Joint Work Session Meeting May 13, 2024 MINUTES Joint Work Session Monday, May 13, 2024 @ 1:00 PM City Council Chambers, City Hall PRESENT: Councilor Johana Bencomo, Councilor Yvonne Flores, Councilor Becki Graham, Councilor Becky Corran, Mayor Eric Enriquez, Councilor Cassie McClure, and Councilor William Mattiace ABSENT: 1. JOBS OF THE WEEK 1.1 Sarah Raney, Workforce Connections presented Jobs of the Week. 2. PETS OF THE WEEK 2.1 Amy Defelix, ASCMV presented Pets of the Week. 3. AGENDA ITEM 3.1 OPIOID SETTLEMENT: COMMUNITY NEEDS ASSESSMENT REPORT. Barbara Bencomo, Chief Administrative Officer gave an overhead presentation. Shara Thorpe, Doña Ana County Settlement Coordinator continued overhead presentation. Liz Olivares, NMSU Crimson Research Program Manager continued overhead presentation. Barbara Bencomo continued overhead presentation. Page 1 of 14 Councilor Graham asked would you say that perceptions of the problem and experiences of the problem were lining up pretty well among the three groups? So the First Responders, Law Enforcement, Providers, those with lived experience, those who participated in the Outreach Program. Would you say we all kind of have the same view of the problem and if not, where are the main gaps where certain groups are seeing problems that others are not? Liz Olivares said we are still waiting and receiving more data to identify some of those gaps because we haven’t been able to overlay these results. But for the most part as far as the participation goes, the participants did identify similar items. We saw very similar trends among the key informants and the lived experience and even the street outreach. So there weren’t really too many surprising findings when we came out. But we did hope that the focus groups would provide some of that in depth information. Whereas just transportation in general, what kind of transportation and we are working through to identify those still. Like I said this is very raw preliminary. A lot of these numbers include like one or two individuals, and it was the top five themed that arose. Please keep that in mind you know, as you reflect on the data. Commissioner Christopher Schaljo-Hernandez said on slide 35 you were talking about the Outreach Survey Participants, and you outreached to 53 participants, and you listed where they were coming from. Did we solicit any participants outside of the City of Las Cruces? Liz Olivares said no there were no participants outside the City of Las Cruces, they were all, predominately within the hotspots within Las Cruces. So, it is limited we don’t have any like surrounding areas. Commissioner Schaljo-Hernandez asked is there a way we can look at outside? You mentioned in one of the earlier slides that Chaparral has doubled their OD rate from 2022-2023. I would probably consider that a hotspot at that point in time. But I do know that there are issues outside of the City of Las Cruces when you’re looking at the South Valley, going up towards Hatch and so forth and those are concerns because there aren’t a lot of services in those areas. So, I would really like to see some data as to what those areas are saying because they are 30 minutes away from the City, 30 minutes away from services that are more localized here. I would really love to see that data. Barbara Bencomo said one of our advisory council members Athena Huckaby also wanted to respond to the question from Councilor Graham related to the overlap of findings from the three groups if we may. Athena Huckaby, Member of Opioid Settlement Advisory Council said I also conducted many of the outreach interviews with individuals in our streets, in Las Cruces. I wanted to point out that one of the things that really jumped out to me here is the lack of overlap between the Department of Health data regarding the age of people experiencing fatal overdoses, versus the focus that was noted in the focus groups in wanting to focus on youth outreach and youth prevention. If we’re seeing in our community that the majority greater than 50 percent it looked like I believe, of Page 2 of 14 people dying of overdoses are 50 and older than that speaks to me as a disconnect, right, between this focus group emphasis on outreach to youth. For me as somebody working in substance use, sometimes I feel that people prioritize youth and children because they feel that it’s time that intervention can happen. So, when the person is 50 years old that they may not be having these same problems. But I just want to point out that people older, people of middle age in our community are really the ones that are dying. I think that outreach focused on them was not noted in any of the focus groups and I thought that was a big disconnect. So, I just wanted to point out what came up for me while I was listening. Commissioner Susana Chaparro said I work in the court system and so what I’m seeing is that there’s a way to perhaps reach the 50 plus age group. You have treatment courts that including juvenile drug court, adult drug court, veterans court, family re-unification and they are really a captive audience. Most of them are receiving treatment for substance abuse whether it be alcohol, fentanyl. But as your data shows at least what I’m seeing in court is there’s such a sharp increase in fentanyl use and that is so concerning. It is specific to at least in the county that I know of Organ, Chaparral, Sunland Park and so to be able to obtain more information in those areas, I think it would be helpful to the Commissioners at this point. Also, FYI they have a teen program for kids that may perhaps be an avenue to get more answers as to what’s going on. Just a suggestion. Councilor Flores said I see the information you collected is really good but there is a big gap there and it touches on what Commissioner Chaparro just raised. We don’t have any young people here; we have the older people. We don’t have any data on what the schools are doing. Councilor Graham and I serve on the Las Cruces Community Schools Board and those schools I hope they really grow and continue to become Community Schools because it pulls in the entire community. It pulls in the parents; it pulls in everybody and there’s a very good book that I recommend it’s called “Anna Age Eight” and you’re probably hopefully familiar with it and it deals with trauma that the children go through. People don’t grow up in happy homes, excuse me. People who grow up as happy children generally become productive citizens. They grow up with self-respect, respect for others, they know how to work in a community and it’s a story of Catcher in the Rye. You get someone who has a dismal childhood where there isn’t any food, where there isn’t any love. Where there’s people coming and going, there’s a lot of people living like that and that’s the reality our people live in. I don’t know if you covered it if you did or not. But if you take apples to apples, oranges to oranges you would see that children who grow up in happy environments. I’m not saying happy everyday there’s a smile and there’s a birthday party to go to every week and you get a new toy every day. I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about a home where you have food and where you got to school, and our Community Schools are doing such a wonderful job. Cheryl Love who is the principal at Doña Ana Community School in Doña Ana they bus children in from all over like Hatch and what not and kids get on the bus at 7:00 and their mission is to make sure that they have attendance at the school. If there isn’t, if there’s an attendance problem they go to speak with a parent and they make sure that child is taken care of. There are children who don’t go to school when they’re asked why or why didn’t you eat your lunch today. They provide lunches now but back in the day even like maybe twenty years ago, a child was asked why don’t you each your lunch, she’d walk in with her Page 3 of 14 lunch bag every day and she’d say, “oh I’m not hungry” and she separated herself from other children. God knows what happened to that child. But it turned out that finally one school board member who would go visit schools just said oh well talk to her a little bit more, it turned out she carried a rock in that bag, just to make people think that she had food. There was another little girl who would go to school and the school board member here in Las Cruces would ask children “why do you go to school”, oh I like my teacher, I like to color, I like recess. This little girl never said anything and finally she warmed up to Mrs. Flores (not me), the teacher and she finally warmed up to her and said I come to school to eat. Our community schools maybe it’s just my suggestion, we really have to look at the root problem. We’re looking at the outcomes of God knows what. If we don’t ever address the root of the problem, we’re never going to find the solution. We haven’t really defined the problem if you don’t define the problem, you’re not looking for a solution. We’re looking at stats and you’re getting the data accumulation of information that we all see every day. Commissioner Manuel Sanchez said I think the second to the last slide 41 indicated that one of the next steps was to established a system for collection and reporting. How are we collecting data if we don’t have an established system for data collection unless I’m missing something? Barbara Bencomo said I believe what that refers to is we were talking about the implementation plan. Once the decisions were made by the City Council and County Commission as to how funds were to be expended, then we need to develop a plan for tracking and reporting, not only the expenditures but also the outcomes. We don’t know yet how these two governing bodies will direct the spending and so the development of data collection reporting systems might be very customized. There might be tools we already have as part of our data inventory that we did early on as the Advisory Council we uncovered the resources that we have in the community for data collection. It’s just unclear at this point depending on what the decisions are for the expenditures as to what we will be collecting and reporting and how. That’s part of the evaluation process that we’ll go through after we receive guidance from the County Commission and the City Council on expenditures. Commissioner Sanchez said I think my concern as Commissioner Schaljo-Hernandez had brought up there’s a lot of concern because when I look at this between the 53 participants that were surveyed and the 38 that were a part of the focus groups. We have 91 people that were participating which would be .04 percent of the population which is driving what the next steps of this and particularly when there’s not enough representation from outside the City of Las Cruces. I think I would like for us to get better information and understand because to help light our way to what next steps are. Because I know that one answer or one solution it’s not a one size fits all solution because of the diverse nature of the County. I mean we have as was mentioned in Chaparral and areas outside of the City in the County that are more rural versus the very concentrated population center here in the City of Las Cruces. We’re going probably looking at needing different solutions here. So, I would love for us to be able to understand and look at data to have a better understanding of you know. Because I think I see, I agree with some of the high points here where it becomes a lot of access to the services. It becomes an education piece. There’s several things that are in here that I think are obviously we need to address but again like I say as we develop those Page 4 of 14 next steps. I would love for us to be able to get that more information. I did have one other question on slide 16 and slide 18 which was about some of the increase in calls here and for OD’s. I didn’t know when we talked about Chaparral is this data based off the residence of the victims or is this based off where the calls originated? Liz Olivares said the data is from the entire County so all of the calls and we would have to speak directly to our data source to specify where those addresses were from because we did not collect addresses. We just got the counts for the total number of calls and the breakdown per year. So, it was interesting to see that there was an increase in that. But earlier you asked about data and surveillance, data collection processes and I would like to say that there were extreme challenges collecting all of the data. Even within one agency where one year to the next the data is just either entered differently or collected differently and to not have 2023 data we can’t even speak to what’s happening right now either. Because it's still raw data, it hasn’t been published. We were fortunate enough to have some of our partners share some of those preliminary findings but that was known, it could change at any time because it hasn’t been cleaned up. We are very limited in County with surveillance measures and that’s my own intake having worked with some of the data and trying to find where we can collect from. We have a lot of partners who are willing and wanting. I think it’s just a matter of having a more systematic approach to what’s out there. Commissioner Sanchez said the reason I ask, is because I would love to understand if the calls are happening because people are hanging out in certain areas, or if their residences or if they’re going home. I guess there’s a lot to look at this data. The other one is on slide 18 when it talked about the overdoses and then the Naloxone doses and the reversals because it’s interesting that in terms of the number of distributed like on table two here. That seems to line up with the efforts we had with Doña Ana County to try to get those out into the hands of residents here in the County. Which the reason I say it’s about 8 percent of those doses distributed are in Doña Ana County which is about 10 percent of the State of New Mexico. But when you look at the reversals, it’s a stark difference. So I’d be curious, and this might be just as we kind of go along to have a better understanding of this is it that we’re not reporting or are we not getting them into the hands of the people that actually need it. Athena Huckaby said previous to my position at Ideal Option I managed the program at Doña Ana County Health & Human Services doing Naloxone distribution and education. I also do Naloxone distribution, education throughout the State and have a contract with HSD doing that statewide. I do work statewide with Naloxone distribution. I think this speaks to two things; one is the emphasis around getting Naloxone into the hands of people who use drugs. So, when we get Naloxone into the hands of people who are not using drugs or who are not acquainted with people using drugs, that’s all well and good. But we tend to refer to that as preventative Naloxone, right. It sits in people’s drug cabinets; it sits in people’s cars. You know I carry some with me all the time. I never actually had to respond to an overdose. We saw in the slide that 60 percent of people using fentanyl were carrying Naloxone which is great. But that leaves 40 percent that are not. So, I think that’s where you are seeing that disconnect. We have a lot of emphasis on getting in the hands of police, social workers, first responders, schools. I think that’s all well and good and quite important. But also, I think what’s extra important is that we get it into the hands of people who Page 5 of 14 use drugs because those are the people that respond to overdoses, and we would see the gap close. That’s my two cents. Barbara Bencomo said I would just like to add one thing. With respect to the information on the residence and addresses. I did sit through a presentation through HIDTA where we were talking about the difficulty of obtaining some of the data and some of that is not able to be conveyed to us for HIPAA reasons. So, it does present a little bit of difficulty to pinpoint some of that demographic data. Councilor Corran said thank you for work on collecting this data I know it’s an extraordinary effort especially get the inputs of folks who are experiencing substance use disorder and using drugs in the community. My first question is how the money can be spent specifically? I think it feels like there is a very clear indication that humans are going to solve this problem, not buildings and perhaps cars or vans actually, I would say. Are there specific restrictions on how this money can be spent in addressing the needs? I think of transportation needs, I know Athena has talked to us about the transportation needs in particular and the range of services that are available but may not be accessible to folks. Can you talk about any specific restrictions on how we can spend in terms of services, please? Barbara Bencomo said yes, I have a couple of slides here on allowable uses under the terms of the settlement. There are some general categories for treatment, prevention and kind of another catch all category. But you’ll see some of the things we talked about today related to medication assisted treatment for example, solutions within the criminal justice system that’s come up before, some training research. Then I had complied a list of some examples of things that we saw on the documentation related to the settlement that are allowable uses for these funds. You definitely see the transportation is there. There is job training as well, actually when I looked through the allowable uses, they’re quite broad but there is a framework for that. So, we are going to be mindful of that in the recommendations but here’s examples of some of the allowable uses. Councilor Corran said I think one other thing just related to the distance question. I would also add that folks in Hatch would have to cross through a border patrol check point and so in terms of accessing services that is also a really important barrier to consider. I hope that we can think collaboratively about how to address that specific barrier in our county. I really want to appreciate the work that you all have done and more to the comment more than a question. I do think often it’s very easy to say oh look we as a Council, we as a Commission, we as a group did this thing, one concrete thing, often literally concrete as we love to do, build buildings. I would just ask that I hope that we can consider the diversity of the things folks have identified. I hope that in our addressing these issues we can prioritize saving lives as is required but also sort of indicated by some of the things that Athena mentioned and really do a range of things. Because we can’t build a building and fix this problem by any means. I think I really have hope that we can come up with a diverse and responsive range of things that are addressing this in community. I just issue that challenge to my colleagues. To be complicated in the way that we respond to this. I thank you all for being complicated in presenting this information and giving us a lot of really good insight. Page 6 of 14 Councilor Bencomo said thank you so much to our Commission colleagues for joining us today, it’s great to have you here. Thank you all very much for the work you put in already and certainly to the Advisory Group. I’m curious about the Advisory Council and how often they’re meeting? Shara Thorpe said the Advisory Council meets once a month. Councilor Bencomo said that’s a lot of work and I just want to commend you all for your commitment to that and for your commitment to our community. Miss Olivares, you talked about on page 15 you talked about 2023 data not being published yet. I am curious if you can talk about who publishes that data? Liz Olivares said some of this data the one that I did receive was from HIDTA, the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area program. They get their data from NMDOH and the Office of Medical Investigators. So, the data is still being cleaned up for the same reasons NMIS hasn’t published anything that is what I’m presuming would be the limitations to it, just cleaning it up. Councilor Bencomo said similarly on page 16 I’m curious about you have on here there’s no data necessarily on here for under 25. I guess I am curious to Miss Huckaby’s point about the over representation of youth and obviously youth are important, and we want to be preventative with youth, right. I also understand the other coin of that around who is actually being impacted? Who is actually dying? Who is actually losing their homes and their livelihoods because of addiction? And obviously we need to put a significant amount of resources in harm reduction, not just prevention. Because there is unfortunately too many people there, right. So, I am just curious about some of this discrepancy in the data and if are we just not allowed to see overdose data for minors? Is that not public? Liz Olivares said it’s public, it’s just we don’t have a lot of minors that are dying. So that’s good news for us. However, we did see that Doña Ana County had two deaths among 0 - 4-year-olds in 2022 and 4 across the State of New Mexico. So, half of that came from Doña Ana County. It’s interesting but to Athena’s point also the overdose deaths among the age groups changes with every single year so it’s never like one concrete group. But I did notice the trend between 25 – 54-year-old groups. Those are the top three that are repeating every year. In the raw data we saw that the top in 2023 the highest rates were among 25 – 34-year-olds and the second group was 45 – 54-year-olds, who had fatal overdose. But it is interesting, and I don’t think the challenges are there’s no transparency in the data. I think, it’s just not moving fast enough. We need more support, more people on it to get it cleaned up and get it ready for us. So may be that would be a state recommendation. Councilor Bencomo said but the data is out on minors and this issue. The good thing is we’re not seeing it. Liz Olivares said correct we’re just not seeing it happening in that age group as high, so it’s lower and I only reported the top three because I couldn’t present on my nice graphs that were created. But it will be included in the report. Page 7 of 14 Councilor Bencomo asked just in terms of more data collection do we have plans to do that? Obviously, it seems like that’s the ask here today, but was that already the plan? Shara Thorpe said it is up to the Advisory Council how they want to prioritize with given the approved core strategies of Opioid Settlement spending. Like we said earlier you all are the first to hear this information, our Advisory Council has not even received this aside from our members that are here today. So, this month they will be presented this information, and they will begin to start prioritizing based on the data that is there. We’ll start to have those conversations and we’ll start to prioritize within the approved strategies. Once we start deciding then we present to the County and City with some of those recommendations. So that’s kind of the process. Liz Olivares said I would like to add that the focus group content was substantial. We did a year’s long project in three weeks. So even that data is limited. I was hesitant to report on anything with any specific language just because it’s so raw. We had three people who represented Southern Doña Ana County. I mean those numbers are very small. We would need more, and I did let the County know that we’d be open to accepting more survey data. Because our aim was to achieve 200 participants on that and see that through. So, we are open to receiving more of that and analyze it to include in our final report. However the focus group work is substantial, and I don’t think we would be able to provide that in a short time frame and turn it around for considerations. Barbara Bencomo said if I might add I think we alluded to this earlier once we get the final report from NMSU, the Advisory Council as Shara said is going to review that and one of the things that will need to be reviewed is the presence of data gaps and whether were sufficient to make those recommendations. So that will be part of the evaluation of the final report of the needs assessment. Councilor Bencomo said sure I think it’s not totally fair that I can say there are data gaps when you still need to do that analysis. But it’s clear to me that there are some. The County is very big, and I would love to understand what’s happening in Sunland Park, what’s happening in Vado, what’s happening in Hatch. I think that is incredibly important. I also would love to better understand our unhoused population if we have already on here in these PowerPoints that the unhoused population is a target population. How many focus groups did we do at Community of Hope? Those are the kind of questions that I would love to see answered. I just recently got an email from a mom who just feels powerless about the kinds of resources that are out there for her son and last week I was hanging out with Project LIGHT and the social workers there and the folks there. There talking to me about also like moms and grandparents and people are going to their office and just sitting down and wanting to be heard because this problem is deeply overwhelming. I think people are almost expecting us to make a little bit of magic with this money. Which also feels really daunting and I think we’re all up to it though. So, I think we need to deeply understand specifically the folks who are struggling with this right now. Not just with informants it’s definitely the folks with lived experience. There is not better expertise than lived experience in my opinion. Page 8 of 14 So, I think that if to me if there’s going to be gaps in the data it’s that. It’s hearing from more directly impacted people, people who been through substance abuse or people who are currently going through it and what the limitations are of receiving care. I do want to say a while ago I read a quote that said, “The opposite of addiction is not sobriety, the opposite of addiction is connection”. I think as this community has shown time and time again, we can definitely stand next to each other and to focus on people who are struggling the most. I just want to be able to invest in strategies that are effective, that work and not just throw people in jail for substance abuse. Thank you for the work you’re doing. Athena Huckabee said I just want to speak a little bit about the Outreach survey and the difficulty in conducting that and the skill set that is necessary to sit down and have somebody who is unhoused, perhaps waiting at a bus stop and asking them a 20- minute survey about their drug use, right. It is pretty difficult to get people to strike that right tone to have somebody to be interested in speaking to you. I definitely did push, we all pushed, I think for not only lived, right. I’m a person with lived experience. I’ve been sober for 12 years now but people with living experience. I think that is really important. We only had a few weeks and a few volunteers and so it was difficult to get out into those areas of the county. I’m not personally convinced as a middle-class white lady that folks in Chaparral might resonate with me the best, you know. So, I went to the areas where I felt people would actually open up to me and answer questions about have you used fentanyl in the last 30 days? Have you used methamphetamines in the last 30 days? Where did you sleep in the last 30 days? These are deeply personal invasive questions that are hard for people to answer, and a degree of trust has to be built. So, I did just want to emphasis that with the Council, the difficulty of conducting these, the building of trust, the importance about sending the right people into the right communities, to ask the right questions and also showing up with something to give in exchange. We had $10 gift cards available from Walmart which was helpful. I also provided people with a burrito and a bottle of water. I literally sat on the corner on Amador and Solano in the middle of the street where that intersection is and met with people. I think that the data that we did get though as you’re saying is not as ranging as we want it to be the fact that people were even willing to sit down and answer these questions, I think is incredible. So, I just kind of wanted to point that out. Two other gaps that I actually noticed while I was sitting here. One, somebody did text me you know I wish unfortunately these people that had died of overdose in the State of New Mexico this year were able to talk to us, you know unfortunately the dead don’t talk. The other thing I wanted to mention is throughout all of this there has been no mention of pregnant people and I think that’s a gap that we need to look at as far as services that are available, stigma and things of that nature. So, I just wanted to make those last comments. Thank you again for your willingness to hear me out as I sort of sit in the front row and jump in for comments. I’m so passionate about this and it’s so important to me that the City and the County spend this money in ways that are going to impact the population and reduce deaths, so I appreciate you thank you. Commissioner Shannon Reynolds asked do we lose this money if we don’t act on it right way? Because as I understand it this money is going to be here regardless of how long it takes us to get to this problem, am I right? Page 9 of 14 Barbara Bencomo said that is correct there is not a time delimited period to spend the funds. Commissioner Reynolds said beautiful because as Councilor Corran said buying buildings isn’t going to help us, we have to figure out something different. I noticed on page 16 in the second section there’s a race and ethnicity that show as being the people affected by overdose of Hispanics 67 percent had the highest fatality rate and White 28 percent, Black/African. Did anybody else notice that follows our Census Data? So, the point I’m making there is this data doesn’t help us. If it’s following the Census Data, then all we’re seeing is that we’re recognizing that the population distribution is affected equally. So, we have to try to figure out a different root cause associated with this and say ok now do we distribute our resources on the same as the Census or do we try to find out if there’s different root cause here that we can address with this money and to better affect the Hispanic population than the White population and so forth. So even though the distribution is similar to the Census more people are still dying. So, we have to be able to solve those problems. I noticed if we have somebody who is disabled and has a disability, they actually get some additional support other than just services. Like as a for instance, if they’re going to college, they actually get some of their books paid for, they get some other help with some of the other resources that they need. I think as part of this if I heard some of the data correctly is limitations on transportation. Limitations on access to help and services. Having to miss work in order to have the services done. I think we have to think of a program that is going to also support surrounding services, i.e. if I’m going to take off from work in order to help get off my drug addiction then I need to have some way to feed myself. I think we have to think of a more comprehensive program that says the surrounding services may actually end up being more important, along with the connection Mayor Pro Tem Bencomo said of the connections are more important. So, I think we have to take a step back, we need more data, we got to get a whole lot more data. Then we also have to step back and say this is not a problem that anyone has really solved it before. So, we have to take a creative look at it to try and find the solution that is going to work for us. It’s not going to work in the cities the way it’s going to work in the county and the way it’s going to work in other communities. I applaud you guys, but I tell you we cannot rush into this. We’ve got to do the right thing and as Commissioner Sanchez said what is our plan for collecting the right data. I think I agree, if we don’t identify the correct problem, by correcting the right data then obviously we’re going to solve the wrong problem. So we have to make sure we get the right information we need in order to properly identify the problems and then work on the solutions that are going to work. Then follow that closed loop process because we might try some things that don’t work, and we may need to be willing to go back up and try some other things and make sure that we’re doing the right things. Councilor Flores said on page 47, the last dot, so that touches on what I raised. Is anything being pursued in that? What you presented was data that you collected. So, is anything being done about youth-focused programs to prevent drug abuse? Barbara Bencomo said so these are examples of potential expenditures that could be Page 10 of 14 made. Today what we were doing is presenting data that will help to inform the recommendations for expenditures that will come forward. So that will be the part of the next steps of the process. Again, we will look at the final report from NMSU, understand if there are data gaps that need to be addressed, if there is more collection necessary and the evaluation, recommendations to the body that might include any of these or more potential uses of the funds, depending on what the community needs are assessed to be. Councilor Flores said so I think some of my colleagues up here have also focused on the causes. So, is that being explored? Is the money going to be spent there? Because I think that gathering the data is like looking at the dead horse almost. It’s like let’s look at what the root causes are because then 10 years from now we’re going to be dealing with this again. Because we haven’t reached a solution, and the solution is helpful to those addicted but to prevent people to become addicted. I didn’t see any questions about, and I don’t know if it’s appropriate but to ask when was the first time you used drugs and what was going on in your life? Is that too intrusive, is that not appropriate? It seems to me that I would like to know. If you don’t know what the problem was, again how are you going to find a solution. The youth-focused programs to prevent drug abuse. Then could a drug abuse program could be based on the information that’s gathered. So, I hope that happens. Barbara Bencomo said absolutely, that is the intent. I think one of the things that you saw on a slide is the impact or the importance of breaking the cycle. We talked about children who are in homes where there are drug users and stopping that cycle of use. I don’t know if any of my colleagues would like to respond further to that, to the comment in question. But that was something that struck me when I saw the data and the impact on potential use of the funds. Liz Olivares said I could add a little bit about the initial use or relapse. We did ask the 53 participants that question and interestingly we had a list from Vital Strategies of possible responses that people could answer. When we looked at those responses, we actually saw that the “other” category or “new response” that one was the third highest response. So, the responses were everywhere. There wasn’t a standardized reason for anyone. It was slide 37, where we asked what has influenced your initial use or relapse of substance use? The number one reason was stress, then the social environment and in between that we had an “other” category that did not report here. But it was a high percentage because one or two people again this is a small group, small sample size that are reporting reasons such as Covid, ADHD, Depression, to escape reality, lack of support. My point is that the reasons are everywhere, and I think that also speaks to our national challenge. If it was a straightforward answer where it was the same reason, then we might not be seeing these problems generally. Councilor Flores said I recognize what it says, 35.8 percent of us up here I’m sure have stress, we didn’t turn to drugs. You’re stating the outcomes I mean of whatever their circumstances was. I would like to see what the circumstance was that led to that and then if we could have a better social system where our schools are participating, where our police force. I mean my kids in the dark ages when I had young kids there was a DARE Program in California. The kids did learn, a police officers would go into Page 11 of 14 schools and talk to kids about this, that and you know about drugs, alcohol abuse and stuff like that. So that’s what I’m referring to. I think that the information you gathered is important without a doubt in terms of knowing what the objective conditions are. But they still don’t address the cause and I think that if we identified the cause then we can have solutions and a lot of this addresses well you know this is what we’ve done to whatever. I think Miss Huckaby is correct trying to talk to someone who’s waiting for a bus. Councilor Bencomo said just real quick Councilor Flores DARE programs have been just historically debunked as effective. I think there is also just a balance to be stricken. How much money we have is truly not that much money when we really think about it, and I would hate for us to use a significant portion of that in data research and studies and experts. When we need to be using it in the community. It needs to be going to the folks that are mostly impacted. So, while I do think there is more room for data collection in some of these gaps, I also believe there is urgency, people are dying. So here is urgency to the way that we act around some of these decisions. But I don’t want us to get bogged down like in all the data collection. We cannot let perfection be the enemy of progress and then you know spend down this money on things that are ultimately impacting people’s lives. Commissioner Sanchez said thank you Mayor Pro Tem Bencomo I appreciate your thoughts and I think I wanted to as we have had further discussion, I think in particular to also Councilor Corran’s comments about you know trying to stay away from you know having to do brick and mortar solutions to a lot of these. I would as we look forward in trying to figure out next steps. I would love or be open to a suggestion as the Mayor Pro Tem suggested of having parallel paths. Because I do think we need some more data to figure out specifically are we seeing with some more solutions. So, I think I would support having next steps with some actual programs or solutions that could be presented and then also some opportunity to look at that data collection that was going to be established to figure it out. I think in two manners when I say data collection. I think one I would love to understand more about what is the population we’re seeing how do we continue to differentiate the services that will be best received by those in the community. The second part would be as we continue on, I would love to understand some of these solutions that we’re investing in, are we getting the results? If not, then let’s have an opportunity to pivot because I think especially if we’re not going to be putting significant investment into buildings but into programs, how do we start really looking at that data and then coming back. Because with these combined monies that we have from the settlement and as they start to come in through the next years. How do we start to figure out, this year this worked. How do we look at next year, what can we revamp and get better at and so on. That can be in the City and the County. I agree with the Mayor Pro Tem thought let’s not sit here and wait a long time before we start having some action. Barbara Bencomo said that eludes back to the comment from Commissioner Reynolds for a closed loop system and back to our next steps in that whatever the expenditures are going to be we have to be very intentional about developing that implementation plan, data collection and tracking for the outcomes that we’re looking for. Certainly, bringing that back for potential adjustments or pivots as you mentioned. I think that’s very important. Page 12 of 14 Robert Wayland, Member of the Public said I don’t know how many of you have went through withdrawals, how many of you have went through withdrawals in jail. We are real familiar with the ACE’s Studies. You can’t tell somebody to come back next Tuesday at 2:00 in the afternoon, when they’re asking for help. They are probably not going to come back next Tuesday at 2:00. As a matter of fact, I know several people that have not come back next Tuesday at 2:00. Hopefully they’re none of your family members. We can’t put off on doing something, right. There is a 6-unit medical assisted detox currently in this town. It wanted to be a 10-person unit that got shutdown. If you want to do something real quick increase from that 6 person to a 10- person unit. That will help get the ball rolling. Because I know a couple of people right now that are on the waiting list. Those of us that are in the field see the urgency. I apologize that we didn’t get you more data. We were limited on our time, you know. We’ve actually asked to go out and get more and we’re waiting to hear if we can. I don’t know how many times you guys got to have more data, you got to have more data. It goes back to trauma right, continued trauma, PTSD, etc. Nicole Martinez, Director of Mesilla Valley Community of Hope said I just wanted to give some quick examples of some of the things that are being done across the State right now with the Opioid Settlement money as you are considering on how to go forward with expenditures. Behavioral Health Services Division has a couple of Grant sources that they have disbursed funding to a bunch of agencies throughout the State. We are one of them it’s for people who are exiting incarceration who are getting treatment. The other is a Fresh Start Program and it’s specifically for people with opioid use disorder. So, when they first rolled this out it was really a pilot program based on an addiction prevention program. So, it does target people who are unhoused trying to get into housing and people who are about to become homeless. It was a six-month rental assistance or $10,000 per person and very quickly we started this in November we were like six months for somebody with an opioid use disorder is not very long to get stable, especially if you don’t have those social networks and the connections we’ve been talking about. We’ve had some feedback sessions with them because the Grant is about to end. So, talking about longer rental assistance time for people and again making sure that they’re getting treatment. That’s been a really great program we’ve served a ton of people, it strengthened our collaborations with our service providers but there’s still some other opportunities here like services are really important as we talk about that we need the connections, social supports. So having flexible funding to support people in permanent supportive housing programs that do have opioid use disorder would be really important. Some other ideas we had talked about with the County, but we hadn’t gone forward yet. But maybe we can consider doing something like a harm reduction vending machine at places like Community of Hope that are hotspots and additionally just want to extend us as a solution hopefully for if you do more data collection through Outreach. We have an Outreach Team that asks the questions everyday with our unhoused clients and can definitely tag team, so we have people with all races and languages and hopefully we want to be part of the solution. So, we have some ideas too, and we know we are very much impacted and really want to support housing in these efforts. 4. ADJOURNMENT Page 13 of 14 4.1 Councilor Becki Graham moved, seconded by Councilor Yvonne Flores, to Adjourn at 2:45 p.m. RESULT: Carried MOVER: Councilor Becki Graham SECONDER: Councilor Yvonne Flores AYES: Councilor Johana Bencomo, Councilor Yvonne Flores, Councilor Becki Graham, Councilor Becky Corran, Mayor Eric Enriquez, Councilor Cassie McClure, and Councilor William Mattiace Mayor City Clerk Page 14 of 14