The Health and Human Services (HHS) Committee met on April 23, 2026, from 9:34 a.m. to 1:48 p.m. to consider the FY27 Operating Budget and FY27-32 Capital Improvements Program for the Department of Health and Human Services, as well as a supplemental appropriation. The committee reviewed funding for homelessness services, public health programs, and minority health initiatives, approving most recommendations and placing several items on the reconciliation list for full Council consideration in May 2026.
Good morning and welcome to the Health and Human Services Committee. I am grateful to be joined by my colleagues, Council members Don Ludke Friedsen and our guest, Councilmember Mink. So we have three items on today's agenda. And so we are going to be starting first with a special appropriation, a supplemental appropriation to Ceph. And I am going to turn things over to Tara to uh brief us on this supplemental appropriation for FY26, and then we will go through the remainder of the budget. We will go back to item one. So we're starting with item two. We will go back to item one and then we will end with a deep dive into quite a few items with the Department of Health and Human Services. And then we have some items that were recommended by colleagues, and we will touch on those in item three. Anything else to add, Tara? All right, let's get started. Thank you. Good morning, and thank you, Chair Sales, and good morning to the rest of the members of the committee and our guests here from DHHS. Just to set the scene, as co as Chair Sales said, we have about 30 items that require the vote of the committee today. If not, we will have to have a follow-up work session on April 27th. So our goal is to ensure the committee can move through the items and uh so that they can be voted on at full council. We are starting with item number two, the supplemental appropriation 26-14 for services to and to prevent homelessness for emergency family shelter services in the amount of $3,064,158. The main items that this supplemental covers are support for um overflow motel sheltering, approximately 85 rooms and 2.9 million that will sustain Ceph through the end of the fiscal year and help to house families. There is 50,000 requested to cover maintenance costs associated with the use of those facilities and um the and utilizing those facilities long term. There are just maintenance issues that occur that are not budgeted for currently within within using overflow motels. And the third item is for um the stepping stones family shelter to move its operating to 100% capacity, but the budget only covers 70% capacity. The uh Stepping Stones Family Shelter operates under a um open solicitation, and so when they applied and were awarded the funds, it was the expectation that we would only need 70% of the capacity, but that has changed due to the need in the community. So the $54,000 is requested for the up until the end of the fiscal year, and Ceph has informed us that uh additional funding might need be needed in FY27 to support 100% capacity as well. But right now that has not uh been part of the FY27 budget. So I will stop there and see if there are any questions for me and um go back to the committee. Thank you. No questions. I'll turn things over to HHS, Dr. Bridgers. So good morning, everyone. Good morning, uh HHS Chair Sales, Councilmember Freedson, Councilmember Lukey, and our honorary member, Councilmember Mink. Thank you for joining all of the sessions. Day five of day six. How about that? Um there's a lot to discuss today before I turn it over to Chief Hong. Just wanted to say this. Uh we appreciate all of the efforts and the input on the CE's recommended budget. We uh appreciate the um the candid, sometimes tough discussions that we've had with the with the committee. Uh we have a lot of our community partners behind us, and I want to thank them for all of the input, the feedback as key stakeholders as we continue to um move forward and supporting our underserved and at-risk communities. Um a lot of tough conversations have been ahead, and we know that we need to do more work in this space, either for sustaining our programs, evaluating the program effectiveness, and just the overall impact in the community. So thank you, community partners, for your ongoing support to HHS and our committee. As I like to end and begin, we will get there together. I'll turn it over to Chief Hung now. Thank you, Dr. Bridgers. Thank you, um HHS Committee and Councilmember Mink for all your support of our work. So the this supplemental request is very important because as you all know, the number of families we've seen in particular in our county has um in the past year increased. And we were able to do really incredible work with the SHARP program, and we'll be sharing data on that and our successes in our presentation after this. And we continue to see families presenting in need of shelter. And so when our permanent shelters, and we have three of them are full, we still rely on our motel budget to place them temporarily in motels as shelter.