Human Services Advisory Board - Regular Meeting

Thank you everyone for being here. Welcome to the 08/27/2025 regular meeting of the Human Services Advisory Board. I'm about I'm calling the meeting to order at 06:02PM. And, I wanna clarify that or should I do the update attendance or no?

Yeah. You're presiding the Yeah. Over the meeting. Hypothetically, they're supposed to vote. I think we should just Oh. Do a consensus. So maybe Roll

call the call and then Alright. My apologies, everyone. I'm now gonna do, the roll call for the record of board member attendance. Lucy Gonzales? Here. Here. Elias Martinez?

Here.

Linda Harper Williams?

Here.

Ethan Graves?

Here.

Tricoci's absent. Lucy Johnson, absent. Alyssa Ramirez?

Sorry.

Okay.

There she is.

She's coming. Alright.

There

she is.

Here. Sorry.

No. Thank you, Alyssa. Alright. With six out of seven voting members in attendance, we do have a quorum. Alright.

So I guess I can just announce, we knew that Lucy Johnson, our chair, would be out. Sharif Gossett is our vice chair. He has COVID. He is sick. Maybe I'm not supposed to announce what he had. Sorry. Okay. So Yancey has volunteered to fill in, but, by the rules, you're supposed to vote in the presiding officer. She is our only member who's here in person, so she is your only choice. But maybe if we could just have a quick, I guess I'll just call the roll. I'll just call the roll really fast

to confirm that y'all have incurred that Yancey can preside over the meeting. So,

Yancey, hi. Elias Martinez?

Yes.

Linda Harper Williams?

Yes. Ethan Graves?

Yes. Alyssa Ramirez?

Yes.

Okay. Thank you. And so then I'll hand it back over to Yancey to run the meeting.

Thank you, Carol. Alright. Moving on to citizens' comment period. Carol, is there anyone present to speak during the citizens' comment period?

So I guess I'm to allow everyone to talk. If you're here as an attendee, please let me know if you are here to speak during the session and comment period. I think everyone's here for presentations. Okay. I just didn't recognize everybody, but okay. We'll leave it at that. So I don't see anyone who's here to

Okey dokey. Thank you, Carol. So the next item on the agenda is approval of approval of the meeting minutes from August 6 and August 20 meetings. However, this evening, we do not have a quorum of members who attended the August 6 meeting. So we need to postpone considering those those minutes postponed to the September 3 meeting. Also, the August 20 minutes have not been drafted, so consideration of those minutes will need to be postponed to the September 3 meeting as well. Do I hear a motion to postpone consideration of the August 6 and August 20 min minutes to the September 3 meeting?

No. No.

Oh, second.

Okay. So you wanna say who

Motion made by Elias. Did I get that right? Yep. And motion seconded by Ethan.

Correct? Yep. Okay. Alright.

Carol, will you please call the roll for the vote?

Okay. Yancy?

Yes. Alethis Martinez?

Yes.

Linda Harper Williams? Yes. Ethan Graves? Yes. Alyssa Ramirez?

Yes.

So we have a majority heard. Everyone by unanimity, yes, and move them to the September.

Alright. Thank you, everyone. So now moving on to the presentations. We will receive a ten minute presentation by the applicant agency for each program that was listed on this evening's agenda. Each agency will receive a thirty second warning as the ten minute time limit is approaching, but the time limit is somewhat flexible. Each presentation will be followed by a ten minute question and answer session between board members and the agency regarding the program or application. Members of the public are welcome to listen, but will not take part in the discussion or the question and answer session. So that I can devote my attention to the presentations and discussions, Carol Griffith, housing and community development manager, will introduce the presenters and track the time. Go ahead.

Okay. So first up is b r three t. I am realizing I did not write down the names of the presenters, so I'm gonna ask y'all to introduce yourself. They are presenting the housing stability services program, and they're here in the room with us.

So I'm gonna hand them out. Oh, I can share the screen.

Oh, okay. You can click on it. It's green. Yeah. Share. Number two. Number two. Share at bottom.

Check bottom. Alright. So

good. Oh,

we take it out of this interview. Yeah. The three dots.

Yep. Alright. So there. And now

just hit You can move Linda over.

Not from beginning.

And I think she's just on our screen. I don't care. Okay.

Let's see. Maybe double click. It's bringing up this for some slideshow, maybe.

You want me to mess with it?

Think. Sorry. Can play

everything wrong. It's fine. Okay.

Slideshow.

I don't feel about this view.

I think you can have. Look at it.

Well, it's showing up on this side.

Oh, there it

is. Okay. Oh, that's funny. I didn't notice that. Oh, that's hilarious. Okay. So now I think you're set. I think you can click to move

it. Sure.

Alright. Alright. Okay. I'm Elizabeth Wills. I'm the executive director for BRQT. My name

is Kylie Contaras. I'm the assistant program director for BRQT.

Okay. So

Blanco River Regional Recovery Team, that's a mouthful. So we go by BRTT. The b is for Blanco, then there's three r's, so it's r cubed and then t. So BR three t was founded in, 2015 after the devastating Memorial Day floods along the Blanco River. We're the long term recovery group for four counties.

It's the four counties that were affected by that flood, Hays, Cabo, Blanco, and. In 2015, I was a volunteer with BR three t in our volunteer resource center where we, worked cases, and we managed volunteer groups that were coming in from all over to help, residents rebuild their homes. So I know our name has the word Blanco River in it, but we don't have a the Blanco River recovering. We help with the residents, who are in the Blanco River region recover from disasters. We help the residents rebuild their homes as well as their lives.

And our focus is on, housing. We want to make sure that our residents have safe and secure, stable housing. I mean, even even our logo has a house on it. So over the years, we've worked on a variety of disasters that are listed on that slide. One of our strong suits is being a fiduciary agent.

When a disaster hits, the emergency managers, can put our name out and say, send the donations here, and we take in all the donations. This is really important because it keeps the donations local. When, the COVID pandemic hit in 2025, Hays County turned to be to, run a rent relief program. Since we were the long term recovery group, they they just turned to us to do that. And so with our fiduciary experience and our case management experience and our our history of helping residents with safe and stable housing, we were able to just jump in and build and run a program efficiently and quickly and get those rent funds out to the the people that needed it.

So since then, we've come come become experts at housing grants, and we've, administered a couple more or another one for Hays County and several for the city of San Marcos. And then we also have our state grant with, TDHCA, the Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs. And our state grant was set to be supposed to be a one year grant for about 2 and a half million, and, it has now gone longer than three years and sold at more than 5,000,000. Now we're really good with paperwork and data tracking, accurate and timely reports, and we're able to spend the money as it's outlined in our budget. And we we get we're able to meet our benchmarks, and we get, good grades on our scorecard and TDHTA.

So they we have received multiple reallocations as money becomes available to reallocation. And you can see on the the graph on the right the the ZIP codes. So our state grant does cover all the four counties that we serve, but the majority of the funds are spent here in the San Marcos area. So our these grants have all been COVID funded with COVID money, and the COVID money is coming to an end. So our state grant will end on September 30.

And when that happens, there will be, a gap in services in our community. And we want to help fill that gap and continue running our housing stability services program, and we are seeking grant funding to do so. We you know, over the last five years, we we have so much experience and knowledge with the local rental market. We have relationships with landlords and apartments and property management property managers, and we want to continue to put all this knowledge to good use.

So for our proposal of the 2026 housing stability services program, we'd like to cover application fees, security deposits, pet deposits, utility deposits for getting people into stable housing. We'd also like to cover emergency short term hotel stays for clients referred to us by code compliance and San Marcos PD. We'd also like to assist with owned rent and owned utilities for keeping people in stable housing and across the board, case managements for clients who are in need of case management and access to other resources. So in general, why deposit assistance? Basically, when it comes to getting people housed, it is a huge financial burden to try and pay the deposits, the first month's rent, any associated fees, the moving costs, the getting furniture, especially if you have been previously unhoused or living in a room for rent in that kind of situation.

Never bought kitchenware. Right? So this graph right here shows how much we spend in deposits alone for the year of 2025 across each month. Roughly speaking, per month, we spend about $12,000 on average, some months higher than others. So why rental assistance? The idea is if a client is already in an affordable rental, helping them stay housed in that rental is the best plan for them. Right? Different clients need different things. Some clients will need assistance moving into an affordable rental. Some clients will need assistance staying in an affordable rental.

Rental assistance with case management can help prevent evictions, which is also what we are trying to do. This graph right here shows, the rate of eviction or the number of evictions in Hays County from 2016, on the left to 2025 on the right. You can see that big dip in the middle. That's when the, eviction moratorium was going on during the pandemic.

Mhmm.

So as that graph kinda shows, currently in 2025, it's nearly double what it was pre pandemic. So trying to help keep our clients, in stable affordable housing or those who have been evicted get into affordable housing is what we are trying to focus on. As we why case management? So during case management, we can assist with financial planning for financial self sufficiency. What the heck does that mean?

When we're talking about financial self sufficiency, we're working with clients to help create budgets and help plan for savings and emergency funds, you know, your assorted future financial needs. Right? The idea is if we can help you now, help you create a plan, help you get into an affordable housing, help you plan for your future financial situations, you can save your money, save your emergency funds. The next time you have a financial hardship or something come up, you have the funding already, and you don't need to ask for assistance again. That all starts with trying to get them into affordable housing, trying to get them out of these cycles of poverty.

We have clients who sometimes get stuck in door dashing cycles where they door dash, they pay for a room for that night, and then they have no money. They have no savings. We see clients who are stuck on fixed incomes and aren't, you know, able to save. So if we can help them create plans, get connected to resources, and what have you, helping them stay housed, that is what we wanna do. So in case management, we can also help with housing navigation.

So like Elizabeth mentioned earlier, we have good relationships with many different, rentals and property managers in this area, helping get clients connected to property managers who can work with them given their situations, is what we wanna be doing. We can also help connect clients with resources, help them obtain income, and apply for benefits. So, again, the idea is, like, different clients need different things. Everything starts with the conversation. Hey.

What are you having trouble with? Are you getting food stamp assistance? Do you need to go apply for Medicaid? Do you need assistance with, mental health resources? And just figuring out where they're at and what we can assist with them so that they can obtain stable housing and maintain stable housing.

We also assist with tenant rights. So part of stable housing is making sure that we're getting you into a legitimate rental that with a landlord that's not gonna take advantage of you, that's not charging you illegal late fees, that's, treating your security deposit as an actual security deposit. Mhmm. These are things that we have dealt with in the past and have helped correct certain landlords on. But like I said, our case management is capable of fostering a healthy relationship with finances, and providing those the opportunity to kinda, like, help troubleshoot their barriers, and regain some normalcy in their lives. So just so

you know, we're almost at ten minutes, but the board has really wanted to emphasize, like, the presentation and hearing from y'all. Mhmm. So I really think they would prefer that you just kinda continue. Keep going. And then we'll have a slightly shorter Okay. Q and a. Yeah.

You got it. It's nearly our last slide. So Okay.

So then the other thing we've requested funding for is these emergency short term hotel stays. We, get calls from co compliance. I got one today. You know, or the, police department, they need to be able to place somebody in a hotel. But our current program, we have to have paperwork. So we're going we can't handle a full emergency. We put them straight in their hotel. Sometimes they're already a a client of ours, and it works. There was a situation recently where there was a human trafficking going on, and the police went in and and saw this. And they they went back, and they're trying to find the resources.

By the time they got back to the location, all the people had scattered, and nobody, knows what happened to them. You know? So if they could have just immediately said, oh, we'll go here, Those people would be safe right now, and that's just we don't know where they are. So that's why we requested this because then we know this this the co compliance and the police department needs some place. And we've been running our hotel stay program. We know what we're doing. We got relationships with hotel owners, so we're asking for that. Alright.

So thank you very much. No questions can we answer for y'all?

Thank you for the presentation. So of those households that that you all are serving, after they go through the services, like, what percentage would you say are stably housed after after the services within that sort of, like, six month to one year period?

So at this time, we don't have a good system for tracking all cases if they're still continually stably housed. That being said, because we continue to work with different landlords, every now and again, I'll get the gossip from the landlords and be like, hey. How's this client doing? And, you know, I'll I'll get stories from different landlords where clients are doing well, some clients are not doing well. We do every now and again have some repeat customers. It happens. We do just try and, like, game plan, troubleshoot. Let's try it again, figure it out.

Right. It's not a for a lot of people, you know, one one interface with us is is not gonna, you know, get them housed forever. You know? They they they do come back for services again. We have you know? We've touched them enough times, given them the information, and it sinks in.

Okay. Could you maybe share an example? Like, tell us a story about a client who's been impacted by by the services?

Totally. So one of the clients that, wrote us a letter of support, she what happened with her was she was initially the caregiver for her father and her son, and her father died, unfortunately. And because her father was the owner of the house, the owner of the property, she then lost her housing. They had to sell the house. She got no money from it due to family issues, broadly speaking, and her and her son ended up living out their car because they were evicted.

We were able to pick them up in our short term hotel stay and allow them the time to save their money. They were both on fixed incomes because they were both disabled. We then gave them some financial counseling. We gave them some, housing navigation. We were able to get them connected with a tax credit u income property in this area and got them into a rental that was about 33% of their income, which was incredibly affordable, especially given all of the medical issues that she was dealing with and that her son was dealing with at that time.

And then we were also able to connect them with another program in this area to offer them continuing services after they left our program. Since we know that even though we got them housed in this area, we can't always be there to do the little bits and pieces after we get them housed. So trying to get them connected to other services in this in this area is an important part of our job as well as case managers. I do have some other stories if you'd like, but I I could I could yap about stories all day. I know. I wanna make sure I'm answering other questions for you too.

I do have, one slight question right here. Is there anything in y'all's, I guess, application process or, like, in choosing who your clients are that disqualifies someone or would be, like, a disqualifying factor in receiving assistance?

We, really, basically, just the, income. We we we only serve, you know, certain AMI level. If they're over that income level, then, yeah, there's no way we can help them.

Okay. But y'all don't necessarily like, for an example, like, y'all wouldn't take something like criminal history into account or anything like that?

No. We don't. Like, most of our clients have it. A lot of our clients have it.

I I understand. Yeah. I just I wanted to clarify that. I know there are a lot of people who need these services and are in, less than ideal circumstances and stuff like that.

And those are the people that need the services because it's harder for them to find housing relevant to them. Totally.

We ask about criminal history just because it hey. It helps. If you can tell me that you have a criminal history, I can then better give you some navigation for housing and which rentals are gonna work with you. What is your criminal history? Is it lamies or misdemeanor? I can now recommend these apartment complexes or these rentals or these landlords. Right?

So we

do ask about it. It's just not a disqualifying thing for them.

Thank you.

I have a question. On one of your slides, I think on the earlier one of the earlier slides, I think it had a list of, like, events that you guys have helped with perhaps. Is that what that slide was? Yeah. On there, I think I saw the July 4 floods. I was just curious in what sort of role you all play or BR3T played in the fourth of July floods?

Right. So we recently were contacted by the, city manager and the, emergency manager, about helping with case management and giving up, the sheetrock donations, that kind of thing. And we are we Sorry.

Let me ask the question.

Oh, no. This isn't Seguin. I know so people don't even know Seguin flooded.

We we just didn't know which city.

Okay. Seguin. Because it's in Guadalupe County. So we we're still waiting for them to get the full list and and and to find out, you know, the scope of what they're asking us. So we haven't actually done any work on it yet, but we are in discussions.

And so the San city of San Marcos emergency management or Seguin emergency management contacted you?

The Seguin emergency manager, Seguin city manager. Yes.

Oh, okay.

Awesome. And then, so excuse me. I'm having some technical difficulties, so I don't want to have, like, multiple screens open. So I don't know off the top of my head right now how much, was is being asked for in funding. But I had a question related to I think when y'all were talking about deposit assistance, the $12,000 came up.

I don't know if that's, like, the typical amount of money or, like, usually a client requires, like, up to or if y'all if that's, like, 12,000 a month, but that you guys, like, normally spend on deposit assistance. So I was just wondering, like, what that number what that $12,000 was again, and if you can compare that to, like, essentially how many people might be helped with deposit assistance if if b r three t is awarded what you guys are asking for. Does that make sense?

Oh, that's a good one. Okay. So the $12,000, that's what we spend on that's what we have been spending on security deposits, utility deposits, application fees over the for this year. You can see we did not ask for that much money to last for the next year. We know that's not possible, and this is just a portion. We're asking for a portion of what our program will be, and we are seeking other grants. Our security deposits average about $3,000. I'm I'm sorry. 3,000 That was the rental assistance. The, security deposits average $600.

The utility deposits average, I think it's around $250, and the application fees vary. Mhmm.

Thank you.

Does anyone have any other questions? I have a question.

We have just a couple more minutes. Go ahead.

How many of your case managers speak an additional language? We have what right now? Mhmm. What language is that? Spanish. Okay. So so in situations where y'all encounter someone who speaks an additional language and is not Spanish, what do y'all do in that case?

I would put Google Translate on my phone, and we figure out how to make it work. Sometimes if they do have someone nearby who can help translate, super. But I you can always rely on that. So I do tend to make do with Google Translate, as best we can and trying to figure out what other resources we can get them connected with so we

can communicate better. And, I guess,

does that happen often where you interact with someone in case management that speaks an additional language that is not Spanish?

Has not happened to me yet. Has majority been Spanish. Mhmm. I speak very bad Spanish myself. I can manage, but I am not fluent by any means, so I do still have to use Google Translate and our other case manager who can assist with that.

We're out

of time, but does anybody else have a final question?

I have one final question. I heard y'all bring up case management a few times, but what are the services offered in case management?

So we offer housing navigation, financial planning, connecting clients to other resources. It's very much just kind of a troubleshooting. I'm the case manager supervisor, and I do case management with my own cases at this time. And it really is just like, hey. Let's have a conversation. Let's start, communication around what are your housing barriers, and let's start trying to address them. And so, you know, I've helped some people with resumes. I've helped some people with what is a Social Security number. Let's Google some things. Let's try and figure this out.

So even though I do a lot of, like, niche little things depending on the clients, very broadly speaking, it's housing navigation, financial planning, and connecting the resources. So

Thank you.

Mhmm. Okay. We are at time. So I guess I'll thank you very much. You're welcome to stay and listen to everybody else, or you're welcome to go. And your, flash drive is in your little box, so you know how hard

it is.

So Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you for your time. Thank you.

Okay.

K. Next up, we have Bobcat Pride Stabilization Fund, and I've gotta move their representative over, to be a panelist. Heather, do you have anyone else with you?

Yes. Kennedy Stonehawk. Hi.

Kennedy Stonehawk. Right.

Madam chair.

Oh.

I I guess I need to recuse myself because I am also an employee of Texas State University.

We're not affiliated with Texas State. We're a nonprofit, just to clarify in case that helps. Yeah.

So you have don't see her name.

Yeah. I don't see any conflict, Elias.

Okay. Great.

And then alright.

And then, we have Kennedy on yeah. There you are, Heather. Okay. Let's take this down. Do you have a presentation that you're gonna show? Or okay.

I do. Yes. Does do I have sharing abilities? It looks like I do.

Okay. Try it. And then if I need to make you a host, I'll do that. There we go. It's working.

Awesome. Okay. Good evening, everyone. My name is Kennedy Stonehawk, and I have the privilege of being the operations director for the Bobcat Pride Scholarship Fund, also known as BPSF, not affiliated with Texas State as we said earlier. And joining me on the call is our executive director. Heather, do you wanna introduce yourself?

My name is Heather Idella.

And let me share this so you can't see this. All right. So good evening. A little bit about who we are. BPSF was established in twenty ten, fifteen years ago, specifically with the aim of providing economic support for San Marcos' LGBTQIA plus community members.

Currently, we have three programs that provide economic stability through emergency funding, academic scholarships, and paid internships. I just want to double, you know, just stamp that fifteen years is how long we've been serving both the the San Marcos and the Hays County community, And our program need and our presence has grown tremendously over that fifteen year period. Our volunteer is all our board is an all volunteer board. We have nine directors, and amongst us, we have over a hundred years of professional experience in nonprofit leadership, business and finance, social work and psychology, and creative services. Just in the last year, we've actually grown the board from eight members to nine members because as an all volunteer organization, with services that have just been more and more in demand, the board's growth reflects the community's need for us to have a greater capacity to provide the services that we do.

The program that we are specifically asking the Human Services Advisory Board for support with is our Jeremy Ottorez Emergency Stabilization Fund program. And this was our seminal program with BPSF. It's been the thing that has, been our tried and true trademark, since the beginning of the organization. And we are privileged and make it a mission to have that program led by a licensed professional social worker who's able to really identify qualified applicants and provide resources and ongoing support beyond the initial stopgap funding that the emergency stabilization fund provides. Just in the last two years, our board members, provided almost four thousand hours of community service through VPSF to San Marcos and Hays County.

And then finally, I would just wanna name that we are really committed to being good financial stewards, and we ensure that at least 90% of donations go directly to clients and programming. So what is it specifically that we do? So as I mentioned, we provide through the Jeremy O'Dores emergency stabilization fund, emergency stipends up to a $400 based on need. Now since its beginning, that stipend amount has gone from less than $100 to our current level of 400. And just in the last eight months, we've increased from a $300 stipend amount to a maximum $400 stipend amount just based on community outreach and need that we were hearing from applicants.

So the stipend is able to cover unexpected financial emergencies. This can include rents, so I feel like it's appropriate that we're following the last organization, Medical mental health bills, car repairs, fuel to get to work, basically, that is outside of educational expenses or expenses that another service within San Marcos already provide support for. Emergency stabilization stipends are available to young adults 18 25 who identify as members of the LGBTQIA plus community in San Marcos and Hays County. We serve San Marcos residents, including those who attend Texas State and ACC. And today, we are the only organization in San Marcos that has an economic justice mission justice mission that specifically serves this marginalized population.

And I again, we do not cover any emergent education related expenses through the emergency funds. We also do not fund groceries because of the access to the food bank, which is a resource that we remind applicants of when they're applying. Most of our applicants on average make about $714 a month. And because the median rent in San Marcos is about $1,263, what we discovered is that that we had to increase the amount of the funds to $400 to just help make up those differences between what our applicants typically were making per month and what they needed in the areas that they were most often applying for funds to cover, which, like I said, was rents. So how do we specifically fill a need?

So in the fiscal year 2025, and for us, that fiscal year runs from March 1 to February 28. So we closed out fiscal year 2025 on 02/28/2025. The average income, as I mentioned, was $714 per month for our applicants. And this is 54.854.8% below the federal poverty level of an individual. 18 to 25 year olds are the bracket that we serve, and that comprises the largest age demographic of the city of San Marcos.

Statistically, 18 to 25 year olds who identify as members of the LGBTQIA plus community are more likely to experience financial hardship, but they're also less likely to have family support or access to other resources as a result of their gender and sexual minority identification. As I mentioned, rent is something that we're often where we often see applicants needing support. And in San Marcos, specifically, with a low inventory of affordable housing options, meaning that there are higher rents in a climate where the cost of necessary goods and services are higher than in previous years, where we're having more frequent unprecedented weather events that have increased utility costs, And where the job market is really slow, we we have seen an increasing need for our stop gap measure and funding. Just in the first four months of this fiscal year, we had a 58.5% increase in applications for emergency funds. And then lastly, I just wanna name that specifically in the state of Texas, the community that we serve faces additional barriers.

The state of Texas proposed more than 200 bills discriminating against LGBTQIA identified individuals in the last two legislative sessions, and they codified many of those bills into law, creating an unsupportive and hostile environment in which our the community that we support has less protections than other members of the community. So how do we specifically serve San Marcos? As I mentioned, we are we can serve anyone in Hays County, but we see the greatest need and we provide the greatest amount of services right here in the city of San Marcos. So in fiscal year twenty twenty five, Human Services Advisory Board awarded us a grant that allowed us to serve 18 individuals from San Marcos. That represented 25% of the total stipends that we awarded through the emergency stabilization fund.

We served a total of 77 individuals with awards, but of those 77 in fiscal year 2025, 72 or 93.51% of them actually resided in the city of San Marcos. So, again, the majority of our recipients live here in the city. And over the last five years, as you can see in that table, that has been the trends. This is the biggest metropolitan area in Hays County, and, therefore, that's where we see the greatest need. And as I mentioned in earlier slide, the age demographic that we're serving with this specific program is the largest age demographic within San Marcos.

Since fiscal year twenty twenty two, we've invested more than $83,000 through emergency stabilizations stabilization funds back into the San Marcos community with these stop gas gap measures. And we're doing this largely because we want young people in San Marcos to thrive. We want them to be healthy, and we want them to be able to be productive citizens of the community because we know that's how we create an environment in which everyone is more successful. So our board of directors and on behalf of the LGBTQIA plus community that we support, we just wanna thank the Human Services Advisory Board that mentioned the last three years. We have generously received funds from this board, and we've been able to make a big impact on the community as a result of that.

We wanted to leave you with just a little bit of direct statements from some of the recipients who have received funds from us. I think the theme that you'll notice as you read through them is that these funds were received just in time. They were on the verge of a crisis. They didn't know where else to turn, and we were able to come in and support, and ensure that something that is relatively small in the grand scheme of things, 200, $304,100 dollars, actually averted what could have been a larger crisis.

Can I just interject, Kennedy? We can, can you change the display so that it's just the presenting slide? Right now, we can see, like, the presenter screen, And maybe it would also be helpful one to read this slide, but to go back to the table, just because it was hard to see size wise. This is this is the challenge of technology.

Yeah. Sorry about that.

No. Don't even worry.

I thought I got through the whole thing before I knew.

I just don't wanna interrupt. Yeah. That's

Then you need to go to slideshow up at the top. You click on that. Yep. Uh-oh. Sorry. X that out and then go to the yep. That one. Oh, it keeps taking it around. I don't think I can help.

Let's see. No.

No. Well

Let

me

have with the other one.

Everybody's having difficult technical difficulties, so maybe it's not worth trying.

Well, I'm so happy y'all got to see my notes. I hope those were also illuminating.

Yep.

Is that the same table that y'all have in your application?

Yes. We have two tables in the application. One of them is about the recipient number, and then the second one is specifically about the the amount of awards. One that we budgeted for and two that we were asked for and then turned to the community, to, request additional donations so that we could meet the need and just demonstrating that we have been able to do that, year over year.

So, I guess, to clarify, the 18 from San Marcos compared to the 72, the 18 received direct HSE refunds, and the 72 was just, like, general?

What we what we have fundraised on our own. Correct. Yes.

We are in the question and answer period, so y'all have about eight to nine minutes to ask the question.

I have a quick question. So it seems that you guys also connect Query Youth to other resources in the community. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Yeah. So as I mentioned, the program director who oversees this specific program is a licensed social worker. So she is able to identify other resources, whether that's public transportation, access to food, food pantries, utility assistance, medical care, if that's, you know, clinics that provide low income or no cost medical care, even counseling services just because she's invested in that community. So that's one of the reasons why we've made it a priority as an organization to always have someone with a mental health background who is leading that program and is able to essentially case manage in in some ways those individuals who seek that funding.

And I'll also clarify, because of our age range, we do have a number of recipients who are attending Texas State, And we are very aware and connected and networked with resources on campus that enrolled students are eligible for. So that includes the Dean of Students Care Center, the Counseling Center, the Student Health Center. And, unfortunately, we've just found out that they're closing the Bobcat Bounty food pantry, which was associated with the Hays County Food Bank. So, we do stay abreast of kind of what is accessible depending on whether our recipients are enrolled or not enrolled as students. I'm gonna apologize.

I have a Siamese cat who just woke up that's trying to get in my camera, and so I'm doing a little dance with him right now.

I I just have one more question, and and thanks for your for your response in your presentation. How do your recipients find out about you? How how do they get connected with you? Yeah.

Yeah. That's a great question. So we make it a point of really being present at community events. We table at the the San Marcos Farmers Market. We always are at Pride. If there's any kind of queer events happening in within the city, we are we have a table there. We're a presence. We also go to you know, this is the beginning of the school year at Texas State, so we have relationships with student organizations there. We make sure that we're spreading the word that way. We have professors on campus who are allies of the work, and they also share the word.

Have a social media presence. So we're doing we blast on Instagram, Facebook, Blue Sky now, the fact that we offer these services. So we're really trying to cast a wide net to ensure that we are getting in front of as many young people as possible so that they know that this is a resource. And then you did

a great job answering that. I'll add a little bit more. We have a newsletter that we send out with information about this. It goes to over a thousand different individuals, whether they're donors, whether they're people who have signed up for our newsletter at tabling events, and whether they're past recipients because we also wanna make sure that they are aware that they can stay connected to the community and other resources. And we are kind of an organizational member of the San Marcos Queer Council, which is another nonprofit that was established after Stonewall Warehouse closed.

And so we are part of cosponsoring and showing up at events that both of the nonprofits are doing. That way, we'll make sure we're meeting our community kinda where they gather.

I have another question. Can you clarify again when y'all's fiscal year is?

Yes. So we, our fiscal year starts on March 1, and it ends on February 28. So, this the the $5,000 that we received last fiscal year, which we're still in, we actually expire that those funds within the first thirty days of our fiscal year 2025. So those 18 individuals that I mentioned that were specifically funded through the HSAB grant previously, all were funded in the first thirty days of our fiscal year.

K. Thank you.

I do have one question also. I know, on the application, y'all mentioned, kind of an interview process that takes place with potential candidates. You wouldn't mind maybe just, like, walking through a little bit, like, what are some of the typical questions you may ask about, like, hardships and stuff like that to determine? And is the interview kind of more just, like, something to get a gauge of whether or not they need access to more resources, or is the interview kind of, like, a determining factor in whether or not someone gets funds and how much?

It's a great question, and it's actually both. So, we use that we have a a pretty robust online application where we're trying to get as much information as possible so that by the time our board member who oversees the program reaches out, really, what she's doing is clarifying what the need is and making sure that the need qualifies with within our guidelines. So making sure that it is not for groceries, that it is not for education related expensive, but that it is for things like rents, that it is for health care, that it is for those emergencies that I listed. So that's the the biggest piece. The second thing is that we're verifying that they're they fit within the age demographic.

We're really focused on that emerging adult, 18 to 25 year olds, so we wanna make sure that, the individuals that we're funding fit within that demographic, and then that they live within his county is the the other stipulation. So the reasons that we don't fund are for people that have aged out. They're they're older than what our cutoff is. Just, you know, there are other services that are maybe better suited for folks that are beyond the age of 25, and we really feel like we wanna catch that most vulnerable population, which is emerging adults. So the last year when we looked at the data for why someone wasn't funded, the majority of the reason was either they didn't live within San Marcos Hays County or they were beyond the age.

Awesome. Thank you so much. Yeah.

I have a question again.

But I wanna say that we're really careful about the information that we are collecting about our recipients because they are a vulnerable population. And so we recognize that sharing, identifying information, name, address, even social security numbers, especially in this particular climate, actually not be safe. And what we want to ensure is that we are being a safe resource for the individuals that we're sharing. So we really try to keep our application and the questions we're asking specific to their circumstance rather than a lot of information about who they are outside of, this event.

Yeah. I have one more one more question. That 5,000 for the 18 people, were you doing that at the 300 amount or the 400 amount?

That was at the 300 amount. Yes. And I'll I'll also just clarify that the award is at that time was up to 300. At present, the award is up to 400. So we have luckily, I I this is wild to me, but our recipients are really honest.

Like, if they only need $223.19, then that is what they're asking for. Even though they could say, I need the whole 400, our our the clients that we're serving are are really genuinely coming to us with emergencies that are putting them out in this in this one time and place, and they're saying, we don't need all $400. But if you have $307, that will actually be the thing that gets me over this hurdle right now. So I think if you map it out, 18 times 300 is more than $5,000, but that's because there's a been a variable giving within that. So just to in case that was the underlying question in your observation.

So we are out of time. Does anybody have a final question?

That brought up a question, Kennedy, when you were saying, so do you require, like, a bill to be submitted to y'all? Okay. Perfect.

Yes.

Yeah. A snapshot of a bill, we or something from a landlord showing that rent is in arrears. Those those are the kinds of documentation we're asking for.

Perfect.

And just to clarify, there's there are some pieces of documentation that we ask for. We're not having them upload that information. They do that directly with our case manager or with Ricky as our program director. We don't wanna be holding on to that information just in case we ever somebody decided hire outs outside of our nonprofit to seek that information. But we are seeking a state identification that shows that they who they are, their name, and their birth date.

We're seeking documentation of their residency, and we're seeking a bill that documents their emergency need. So just because I know what Kennedy was expressing, but really, we've changed the process of how they provide that information, and it only goes to our program director, and it doesn't get uploaded into kind of a database anymore just because we've seen people outside of nonprofits go into nonprofit or medical records seeking information about the LGBTQIA community. And and that would make us unsafe for them. Perfect. Thank you.

Okay. With that, I guess I'll close down the q and a period. And so thank you very much for joining us, and, we will go on to our next presenters. Thank you.

Thank all so much.

K. Next up, we have CASA, court appointed special advocates, and I'm gonna move them over to the panelists. So just give me a minute.

Oh, and this would be

I have one person that's just, logged in as m o r g a. I'm not sure what, agency you're representing. My

apologies. I was here as an observer.

Oh, great. Okay. So we'll have another opportunity for others to talk at the, after all the items. We have a question and answer session with present public. So if you wanna talk about something on the agenda, that's another opportunity, just so you know. Until then, please feel free to observe. Thanks a lot. Okay. So then, now we will go on to Casa. And, I'll go ahead and ask y'all to, introduce yourselves as well even though your names are showing up on the screen. And then if you have a presentation to share, I think they'll be able to do that.

Good evening. My name is Nicole Douglas, and I'm the director of development at CASA of Central Texas. I'm joined this evening by our CEO and our grant manager, Marissa Herzog. And then I I don't have, something to share or project, but I do have the presentation that I could read out of.

Great. Great.

Great. Again, thank you for this opportunity, and just wanted to shed, more illustration on our application for the committee. CASA of Central Texas provides trained volunteer advocates for children in foster care across a four county footprint, one of which of those counties is Hays County. Serving, children from birth through age 18 and beyond, CASA ensures that every child has a voice in court and receives support for their medical, educational, emotional, and permanency needs. Our mission is to help children thrive in a safe and stable home through compassionate, community driven, and advocacy.

This year marks our fortieth anniversary of our organization, and we are proud to be the third long standing CASA program in Texas, having served children and families since our founding in 1985. CASA becomes involved with the children and families when a child enters foster care due to an unsafe home environment. The judge may appoint a court appointed special advocate to serve as a guardian ad litem. In San Marcos, we provide a unique and unduplicated service to represent and advocate for the child's best interest. Our trained volunteers focus on one case at a time.

They offer a unique perspective to the court and solely represent the child's best interests. In 2024, our cost our program served a 147 children from Hays County, which included about 75 children from San Marcos. This is approximately half of the children from Hays County, were San Marcos residents. However, that left about 47 children who did not have a CASA volunteer to advocate for them in schools, in the core, and the child welfare system. CASA continues to make meaningful impacts in the lives of children in foster care through core advocacy service.

Their efforts directly contribute to positive permanency outcomes, including reunification with family, adoption, or placement in a stable long term foster home. Volunteer commitments remain a cornerstone of our success, and each year, our advocates contribute thousands of service hours, and we're we're we're really proud to have maintained a 72% volunteer retention rate. This, high level of retention reflects not only the strength of our advocates, the training that they're given, the support that they're given, but it demonstrates that CASA has a strong investment in of funds, ensuring that these resources are dedicated to the recruitment and training, and result in long term impactful service for the children. Our organizational stability further reinforces our effectiveness, and we are currently maintaining a 100% staff retention. And our active diverse board of directors continues to grow and bring valuable expertise in expanding our network to our community partners.

This consistency in leadership and governance fosters trust in stakeholders and ensures continuity in in service delivery. In addition, our community engagement efforts have significantly increased in awareness and involvement through participate I'm sure if you attended an event in San Marcos, you've seen our participation in chamber events, community festivals, and strategic outreach. We've strengthened these partnerships and seen a rise in volunteer applications, especially in San Marcos and Hays County where the need continues to grow. As, again, the need for the service is growing and the urgency for these funds cannot be overstated. Without the support, we risk being unable to recruit more volunteers, to meet the demand and leaving more children without a critical advocate they deserve.

We are requesting funding to support that recruitment, training, and supervision of these volunteers to serve as guardian ad litem. The city of San Marcos and Casa had a long standing partnership in protecting, the community's most vulnerable children, and we've been responsible stewards of the past human services funds, maintaining good standing and timely reporting and compliance. These funds will support, salaries towards our case supervisors who supervise the volunteer advocates and continue to provide their training, ensuring that they're giving quality advocacy, and also to in community engagement coordinators, again, to continue that outreach in San Marcos so that we can continue to support the efforts in recruiting, and retaining the our volunteers. Casa is growing alongside the city of San Marcos, and we understand the difficult decisions that you face, but we appreciate your commitment to this community. We're grateful to the city staff and this committee for your support and consideration.

And in closing, I wanna express our gratitude to our volunteers, staff, and local board members who give their time and speak up for children in this community. I'm honored to be representing them tonight, and we we also invite you to attend, something that we call a virtual voices information session that can be found on our website, and also to observe court with us with a staff member. This experience offers powerful glimpses into the impact of advocacy and not just the black and white data. If you're interested in that, we'd be happy to send you a link to sign up, and we'd also be happy to answer any questions you may have. Thank you.

Okay. So we're at about six minutes. So we have about fourteen to do a q and a. Y'all go ahead.

I guess I'll start us off. Thank you so much also for your presentation and everything like that. Do you do you guys have maybe kind of, like, a idea in mind? Do y'all typically work with children who are more in the kind of, like, I guess, zero to ten range or, like, kind of older teenagers? What's y'all's, I guess, the majority of y'all's clientele if there is one or if it's more spread out amongst the age groups?

Thank you for your question. I did learn today in speaking with our program director that we have seen a trend here recently that we've we do we have a wide range of youth that we serve, and that's from newborns all the way to, those transitioning into adulthood, so up to 21 years of age. But here recently, we've seen a seen a trend in kids that are below the age of five.

Mhmm.

I have a question. Okay. Do you have, like, a percentage of reunification with families of these children?

Yes, ma'am. Also, I'm visiting with a program director today. I asked her that question, and she said about 40% is of of what reunification looks like for these cases. That varies from month to month, you know, our closing cases, but that is always our mission, and our goal is to reunify families if that's a safe and stable environment. We also do concurrent, planning for our youth and and families so that if the parents aren't in a position to, take their children back after, you know, they work services, we're looking at other family members so that they aren't disconnected if we can if we can connect them to a familiar relationship.

Yes. And I wanna add to that. Our goal is to reunify the families, and, we just had a meeting today with the with the foundation, and, they were talking about how the kids, sometimes the judges have, services that they want the parents to do, but the kids are being placed out of the county. So our goal is to fight for those parents to because if you're telling the parents to do these services and go visit the kids, if the kids are placed in, you know, Dallas, Houston, the parents don't have those resources. So, it's important for us to share that with the with the judge, and let them know that those parents need help in a sense that they need to see their kids.

We prefer our kids to be with relative placement or unified or, making sure that that they are, instead of being in a foster home or, a treatment center. So the parents are the best, and I believe we're doing a pretty good job reunifying the parents. Sometimes it's a cycle. Our goal is to help them out, and we've been successful with that. And we wanna continue doing that as well.

I have a question. First of all, thank you for the presentation, and thank you for the for the work that you all do. Your proposal mentioned that you guys are targeting having about 37 volunteers in in San Marcos. Where do you guys stand now? How many how many do you have? And how do you how do you if if you if there's a gap, what's your plan to to kind of hit that 37?

The the number provided was for new volunteers, as a goal for new volunteers in total. We have in Hays County Let's see here. So I pull up my Hays County numbers. 76. Nope.

Sorry. Yeah. Seven 76. And so in order to close that gap, of course, like I said, we're hoping to recruit more volunteers so that they can we're technically at about 90 per 2% in Hays County and serving the children that were in state care last year. And then I believe we're on track to building that goal for 37 new volunteers.

How do you recruit them? How do how do they find out about you? What what does the that process look like? How do they get, engaged?

We are so the best method that we have learned over the past four years is word-of-mouth. You know? Usually, somebody has either been a part of a case or know somebody who's a CASA volunteer, so that speaks volumes in itself when they've lived the the life of a volunteer. But we also do a lot of communication efforts. We have a very active social media presence.

We have a website, and we're constantly on all of the the social media profiles. But in addition to that, we've really made efforts in being more visible in the communities that we serve. So if there's a festival, if there's a networking event, either our volunteers or our board of directors, we have representation there to to just educate the community about the program and gain more interest. If it's not in terms of a volunteer supporting us with a business partnership, diversifying our funds, things like that.

And we also got a grant from Texas CASA to spend on radio stations. So you're gonna be listening to that soon. So I'm excited about that, in our Fort County area. So, not only that, but we also do the the banners. I know they're a little bit expensive, but, you know, some it works.

You know, people start, you know, remembering, oh, I saw that banner. I'm gonna go back and do that. So, it's good to, that Texas Casa was able to fund us with that. And, we're also doing the coaches for Casa, which we got the coaches within our four county area that you're gonna be seeing soon supporting our CASA program. And then we're going with the state, and Texas State is also helping with that in the sense that we are gonna do coaches for Casa across the state of Texas.

So we're doing locally first, and then we're gonna move move because those are the ones that see those kids and can help us out, and we can help them out break the cycle. So and we also started the young professionals. So we're gonna be doing by counties. We're trying to make wanna make sure we, get the young generation to volunteer support, and and it's we're gonna have our first, social in October, and we're gonna turn you know, making sure we rotate within the four county area. We have, targeted some individuals within the four county, area, so I'm very excited about that.

So people because we have a lot of older generation being volunteers, and we wanna make sure they know how to, you know, not only get, but to volunteer and know that there's you know, there there is a problem, you know, in your backyard and step up and help out those kids.

Thank you.

I'd only I would like to add to that too, is that Norma made a great point in that we fall into, two major metropolitan areas, and so, essentially, everything between San Antonio and Austin is our coverage area. And so, we do have CASA programs in San Antonio and another one in Austin. And so because we're a part of the greater Austin area, we make very strategic moves so that we make sure that those folks that live in Hays County, Caldwell County, come to support our their local program.

Okay. Thank you.

Often you know, the commercials that you may hear on the radio, are for either Texas Caso because they have a bigger budget than we do to have those bigger affiliates. So it was great that they passed through, and we were awarded that, funding for maybe a local branding of our own local, community chapters. Stay tuned for that. I had no idea how expensive, all of those communication efforts

are there.

And I also wanted to to share that that Casa Center Texas is supported by our very active and diverse board, which plays a vital role in guiding our mission. And I, as an executive director, am very proud to maintain an excellent retention rate among both of our staff and volunteers, reflecting their strong dedication and commitment to serving our community. So, I've been very blessed as an executive director, because they they're very we have a 100% giving from our board. We do have an advisory council first to make sure that it's gonna be a good fit for them and for us, making sure that you just not be on the board just to put it under your resume, but you have to prove yourself. We have a report card.

And once they prove themselves, they move to the board. So that's the reason we have a 100% retention rate on board and giving as well because, you know, we believe that if you wanna be asking for money, you need to be giving money before you ask. So I'm being very blessed.

So, Yancey has a question? Yes.

When I'm looking at y'all's application, for the report from 2024, it says that y'all helped year to date 20 San Marcos residents. Is that number correct?

Marisa, do you have it in front of you?

I have it in front of you.

Yes. I just pulled it up. That is the number we reported on for that the year for 2024. Yes.

Okay. And so for this year, y'all are trying to hit seventy five?

Thirty seven new volunteers. And then we have so we we separate them out between like, we have active volunteers who continue to volunteer in that retention with us, and then we're hoping to gain more and 37 more from the 66 that we had.

The 20, is that children that y'all helped, or is that volunteers that y'all got? I'm looking at this number. The program

Oh, she's looking at the, report that you turned in for 2024 for the quarterly performance report, the final report that you turned in.

Cool. So so that's yes.

That's the 20 of unduplicated. So we, have the two grants between the CDBG and the human services, so we divide those up so that we're not duplicating the services. Amount that's reported.

Okay. So then I get my other question with the 20 was, are y'all trying to go from 20 unduplicated Samarco residents served from last year to 75 unduplicated residents for this year? Yes. Mhmm.

As a total for the city of San Marcos. Yes.

And the volunteers. I was I think I was a little confused. So are y'all trying to add 37 whole new volunteers in addition to what y'all have?

Mhmm. Correct.

Okay. Thank you.

Maybe I have a follow-up to that. Is is so how many children are are based on kind of them reaching out to you? Like, how many are not are are not getting the support that they that they need. So because, like, going from 20 to 75 in a year, that feels like a pretty big jump. Like, what is the total population or pool of at roughly annually in San Marcos of of of kids that are referred to or could benefit from CASA services.

Yes. So last year, the number of children in state care for our front Fort County footprint was 493 children, and we were able to serve 392 of those. In Hays County, specifically, there were the one sixty, and we served a 147 of those kids. So when you say how many children are reaching out or how many families are reaching out, we are we get assigned to a case by the discretion of a CPS judge. And so, that is something that we become a party to the suit by the appointment that the judge gives to us. So that's essentially our referral is the judge.

And we're at time. Does anybody have a final question for Casa?

I do oh, sorry. Yancey can go. Ahead. Okay. I was just gonna ask, I know, a lot of our community is kind of Spanish speaking as well and does have, like, other languages. Do you all have volunteers that are geared towards working with children and families who maybe don't speak English and maybe speak Spanish or another language? And if not, kind of what what percentage or what kind of proportion of the families do you find don't necessarily speak English as their first language?

Well, of all, as a CEO, I'm a bi I'm bilingual. We have about five staff that are bilingual within. We do have volunteers that are bilingual. We kind of use them as much as we can. I'll give you an example.

Today, my program director, we had a, you know, a situation, parent out of Guatemala. You know, we called the volunteer. She stepped up looking you know, you have to contact the consulate of Mexico Guatemala or Mexico. So we have those relationships with the consulates to making sure what's gonna be the situation and help them out as much as we can. We also had sex trafficking, the same thing, you know, out of El Salvador.

So I try to help out with that case and and the volunteer trying to talk to the consulate whether the child is 13 pregnant. You know? So we have to kind of advise them as their what their rights are. You know, you were a victim. You can stay here.

You can have your child here. What is it that you wanna do? So that child is still within the custody of the state of Texas, and we're still keeping up with her. She had the baby, and she's placed somewhere where I can't say, but we try to help them as much as we can. And like I said, we have very good, relationship with the consulates in all countries.

So we have family finding like this one that we had in Guatemala. We were able to find The volunteer was able to find the mom. The dad was here locally, committed a crime. So the kids are by themselves. So, we were able to find family members in Guatemala. So what are we gonna do? But, yes, we have a lot of bilingual within our programs because it's necessary. So

Thank you.

And I'm Mexican. I love my my Spanish, and I love practicing, you know, because sometimes you don't practice practice it enough because everybody speak English, but I enjoy doing that.

I completely understand. I used to speak Spanish too, but after practice went away, it's no longer there.

Yes. But they feel they trust. You know, they won't talk to anybody, but then if I talk to them, they're gonna trust me. You see what I mean? So it's a good thing. It's a win win. So

Okay. So we are at time. And so we'll go ahead and end this presentation, and we'll move on to the next organization. So thank you very much

for joining us. Thank you so much for your time and for your all your support you've done in the past years. Appreciate it.

Thank you. Thank you. Bye. Bye.

We're gonna need just a minute for transition. I need to we have our next two presenters in the room, so I wanna give them just a little heads up and get some information from them. So I think I'm gonna pause the recording. Would it be okay if we took a five minute break?

Yes. We can take a five minute break.

Is that

okay with you? Okay. That's what we're gonna do. Thanks. Okay. We're back, and so we'll need to see everyone, all the board members on screen. We have three. We have to wait till we have a forum on the screen.

Would you be able to pull up the information that he had on the screen?

Yes. I think It's that. So I can show that, but then we won't get to see him. Right. It's a chair. Yeah.

We can't

do We could, I can share the screen, and then his little picture can be up there. But I think when I share it, it shows just that to the outside.

You can

use the other screen.

Yeah. I think

It won't show on their screens. Interesting. Yeah. So that's what they'll see. So we can't share our screen? We can share it, but that's what they'll see, but they won't see him. But they we can if that's better. I mean, either one.

Or we can Can you email it to all of us?

Oh, I will email it to all of you.

But you can do it now?

Email it

to you?

Sorry. Yes. I can. Just a minute.

Sometimes in Zoom, you can drop the

same documents in the chat.

Oh, can you do that?

Oh, I can do that. Challenging my, abilities. Hang on. Good. We'll all learn how to do that here. Chat.

Attach.

Like that?

I think so. Yep.

I don't think I have access to my document.

Just so I have the right application and everything pulled up, is it rough draft that's going next?

I'm sorry. It's gonna be Saint Vincent de Paul.

Okay. Alrighty. Thank you.

I'm sorry. We were trying to figure out how to it'll take a minute for me to email it to y'all. Okay. You know what? For you, though, what we could do is hang on.

No. Thank you.

There.

Okay.

I do wanna ask, like, so we have Warner Davis here to present. He's gonna read his presentation. We have the presentation that I'm gonna email to you, tomorrow. It's just words. So would y'all rather see the words or or the person?

Other than that.

Any opinions? Okay. We're gonna go with person. And so will you go ahead and introduce yourself and start? Okay. And, go ahead.

Alright. Good evening. I'm looking at the camera. I'm looking at that. My name is Warner Davis.

I'm the vice president of Saiga Saint Vincent de Paul Conference here in San Marcos. Our Saint Vincent Paul Conference is Saint Vincent Paul is an international organization that has been helping the poor and needy for almost two hundred years. And here in San Marcos, been helping our neighbors since 1995. Our office is located at Saint John's Catholic Church Guadalupe Center at 218 Roosevelt Street, down the street from Casa Maria. The office is open from one to 4PM, Monday through Friday, and this location provides us more room than our last location, at which was by church, to interview those needing assistance, storage for donations, and providing a closed closet for the homeless and others.

Saint John Catholic Church provides us with our facility and our city utilities. Aside from the two city grants that we receive and our annual fundraiser, which is the Riverwalk for the Poor, which, by the way, will be this October 4 at, Saint John's, and you're all invited. Our funds come from church collections and donations. Our finances are completely separate from the church, and we operate independently, autonomously, actually, from Saint John's, but certainly, the pastor's pleasure. Our conference in San Marcos has 38 volunteer members.

We'll keep getting one. And they're all dedicated very much at Saint from Saint John the Evangelist and Our Lady of Wisdom Parishes. We work in teams of four to five responding to requests for assistance. Neighbors can leave phone messages requesting assistance or walk in. We provide emergency financial assistance for utilities, rent, gasoline, temporary lodging, travel, prescriptions, food, birth certificates, other essentials, pretty much anything.

In kind food and clothing and household items and furniture are provided from the many donations that we receive, and that's all free. Even though we help out the people who come to our office seeking assistance, our teams will also make home visits for the disabled, the elderly, elderly, or unable to do unable to due to work hours. All new neighbors are visited face to face. During this fiscal year through July, we provided a $158,500 in financial assistance, of which $84,000 was paid to the city of San Marcos and other utility providers in utility bill and deposit assistance. This past year, we has been particularly difficult for those needing housing and rent assistance.

Over $50,000 was provided in rent assistance and $8,400 in temporary lodging. These needs are not going away. They're growing. We refer neighbors daily to the Salvation Army, Southside Community Center, BR three t, Community Action, Home Center, women's shelter, and other resources to help them meet their needs for assistance. We share utility bill assistance regularly with Salvation Army and rent assistance with south Southside Community Center.

Society of Saint Vincent de Paul Saint Marcus conference prohibits discrimination in all of its programs and activities on the basis of race, color, national origin, gender, religion, age, disability, political beliefs, sexual orientation, or marital family status. That's pretty much what is on the paper. I've made a few extra notes regarding what's going on with pretty much rent assistance. Besides Northside Community Center, as far as I know, we're the only one that are providing rent assistance. BR three t helps with deposits and helps get people in.

I know home center helps with caseworkers and caseworker to help people find locations. Since June 1, we provided $30,400 to 77 households requesting assistance for rent. Although 77 households, 50 are new to us. They haven't been to our office for any other financial assistance. So their first time for financial.

That's a lot. And on the average, it's about $394 per request. Our limits right now, we're providing assistance, and We have for the last couple of months $250 for utilities and things other than rent. And rent right now is about $300, and that's generally the last $300 that they need to get to stay where they are. If they have an eviction notice, there's amount they have to pay.

And before we give them before we provide the $300, we have to see really how they provide the rest. In some cases, we've helped helped them with substantially more, and we can do that depending on the severity of the problem with them, children. We will go through a what we call a co pay program within the diocese of Austin to the other 28 conferences within the diocese, and it goes out on a network where they can ship in and help out with rents or people for keep people from getting evicted. We've done that up to, like, $34,000. But that's depending on the case.

And, actually, every case is an individual case that's that's treated as such. In our in kind clothing, of course, we take care of Southside's closed or closed closet, and they're nice enough to give us their clothes and clothes racks. But, anyway, we, keep track of in kind and clothing by putting, like, a a a nominal $2 per item thing so we can keep track. So since June, we've, basically provided 9,000, $9,400 in clothing, which is like 4,700 pieces of clothing, including shoes, to the homeless and pretty much anybody that comes in, looking for clothes. A lot of them with kids.

So that's been a big help to the community. We provide snack packs to the homeless. This since June, we've given out a 175 snack packs. In kind recipients, we've had 747 requests for in kind dates since June, mostly repeats, but but but a 130 of those folks were new. And that's that can be home homeless, but not so many new homeless, but mostly new individuals with households, children coming in for help.

Okay. That's my presentation.

Okay. We're at about nine minutes, and so we have about eleven for any questions, that you wanna ask.

Thank you for the presentation. I do have a question. Do do do people that are parishioners or going to your church, do they have more of possibility of receiving these funds, or is it equally open to everyone?

Equally open to everyone. Although we had usually, I don't see too many parishioners, but we've had several, people. We clicked checking the Catholic box. Anyway, I know they're parishioners, but they check the Catholic box. But we have most of our we we ask them what their religious affiliation is because we try to get into their spiritual life a little bit.

That's well, that's that's one of the main purposes of society of Saint Vincent. But, a lot of people there's a lot of nuns out there. There's a lot of people that don't have any faith. None specific faiths anyway. Interesting. But, no, our door is open to everybody.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

I'm Linda Harper, and I have a question. You had mentioned that y'all have been given out clothing that was given to you. Do you take donations of just clothing, or does there a certain criteria for how you get your clothes?

We take clothe clean clothing, bedding. We pretty much take everything.

We don't give we

don't give everything away, Linda, because our places it gets so filled up.

Right.

And, every other month, a truck comes down from the thrift store in Austin, and we it's a 26 foot box truck, and we fill it to the max.

Okay.

And, and then in the meantime, we're pretty much giving people clothes, pretty much what they want.

Okay.

And we take a lot of time to hang it up, sort through it

Right.

And display it. And same thing with household items. We have people moving into places, and they don't they haven't a thing. I got a call today for a lady who didn't have any furniture, and she wanna know if we had some. We had some, but we gave it to someone. You know? So yeah.

Now do you have a way of coming to the person and picking it up that wants to donate it, or we have to get it to you?

Well, pretty much you have to bring it to us.

Okay.

I have a pickup truck.

Okay.

Thank you.

I have a question kind of along those same lines. You mentioned, like, with service delivery, sometimes y'all will make, like, house calls, like, people's homes and stuff like that. Does that include kind of, like, dropping off donations to people who need them and stuff like that?

We not unless I request it. For instance, if somebody called and wanted a walker Mhmm. We have yeah. I would bring it. Okay. And we always go in Teams, of course, when we do a home visit. But, that's not normally the case.

Great. Thank you.

You're welcome.

How do people hear about you?

It's probably mostly word-of-mouth. The apartment the apartment complexes have the have office managers. And the office managers, in many times, will refer folks in trouble to us. So in Single Point if I pull up in Single 0.18 Hundred Post Road in my computer, I'll probably have a 100 people, different departments that we've given some assistance to. Now that could be a utility bill.

It could be in kind. It could be could be anything. But once the word gets out, it spreads pretty quick. Then question. Excuse me. I'm sorry. Also, in our church bulletin, I'll put a monthly report so we, you know, we kinda give everybody an update on

My question is, what types of requesters are you seeing the most of right now? What is kind of the greatest need in our community at this point?

It's pretty much across the board. We have sing single single folks. It's everybody they've been laid off. They've been sick out of work. Some something's happened, and and they and they got behind in the rent. Or in many cases, it's the way they're managing their money, and they're and they're paying late fees all the time. We try to help them with their budget. I'll do a budget sheet with people, but it's hard to break bad habits. And, get them thinking like that. But, it's it's kinda lies as pretty much every anybody.

Women, men, white, Hispanic, black, everybody has come in looking for help. They're mainly looking assistance. Yeah.

They're mainly looking for rent assistance. Is that kind of

the primary ask? They I had I took six phone there was Six phone calls, four of them were for Ray. And, you know you know, South South if they go to South Side to get help, they'll refer people to us. The South Side will provide some help. And a lot of them already know that it's the last 2 or $300 that, you know, we're helping with.

So they it gets around. They figure it out. But, generally, everybody is in crisis. And one one today was a lady who had been homeless for seven months. BR three t got her in the Sunrise Village. We and they were paying her deposits when we paid her paid $300 of her rent, and she was just overwhelmed. So, you know, there's stuff you do.

If people need help with, like, rent assistance, right, is it, like, a one time thing where it's just they can get home for rent assistance?

Rent's generally a onetime. Yeah. Rent's generally a onetime thing. Now that's not to say it's six months. They don't need a $100. Know, we'll take a look at the situation again. Okay? Utilities, we try to tell people that, you know, it's depending on the amount. We really help them out with a significant amount of money, you know, once a year. But, you know, it always depends. You know? You know? They're have a problem in January, and August comes around, something happens. And, you know, the utility program that the city's had this past month, two months been terrific.

Mhmm.

You know? Because we're we're referring people to Salvation Army and Attorney Action, all those those folks, pretty regular as long as that lasts. I mean, I don't know where the bottom of that bucket is. It's great. But we've been paying, like, put on to PC, Bluebonnet.

So we're getting all these new subdivisions and comp housing areas that are outside the city's utilities that are, you know, being in in the the city in our boundaries. Our boundaries are the power's boundaries, by the way, not just the city. So we kinda go stretch out. We go all the way up to Hugo Road, up Ranch Road 12. That's where we touch base with Saint Mary's and Wimberley. We go out to the river where we touch base with Saint Anthony's and Kyle. And, you know, we have a lot of folks here in. They're not even in the county. They're not in our area. We used to refer a lot of them to to the agencies and, resources in Seguin, but they aren't they don't have a lot.

So we we try to take care of those folks. The parish in Martindale, our parish and our our pastor is now the pastor of Saint Mary's in Martindale and here at St. John's. So we are covering Martindale. We go out to Radyville. We'll go out, you know, all the out to those areas that don't don't really have good coverage for people that get in trouble.

Okay. We're at about eighteen minutes. Does anyone have another couple of questions? We've got about two minutes.

I don't. Anybody?

Okay. Seems like we're done with questions. So thank you so much for coming in.

Thanks,

Dawn. So and I will get the presentation to the board No. Also tomorrow. Okay. And we'll just need a little bit of a transition time. Maybe y'all could come sit for. You are welcome to stay, of course. But I was just thinking it seems like the or maybe if you sit across from Yancy, it'll have her

on Yeah.

Yeah. We'll come down.

Okay. Yeah.

Thank you. We just got them here so we wouldn't be in the way. Yeah.

Thanks for coming in. I'll show up. Okay. In touch.

Thank you.

I noticed it's, like, balanced between the two of

us. Weird. Okay.

So are we able to ask everybody on the board to have, like, a blank sheet of paper with them?

Oh, yeah. You can do your presentation however you want. So, yeah, I can set it up, and then I'll start the time when everybody's kinda set. Okay. And then, let's see. I've asked everybody to introduce themselves, the speakers, but I do wanna introduce the organization, and that is rough draft. And they're bringing their program art of being, and so they'll do their presentation. So now it's over to you.

Okay. So we we were hoping everybody would be in person. So if it's possible to get just a piece of paper out and draw some circles on it, it doesn't have to be perfect nor does it have to be this size of paper. But and just give a good thumbs up when you're ready so we know everybody's got it, and we can give directions on what to do.

Lucy, Elias, and Linda, are y'all ready?

Baker. Linda, you're good to go?

Okay. She's good to go. Okay. We're all good.

Awesome. So what we'd like for you to do is to take about thirty to forty five seconds and draw as many things as you can think of in those circles. Ready, set, go. Or out of or around circles. Alright.

Pencils down. Color pens. Okay. So this is an activity that helps get your creative juices flowing. And this is kind of one of the activities that we do with some participants, in our classes to help unlock their creativity.

Yeah. And creativity an activity like this can seem quite frivolous or silly or just kind of fun, but doing activities like this actually greatly help reduce trauma and stress by unlocking parts of the brain that help with emotional regulation and neuroplasticity.

Do wanna jump in from there?

Yeah. So trauma and stress, a lot of people in society are currently under for a variety of different reasons. And these can be a major problem because it affects our cognitive processes, which are important for problem solving in everyday life. They're, they lead to lower quality of life. It can lead to different types of addiction, mental illnesses, etcetera. Art and doing creative arts engages the amygdala, the amygdala. I always say that wrong. Amygdala. Thank you. The amygdala, which is the part of the brain that processes and regulates emotions.

Art also stimulates neuroplasticity so the brain can break out of patterns of anxiety, depression, and trauma and form healthy new neural pathways. Plus completing a piece of art, whether that's music, whether that's visual art, whether that's a movement or a dance piece, that brings a sense of accomplishment, which helps to boost self esteem and self confidence. And when all of those things are boosted, it is a huge impact and improvement for people's mental health and for people who are struggling with mental illness, which as of last year, about a

quarter of the adult population in The United States reported struggles with mental illness. We all know stress is just continuing to grow and uncertainty, and art is such a great way to provide, proactive coping mechanisms to people who might not otherwise seek out help or have barriers to receiving help for mental support. So because of

this, we came up with an idea, and our idea is twofold. Number one, we want to put a tent up at the Art Squared Market. And inside that tent, we wanna do two different things. The first thing is we want to do a piece of community art and bring art to people who are coming to the Art Squared Market. And then the second thing we wanna do is provide bags of art supplies with therapeutic workbooks that people can use to go back and start to become creative and do their own artistic work.

Yeah. And another huge component of the tent and that we want the bags to be a part of is a conversation starter. So a big reason people don't always get help for mental illness and mental health issues is stigma or being afraid to talk about it or, you know,

you someone could be very close to someone and not even know that they are struggling. So we want the tents and the bags, as a byproduct of that to be a place for reducing mental health stigma and really to be a place where people can openly talk about you know, it's not gonna be getting into the deepest, darkest traumas necessarily, but where people can openly say, you know what? I had a really tough week, and I feel really alone right now, and this is a really nice thing that I I don't have to lie about that. I don't have to just pretend I'm okay when I'm struggling, because everyone's struggling in some way or another these days usually.

We're talk about grief. Sometimes we carry around all kinds of things with us every single day, and we don't have anyone to talk to. It's not like you're gonna walk into your coworker's office and be like, hey. I'm grieving. Like, I'm really struggling right now. Like, not feeling it today. I mean, you might say I'm not feeling it today, but, like, you know, you don't go into that. We wanna create a space where people can, not necessarily, like she said, delve into the deepest, darkest secrets and and their personal vulnerabilities at that moment, but have a space where they can say, you know, I need to do that. What can I do? How can I get some help? And so go ahead. Oh, and I was

just gonna add that the art activities in the tent and as part of the workbooks would all be very self reflective and mental health oriented to help get those conversations going and help people have, again, those other ways of accessing mental health support for themselves.

So you might

be wondering what in the world are you thinking of actually doing? And so what we're actually thinking of doing is, as far as the workbook goes, is having kind of a five inch by seven inch workbook that would go inside of the canvas bag with supplies, sort of like this size. And then, inside of it would be 12 different activities. We'd have one for youth, and we'd have one for adults, depending upon who came by. The 12 activities would include different types of styles of artwork that could be done because everyone's gonna resonate with different types of artwork, whether that's drawing, being in nature, watercolor, it might be sculpting.

And each of those is gonna come with a journal prompt. Once we have put the art activities and things together, we have two independent, counselors that are, trained in this wonderful process of art therapy, and they are willing to go through and look at it and help build the workbook worth with us. The second part of it is to create, the community art. And you might be like, okay. Well, what does community art look like? Right? Are we all just painting a giant, like, piece of art together? But we have something a little bit more than that in mind.

Do you wanna talk about some of the

art ones?

Yeah. So Yeah. Since there are eight different, would be ideally setting up at eight different Art Squared events over the course of 2026, we'd have several different projects, and we kind of see how they evolve as they go along. But some of our initial projects that we want to do are a mind body emotion check-in where people can come into the tent and do some art self reflecting on, you know, how is my body feeling? How is my mind feeling?

How is my emotional state feeling today? And even simple check ins like that can do so much for emotional regulation and building those coping skills and then take their small pieces of art and make them as part of a bigger display of, like, here's the community's picture of body, mind, emotion. So there can be this sense of interconnection. I do therapeutic arts classes around town, and I've seen firsthand just how much doing these sort of interactive activities helps people open up and feel less alone who were otherwise struggling and feeling very stigmatized in their mental health.

So one of the most important parts for us is to make sure that we are also providing people with a list of resources in the community. It's not about just coming to the tent or getting this workbook. It's about making sure that inside the workbook, we have a list of resources. Those resources can take a variety of different shapes. They could be, you know, private counseling places. They could be groups for people to attend or join. They could be something like being part of a, you know, singer songwriter group at Cheatham Street warehouse because that's very therapeutic for people to be, working through music. So we wanna make sure that we are not just connecting people with art, but we're connecting them to other resources within the community as well. For mental health support. For mental health support.

And and fostering that sense of community connection and belonging over these open dialogues about mental well-being.

Yeah. Did we get everything on our list? Yeah. I think so. Because we're artists, we have very like, not the most perfect outline here, so I'm just double checking. We got everything? I think so.

Okay. Okay. Okay. So we are in eight minutes. You have about 12 for q and a. So have it.

I have

a couple questions. Yeah. In your application, you cited 500 direct clients with over 80% being within San Marcos of the direct clients you're expected to serve. So how and if you're going to be if your direct clients are going to be coming from sorry. When you're gonna be at the tenths, right, at these eight events, how are you gonna make sure that they're unduplicated?

That's a good question. That is one that we've talked about as well. And one of those is it's not totally possible. Mhmm. I I mean, it would be a little bit odd and kind of rare for people to just come back every month and grab the same thing over and over again. Most of the families that come there don't necessarily repeat. I mean, it'd be awesome if they kept coming back to do the art activities. Mhmm. But to be very honest, I am not sure that we have a way that we could stop people from getting more than one if they if they so chose to just because, I mean, that would that might be a little bit difficult to be like No. More supplies for you.

You know? Like, I know. I think they love it that much maybe. Or or, you know, I'll be honest. Sometimes, like, I teach classes at the Hayes County Jail, and we give out notebooks. And sometimes people are like, well, my friend also wants a notebook. They really wanna write. They love to write. Can they have one too? You know? And if people are that into art and wanna be helping and using art supplies, then kind of, like, awesome. Mhmm.

I ran a family community art table at ArtSquared last year, and I had to keep track of, you know, how many people were coming and going and all of that sort of thing as part of the Art League's numbers that they needed. And I did find it was roughly 80% were from San Marcos. I was having to casually mention, know, hey.

Are you visiting from out

of town? Whatever. And of all those groups, you know, we'd get any like, at least 30 families, sometimes more depending on the season, coming through to the table each time. And I would say there was only, like, five that repeated. So it was a it wasn't that many who were repeat visitors. It's it's an event that usually draws, a lot of different people each month.

And then my other question was for these workbooks, I saw in the budget that y'all had set aside money for, like, a design. So y'all paying someone to, like, specifically design the workbook?

Yes. So we would want to, pay some To customize. To customize it. Yes. So we would create content, and then they would put it into, like, a nice format for us.

And the hope too is that, some of the activities can kinda be customized to the Sun office community. So helping people get more connected with the community and with the nature around us, like, of these supports that already exist for mental health. And then are any of

these workbooks going to be in an additional language, like Spanish or a different language?

So we have actually talked about putting them into Spanish. As far as other additional languages, we feel like the cost of printing them and and translating them might outweigh the number of people that we might run into. Mhmm. But we have definitely discussed the idea of putting a nice set of them into Spanish. That's all.

Thank you. And some of

the bags as well, a lot of, like, at least half, if not more, would be distributed at the events, but we also for the people that we have or the organizations that are listed, we would also wanna be able to have some available at organizations where people will be be going to seek other help and support. Okay. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. Thanks. Anyone

else? We have plenty of time. No rush.

I'll ask a couple of follow ups. Are are you modeling this off of any particular program? Like, is there some inspiration that that you're drawing off of? And are are there, like, lessons you're taking from that those that programming to inform the creation of your program?

So I think that that's a twofold answer. I think I have part of an answer, and Ellen has part of an answer. I've been developing an art curriculum at the Hayes County Jail and Travis County Jail for the last fifteen years or so and, and working with people who are in very stressful stressful and traumatic situations. So several of these activities we do, like this circle one, we do there with inmates to help them because of the trauma and stress that they go through to help kind of unlock their creative juices and and work with them that way. So I would say that it's inspired by, but definitely not going to be built around the same type of activity because this is definitely a different population with different needs. So

Yeah. And I think some of the format is us putting together, a lot of things that we see as gaps in how, people's mental health can be supported in the community. So in that regard, to have not seen something identical to this. I surely hope there are other things like this going on around the country. And as a researcher, that is I'd like to look into more and make sure as, like, we would be building it out, be cross referencing with other programs.

And for me personally, I've been doing expressive arts facilitation work, which is a form of therapeutic arts for the last eight years. So I also have almost a decade then of experience of coming up with activities that support self reflection and mental well-being. And in my classes in town and workshops and pop up events that I've run-in town, they all have a connection between art and mental health, and I've really seen how, events and community gatherings can be shaped to foster those sorts of conversations through creativity. So I'm pulling on a lot of that experience to make this an impactful. We sort

of just brainstormed this together one day. We were just like, hey. We've read we've read through the RFP well, with the great stipulation. Sorry. And and we were like, hey. What, you know, what can we do to help our community? What way can we make art, like, fit into all of these great things that

we could do for San Marcos? How can we have this reach outside of the classroom where we're only reaching

The jail. The jail.

Or for me, I'm reaching, you know, 10 to 20 people at the library every month. How can we have it have a much bigger impact? Because we see it in a small impact in both of the that we run. But we

haven't seen this idea anywhere else.

So And

and if the pilot goes well, you know, kind of what's your vision for it? How do you see it evolving and growing in in future years?

I would be, absolutely thrilled if it really well. I think that for me, the way that I would see it growing is being able to reach out to more organizations, support more people, be able to be at more, festivals, maybe join, like, farmers markets and things like that to to help. I mean, it would be awesome if we could scale it around into other counties as well. You know, if we could bring it different places,

it would be fantastic. I think partnering and also, like, making it so it's like you have the tent and then also being able to bring that sort of experience, to the different organizations. So, like, once a month

Running a class for them so that the community has a place to go to do art, and they know that they can be there with their family on a Saturday from one to three, because we're there. And it's That would be nice.

And it's both having that art thing for people to come together over, but it's also teaching the emotional intelligence component, tools for emotional regulation, managing trauma, stress, depression, all of those things that people are facing.

Great. Thank you. We

still have a few minutes. Any other questions? I have

a question.

Mhmm. Go ahead.

In your application, you mentioned that y'all were going to have three partnerships. So do you already have those three partnerships, or it's still, like, a work in progress?

So right now, it's a work in progress because we wanna make sure I mean, we have a lot of possibilities of places that we could partner with, but we wanna make sure that we're partnering with the right places to hit the people that we need to to hit if that make or connect with. So and we're not really sure at this point, like, if the best course of action is to go with, like, private counselors and hand them some bags that they can give to their clients or whether that's to go through, like, the Hayes Caldwell Women's Center or exactly which direction is best. So we just put three. Honestly, if we could do way more than three, I would be so happy. There's many we could partner with

for sure in

the community. We got really excited, and we were like, we could do this and

this and this and this.

And then we were like, let's just pilot it. Keep it small. Mhmm. Keep it doable. Make sure that we can be successful and then

and then jump. So

I think focusing on community centers and the places where people are already having lower income and might not be able to access the mental health services is really important for this sort of thing. And we're both, I was speaking for myself, pretty well connected in the community where, you know, everyone you're, like, one degree of connection away from being able to have those, powerful partnerships. So Thank you. Yeah.

Anyone else? Anyone else? We've got a couple more minutes. Seeing none, then we'll go ahead and conclude this presentation. And so thank you very much for coming in. That completes our presentations. And so now we'll go into other business of the board, basically.

Y'all are welcome to stay and listen. We appreciate the offer. Okay. But you're

all welcome. Thank you so much.

Thank you. A normal

So I'm curious what your circles were because we didn't really use our time to go through, but, generally, we would talk about, like, what everybody what everybody drew.

My first circle was a cat that tells you about my mental health support. My cat. Same. I just

had flowers, butterfly, dog, heart.

Ended up drawing a lot of really basic landscapes. So it's

Okay. That's pretty quick. I wanna go

right into facilitator mode and Yeah.

Tell me about

if you like to get out in nature?

Like, is that something that feels positive for you?

I mean, I suppose it's something I'm gonna have to look into for myself, I guess.

Yeah. Yeah. It's a great resource and great way to support oneself. And then it's like another person comes in.

Oh, I like this

trail too. Okay. Go be friends and go on this nature trail

and don't feel alone. Yeah.

There's great trails here too. So Alright. Well, thank you all so much. We appreciate it. Have a good day. Yeah.

I'll hand it back over to you, and you can go ahead and

We have more presentations. Is that correct? From me. Okay. Yes. So we are still in presentation mode. We will now receive a presentation from staff and hold discussion among board members about the study funding proposed to be allocated for HSAB grants for the fiscal year 2026 and the process for final approval of that funding. Carol, go ahead.

Okay. So I'm gonna try to open this up. Where's my presentation? I think I accidentally closed it. I'm sorry.

Y'all hang on one sec. It's right here. Okay.

Okay.

These are item I'm presenting in response to items that were requested for a future agenda in the last meeting. And so I'll just do a brief presentation and then hand it back over to Yancey and any discussion, I'm happy to answer any questions about this and give you more information or some resources to get it, that kind of thing. So, and I will email this to you tomorrow. I'm sorry. Everything's kinda running a little bit late. It would be ideal if I had done that before the meeting. Okay. But I'll send it to you tomorrow so you'll have it. So, for example, on this document so I'll send you this exact document. There's a link to the budget page for the city.

And so once you go there, you can open the whole budget book. This is what it looks like. You can open the whole budget book. It has the next public meetings coming up and that sort of thing. The web page also has links to the budget workshop presentations that the staff have been doing for city council and then recordings for those and so forth.

So you can kinda dive into it if you want. I thought I'd bring up a few parts of the presentation that the budget staff did for city council on August 19. There was specifically a budget workshop. So I'm gonna go over just super quick the the parts that relate to human services advisory board. And then and I'm trying to answer the question that was asked, you know, like, just to gain more information.

This was put on the agenda by Sharif, and so, unfortunately, he is not able to be here today. So, if we need to talk about it again in the future, we certainly can. So this is the budget calendar. I just thought I'd let you know this is kinda how it rolls. So, really, budget starts in January, and they start having some visioning workshops and strategic planning work session and that kind of thing. These are always public meetings. Anybody can join and listen, of course. They have specifically a policy workshop, and they adopt the policy in a city council meeting. They have various presentations and so forth. So here they are at August 19.

They have to set they have to decide what maximum tax rate they're gonna go for. And then, more presentations, public hearings, and so forth, and then they adopt the budget September 16. They have to adopt it, during this fiscal year, and it's for the next fiscal year. So this budget is for October 25 through September '26. The budget has strategic goals in it.

These are goals for the city as an organization to serve the community. And so you'll see that, city council has chosen these as focus goals for the organization itself, the city. So it is important that the city supports quality of life and sense of place. This is the item under which Human Services Advisory Board is funded. They are trying to provide quality of life for the residents of San Marcos.

In addition to that, there's economic vitality. So, you know, recruiting new businesses, being a business friendly community, trying to have jobs that are good for our residents and that sort of thing. Public safety, core services, and fiscal s excellence. So this is fire and police, trash, water, sewer, etcetera, and then the staff in the background who are, you know, like me, putting together programs and getting the funding out to the community. They also emphasize separately mobility and connectivity.

So that's transit, also multimodal systems. So San Marcos tries to support biking through the community and that sort of thing. This is just the ability to get from one place to another. And then environmental protection. So that is a very important thing.

So San Marcos, we have rivers. We have natural areas, historical resources, and so forth. So these are the the emphasis that the city council has provided to shape the budget for the city as a business, basically, as an organization. So they do a budget policy statement every year, and then they check to see if the budget they're creating so they create the policy statement, and it's detailed. There's a lot of various parts.