'm good. I think that I echo your thanks to everyone in the city who has been working to do things to help our citizenry through use of this 18 million plus dollars and further diligence and making sure that the requested amount would cover everything because it's okay to have a little left over and then you pull all those together and Before you know it, we've got some money done. So anyway, thank you all, and thank you, Mr. Meagle, for pulling it all together.

Thank you.

So we're good with a resolution coming back for somewhere around 49,879.52, or maybe a little more. Maybe a little bit more. And that'll be at our next meeting?

Yes.

Okay, and then you're still... making sure that the funds are spent, because I think I understood you to say maybe some of them aren't quite spent yet, but they will be. We now have exact dollars.

Correct. I mean, we have a good idea. I'm following up with them saying, hey, you're supposed to pay for phone service for an additional five months. How much is that going to be? And yes.

But it's like 85, 90% actually spent?

Over 96. 96.4% has been spent.

Okay. Wonderful. All right. So if there's nothing else, we will close this item out. And next we have... Question and answer with press and public. No one signed up. Seeing no one saying me, me. And we have no executive session items today. So we will end this session at 3.44 p.m.