Human Services Advisory Board - Regular Meeting

Welcome to the June 3rd, 2026 regular meeting of the Human Services Advisory Board. I'm calling the meeting to order at 6.16 p.m. Thank you all for attending. Carol, will you please unroll for the record of board member attendance? Okay, no, I'm hearing that it's not able to attend.

Nancy Arevalo?

Present.

Raymond Best?

Here.

Linda Harper-Williams.

Here.

Ethan Graves. Here. Sharif Qassis. I'm going to say unable to.

Okay. Madeline Smith had a family emergency, unable to attend, and then Elisa. Here. So we have one, three, four, five.

With five out of seven voting members in attendance, we have Jake Foram. It is now time for this citizen comment period. Anyone is allowed to speak on any topic for up to three minutes. If you'd like to speak during this citizen comment period, will you please raise your hand?

Okay, we only have presenters showing up, so I think, okay.

All right. Now we will consider approval of the minutes for the meeting held May 27th, 2026. Do I hear a motion to approve the minutes for this meeting as written?

Motion. Second.

You mentioned they don't see a second they even does the board have any discussion or actions regarding the minutes. They are we all the role of the best.

Yeah, okay, I got the air votes, yes, right and that's yes. And that are going.

Yes, you can grab this that's sorry for us is.

Okay. Okay.

Okay. Yes. Okay.

All right. We will receive an approximately 10 minute presentation by the following applicant agencies for each program for which an agency has applied for human services grant funding. Each presentation will be followed by an approximately 10-minute question and answer session between the board members and the agency regarding the program or application. Carol will introduce each presentation and we'll keep track of the time.

Carol, the floor is yours. Okay, thank you. So first up is Julia Ramsey-New. She's online. She's the Executive Director of the Greater San Marcos Youth Council. She'll be presenting two programs. The first one is going to be family and youth support services. So Julia, take it from here.

Thank you, Carol. Good evening and thank you for the opportunity to present to you. As Carol said, my name is Julia Ramsey-New and I represent the Greater San Marcos Youth Council.

So Julia, just real quick.

Yes.

We can no longer see your video. Oh, oh. Can you see me now? Yes. Okay. Sorry about that.

Okay, good. GSMIC, the acronym, has served vulnerable children and families in the San Marcos community for many years through a continuum of prevention, intervention, and emergency care services. First, I will share information regarding our prevention and early intervention services provided through the Family and Youth Success Program, known as PHASE. The PHASE program works with families in crisis to address concerns before they escalate into more serious outcomes, such as child protective services involvement, juvenile justice referrals, school disengagement, or law enforcement response. The program provides no-cost counseling, case management, parenting education, crisis intervention, 24-hour year-round access to a crisis hotline, and family support services for San Marcos families. The program currently serves more than 500 San Marcos residents annually and delivered nearly 3,000 counseling and family support sessions last year. Although services are available to families throughout Hays County, San Marcos residents represent a substantial portion of those receiving services. And demand for services has increased significantly. We're currently operating at capacity with each family support specialist carrying an average caseload of 37, which exceeds the state recommended caseload for family specialists. And our wait list right now, we currently have 62 families on it. Most referrals come from schools, community agencies, law enforcements, and direct calls from families themselves seeking support. Many families seek services during periods of escalating stress involving behavioral concerns, school problems, family conflict, housing instability, or mental health challenges. For example, we had one high school aged youth began services in 2025 to address anxiety and receive additional mental health support. And during services, the youth experienced challenges involving family dynamics, unstable living conditions, and substance use concerns. Through counseling and case management support, the youth developed healthy coping strategies and identified solutions to those concerns while improving emotional regulation, school attendance, academic performance, and social support connections. The youth demonstrated significant resilience and progress during services, graduated last month, and will continue their education in the fall. We are requesting $45,000 in city funding for phase, which represents approximately 8% of the total program budget. City funding supports counseling, case management, crisis response, parenting education, youth skills groups, and emergency assistance for families experiencing acute hardship. These funds help expand access to services and reduce delays in care for San Marcos families experiencing crisis. Thank you for your time and consideration of our funding request, and I would be happy to answer any questions.

OK, so thank you and we have plenty of time.

That was four minutes, so please ask any questions you have. I tried to be succinct.

Yes. Anyone have questions?

How long are families waiting on the wait list? Like what's the average wait time for that?

It depends. What we do is we check in with them periodically, right? We'll call them and we'll say, has your situation worsened or has it improved any? Just to touch base with them and let them know that we haven't forgotten about them. The our associate director did tell me today that she's pulling 25 families off of the wait list and distributing them among the family support specialist. So the goal is to not keep them. We don't want them to just be languishing on the wait list.

Thank you.

Can you clarify something for me? I want to make sure I've got this right. Your application says you're requesting $35,000, but your proposal in the back with your support is showing $45,000. Which is it?

Well, it must be what's on the application.

Well, your breakdown is on the back part where you have the breakdown, you have the Salaries and benefits for 20% of a salary at $35,000 and then utilities at $10,000.

Okay, so that is $45,000.

$45,000 is what you're asking for?

Yes.

Okay.

I'm sorry.

I'm sorry. Go ahead. Yeah, I was just going to say, when you said, I thought you said $45,000. I said, I'm seeing $35,000. And then, you know, I'm online. I wanted to make sure I was hearing clearly.

No, thank you. Thank you for checking.

And then, you know, I'll change that. I'll probably just at this point send a note around to all the board members. We're missing a couple of people.

So everybody knows that the amount is different.

Um, yeah, I have a question. So I guess to continue talking about the budget for your let me go look for both the fiscal year 26 and fiscal year 27 budget. It's the Exact same budget. I don't see any changes in it. So I was wondering why that would be just because I know that the cost for a lot of things have been going up. So do you not expect any changes in your budget for the next fiscal year?

No, we do. In fact, the next year's fiscal budget is supposed to reflect 5% increase in expenses.

Alright, thank you, thank you.

Anyone else? No rush, but I just want to make a balance between giving all time and if we're ready to go on.

Would you guys like for me to check? I don't have the file in front of me and I can check. I didn't, when we went through all the documents and the attachments, I did not see, I mean, we did the 2027 budget. So would you all like for me to double check what we submitted and make sure and provide the correct one?

I think that would be good. And if you can get it to me, if by the end of the week would be ideal, and then I'll get it out to the board. I'll get it to you tomorrow morning. Okay.

Thank you, Julia.

Thank you.

I guess one last question for me. So for the salaries and benefits, how many employees is that covering? Is that just one position or is it broken into different positions?

It's one position.

All right. Thank you.

anything else anybody online okay julia i think we're done with that one and then next we'll go to the children's shelter also run by the greater san marcos youth council so we'll start the time over and uh please go ahead okay thank you and thank you again for the opportunity to speak with you this evening about our children's shelter

So phase focuses on prevention and early intervention. The children's shelter serves children when a crisis has already escalated and immediate emergency placement is necessary. The children's shelter provides 24 hour emergency residential care for children ages 2 to 17. Many children removed from their homes are now appropriately placed with relatives or fictive kin whenever possible. However, emergency situations still occur where no immediate caregiver is available. Children served at the shelter often include runaway youth located by law enforcement, children whose parents have been arrested or hospitalized, or children identified in unsafe living conditions while Child Protective Services opens an investigation. The shelter served 136 children last year and maintained a 100% safety rating and a 98% safety status. stability success rate. So 98% stability success rate. Maintaining local emergency placement capacity is critically important because these situations are unpredictable and require an immediate response. We currently have a San Marcos child in care who needed emergency placement last week. Recently, law enforcement located two runaway siblings in San Marcos late in the evening. And because the shelter was immediately available, the children were able to remain safely in the community instead of being transported to another city, possibly hours away. Our caregivers provided supervision, meals, stabilization, and coordination with Child Protective Services until safe arrangements could be made for the children to return home. Maintaining a local emergency placement option ensures that San Marcos law enforcement, hospitals, and child protection professionals have a safe, local resource available when crisis situations occur. We are requesting 15,000 in city funding for the children's shelter, which represents slightly under 2% of the total shelter operating budget. City funding supports the ongoing readiness and operational capacity of the shelter, ensuring it remains available when emergency situations arise. We so much appreciate the City's continued partnership and investment in services that strengthen families and protect vulnerable children within our own community. Continued City investment helps ensure that children facing emergencies have a safe place to go immediately within their own community. If awarded, these funds will help us maintain emergency response capacity and support vulnerable children before situations become more costly and complex for the broader community. Thank you for your time and consideration of our funding request, and I would be happy to answer any questions.

Thank you. And Cherie, because he has arrived here in person and he was having technical issues. So Cherie, if you have questions on the prior presentation as well, please feel free to ask those.

Right.

Yeah.

So now she just finished the second. And then does anyone have questions about the children's health?

From application, it was describing that how Texas will be transitioning to a community-based foster care system model. Can you expand what that looks like and what that would look like for y'all?

Absolutely. Thank you for asking that question because it's consumed us. The Texas foster care system has not changed in 40 years. They've done all kinds of things to try to improve our foster care system. And everyone is hopeful. Now, not necessarily the privatization piece. A lot of child welfare folks are concerned about it being privatized. but are hopeful that T3C means that children will no longer be labeled as basic, moderate, specialized, or intense. The proper facility, the proper service will be provided to them. And so that's positive, right? I think that's positive. We actually are applying for three of the tiers. And every provider that has managed to stay open, because it's a huge undertaking and it's quite costly, have to decide which tiers they want to provide. And we will provide basic childcare, emergency emotional, support and assessment services, and school-aged parenting for children who are either pregnant or parenting. And probably the most positive thing to come out of this is while they are requesting us, requesting or requiring that we provide much more, we have to provide a lot more. For example, we have to have a medical director. The rates will be much higher than they are now. The rates haven't changed in years and they're barely, last year they covered 50% of the total operating costs, the per diem that we received from the state.

I'm sorry, I think that answered way too much, way more than you asked.

But it's just, you know, it's something that we're all just really, we're consumed with right now. Because the board said, hey, we want to stay open. We've been in the community 40 years. We want to keep helping kids and families.

Yeah, no, I appreciate your response. Thank you. I was just really curious as to what that was like for you all.

Thank you.

And I have a question. Well, two questions, but they're both related to, I guess, training of your staff. So one question I had, just based on what you guys deal with, does the staff take any training in trauma-informed care? And if so, like, kind of what does that look like for your organizations?

Yes, absolutely. We have been a trauma-informed provider for many years. And we have actually, because of T3C, we have now sent one of our folks to become a certified trainer in TBRI, Trust-Based Relationship Interviewing, which is also trauma-informed T3C requires a lot more training than we've been required to have in the past. But just to brag a little bit, we have minimum standards that we have to adhere to for residential care facilities. And we always exceed the standard. We've always done more than they ask. Awesome.

And then I guess probably too, and I know there's, even kind of a little space in here under the support for colleagues. But I guess, and I just recently taken this training, a training like this that I've worked with kids a lot and I've never had a training like this, but it was like a child abuse prevention training, you know, from like a third party. I guess, do y'all also go through extensive training kind of in that realm?

too about you know preventing any sort of child abuse situations yes we do that training is required annually so everybody everybody who works here takes it annually thank you welcome

Anyone else questions?

I have a question. So in the application for the reporting of 2025, it showed that y'all served 82 unduplicated individuals, but zero of them were from San Marcos residents. So compared With that information from last year, how are y'all's numbers looking so far this year?

So far this year, we've had three San Marcos kids.

Right. And then I assume your shelter is full?

Actually, because of T3C and because our building is... really old you know over the years we've done we've slapped on paint and made improvements that way but we are remodeling completely remodeling for the first time ever uh yes thank you we got we got a grant to do that and um so our capacity we haven't been able to take as many kids as we normally would Doesn't mean that we don't leave a bed. We actually leave two beds open for local kids. Pardon me. But we have five kids right now because we can only take like a third of our kids because they are remodeling the bathrooms and the bedrooms.

Awesome. Thank you.

Y'all should come see us. Come for a visit.

I guess follow up to the remodeling. Is there a timeline for those remodelings where you guys can get back to full capacity?

Yes. Yes. He, our builder is, he said that he's slightly ahead of schedule. And what's awesome about him is that he was a residential builder. director. He actually ran a facility like ours. And so he had some suggestions that none of the other folks that we got bids from had. He's slightly ahead of schedule and he's actually done some things for us that he's not charging us for. He said, if y'all can get the windows donated, I'll replace all the windows and not charge you. So. Yeah.

June so we're looking at looking at the end of June this month. OK, we still have plenty of time. Any other questions for Julia?

OK, seeing none, Julia will keep moving to the next presentations. Thank you so much for joining us.

Thank y'all.

Thank y'all. Have a good rest of your evening. So for the next ones, I'm going to. Desiree Miranda online up to be a presenter and then go give the rest of the people that are OK. Yeah. What is that? This is the offerings. Thanks.

me me Kimberly, can you hear me? Okay.

Kimberly Armstrong, are you able to hear me? Yes, I can hear you.

Oh, OK, good. Do you want to sit next to this one? Yeah. Not show your video until it's your turn. We're running a little slower than we expected. So we're just now starting South Center and they have three presentations.

OK. Oh, and she turned it off.

OK, good. OK, so. Oh, and here's Desiree is. Able to join. I think she's just here to watch. Yeah, so she's fine. OK, good luck. Alright, so then next we have Southside Community Center. Go around the room. I think so. Deborah Bigamondo is the executive director, so she's here staring at her staff while they please.

Jessica King, yeah.

Jessica came here in the blue and white is director of neighborhood enhancement, engagement. Oh, yeah. That's funny. Okay. Okay, you enhance it. I engage with it. Exactly. So that's good. Okay. Engagement. Okay. And then we have is it Amaris Amaris Amaris Hutzler. She's the property manager at Sun Sunrise Village, which is for the first presentation. then we have they have compost beer men back here in the bank um housing program manager so they're going to each kind of roll through the different presentations um jessica will be part of each one so the first one is about sunrise village with jessica and um cameras cameras okay it really shouldn't be okay thanks y'all and then uh please feel free to start and take your time like i know It's a crowded agenda, but everybody gets all their time. So we're here for it. Do you have the slides I sent you?

Oh, do they have? I sent them to you before the previous one. So they may be back in your email. Okay.

Sorry. I didn't remember and I didn't bring them up.

That's okay. We'll just fail.

Yeah.

I practiced them today and not one of them is 10 minutes long. So we won't take too much of your time today.

Okay. Here's. Me. Right there is.

All right, now that it's up, yes.

So our first presentation today is about Sunrise Village. I'm going to be giving the presentations and then I've brought folks with me to answer questions because I don't necessarily know every detail that y'all might have questions about for each of the presentations. So we're going to start with Sunrise. So Sunrise Village is our 100-unit independent senior living community. It's right behind Sunset Bowling. You've probably driven past it and not realized, one, that it's there, and two, that it's part of Southside. Everybody in Sunrise is 55-plus. It is a senior living community, and all of them are San Marcos residents. So when we're talking about this program, we're talking entirely about folks who live here. Well, can you go back for a second? There's stuff at the top. I didn't say it. Yeah, so Sunrise Village provides this safe, affordable and welcoming neighborhood for seniors. And it's not just a place to live. We do also offer not just the affordable housing, but transportation. We provide social events for the residents there and then also individual support. Our staff does a lot of case management for our seniors there. This slide is in every one of these presentations. Just because we do so many things and we have three applications, I wanted to give a really clear, this is where we are talking about right now. So right side of the screen is daily services, left side is housing programs, and for Sunrise, we're located right there in the midst of the housing program. So just that little orange bubble is what we'll be talking about. So in our grant application for Sunrise, we have a few things going on. The funding that we're requesting is for kind of three main areas that you see up here. The first is for updates to the units. Like I said, it's a 100-unit senior living community, and there are several things that need to be updated. Emergency alarms, accessibility for our seniors, HVACs, appliances within the units as well. I'm going to skip over to transportation. So we do provide transportation for our residents to HEV and to Walmart to go shopping for social events. And for other things, we have a sunrise bus. We also use that bus at Southside. We literally just finished unloading an Amazon donation from the bus earlier today. So also included in this are repairs for that bus. and then also a new set of tires and a battery replacement so that we can keep using that bus not only for our residents, but also for the things that we use it for at Southside. And then the final piece of the grant proposal is related to our social events. Right now, Amaris and our administrative assistant, there are only three staff members at Sunrise. The last one is our maintenance person. Amaris and Aaliyah are doing the full Everything in terms of programming, so they plan those events and what we're hoping to do is add an events coordinator to the staff part time is what's written into this grant that that person would not only run the. basically once every other month events that we currently run at hopefully kind of a higher caliber and with more focus than these folks are able to give to it, but also that we would be adding quarterly lunch and learn events for our residents and perhaps even for the community. We know that seniors are often victims of fraud and scams and things like that. So that's definitely one kind of lunch and learn that we're interested in doing. We partner with some local banks and they offer budgeting and things like that. Most of our seniors are on a very limited budget of some sort. So that's kind of where that position would help support the whole community as well. And then you'll just see there at the bottom, many of these new costs when we're looking at the unit updates and the transportation are just due to the age of the buildings and the bus. Sunrise has been around since the mid-90s, and if you know anything about buildings, we're hitting the fun part. So the reason that we're bringing these programs to you in the Human Services Grant is that we do have a community need for Sunrise's very existence. Our current waitlist, like I said, I sent these before we were supposed to present before. Amherst just updated me. Our waitlist is 51 individuals or couples right now, but we only turn over 10 to 12 units a year. we have a lot of folks you know if you can move in when you're 55 and you're relatively healthy you can live at sunrise for 20 or 30 years no problem and so there the longevity is there and then also when they move out there's all that maintenance and upkeep that did or did not happen depending on who's been living in the unit We do offer the lowest rent outside of apartments that do by the room rentals. Our rent is 775 a month, including everything but electricity. We see that that is obviously a need for a lot of folks in our community. Sunrise is a critical component of our rehousing efforts at Southside. In our transitional housing program, anybody who's 55 plus, we do try to rehouse at Sunrise. So they continue to have that really steady case management support and are connected with the overall organization going forward. There's also a need at Sunrise. Like I said, we've got buildings from the mid 90s. We have these long-term residents. We have folks who need ADA updates that either weren't required or folks didn't need when we first built the units. So there's a lot going on there. And the reason that we're bringing it as a grant proposal, you might ask, why are we not using our rental income to cover some of these things? First of all, a lot of it is maintenance that it's kind of all coming due at the same time. And to be able to keep our low rent, we're hoping for some additional funding to help cover these costs so that we can keep serving the community. Sunrise does have the capacity to manage this grant and to do all of the work that we've laid out within it. We have the staff in place. They're excellent. We have volunteer support and we already have relationships with contractors, so we've already gotten some bids and some ideas of what these things are going to cost if we have not already been working on them in other ways. Finally, this is how the program is what we need for the program and how we're funding it at this point. If we're able to do all of these things, we will obviously serve 100 or more individuals a year because we have 100 units and some of them do have couples in them. It will offer long-term accessibility, affordability, and quality of life, both for those who are already there and for folks who move in in the future. The total cost of everything that we've put into this grant program proposal is $120,000 and we've asked for $50,000 from Human Services. We are also applying for other grants. And then, of course, we do have some rental income above our expenses that we'll be putting toward all of these things.

That's all I have.

All of these follow basically the same format, and at the end you'll get the contact information for myself, but also for whoever you can ask more questions of.

OK, there we go. We can see our people. So we have plenty of time for questions specifically about Sunrise Village in that application. I had a question. I guess I can, I'll start.

So, you know, you mentioned someone could live at Sunrise for a really long time, right? Essentially, just out of curiosity, do you know what is like the longest time someone? We have a resident that's been there since 98, since phase two was built.

She's 90, 95, certainly. Oh my goodness.

That's awesome.

And she's amazing. She's just so mentally with it.

She's at all the events. Always participating and stuff.

She's got a lifelong learning event. They're making beer. That's really cool. Thank you.

I'm sorry if I missed it, but what are y'all's income restrictions for like if you're single or in a couple or what's the difference for that?

Follow TDHCA's guidelines, Texas Department of Housing Community Affairs. So each year that income gap, well, it will change for one person or two income households. I believe right now for one, it's around $46,000.

You have to make money with that amount.

Any questions online?

How long has the barnship been in Southside Community Center?

Well, it's not a partnership. We were built and owned by Southside since 94.

So Southside is the 501c3 and Sunrise is one of our programs.

Yeah. I don't recall Sunrise being in the To accept the priorities we've funded in the past.

No, it is not. This is a first.

But with any of our purchases.

I did go on the sunrise.

Has it always been seen living? Yes.

For the emergency alarms that

I think we're mentioned as one of the needs. Is that like smoke alarms or carbon outside in the units, or is it like an external emergency system at all? We do have full cord alarms, one in the bathroom and one in the bedroom, and the alarm will kind of sound outside of the unit, so then a neighbor can hear if someone's fallen or needs help, they can notify us or knock and you know, see if they're okay.

So like updating that whole system.

After 30 years, some of them go out.

They all go out at the same time.

Much like the HVAC.

Anything else for this one?

Would y'all happen to know, and totally understandable if not, what percentage of the funding is non-city? It's just that that part got cut off from the application, I think.

I want to say when I wrote it, I said 5% was from the city. Because most of the funding for Sunrise is generated by Sunrise itself.

I have two more questions versus laundry or their units in a unit laundry or is it like on site on the property or how does that handle washer and dryer hookups in every unit but we also have a laundry two laundries rooms on the property. Do y'all like I know like Southside does like services kind of like for eviction and like housing and payment plans and stuff like that. Is there a system in place like specifically for Sunrise Village residents if like they ever needed assistance like paying or something like that that they could set up a payment plan?

Yeah, we definitely try to exhaust all resources.

Okay.

Yes.

And where do you all get your volunteers from? Is it just like individuals in the community or groups of people who can volunteer?

Yeah, so this will be the same answer for both Sunrise and Southside. We get volunteers from Texas State a lot of the time. There's a particular Texas State class that requires 50 hours of service during the semester. So in the fall and the spring, we have 10 to 18 students who will sign up with us for that. Texas State groups, a lot of the fraternal organizations, whether they're social or they're academic related, will come and volunteer with us. And then we do have churches that will bring groups. And then we have a lot of individuals throughout the community who will sign up with us. We have about 900 registered volunteers with us. And I think I'm trying to pull this from the last time I saw it. I think about 300 individuals have volunteered since the beginning of 2026 with us.

Thank you. Yeah.

And some of those are at Sunrise and some of those are at Southside and some do both. Yeah. So the whole the program covers both of us for our volunteers as well. No, we do a lot less over at Sunrise because that would be a lot. Yes, it's a buddy system. No, it's a lot more at Southside on our property, but they do have a food bank twice a month at Sunrise, and the volunteers come through our main program, and I think we've got a pretty good group that are regulars now. Thank you.

You're welcome.

No rush.

Just checking. Okay. Nancy, are you good?

Yeah, I'm good.

Okay. Then we will go on to the next program. Okay. So now we'll have Jessica and Mayhawk. And again, it's the housing program. And that, yes. Okay. The program that they're going to talk about is the housing stability program. Okay.

I have a presentation for this one too.

It's okay. Cause I know what's on the first page. So as you're bringing it up the housing stability program is a combination of some programs that already existed, some programs that we've added some that we kind of had, but we're doing in a better way. And so we tried to pull all of our housing programs really under one big umbrella. And so NEHA is managing all of them and they are tiered based on the needs of the individuals and families that come to us. So I can talk about this for a long time. So the lowest level tier of the housing stability program is emergency assistance. We've had emergency assistance for a long time at Southside for almost a decade, I think at this point. That is a one-time payment for rent or utilities. We work with Hayes Helping Hands, St. Vincent de Paul, and the Presbyterian Church, First Presbyterian Church to get enough funding so that people can bring bills up to $800 to us in emergency assistance. And when they leave their appointment, we know that full bill will be covered. Eviction prevention is the newest part of this. It will turn one next month. And it is entirely the result of the ARPA funding that we received from the city and listening to our community that we had so many people coming for emergency assistance that were above our ability to help them. And they weren't unhoused. And so we had this huge gap between services. So we created the eviction prevention program, which is similar to emergency assistance. It's rent or utility assistance up to twenty five hundred dollars, though. And we can do that over the course of one to three months. And during the time, however many months we help them financially, we also have case management services for the folks in that program. We have had 85 people go through that program and only two have come back to us with any further needs after exiting the program since last July. And then in transitional housing, that is for folks who are already unhoused. We use our on-site transitional shelter. They stay there for up to 60 days. And while they are with us, they have a case manager at Southside who walks through social, emotional things, works with them on what it's like to live in a house with potentially 11 strangers for a couple of months, connects them with community partners. We have a whole, they have to put together a whole curriculum for them. So every week they have a class with one of our community partners like CENIFOR or Security State Bank and Trust or the Women's Center. on different aspects of life and budgeting and all that kind of stuff. And then they also have a case manager through VR3T who does housing navigation with them so that they can say, this is the kind of housing I want and sort of the general area and what I can afford. And then Kylie from VR3T helps them navigate the systems here, pays application fees, pays their deposits, and then they're not responsible for anything until that first month of rent when they move in. So, yes, we have this tiered intervention program through these three separate pieces that all come together to form the Housing Stability Program. Through this program, we serve more than 600 unique individuals each year, and 76% of them are San Marcos residents. So back to my cool slide, we're in the yellow zone right now, still in housing programs, but specifically the ones that we've run at Southside. So the process for participating in the housing program or stability program is that a person or a family will use our common application. We used to have separate applications. We found that that was just one more barrier to folks. So we have one application, no matter which one of these programs you think you are going to need, you apply in the same way. And then our intake coordinator takes a look at those makes phone calls, checks in with people, gets more information as she needs to understand their actual situation, and then she sets them up with appointments with the right people based on whether they really fit with emergency assistance, eviction prevention, or transitional housing. Emergency assistance and eviction prevention, like I said, are pretty similar programs, and so they have kind of a similar process once you're in them. You go to a meeting with a case manager, you're either approved, denied, or referred. In eviction prevention, we do also have what we call a pending situation, and that's for folks where they haven't sent us all the documentation we need or They've said that they can pay $500, but it hasn't been posted yet. And so they kind of sit there for a week or two until that situation is resolved. Once we've approved someone, we do cut checks within a week. They go directly to the landlord or the utility company, never to the person. So we know, in fact, our case manager drives around town and drops them off so that we know they're getting to where they're supposed to. In transitional housing, folks go on a wait list because we do generally have people already in the housing. And then we go through that wait list as the time is coming for a new cohort to come in. We've had our transitional shelter for a while. This particular program is new since last October. This cohort style, we used to have mixed genders in there. We used to have kind of a one-in, one-out, so if somebody exited the shelter, we brought a new person in. You can imagine that that's very destabilizing for people who are already in pretty difficult situations. So now what we do is we bring everybody in within the same two week period. We'll be doing a huge move in next Tuesday or next Monday with our new cohort. And this cohort is going to be all males. The previous cohort was all females and children. So some of those females have kids. So far we've bounced back and forth, but the great thing about this cohort style is that we could always say, you know, the need for men is much higher. We're going to do two cohorts of men in a row, or if we find another specific population we need to be able to bring in, we can make those adjustments. There's an intake process. They get 60 days in the shelter. So again, they leave within the same one to two week period, and they have that case management and housing navigation throughout. So the program rationale for us putting in this particular application is the community need. We have all these programs in place and they are already behind what the city and his county at large need. I think that slide says, the bottom says our need exceeds capacity by more than 40, 50%. Thank you. No, that's fine. So in emergency assistance, we're receiving 102 applications every month. We have $3,000 to give to this program every month. So- You can do that math. It's not great. This is part of why we work with our partners to help cover those bills. In eviction prevention, this slide came a few weeks ago. I know there's been more since, but at that point, we had almost $200,000 requested of us in this program. Our monthly budget is $7,000 to $10,000, and we've given out $40,000 this year, but that is the maximum amount of money we had to give. Currently, that's only for San Marcos residents because, like I said, it started completely with that ARPA funding, and honestly, we're already over capacity. So we're keeping it with San Marcos residents for the time being. Transitional housing has over 200 applications in, but we get six rooms available every 60 days. The maximum number of applicants we could put in the shelter is 12. We believe that we have and have exhibited the capacity to run these programs. Our emergency assistance partnerships help us nearly double support for applicants. So we have $3,000 a month. We turn that into almost $6,000 a month that go to our clients, thanks to our community partners. In eviction prevention, we are spending about $2,100 on average to create long-term stability. Like I said, only two people have come back to us, and the first clients in that program started last July. Transitional housing cost us just $600 per client unit to Southside. And as I said in our previous presentation, often uses our own housing stock at Sunrise for permanent placements for folks. None of these programs could be comparably cost effective if someone was trying to do them a la carte, so to speak. We're able to do this because we have the staffing in place. We have the experience because people know to send people to us and because we've crafted this program in such a way as to make it as cost effective as possible. This program requires a lot more funding than Sunrise did. We do serve over 600 individuals a year through the Housing Stability Program, and it costs us about $412,000 a year. Most of that is new costs outside of the Emergency Assistance Program. Our total Southside budget is currently $1 million, and what we've asked in this grant is $150,000 toward housing stability. So as you can see, it's about a third of the total cost of housing stability, but significantly less of our total budget at Southside. Much of the program was built around that ARPA funding. So we have been working very hard on all of these other funding sources, grants, fundraisers, individual donors, businesses, governmental entities. I'm gonna list those now. This slide is also present in the next one. The same thing is true over there. So we just received a grant from Christus Health. We've applied with Austin Community Foundations. The McCoys Foundation has given us funding toward this. We have... started fundraisers last year. We're continuing them this year and anticipating more buy-in and more money coming that way. We've worked on our donor base, telling our story, inviting more folks to donate. We're talking with other businesses either to do in-kind donations or to provide funding. And then we also are not just coming to the city of San Marcos. We've gone to Hayes County. We asked them for more money. They gave us more money. We will be asking for more. Well, we just applied for the 27 grants through them and asked for more funding there. We're also going to cities we haven't asked before. So I just turned in a grant with the city of Buda this week as well.

What questions do you have?

And CineCorps, if you could turn off your monitors so that we just focus on this program. Yes, thank you.

So any questions on housing stability?

How has the partnership with Long River Regional Recovery Team helped with VR routine development?

Um, so we have referred to them a lot in the past, but we started the partnership with our shelter for the shelter shelter cohort style this past October.

Anything else? Yeah, no question. Yeah.

It said on here that the whole condition that there's 250,000 as long as cities and markets pitch partly as a portion.

Yes. So they have given us $100,000 this year, and they pledged a further 150. But the challenge was that both the city and the county match that So 150 from the county and 150 from the city is what they're hoping to encourage. And that does not have to be from HSAD specifically, but from the city overall.

So if y'all don't make them, they don't get one.

We that that's the intention, right? So a challenge gift is basically a matching gift.

Yeah.

I'm so sorry.

Now I was just thinking so. Do they just match whatever city gives or you don't want to get 100,000 like OK, sorry you didn't get it.

I would assume that they would match whatever we do get because they're very generous.

You didn't say.

I'm also in. Total.

We're now getting $475,000 annually in ARPA funds since 24. Am I reading this correctly? So we received $800,000 in 2024. It came in batches, but so it essentially worked out to about $400,000 a year. Okay, over the two years. And just to be clear, ARPA is...

There's no, yeah, there is no more came from the federal government. Yes, we have no more. And there's no more to give. Yes.

We did.

And I would be happy to share the presentation.

Yes. That was that was my question.

Any other questions? Everybody looks like they're thinking very deeply. Good to go.

Looking at Johnson. I don't have any questions.

Okay. Next program that we will have a presentation about is Southside, and it's daily services, and Jessica will be doing that presentation. Do you want to come sit over here now, Deb? Okay. Don't leave me alone.

Bring it up.

This one is the shortest and sweetest.

Cheers. You're doing great here.

There's a lot of back and forth. So here we are in an extension. Alright, that's perfect.

So yes, Southside's Daily Services is our final application for y'all.

We'll go to the next slide. All right.

So daily services at Southside provide for the essential needs of our neighbors. They include daily meals. So that is dinner every day, 365 days a year and breakfast every day but Saturday. Showers also essentially every day. Laundry happens Monday to Friday. Hygiene kits Monday to Friday. Lockers, mail and the emergency weather shelter. Southside serves more than 400 unique individuals each year through daily services, and at least 75% of those are San Marcos residents. So we're finally in the green. Daily services really are over on the right. We've kind of pulled weather shelter into it because it's this weird thing that straddles the line between housing and daily services. So for all of our daily services, we intentionally make them low barrier. We are not asking for a lot from our neighbors who come for these services. We ask them to sign in for accounting purposes so we can say these people were here if anybody ever asks and legally speaking, but also so we can keep track of numbers so I can tell you things like what's coming later in these slides. But that's all we do for meals and showers and laundry. We do request that folks give us an ID of some form if they're going to have a locker or get their mail with us. Mail for obvious following federal guidelines reasons of making sure that the mail is only going to the person it belongs to, and then lockers because we have a spare key and we want to make sure that if we're opening a locker for someone, it's truly their locker and their belongings. We do have a sign up for laundry and lockers. Laundry, we obviously have a limited capacity. And the same is true with lockers. We only have so many, but all the other daily services are available immediately upon request. We do have a community need that's been pretty firmly established here. That's why these programs have existed for as long as they have, but we're also seeing a steep increase in the need for these services. We saw a steady increase over the course of 2025. From the beginning to the end, we saw an increase of 23% usage of our daily services. I just looked at the numbers from April to April. It went up 41% from April 25 to April 26. And you can kind of see that in the food numbers. In 24, we served less than 13,000 meals. We served 16,000 last year, and we're currently on track to serve 20,000 meals this year. We give out about 75 hygiene kits a month. That's about 150% more than we did about a year ago. We do 180 showers and 40 loads of laundry. And then the weather shelter, again, is that weird gray space. But when it was open, we did have 65 continuous hours when our weather shelter was open in January this year. Over the course of about nine days, we were open seven. And this is another, we have a slight update. We've actually provided 200 total beds over nine nights because we did open the evening it was supposed to hail yesterday.

So we were open one more.

Again, we know that Southside has the capacity to do these programs. We've been doing them for a long time and we've been doing them for a very low cost in any way that we can while still serving our neighbors to the best of our ability and for their needs. So our meals cost us about 75 cents a plate. Our shower and laundry infrastructure is already in place, including we know that it needs regular maintenance and we have that regular maintenance built in. Many of our weather shelter supplies and meals are provided by local businesses and organizations. We have a lot of partnerships for our daily services, but I wanted to highlight specifically that Embassy Suites always gives us sheets for our weather shelter, and we have a variety of churches that we can call upon with really short notices, how it usually happens for the weather shelter to provide meals when we're sheltering overnight. We also have partnerships for hygiene kits. We have a couple that brings us a bunch of hygiene kits every single month. We have churches that will do a big batch. We have other organizations that will do similarly. We have about a dozen churches and groups on rotation that provide meals. And we also, as previously mentioned, have hundreds of volunteers come through Southside every year to help us run all of these programs. We have the capacity, we have our staffing in place, we have the experience running these programs. Again, we're the default organization in San Marcos, so we know that people know that these programs are there for them to use. And we've shown, especially with the great increase in 2025, that we have the ability to scale the programs that we have to the need that actually exists at the moment. Again, in this program, we impact 400 or more individuals every year, and those are unique individuals. Our daily services cost us about $308,000 per year. Again, our full budget is $1 million, and the requested grant here is $50,000. The majority of that going to the... The shelter, I think I put 50% of the shelter and 50% of the others because they run at such a low rate. And again, all those same funding sources I mentioned in the previous presentation are funding sources that we're reaching out to and utilizing to help with daily services.

And that's it. I'll stop sharing. Okay, any questions?

So the presentation said it was the default organization is in markets. Can you explain that a little bit?

Yeah, so we joke that our motto should be go to Southside because that is what people tell people in need. Do you need something with housing? Go to Southside. Do you need food? Go to Southside. Do you need shelter? Go to Southside. So that's what we mean by being the default. We hear that when people come to us, they say, oh, this other organization sent me here. A city official sent me here. A police officer sent me here. Somebody in Buda sent me here. So we are the place that, yeah, we get people dropped off from Seguin here. The Seguin Police Department has dropped people off. The hospital will often drop people off on our door still in hospital gowns. That's what I mean.

Anybody online that are ready to go?

Okay.

We are sending. Thank you very much.

Thank you. We will just keep on moving. Are y'all doing okay? Or do you need a break? I mean, that's okay. Yeah, thanks for coming in, y'all. Thank you very much for your time and your words. Thank you. Okay, our next presentation is access, and I know, Kimberly, you were on. Let me make sure. Yeah, we just got through five, I think, presentations.

I know. Stop. Three minutes. You are silly.

So, Amberlee, I'm sorry, you are up if you're available.

It's over here.

Thank you.

And we may be able to just. Yeah, I'll go get the next two. Is there in the lobby? So is that great?

Oh, right here.

Yeah. Oh. So our next presentation is access. Is there steam summer camps? I'll let Kimberly tell you what that acronym is, because I would mess it up and she's here to talk about that program.

Please go ahead and you have about 10 minutes to present.

Good evening, everyone.

Am I able to share my screen or should I have?

You should be able to. For me, it's at the top right. You can see a little button that says share.

I don't know if it's the same for you. Oh, there it is. I think there's anything I can do to help.

I have a little note on yours that says, oh, there it goes. Go ahead, we can see it. That's great.

Are you going to see it? Okay, great, great, great. Awesome. So good evening, everyone, and thank you all for this opportunity. Well, I guess I'll answer the question first. So ACCESS actually stands for Association of Collaborative Communities Equipping Youth for STEAM Success. So the Y in access is actually just for youth. Just to cover that. And so before we get started and deep into the presentation, I just want to share a little bit about our organization and the structure. Power to Prosper is a faith-based nonprofit nonprofit focused on expanding access to high skill and high wage STEM and agriculture pathways. We partner with churches, community leaders, and local organizations to support youth through the science, technology, engineering, entrepreneurship, the arts, agriculture, and mathematics, or simply put, STEAM. And so our mission is to provide research driven community centered solutions that help families and students access real economic mobility. And so with this foundation, this kind of leads us into how ACCESS became to be. ACCESS was actually selected as one of only 70 NSF includes design and development launch pilots. across the country. This placed us in a national network focused on broadening participation in STEM. And so this national initiative focused on expanding STEM opportunities for all youth. Our shared vision within NSF was to create a culturally relevant research-driven curriculum that helps more students pursue and complete STEM degrees. And so the access model actually brings together, as you can see, schools, universities, industry leaders, government entities, as well as community partners in order to work towards this goal. And so we feel like this collaborative approach is what makes our work sustainable as well as impactful. And so along with this model, We also have our nine guiding principles that make it more effective and meaningful for our youth. And so with these nine principles, we focus on collaboration, trusted community spaces, and strong family support. We help students build confidence, actually allow them to see themselves in STEM, and we explore real STEM pathways for them to be able to relate to. And so we also highlight various role models and make sure students have the support that they need. And our role models come from different backgrounds within the industry. So it could be technology, it could be agriculture. And so here we wanna focus on the impact of opportunity. So as you can see, San Marcos serves a little over 8,000 students with diverse and growing communities. Nearly three quarters of the students identify as Hispanic or Latino. And so this is important because the culturally relevant programming is essential for engagement and long-term success in our programs. With more than 75% of the students economically disadvantaged, This impacts access to enrichment programs, STEM opportunities, and just the overall support that's needed. This matters because being able to highlight the need for accessibility and the community-based STEM programs that meet students where they are and remove those barriers to participation is what we're trying to do here. Through our continue research and partnerships. We conduct focus groups and ongoing evaluations to ensure that our programs are designed to meet these statistics and meet the real-world needs of San Marcos youth. And so these are some of our programs that we have currently at the top, our Access the NDBS camps. These are our core programs that we offer to increase access in learning. Our programs are free to the community and they run for eight weeks, two weeks at a time. And that is for our STEAM DBS and horticulture camp. And our new program, the STEM AI sessions run for two weeks. And the after-school programs are programs that we would like to reactivate. We did a few years back have programming for after-school programs. And so this is one of the areas that we would like to reactivate and we see as another opportunity to expand STEM access year-round along with implementing other programming within access. And so our students get the opportunity to get hands-on learning. It helps them build confidence. They learn problem solving. They get exposure to real career pathways. And again, as I mentioned, the role models and mentors from various industries and backgrounds, whether it's research, IT, agriculture. And then they build friendships. They have an opportunity to showcase what they've learned at the end of each session. And they receive a certificate of completion and items from the garden to take home or science kits, depending on what the program is. And so these are just some pictures showing some of the projects that they work on, whether the face-based lesson or the glow-in-the-dark items that they created over time. And so this number, this slide shows the impact that we've made over the years. You can see we have a strong growth in recent years, year 24 and 25, where we serve close to or right at 100 families. And so part of our survey process shows that this increase was due to direct involvement from our families, word of mouth, due to participation in science fairs that we've been doing through San Marcos, as well as our continued partnership through the Juvenile Center. And so that impact, this long-term commitment that we have with our long-term families, also draw numbers in for new families. These numbers do show a demand for our program, and the impact that we're making in the community, but then it also shows a restriction based on limited funding and resources as well. And so along with these numbers, this is just one part of the impact that shows the impact that we're making. To me, the biggest impact comes from the parents and the families themselves. The families are sharing real stories about how our programs have impacted their children. And so you can see we have families that have been with us almost from the beginning. And we have parents speaking about the impact on our program, on their neurodivergent children, and even feedback from teachers. And so these comments are why we do what we do. And I feel like it really shows the impact that we are making in the community. But along with these, the parent feedback, we also do structured surveys. And so one of the ways that we measure our impact is through pre and post surveys, as well as daily surveys with the students. These surveys help us understand what students know how they feel about the program, how they feel about STEM or STEAM, how their confidence may change over time. And so we also use these as real life stories in our curriculum so that it's more relatable for the students. And of course, we tie these responses to our guiding principles so that we can see the growth. And so this data gives us, not just shows participation, but it actually shows learning and possibly a shift in the mindset and also an increased interest in STEM. And of course, you're probably wondering, well, how do they do all this, right? Good question. So this slide just kind of outlines our funding need in order to operate at current capacity, but also to expand. The request amount covers personnel, instructors, program management, administrative support, just to ensure that we can continue to run a safe and high-quality program, along with facility use, supplies, and things of that nature. It averages about $75 per student. This is, of course, our dream budget in order to be able to actually expand within the community. Because again, we feel like the need is there just based off of the numbers and the feedback that we receive. But the restriction, of course, is available resources. And so altogether, this funding would support our staff be able to expand, not just in during the summer, but have a year-round program in order to reach as many students as we can. And so we'd like to be able to, of course, obviously to continue serving the San Marcos community, increase that accessibility to STEM. And then of course the overall research for this, for our goal is to increase that pipeline in STEM, in STEM related careers from the San Marcos community to Texas State and increasing that accessibility for all students. And of course, if you want more information, here is our contact information if you'd like to learn more. And thank you all for this opportunity.

Thank you. And just so I remember to tell you, when you leave, this is not yet, but only hit the red phone at the top. There's a gold bar that if you hit it, it cuts off our recording. So anyway.

Oh, got it.

I'm trying to remember to tell presenters that. So when you leave, just hit the red phone that says leave the meeting or something like that.

Got it. I see it. Okay.

Sorry.

Yeah.

That said, who has questions for Kimberly?

It just takes a minute to

Anyone? Alyssa's still looking.

Also double checking.

Just a few minutes. Hey, Kim, I have a question. On the last slide you showed where it was showing the budget, and I might have missed it. I might not have just been paying attention to that point, but it showed... where you want to use the money for salaries? And then it showed a small budget for supplies? Is that correct?

Okay. Yes. All right. It's like $3,200 for supplies.

Okay.

Thank you. You're welcome.

I have a question. I think it was one of the slides where you had y'all's participants for each year. 2023 had a slight dip, I think, compared to the other years. Was that just kind of a funding restriction for you guys that caused that or what was that?

Yes, it was. And that was a period where at one point we were trying to determine whether we would go fee-based or not. And so that was one of those trial periods to determine, I mean, we always, we want to be able to, you know, keep our programs free, which we've been able to do that with the exception of one year. So, but that was that trial period. Thank you.

You're welcome.

How do y'all,

Hold on.

The weekly cost per child that was on that slide, how does that compare to other STEM programs? Is it relatively low? Is it high or average?

I think it's relatively low based off of just some of the feedback I've received from parents um regarding some of the courses and programs that they have their students in um some of the programs have can go upwards to several hundred dollars a week um so i would i think our programming is on the lower end thank you you're welcome um and i might be missing this too um so it what

I don't know if I'm seeing an overall organizational budget. It looks like, is this like the 2027 proposed program? Is it just for this program? Like, do y'all have other programs? And if so, where do y'all get additional funding? Like, what are some of your other funding sources?

And so some of our other funding sources, we do have our board members pay a monthly or yearly, I don't want to call it a fee, but donation into the program. It averages about $200 a year, and we have about eight We're structured to have eight. We currently have seven right now, but we're structured to have eight. So that is also a source of income. And then we also get in-kind donations. And then, of course, we also apply for we've had other organizations like pay for T-shirts and things like that.

And so the programming, our camps, our summer camps is our main programming.

Thank you. Anyone else?

All right.

Okay. With that, thank you very much for presenting. And so we'll go ahead and go on to the next program.

Thank you. Thank you all very much. Have a good evening. Thank you.

What?

Uh, can I put in a request for a break after head to toe?

Yes.

For this one?

Break after head to toe.

I was like, break up? You already might set up here if you want to.

Okay. Does the camera pick them up? Let's try. That's where they sat. But I don't think the people online can see them. Actually, so would you sit on the side or this other side? Yeah, wherever we need to be.

Okay.

Yeah, you want to just hit that. OK, so. Our next presentation and y'all just take your time to get settled in. I'll just talk about you. This is head to toe San Marcos and Barbara Montana is president and founder and she is black and tan and then Sylvia Muzzy is vice president. All right, y'all just start it.

Well, thank you all for your time today. Appreciate y'all doing this. The framework is 10 to toe. We passed around packets if we need to email one. Yeah, if you would, then I'll send it to everybody. As we, as you mentioned earlier, Barbara's our founder. She had this idea years ago, started out really small, and she's grown it and now brought on a good amount of people. We're a nonprofit now, 501c3. So I'm going to pass it along to her to give you more of the history of who we are.

Yes. So we started this off in 2014. We started off at Bay Area Fellowship, which was a church over there off of Highway 80. It's a little itty-bitty church. So they came up with this idea of a big 25 family. They're like, Barbara, do you want to be a part of it? I'm like, yes, right?

Yes.

But then I was like, I don't want to do it.

I'm going to tell you, your voice is a little quiet. The microphone is here. And I'm normally loud.

I'm that girl. And so I was like, okay, well, why are we doing 25? And they're like, well, how many did you want to do? I'm like, well, let's do more, you know? And so they're like, okay. So then that was the year of Head and Toes creation. So it was supposed to be something very small. It turned out to be, we helped service 125 kids that year. And we started off with like, there's no money. It was nothing. So we did a Zoom-a-thon. We used clothes so people don't need to use clothes. So I would stay there and I would go through all the clothes. I had to wash it. We had to fold it. We had to put it out. Get rid of whatever was ugly because we had no funds, right? And then I got some hairstylists. They came in and their church was like, oh my gosh. So in one of the rooms, we had a big old pile, like a mountain of clothes, right? Well, that church left, but Head to Toe still wanted to be Head to Toe. So we kept going. And if you look at the picture that's going around, that's the way we started. It was my whole family went to that church. So we kept going. I had my aunts, my nieces, my nephews, all of us. We have now grown it. We are now servicing, last year we serviced 450 kids. Now, fast forward. We were doing turkey plate sales. We were raising money. Now all the clothing is new. The shoes is new. We, like I said, we have 450 of San Marcos CISD students here.

Do you want to talk about, so the way Barbara identified this through her school, through her church, and then it morphed when she began working for San Marcos CISD as a parent liaison, she sought even more. The need was there. um, not just with backpacks, but also other items.

So yeah, so the, so then you go to like, okay, well you're doing a little bit, right. But we weren't doing a little bit. We gave backpacks, school supplies, underwears, socks, hygiene, haircuts, and then they would leave with a hot tub. So we wanted to do more than just a handoff, you know? Um, so it got, We kept growing and we started doing fundraisers. So we went from 125 in 2014 to fast forward 2025, 450. This is all volunteer based. So there is no money in there at all for volunteers. So our goal this year in 2026 is to help 500 students. It gets scary when you start. I mean, my dream at the end of the day, honestly, you guys would be to service all of the elementary schools and under at the market CISD. I know it's a big vision and I scare the board when I bring it up, but that's just the vision. I'm like, it can be done and there's some way of orchestrating it. But right now we're going to stick to the 500, but we will be growing soon.

Yes. And so each year the numbers have grown because it started out just with elementary because that's what was the monies that could be raised through the fundraising events that Barbara mentioned. So she did what she could with those funds. And then each year is the head to toe group community involvement. You know, more awareness was there. Then the numbers were able to go higher and higher. But the demand is there. She sees it still working now at the San Marcos Housing Authority. She's still seeing the need with those families. Even though the parent liaisons, most of that position has been gone, there's still communities, the schools, and that's through them and through Barbara's work. and school counselors. That's how these children are identified and the families are identified.

And so what we provide is we do the backpacks, but we do it on a crazy scale because we go all 35 because they're like, well, how are you? So we would have to go up and down Kyle, New Braunfels, Austin, go to Burlington's, go to Ross's so we can get good quality backpacks for our junior high and high schoolers. Because when we first began, we weren't doing that. And a lot of them were tearing. And as I was a parent liaison, some of the students were bringing their backpacks right back, you know, like Ms. Barbara busted or whatever. So I'm like, we'll got to do better. We have to do better. So now we go up and down all of Ross's because Ross's Jans boarded like 25 bucks or $20. So, and if you go to Target, well, a regular price are 75 expensive. And, but they're the good ones that will last and take care of for a while. The last thing we want to do is give the family something that is going to break. And they, at the end of the day, have to go back and turn around and buy another one. That's not what we're trying to do. So we started doing that. Another thing we also did is we upgraded our shoes. So we now give fourth and fifth graders name brand good quality shoes because, as we also found out, that a lot of the shoes were being easily, you know, fourth and fifth grader, you're more running around, you're outdoors, you're active. And They were getting bullied also for the Walmart brand shoes. So fourth and fifth graders, they do notice that they do, you know, get bullied. So we're like, we've got to do better. So now we do fourth and fifth graders get box shoes. So I'll go to Nike. I'll go to wherever we ask them for a discount. We're asking them for the taxes, you know. So we're trying to get more out of our buck. And we do give. Like we said, the underwears, the hygiene, all that. So everybody gets a backpack and school supplies, all ages. Hygiene kits go from fifth graders and up. They get deodorant, razors, soap, pads. Then the clothing and shoes is elementary and plunder because... Even if we wanted to close junior high and high school, the chances of them wearing what I buy them slim to net, if y'all know, because my kids are the same way. So we don't do that, but we do give them that good quality backpack. So that right there is a good buck. We do give them their school supplies as well. They get their hygiene and then they get their supplies. Haircuts. We do meals for the families as they leave. We do hot dogs. Sometimes we do hamburgers. Constable Peterson's helped us and blessed us with that a couple of times. We'll do snow cones, jumping castles if that's provided.

So what Barbara's talking about is the distribution day. So throughout the year, we'll have different fundraising events. We have a few big ones. So we've narrowed it down. I think it's in here, but I may skip around. We do a concert every spring. And on average, we bring in about 15,000. So that that helps carry us from the majority of the school supplies and the materials that we need. And then we may we do like this grant is going to help us quite a bit to help us increase the amount of students to reach that 500 goal. And then we have other sources, you know, Lions Club, Blue Bonnet. Everyone contributes as they can. But we do as volunteers. We do put in the time. None of us, you know, we're not paid. So Barbara and her family, they will do that shopping. They'll look for the things that are on sale so that we can stretch the dollar. And then so throughout the year, once we're ready in the summer, they buy these supplies. They've identified the families. They have a list. Barbara's contacted them. It's very organized. Distribution day is usually the weekend before school starts, the Saturday before. So they're, again, beautifully organized. We keep it all discreet. We don't want, you know, we don't want these kids and their families to be seen as, oh, they're taking handouts. So it's very discreet. They come in. We have somebody guide them through. We have Spanish speakers as well. We'll guide them through. The little ones get to pick their backpacks. So it's something special. If it's a girl, they can pick the girl or boy. Then they go on to get supplies, hygiene items, according to their age. And the big kids get to pick their backpacks as well. The haircutting station is there if they choose to get a haircut. And that's always fun. The hairstylist, they donate their time. And that's the Saturday before school starts. So they're usually busy. So they're giving up, you know, money that they could be making. So it's a beautiful community event for that one Saturday. And as Barbara mentioned, they go off. We have something fun for them, some food. We also bring in ministry. So we have little Bibles that they can walk away with. The person that's walking them around, if they choose to have a conversation about God, they can do that as well. So it's all tied in together. And that's distribution day. So that's what a lot of folks do.

Yes. And so like Ms. Sylvia said, so the students are referred to us by communities and schools, counselors, attendants, clerks, before it was just churches, foster care, the shelters, and they would just get in contact with one of the members and be like, hey, since we have a family, can you help? And of course, as long as they're here in St. Marcus, they're good to go. So we're like, yes. Then the parent liaisons were always helping us. Now that they're gone, We're using the principals, the counselors, communities, and schools. So we're still utilizing them for that. And then families, after we get the list from those, I'm sorry, communities and schools and all them, then the families are contacted. We call them. We introduce ourselves. We ask, hey, how many kids do you have? What schools do they go to? What are their ages? We ask their shoe size, their clothing size, and that's how we start shopping for them. So each family is, we go out there and we buy specifically for this family. So we like, okay, I got Garza's and then they're like, I got, you know, so-and-so and they're like, okay, so I got to get that, that, that. And we start putting the outfits together. And that way we know that the little girl with a little sparkly uniform is going to have little sparkly shoes. So we know exactly what we're buying for these families. Families come to distribution where the volunteers guide them to the stations. So like Ms. Olivia said, they do go to the stations and They put out their hiking items. They get their backpacks, you know.

And over the years, what has happened since Barbara, I've been on for about four years now, but Barbara was doing it much longer. What's happened is the families that had received help Early on, they saw how this was turning into something special, how much they appreciated the help. Now they have come back to Barbara and said, you helped me 10 years ago. How can I give in return? I'm in a better situation. So they're either donating monetarily or volunteering. So it's not something a one and done. They remember, they see the importance. So it's been a really beautiful thing to carry year after year. and get more community involvement. Because again, it all goes back to giving these kids a really good first day of school. That's what we want. We don't want them to feel like they don't have the good shoes, they don't have the good backpack, make them at least feel confident to go into that first day.

And then, like Miss Olivia said, the community support and fundraising.

Yes. So we'll continue to do that. We have a we might do a fall concert here in San Marcos. We've done one at Guadalamo before, but we usually do it at Bucks. They accommodate us. They don't charge us. So we just get sponsorships for the band. We might do another one. But those those are good. one and done so that we can raise the amount of money we need. But yeah, it's the community involvement and the sponsorship, like La Cima has been great, different community members, you know, to help bring in those bands. But I would say in conclusion, the goal of this is to help supply as many San Marcos CISD children in need With supplies with the outfit with the hygiene items, so that they can have a really good 1st day at school. Superintendent a lot of teachers, they come to our concerts. They support us. They see the good that we're doing. So we do have school support as well and community support and community support. So the biggest challenge that we face is. We are careful in increasing the numbers. Like Barbara wants to go 100 miles per hour. So the board, again, we're all volunteers. We live here, we have kids here. We wanna make sure that the money that we raise, we can buy the supplies for these kids, good quality supplies and not overextend ourselves. So this definitely will impact us in helping us supply the quality materials for these children.

especially with everything going up, it's gotten a little more complicated at Ross. They're like, ma'am, how many times are you going to come this week?

We're at 14 minutes, so we have still plenty of time, six minutes or so, to ask questions.

I'll start.

So it looks like in one of the letters of support, I'm from Rodriguez Elementary. And so I think they said y'all had actually gone to one of their events to help provide hygiene kits. So that's awesome. It's in my neighborhood. But on the distribution day, is it also at a school or where do y'all like do y'all...

Oh my gosh, the Connection Church. So they have allowed us to do it there. We used to do it at the schools back in the day, many, many years ago. And then a lot of things changed. And so they would let us use the gym or whatever, which was good. And then once we couldn't do that anymore, we started using, we asked the pastor at the church. And he's like, yeah. So we use it for, it's been years.

We've been using it for years. The building, the main building serves well to set up the hair cutting stations. And we, you know, we clean it, we leave it just like we found it. And then there's a separate building where we hold our supplies. And then there's a great parking lot. So it's worked perfectly for us, but they don't charge us again to use that space. So.

And then we also have like vendors there that day as well. Like we had Walmart Vision there. We've had Blue Bonnets there. So they partner up with us. They're like, Barbara, we want to be there. We've had Blue Cross Blue Shield, Medicaid. We've had the dental. So it's almost like a little, you know.

It's like a fair.

Yeah.

They're there giving information. Yeah.

Oh, that's Monica. Monica, will you turn your video off? Sorry. Just for a few more minutes.

Awesome. Thank you. Thank you.

I also wanted to ask for these two budgets that you guys have right here. This one, the proposed next fiscal year would be the one that y'all are applying for the funds for. Is that correct? Yes.

Um, because with everything going up so much, it's just, don't get me wrong. We can, I can penny pitch, but it's been hard guys. Like no lie. Like we, it's been harder than normal. Finding the shoes at Ross, finding, you know, getting the good deals. Like we're looking at you like, guys, what else can we do? And we can't go into Target, which we would love to, and buy that $75 backpack. Because that's three backpacks in one that we could get at Ross. And we just keep going up and down. So I'm praying that we can get to where it's okay to not bang our heads against the wall and going up and down $35. And be able just to go and buy it. Because that makes sense.

Because she did it very well. Go and and to a name brand or even Amazon. But she's still not going to get the same discount and. The important thing is to get as many as possible so we can serve as many students as possible. So for that reason, you know that that the increase helps us continue to get the same. Quality products.

I also have a question about the budget. Uh, just curious, uh, for the current fiscal year, your administrative and reporting. Was amounting to 2000. And then for the next fiscal year, it's 10,000. So can you tell me why it's such a big? Jump.

10,000 on this post.

We were thinking of actually trying to get more tracking, more updated stuff. Because we have, like. Website. We don't have a website. We have zero, guys. Like, we're pen and paper, people. We got Facebook. But we want to do it to where the nether, like. We don't know how to do all that stuff. And so we did start doing the bookkeeping QuickBooks recently. So we're trying to get up to where, yes, slowly.

So that is to get us to another level. So right now our treasurer has been Teresa Wilson. We added Lisa Lopez as a co-treasurer. So with that, we just got the QuickBooks account because a lot of our sponsors wanted to pay through a QuickBooks link instead of mailing in a check. And so that was a new cost, the QuickBooks account. And then now a lot of people want to donate online or just see, especially the big sponsors, like who are you? Let us see your history. So this year we'd like to do a website.

We would like to be up to date with everybody else. You know what I'm saying? And we never put any money aside for that. We do everything is just straight for that day distribution. So we've never been able to like, oh, you know, at all. Like we don't even have a laptop for head and tail.

And we do have a storage building as well where we hold supplies. That's probably our biggest expense right now is the storage building, the rental for anything left over or as a shop. They put those things in there.

And I will just let you know we're at 20 minutes. I don't want to cut off the board.

If y'all have any more questions. You did mention that there, the Giving Day at church, you did mention give out Bible. Given that these are city funds, there are some concerns that we don't want to make it seem like the board for the city of San Marcos is favoring one specific denomination or one specific religion over another. So you brought up holy. Is this program seen as only for Christian purposes, or how does getting a student a Bible go into the whole situation?

Well, once we started it back at Bay Area Fellowship, I was always given Bibles. There was no, it was just something different that I did. We just kept it going for all the years. So there's no church, because everybody that comes is not from an extra church. Yes. Those St. John's, I go to actually CDC now in San Antonio. But it's just, we all just, we've always done that. So we had the Calvary that used to donate it to us. I think that's one they used to do. And then another organization would donate it to us.

But they're not, basically, they're not pushed on the case. It's just, is it like an order?

It's there kind of as if they wanted a haircut. It's there if they want to talk about vision, they can pick it up.

Just making sure this is fine.

Yes. You know, even the hygiene stuff, you know, if it's a female, but she identifies differently, she can get it. We don't. We don't. We have brought that up. They're like, I am. And they're like, Barbara, I didn't know. So we just let them pick. And that is what they can do.

The only thing that's prepackaged or for the elementary children, their clothing, and they tell us their size and what their favorite colors are, those kinds of things. But everything else is grab as you go.

Any other questions for this group?

All right. Okay. Thank you very much. Awesome.

Thank you, Johnny. Y'all have a good night.

Monica, now you can be on your camera. I got this. We're great. Okay. Okay.

We'll be taking a five minute break. Yeah. Yeah. That's a one hour max. Okay. Good night.

And Monica, we're back from our break, and Raymond and Linda.

There they are.

And Monica, before you start, I just want you to know, I'm Carol, by the way, when you leave the meeting, only press the little red phone. Did y'all already hear that? Okay. I think we're ready to go. Is that okay? Yeah, ready to go. Okay. Next up is Mission ABLE. So we have with us Monica Falwell. She's the executive director. And the program is the Volunteer Service Housing Repair Program. So, Monica, over to you. Perfect.

Can I share my screen?

You should be able to. It's up in the right-hand corner. Oh, I've got to change you.

Yep, I've got to change you to presenter.

Okay, now it should change for you.

Got it. Okay.

I'm just going to find it here for a second. All right, here we go.

Okay, can you see this? Okay.

Yes.

Okay. Yeah, we're mission able and we mobilize people to meet neighbors needs. And we're doing that largely through home repair and rehab. So a little bit about us. We began in July 2013 with a one week of service projects. But year after year, that just changed per the need that continued to avail itself to us. And so and there was a desire to serve. And so it grew. Mission Able traditionally has mobilized local groups, but for the past Well, this summer and last summer, we've been bringing in groups from all across the nation to San Marcos. And I'm talking about Iowa, Michigan, Kansas, Kentucky. The group we have here right now is actually from Corpus Christi. But I believe next week we have a group from Kansas. But we're able to bring them in to the home that we love, which is here in San Marcos. introduce them to the Hill Country and all that San Marcos has to offer. Meanwhile, they go to work for our neighbors. The request that you have the application for is for $50,000. What we would like to utilize this for is our volunteer camp program. And so we believe that we can potentially mobilize 300 volunteers and serve 20 to 25 low income households for an impact of serving 50 to 75 San Marcos residents. So that we can preserve safe and affordable housing for our neighbors. There's 2 parts to our process. Mostly that 1 is clients neighbors and agencies are able to recommend a project for anyone that they see has a need. We've had friends request a project for friends. We've had health professionals. We've had. City of San Marcos Code Compliance Department. We've had other people just within the community or another organization or nonprofit. So those requests come to us and a client themselves can request a project for themselves. And then secondly is the volunteers. We have a robust system which onboards them and includes a liability waiver. So between our system, we have the client and the volunteer. Here's the word from one of our participants.

How everything was falling apart. I thought I had to go to an assisted living or something because the roof was pretty bad. You don't know how much I prayed. I prayed. Who was going to help me with the roof? Because we had a lot of leaks, except for one room. But all the rooms were, I had always put buckets. And I prayed. I said, please send me somebody that can help me with the roof. And I didn't know where to get the help, you know. And then, of course, the last straw was a raccoon. They came inside, and I said, is it a raccoon? We would hear the raccoon scratching. It jumped and went through my room, and my son wasn't here, so I didn't know what to do. It was pretty bad when he came in. So my daughter found your number, and he got me involved with y'all. She made the application.

All of this was bamboo, every bit of this. And this group from Emanuel showed up and got machetes and got picks and just started digging and getting this stuff out. We're giving them back their backyard. That's the best way to say it. We're giving them back their backyard. And you can see here where they started digging the roots up so we don't have a future bamboo problem.

I had the roof fixed. The whole roof. Not just partial, but it was a whole roof. The whole roof. But now I feel that Whatever God gives me years, I'll be happy here. I mean, this is my home after all. So I'm staying whatever time I have. Prayers were answered. It's not when you want it. It's when he's ready to give you, you know, your prayer answered. And I got it. Thank you.

That right there is Ms. Montemayor. And we've been able to replace her roof. We've been able to clean up the backyard. There was a broken down vehicle in the yard as well. We were able to haul that off for her. And then we scraped the siding and put on a fresh coat of paint, a color that she picked out. And so all of that, we were able to extend the life of every single dollar by utilizing those volunteers to assist with some things that helped alleviate the overall cost. But the ultimate value of that was that Ms. Montemayor got to stay in her home. Before she contacted us, her and her adult children were trying to figure out what is the solution here because she could sell for nothing and then go live in an assisted living for a short period of time, minimizing her overall income. And so this was the best option for her, not the raccoon, but for her. So that's the impact. I just wanted to share with you just our 2025 annual report numbers. And so you'll see kind of a breakdown of where money was spent, roofing, reconstruction, plumbing, accessibility, and yard cleanup. You'll actually be surprised, one of the largest needs that is one of the greatest hindrances to living is trash and debris. And so we really utilize our teams to help with that. you know, and then we have some great rates for a landfill. We've got a great account with Green Guy, so we'll recycle, we'll haul off, but making their overall home a safer place to live. And then, but for every applicant, for every client, we do collect demographic information. So 33% of our clients last year were female head of households. This might be, she might be single mom, widow, or she might be a grandma taking care of grandkids, or she might be an adult taking care of her husband who's ill. And then 22% were disabled and 48% were elderly. For our 2025 statistics, we had 153 project days and we had 149 projects. But we saw 756 volunteers over the course of the year, which gave us 6,828 man hours. That has by far been our largest year of volunteerism. But I'm super excited to go ahead and share with you that for 2026, we're already exceeding those numbers. We've had 95 workdays. We've had over 350 volunteers. We are expecting over 145 more volunteers just from Leader Treks, our partner for the summer. And then we have also over 6,500 man hours. So we're pretty close to breaking what we did for all of 2025 last year. And that has a great to do with these groups that are coming in. We had one group over spring break. There's a conference actually coming to Embassy Suites and they found us. And so they're actually going to send all of their young professionals involved in that conference to Mission ABLE, and we're going to put them to work, I think it's in October. No, August. August. And so we are seeing groups coming all year long, which is super exciting for us because we love to share our home, and we love to share, you know, the work that we have here to keep our neighbors living safely and securely in their homes. Oh, my image seems to have disappeared on here, but community need this isn't about construction. It's about preserving dignity, safety and housing stability. And so. We like to involve the homeowner. We like to connect the homeowner. I can't tell you how many of our homeowners just like to sit on the front porch and talk with one of our volunteers because they've been isolated. They've been alone. They have a lot happening in their life and they just want someone to listen. And so it's preserving that dignity. And actually one neighbor we have, we're still continuing to work on her property, but she has an adult son who has severe special needs. well um she's kind of isolated um and she's lost her parents she doesn't have any other family nearby and um and her biggest her thing was is that i have felt so alone i feel unseen and because we've already had a few groups out there as well as our project manager overseeing all of these these jobs she said I must be loved. And we're like, yes, you are loved. And so she says, well, for the first time, I feel seen. So who we're serving, we're serving the fixed income homeowners. We're serving elderly residents. We're serving disabled residents. We're serving the parent, again, grandparent. We're serving foster parents. We're serving widows. We're serving single parents. We do not discriminate on who we serve. Or even where we go. We vet our clients and we determine what is the need. I can't tell you how many times we've had someone who's had an amputation and just needs to be able to get in their house. And so we'll help with that accessibility repair or installation. And so we don't discriminate, but that's the largest pool of people that we are serving where we see the need. The what is we're preventing displacement. We're keeping people from having to sell for nothing and without the ability to afford something else more livable. We're securing their home. We're making a generational impact on the lives of them and their family members. And then we're also building and connecting community. We get to see neighbors helping neighbors. We get to see people breaking down stereotypes and misperceptions that they've built up in their mind, and they're seeing people for people with a name, with a story. And then we're also challenging the next generation, which is largely what we're seeing through this volunteer camp program. is that we're seeing young people to learn what they're capable of. They're learning new skills, they're learning valuable lessons, and they're becoming better human beings because how they've given us just one week of their summer or their lives to serve someone else. You know, when you see the tiniest girl become the strongest girl on the entire team, it does a lot for morale and it does a lot for just their own self-perception. So it's been really great to see that next generation being challenged. Just a quick word on our implementation. We have been building this model since 2013. We've learned a lot of lessons along the way. And for additional volunteer support, we've been operating this model for the past two summers through a partner called LeaderTrax. And so we now believe we are prepared to internalize it, bringing us to a higher level of self-sustainability, but also being able to maximize what San Marcos gets to benefit from with those volunteers. So in our implementation process, like I said before, we do the homeowner intake, we verify income, homeownership, and then we also do a needs assessment. From there, we do a project scope and priority list. So we'll try to determine what are the needs and what's the most crucial need to keeping them in the house. We also take them for You know, we allow them to have a voice in that, too. And so because they know, you know, what's the biggest priority for their their living. And then we'll assign volunteer teams. So we take a look at our volunteer teams. We see what are their skills, what are their assets, what are their certifications? And we'll utilize those. But we also hire contract support when there is a high level of like expertise that is needed and professionalism. We rely on them to pull the permits and that whole process. And so every one of our contractors signs a waiver with us, assuming the full scope of work on their responsibility. But we will utilize our volunteers to offset some cost. For example, if we get a $15,000 bid for an electrical issue, that's a high priority electrical issue, we'll have volunteers go out and they'll do the trenching. And then we'll have the electrician or the plumber come in and do setting of the lines so that's just a way that we're able to do creative solutions we have a dump trailer that's been donated by the red cross that has been so handy for example with our roofers we will use that dump trailer to reduce the cost of their expense so that makes it less on us by hauling off the shingles that they pulled off of the roof. So we're always looking for creative solutions. And then from there, we schedule the workday and we complete the scope of work. We also submit to our homeowner an evaluation so that we can hear what has their experience been. And so that's how Mission Able operates. But ultimately, those volunteers multiply every dollar invested. As far as safety and risk, we do have Monica, I'll jump in.

We're at about 14 minutes, so if you can just sort of wrap it up, then we'll still have time for questions.

Yeah, I will. These are a list of our partners that we've had. I can throw this back up here in a minute. And then here are some before and after photos of some projects we've had. The top one is a bathroom remodel. This woman was 78 years old at the time, living without a bathroom for two years. I don't know what her solutions were, but we didn't ask. And so we just came in and we installed a shower. We installed the flooring, shower, sink, and toilet. And then we had an accessibility project. And then this bottom one is a 90 and 93 year old couple living without an exterior wall for four years. So that unfortunately is some of the conditions in which our neighbors are living in. So we want to provide safe homes, stable families, build stronger neighborhoods and better neighbors. Any questions?

Yes. And we do have time for questions. So.

Yeah, can you actually go back to that safety and risk slide? Can you just go over that?

Yeah, so we have an executive board that's active and an advisory board. They also financially invest, but they build policies, procedures, and operation expectations. And then we do background check and train team leads. All volunteers and homeowners sign liability waivers, but we also carry proper insurances. And then we do vet location and scope of work. We'll look at what is the nature of the work. And then we'll also, we also vet every address with the sex offender registry, because if we're working with minors and we're placing them at locations, we want to share, we don't want to put minors on a property involving, you know, housing a sex offender. And so, again, we don't discriminate. We're just conscientious about who we place where. And then we'll also mitigate hazards. And there, unfortunately, there are some homes that we have to walk away from in terms of like when the foundation is unsettled and the walls are bowing and the roof is caving, you know, there's unfortunately some situations where it's just, it's too risky. um and then we carefully select teams based on skill and expertise we hire contractors um when work is beyond volunteer skill set we don't put volunteers on a six foot ladder um so you know uh that our insurance doesn't cover that um so we'll hire roofers to do a roof thank you

Anyone else? I mean, I just pause for a minute. Okay.

All right.

I don't see any others. So thank you very much. Also, oh, I already said that. I'm obsessive now. I also need the red phone. Okay.

Got it.

Thank you. Okay. Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Now we have the others on.

Hey, it looks like Cassandra Salinas is also, Kale, is she also going to present? There she is. Yes, ma'am. Okay. Okay. Next, we have CineCorps. They have two programs. The first one is the Substance Use Disorder Prevention Program. And here we have Kale Winfrey-Borzek, the Director of Prevention Programs. And also Cassandra Salinas, and I'm sorry, I don't know your role, so please introduce yourself.

Yes, I am the new prevention outreach coordinator at Cinecor.

Great, okay, thank you. And then you're welcome to start and major presenters, so you should be able to share your screen if you need to.

Perfect, amazing. It's our time to shine. And I first want to say thank you all so much for your your time and still want to be with us here also almost at 9 o'clock at night. We appreciate that. I do have to say being human too, please, please do not hold it against me if I also have a yawn in my.

It's getting late, so I'll be respectful of y'alls time.

Alright, let me go ahead and share my screen here.

Make sure technology works with me. We can see it.

Perfect. It's in. Can you all see the full picture on your end? Yes. Okay. I see that. Perfect. All righty. Well, just as I said, I'm going to pull up my notes here. Let me know if you can see those as well. I don't know if it will share both or if it will do.

It's still on full screen for the presentation.

Perfect. That works out great.

Thank you.

Okay. Well, and thank you, Ms. Carol, for the introduction. As again, my name is Kayla Winfrey. I am the Director of Parenting Programs here with CENACOR. Tonight, we would like to share a little bit about who we are, who CENACOR is, and what our prevention and youth recovery work looks like here in this community and why the continued investment in that work matters for our San Marcos youth and families. And so what we really hope to show tonight is that this is not really just about programs on paper. And this really is about services that are already active locally, relationships that already exist, and a model that helps us stay connected to youth and families across the entire continuum of care. So just to start with who CENACOR is, right? CENACOR is a mission-driven nonprofit. We've been operating for over 50 years. Expanding, serving all across Texas and expanding now into New Mexico. But originally started in Colorado as a therapeutic community. Cinecore is a nonprofit that really just provides recovery and real-life behavioral health solutions for SUD or substance use prevention and addiction. What makes us really unique is that we provide the entire continuum of care, right? So all the way from prevention to treatment to recovery support. And we even have alumni engagement now, which is a really cool piece. So we're not just operating in one area, stepping in just for a moment. We really try, our goal is really to stay connected with individuals and families at different points of need over time. And that matters, right? Especially in communities like San Marcos because of the rapid growth that y'all have had and because of the youth and families do not experience needs in the categories, right? They might need prevention at one point, recovery support at another, and access to additional services later. And our model gives us the ability to understand those needs and the context and make sure that we're staying connected rather than working in isolation. So let's talk a little bit about what prevention does and what it means, right? Because although it's a part of the continuum of care, it's not something we often think about. One of my favorite sayings is always, how can we be proactive rather than reactive, right? And sometimes that's usually what our systems are built off of, is reactivity. So at its core, prevention means showing up early and helping our youth and families and our community in San Marcos help or build skills and support before things escalate into something more serious. That includes, we do decision-making presentations, coping skill presentations, teaching folks about refusal skills, communication, and helping folks navigate peer pressure in real life situations with more confidence. So the goal ultimately is to strengthen protective factors before risk turns into crisis. We are helping to build those support systems, the skills, and the healthy connections that make positive choices possible. And I think that's why prevention is truly so important because it gives us the chance to reach folks and to reach our youth while there's still room to build the resilience and confidence and direction that we need. And so really what we do and what we're based off of is the six CSAP strategies, or it's called the Center for Substance Abuse Prevention. So there's all these different kind of avenues that we take in implementing prevention work. And that looks like education, whether that's like a presentation, an informational presentation. It looks like curriculum, evidence-based curriculum, skill building, environmental strategies, right? So together the work is layered. and practical, and we really try to be responsive to what the community needs. The two specific curriculums that we offer in our prevention services is both in life skills and curriculum-based support group. So the two primary populations that we work with in St. Marcus is what we call our universal population, which means like everyone, the catch-all, right, just general ed. And then we have an indicated population, which is truly our high-risk population, those with already experimenting, already in use, maybe some family history, truly the folks who are actively using. And so with that, I think that the goal is to strengthen and to kind of, even if they are using or experimenting, we can still catch them, right? I think and still do the education. And that's truly the glue that sticks all together is that education and the curriculum that we use to help build their cognitive skills and their skill set. Something that I really like to say is that we're not just teaching kids to say no, right? We're teaching them how to have the life that they want. In order to do that, we have to use positive language. I think we all know what happens when we tell kids no, right? Usually they do the opposite sometimes. And so I think it's always about how can we work as a holistic approach. With our current partnerships, we have an incredible partnership with communities and schools that allows us amazing access to the San Marcos School District. We also have an incredible partnership with the school board itself. We just went to the school board meeting a few weeks ago as part of the Core 4 partnership. So we really try to work within every sector in the community. Um, whether that's going to be, you know, schools, churches, um, you know, community centers, um, any really, wherever we can catch folks, we want to, um, we specialize in K through 12 education. Um, we also do serve adults as well. Um, so yeah, just a little bit more, um, information about our two, um, evidence-based programs that we offer. So life skills, um, again, that K through 12, it's more for our universal population. it really is based in that refusal skills, healthy coping skills, healthy relationships, whereas community-based support group for an indicated population is really meant to be a small supportive group environment for youth who need connection. It's not, you know, sitting in front of a classroom, it's not sitting in front of a presentation, but it truly is facilitated as a group, right? So having those conversations of more of a holistic approach of hey, why are you using, but what's leading you to making those choices so that we can really address problems at its root rather than having the band-aid approach, if you will. So going into our growth focus impact, right, our office in San Marcos has been around for years. And with that, we're constantly changing and adapting to the environment and the work that's already happening in San Marcos and the great community partners that we have A lot of our prevention efforts currently are truly supported by continuing local engagement and community partnerships, whether that be Texas State, Hayes County Diversion Program, our Juvenile Center, Southside Community Center, really some key players and key resource partners that we partner with to make sure that we can do things in tandem and not making sure that we're reinventing the wheel, right? Um, so really, I think, I think it's the, the goal is, is that we're not trying to introduce something unfamiliar and we have already have a really strong foundation here in San Marcos. It's our longest standing office. Um, and the goal now is to build on that base and to continue to increase consistency, to deepen our engagement and really glow, grow our local reach for youth and families. Um, and that's a really important part of the conversation that we're having because that city investment strengthens that work as well. Um, that's already rooted in our community. So just again, as I mentioned before, why this work is so important, especially locally in San Marcos, is because our community is growing at a rapid pace, right? There's a lot of statistics that came out and even the core four partnership data. I think the most recent study for 2024, 30% of youth are reporting that they have more mental health. And we know those numbers are only growing. We have social media and all these outside pressures and unprecedented times that our youth and adults are living through. And so that need for prevention is only growing and only having those conversations about self-medication and what that looks like to cope with hard things. Or if you're going through something at home or at school, how can we step in early enough? And so that way it doesn't lead to crisis. A lot of fentanyl related deaths, right? The amount of fentanyl it takes to kill you, they say is like, right, less than a tip of a pencil, right? Like less than that. And so, and we don't know, we can't see it. It's being integrated in all these things. And so regulating that and having kids have that information in their hands is really important as well. Our prevention philosophy is really what guides our work. And I know I mentioned this before, but I'll say it again. Our true goal is not to just tell kids no, right? I don't want When I think about our prevention services, what comes to mind for me is that we're going in and we're having a holistic approach of that. There's going to be play, but vulnerability and humor, right? The way to connect with kids, because let's be honest, right? A lot of kids buy you and then they buy what you're selling, right? They have to have that relationship with you. And then they'll be able to hear what the information that we're giving. And so that's what our prevention specialists in the community are doing. They are working with the Children's Building Rapport and being able to give that information in a way that's relatable and also digestible as well so that they feel seen. Ultimately, the goal is to give the work back. Let our students in St. Marcus know that they have the power of prevention. Our big picture goal is to have them a peer-led prevention work in the community, right? Let's do some sober, fun activities that they come up with, not just us telling them what they should be doing or could be doing, but let's put it in their hands and know that they have the power over their lives and over the prevention work that is going on and being implemented in the community. Really, I think about the community level through some different ways. I mentioned the CSAP strategies. We do that at a very unique level, as I mentioned, with having the entire community of care. Um, is we have invite different environmental strategies. So even in San Marcos, um, we go to different tobacco compliance retailers and we do, we do compliance inspections and we say, Hey, what are you selling to under age minors? Right. Do you have your permits? Is there, do we have all of our notifications and educational, um, one pagers posted and are under 21 signs is what we usually check for. Um, and having active conversations, even with our retailers, you know, even doing like safe serving. conversations and really checking for fake IDs and things like that. It is also a part of prevention and the environmental strategies that we work to implement. So I think that that's where we're kind of different than a lot of organizations, a lot of other prevention organizations, is that we can move kind of within different strategies and within different sectors of the continuum of care to truly meet folks where they are. Because those services exist, we just have to connect them, right? And that's usually always the biggest barrier. So with that being said, from the outreach side, because that's really where truly our work comes to life. And as Cassandra was introduced to and just recently joined our team to be the hands and feet of our work in San Marcos and to do that work. And so I'm going to pass it over to Cassandra to talk a little bit more about the Boots on the Ground work and the outreach and community initiatives that are taking place.

Sure, I'm just going to let you know we're at 12 minutes. So just, you know, take some time, but, you know, a couple minutes.

Thank you.

Thank you so much. Yes. So like I mentioned earlier, I'm the prevention outreach coordinator. So a lot of what I do is go out into the community. I connect with partners. I help to get our services out into the community. Right. So from the outside or from the outreach side, right. Trust and consistency are a huge part of what I do and what we do here at Cinecor. Prevention has to feel like a part of the community, not something that's kind of siloed away from it. If people don't know who you are or don't know what you do, it's kind of hard for them to trust you, and they're more or less likely to engage and support you with what you're offering, right? So when connection happens, engagement grows. Kale, I also don't think you switched the slide yet.

Oh, thank you.

You're welcome. So when connection happens and engagement grows, right? So youth participate, families ask questions and partners reach out. So for us, impact is not just about numbers. It's about the relationship and the visibility and the consistency and the early trust. All of that kind of develops so that we can give our services out into the community and be more impactful to our community as well. This is just what helps us move from prevention and from being a presentation and just kind of standing there giving you information. And it brings it into a real community resource and a real asset to the community as well.

Thank you. Yeah, and just to wrap this up, the investment in prevention is huge, right? The benefits that youth, families, and schools and the broader San Marcos community will receive from it is investing in this work because it means investing in that early support, skill building, and the trust and community relationships with a stronger front end of care. So that's all that we have for prevention. I know that I'll leave some time for questions, and then we'll switch into our next program.

Okay, great. And we're just set 14 minutes, we have plenty of time. So any questions about the prevention program specifically for Senate for this?

Has y'all's fiscal year 27 budget been approved by the board yet?

I do not believe it has yet.

No. Okay, so would you be able to tell me what the $15,000 would go towards for prevention?

Yeah, absolutely. So that was written in. So as part of our overall program, prevention program, is funded through HHSC. And we work to supplement our funding for sustainability. And so it would go towards our match dollars for that community investment piece. and to make sure that we're going to be sustainable locally and long-term.

Thank you. Anyone else?

Linda, I can still see you, so just know this. I'm checking on the online feed as well.

Seeing that, okay. Okay. So that will be the end of the prevention program presentation. And then next one is also Senate Corps Youth Recovery Community is the program and it will be our same presenters. So feel free to get started.

Perfect. Let's just do a nice little transition here, right from prevention to youth recovery support. So our prevention, right, was talked about is where we begin in our Youth Recovery Community Center or our YRC, as we call it for short. is how we stay connected with the youth and adults in San Marcos. And so our actual youth recovery community center is in Buda, but we do serve quite a few families and youth from San Marcos and help with transportation and things like that to keep them involved locally. So really the YRC model or the youth recovery model is really valuable because it provides just a safe space for youth who are already in addiction or in recovery to go. And that matters because not every person, every young person stops at education alone, right? We need that continued support and the peer connection. And that's where the center becomes so powerful. So our Youth Recovery Community Center is really led, but it's peer led by peer support specialists. And we also have certified family partners as well. primarily serving youth ages 13 to 21. We served about over 430 youth last year, and we're on track to double that number this year for Buda, our Buda location, which is incredible because we did also have our funding cut by 51%. And so a significant reducing in staffing capacity, and they have still been running at full speed, trying to do everything that they can to keep the center open, And to keep the options available for youth who need it and who benefit from that space. And so it's really not just a program. It's a community that meets our young people where they are. And they're led by adults who have that lived experience and they can speak to it. And so really it's meant to be more of a a wraparound service provider, right? So when you look at the YRC model, it means we have that lived experience, and now we have that addition of the family partner, because a lot of times we can talk to the children, right? And something that I always said when I worked in crisis work is that it's really hard to ask someone to change their habits in the environment that's triggering it, right? So unless we address the root and we don't address this family system as a whole, we're going to continue to have to run into the same the same barriers. And so that's truly the goal. And we do so many cool things there. I mean, we just implemented, we have a blessings box, right? A food pantry, a clothing closet. With this funding, hopefully it would help us expand to what we actually can help our youth transition into adulthood, right? So like helping them get access to if they need a GED or if they need help getting applications done, and truly doing some of that life skill building. Right now, our peer support specialist focus on a lot of individual sessions and doing individual peer support. But the goal truly is to expand it, to have that funding to help facilitate their life skills in action. But we still, you know, I think really do, we do our best to really continue to be consistent in offering youth nights. Even with our funding cuts, you know, we still really have been working to have to offer fun youth nights, sober activities. Community service projects is a huge part of the role that we play in teaching kids to give back, right? A lot of the kids that are in our YRC program, some of them are court mandated to be there. Some folks have a really good partnership with the diversion programs. And so if they do community service with us, then we can help sign off on their probation hours, which is incredibly helpful and significantly reduced recidivism rates, which is amazing. I had a mission, a powerful testimony. My peer support specialist, she just went to the graduation of her seniors, and we had over 15 seniors graduate that were on probation less than a year ago, which is incredible, right, across our entire YRC program. But it was so amazing seeing her take pictures with the kids in their caps and gowns, right, and seeing them be able to move and elevate past what they might have been, their environment set them up for is huge. So really that's the whole goal of our youth recovery center is to help move our youth and families along and support them through that recovery process. So it's just not a program for one type of youth. It really is meant to be a community for the entire community as well. So our goal includes peer mentoring. We do group support. So we facilitate at the Hays County At Juneau Detention Center, we do groups there. And we also do groups at our YRC Center. And then we have, again, as I mentioned, we have family groups. So we have, before, a few weeks ago, we just implemented our like, we have different, like a mom support group and then a dad support group, or we have like guardians support groups. And so that's been really, really incredible. That peer connection too, I think really helps youth feel understood. I always like to say that sometimes the most powerful words you can say to a kiddo going through something is me too, right? And having that empathy and knowing that they're not alone is one of the biggest protective factors that we have. And we know that recovery is not just a destination, it's the journey. So having that consistent connection really helps our youth stay anchored instead of drifting away from that support. We're really working to grow. Our presence has been incredible And just as I said, we're on track to double our numbers from last year, even with 51% of our funding cut and our staff cut and over half. I currently have only, as of this month or as of the last four weeks, I have one staff who's running that center. And she's been doing incredible. I've been working so hard to get her to have a work-life balance so she's not overdoing it. But we're really looking for that funding to help support additional staff and really rehire and rebuild the center so we can expand our local reach. And I'd say that's really why this funding matters so much for us, is that this is really an opportunity to invest in our services that are already so active locally, and they are in a really good position for continued growth. And so that funding to help strengthen prevention, our early intervention, and our youth recovery is critical for us to continue services. So really, in looking at key points, we have a really strong foundation. We have the relationships and the visibility. Our focus now is on strengthening and expanding support so that youth can access it and stay connected so that we reach folks earlier and keep them connected through recovery. And we strengthen this family system as a whole. and in turn, creating a healthier community as a response. So that's really the key takeaway, right, is that the investment here helps strengthen the full continuum of care for our youth and families. We have the, you know, essentially with our YRC, like I said, we really work to meet the outcomes and to support I think we just met with a few judges here recently to continue to increase our diversion program so that way children are being diverted to programs that will support them and not reoffending. And we've been really lucky to have that partnership at our YRC center and see the outcomes that it has produced in the local San Marcos community. So thank you. I appreciate all of y'all's time. Please let me know if you have any additional questions.

Okay. As usual, please feel free to ask any questions about the youth recovery community.

Will the 15,000 requested for this program also be matched dollars?

It will not. No. Our funding for the YRC actually gets funneled through Be Well. And so they don't have the same requirements as funding. So this truly is just to support keeping the center operating locally and to supplement the grant that we received from Be Well. But it doesn't have the same match dollar requirement.

Okay. I guess I want to bring up something, and I'm kind of going back to the prior presentation, but could you talk about the function of the match dollars? Because for a long time, we just said, oh, it's match, and we didn't think about what's actually done with the money.

Yeah, absolutely. So we still use that money to go directly towards program activities and supplies. So the overall goal is that it really functions more towards like we have certain caps that we can spend on different activities, right? So a tangible example of that would be we have alternative activities, which are truly like anything you can think of that's a fun, safe, sober event. So anything that we can do to show the community, whether that's youth or adults, so they can engage in something and have fun while doing it. I always use the example of like holding community kickball game, right? And so with that, we can only spend a certain amount of money within the grant to support that activity. But if we have the additional funding from you all, we'd be able to actually focus that on the local prevention efforts rather than at the broader state level. Okay, thank you.

Thank you.

Any other questions about the youth recovery?

Yeah, I do. Actually, I think it's like the last page of the application is referring to the funding that the city gave in FY25. It says from... 25 that y'all are able to serve 11,000 and 11,114 clients with prevention services. And so is that why one is that 11,114 in San Marcos? And does that include kind of like? And. courses, events, maybe, you know, flyers or outreach, like, you know, that y'all distributed like that many flyers or something kind of, I guess, can you just like explain what that number, it just seems like a really large number, which is amazing. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely. So our, our, that 11,000 number is correlated to our region seven impact. Our total number as a prevention department for FY25 I think was about 43,000. So the way that we calculate our numbers is through how many folks attend our informational presentations, how many folks participate in our curriculum, our evidence-based curriculum, and then we count how many folks engage in our sober activities, our sober alternative activities, in addition to how many folks we meet at community fairs, health fairs, and have presentations there. So those are probably the four main core avenues of where those numbers are coming from. And I would say that is truly representative of our impact in Hays County specifically. A large portion of our numbers do come from San Marcos just because of such of our strong partnership with communities and schools and the CIS managers in the schools in San Marcos. We are funded to go across other counties, but we really haven't had the opportunity to expand that reach. And so I feel really confident to say that the majority of those numbers touched the Hayes County and San Marcos community.

Thank you. Any other questions?

No? Okay. All right, then.

Thank you very much. We'll just conclude there. And we really appreciate your presentation.

Yes. Thank you so much for having us. Have a good night. Thank you.

All right. We're in the discussion portion of the meeting. We can hold discussion among board members on programs, agencies, and applications for the purpose of clarification, comparison, evaluation, and assessment.

Would anyone like to discuss? I guess I want to clarify something really quick.

In a prior meeting, somebody asked, is HSAB able to award more than what was requested? So I checked with our legal department and I wanted to bring it up in this meeting because y'all are thinking about, you know, the recommended allocations. And here's what they said. Don't award more funding than was requested unless it can be clearly documented that the overage Computer is about to restart. Unless it can be clearly documented that the overage will be used for the same purposes and program as the initial request. So if you can see that, then we could. The attorney especially noted the city can't give away money. It can't do that. It has to be used for a public purpose. It has to accomplish a purpose that is within the government interest of the city. That's actually underlying all HSEV allocations. So, the applications just have to justify those purposes for the money requested. So, I hope that answered that question.

All good? Okay. Does any board member want to request an item for a future agenda?

We have an opportunity for the press and public to ask questions related to items on the agenda. We don't have any others. Okay. Thank you all for your participation. Do I hear a motion to adjourn the meeting?

Motion made.

Motion made. Thank you. I'll give you a second. Second. Again, thank you. Carol, will you please call the roll for the vote?

Okay. Yancey Arloa?

Yes. Raymond Best?

Yes.

Linda Harper-Williams? Yes. Nikita Grafis?

Yes. Sharika Gassi? Yes. And Alisa Ramirez?

Yes. I now adjourn the meeting at 9.10 p.m. Thank you very much.