Okay, the recording has started.

It is 701 call to order.

Because we have guests this evening and two presentations that we're going to be seeing.

I would ask a motion that we uh revise the agenda to move our presenters to the front of the agenda.

Motion.

So move.

My favorite?

Second.

I believe it was.

Yeah, I'm and here is Commissioner Bailey.

Okay, very quickly.

We have that change made.

We need to do our pledge of allegiance roll call.

Sorry, I got ahead of myself here.

Okay, pledge allegiance to the flag the United States of America to the Republic for which it stands one nation.

Liberty and justice for all.

Okay.

Madam Secretary, can you take role?

Uh yeah, thank you.

Thank you.

Uh Chair Frey.

Uh present.

Vice Chair Auburg.

Present.

Commissioner Bailey.

Present.

Commissioner Lum.

Present.

Commissioner O'Brien.

Present.

Commissioner Mason.

Present.

Commissioner Roby.

Present.

And Commissioners Rosemary Picado and James Street are excused for tonight.

Thank you.

Now, do you want me to uh redo that motion in in order?

Okay.

In that case.

EBAC.

Yeah.

Oh, great.

I would like to move out of the way.

Where should we?

You're welcome to join us at the table.

I'll bring them off.

I don't know if it'll reach, but we'll see.

I'm actually going to move over to where you were so.

Yeah, that's okay.

I don't know if the mouth is going to reach how far you're going to be able to do it.

It looks like it's working.

I mean, but wherever you're comfortable.

This sounds good.

Okay.

Thank you so much.

Okay.

I might move the mic a little bit that way.

Okay.

I'm going to do my research feed.

Okay.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Hello.

My name's Stephanie.

Um, I name Stephanie Dragal.

I work with East Bay Agency for Children or EBAC.

Um, and we uh and I'm the program director, one of the program directors for the family services, um, which helps oversee our family resource centers.

Hi everyone, I'm Selena Romero Perez, and I'm the bilingual program coordinator at the San Leandro Family Resource Center.

In front of you, you'll have this red folder.

The copies of the slides are in there if you want to check back, write any notes, have any questions, and then everyone should have an eBAC 10.

We will get you.

Oh, okay, great.

Um, so I'll I'm gonna we're not gonna go through the entire presentation, we will just go through a couple of uh slides here.

Um so starting with um our mission statement, uh, East Bay Agency for Children improves the well-being of children, youth, and families by reducing the impact of trauma and social inequities.

This is a slide of kind of like an overview of all of our services throughout Alameda County.

So we have about 275 staff members and a bunch of different programs throughout the Bay Area.

Uh one of some of them are intense of behavioral health, school-based behavioral health, and then our family community wellness, which is our after-school programs, and then our family resource centers, in which you guys provide support for.

And you'll see this is where we are right here, this little purple triangle.

So uh part of the program goals is that we partner with families in schools and communities and community organizations to increase family access to uh concrete resources and supports, build positive relationships and community connectedness, increase knowledge of parenting, childhood development, trauma, positive coping skills, and we help families navigate difficult situations that they might find them in with strength, care, and confidence.

And all of this is in order to strengthen their family, stabilize their family, and we do that by using the protective factors.

Um and this is to prevent and protect folks from trauma.

Um last year alone, uh eBAC FRCs, which is our six of them throughout the county.

We uh helped about over 1,600 people and provided light support to over 20,000 folks in the county.

There's slides about who we serve, target populations.

We're gonna skip over that and go right into our San Leandro site.

Um our San Leandro site has been uh in the bar at the Barbara Lee Center since 2014, and right now, currently we have two step four staff members, one coordinator, and uh one family resource specialist.

And uh oh, yeah, located at the Barbara Lee Center, uh, right across the street in high school.

Oh uh, so here's a bit of a snapshot snapshot so far of our services this year.

We have um worked with a total of 80 clients, uh 70, 57% of them that live in Salandro.

We hosted a series of parent cafes uh early at the end of last year in October, and we're actually having another one coming up in March.

Uh they were very successful, 14 participants came and it was a series of three.

Um and in these uh parent cafes, folks have the opportunity to connect with one another and build that uh resilience and uh uh the social connections that we were talking about.

We also have uh holiday events every year.

One of them is the Operation Cranberry Sauce where we give uh Thanksgiving meals to folks.

This year we gave 250 meals and we had over uh around 60 volunteers.

We also have Toys for Tots in collaboration with the Maureens, um, where we gave uh 20 families gifts.

And uh here's the snapshot of like the concrete support that we provide folks.

These are just a few of the services that we have.

For example, we have the closet in our um at our site.

You can actually see it in the picture.

Um we also um received last year a very generous grant of 220,000, sorry, um, where we were able to help people with their rent and overdo bills.

It was really successful, and it was it was quite the gift to give folks.

Um we have diapers on site, and uh sometimes we have grants where we can uh have gift cards for uh folks to get uh groceries.

Um in addition to all of that, we also host workshops about self-compassion and uh and grief.

Um last year we also uh had one around uh emergency preparedness and family planning.

Uh and we've served 273 people in our drop-in.

We've done outreach to over a thousand folks, and we also are heavily um uh partnered with SLUSD.

We attend cost SAR meetings and parent facilitator meetings.

These numbers are from I think like mid-January, so there's definitely been increasing numbers since then.

One of our highlights that we would like to talk about is our partnership with uh some of the county folks.

So we have health insurance technicians and eligibility service technicians that come to our site in which we're able to give folks appointments with them.

These folks are county trained, they specialize in public programs like Medi-Cal CalFresh, all of the programs.

Um, and so having them on site is really nice where families who have very complex cases can go and talk with this professional expert who has all the updates and all of the changes as we know that have occurred and are gonna be coming up in the next couple years to help folks resolve any issues.

Our team can help, but when we get complex cases, we like to bring in like the expert.

So that is a unique partnership that EBAC has with them.

And we also, like we said, talked about the Thanksgiving meals.

Crosswind church provides that.

We collaborate with them, they deliver the meals to us, we get the volunteers, we host that at the Barber Lee Center, and we invite families to come and get free meals, toys for tots once again, and then of course the San Leandro School District referrals, providing services to the school district families, outreach events, engaging with the community, um, and making sure that we are present, have a presence at the school district.

This is a photo of uh our volunteers waiting for they just unloaded the truck with all the meals, 250 meals, that's 250 turkeys and 250 boxes.

They get up on that truck and they unload, and we have a whole little assembly line going on, and now they're ready to welcome the first folks driving up to uh give them their Thanksgiving meal.

And we also have like outcome, right?

So we have uh protective factor surveys that we do with all of our case management clients, and you can see here um 100% of the participants had an increase in at least one domain, 93% increase in nurturing and attachment, 86% increase in family function resilience at 93 increase in social supports, and we also do satisfaction surveys for anyone that comes in and gets a service because we want to make sure that we get any feedback that the community wants to give us, making sure that we're on point with our services.

So we do satisfaction surveys, and people have been satisfied with our services, um, and it's an opportunity for us to connect and improve.

So again, my name's Stephanie.

This is Selena.

That's our presentation.

Are you uh do you have any association?

We say good.

Okay, very good.

We're talking about um justice, social justice and food, yes, and the importance of that.

So they they should be very helpful resource.

I would guess definitely we connect folks to um with them, like and and vice versa.

We kind of have a next one.

There's also a food pantry down the street on Bancroft.

One down on Davis Street, there's one over.

Oh, we have we have the flyer that has all the three pantries.

And we have people uh register for the Davis Street one as well.

I've seen one of our clients actually come from um from our FRC, and then I saw them when I was leaving for work in line for the Thursday one.

Yeah, we definitely wanted to give people everything all the information around us.

There are truthfully some folks that would speak ill of that, but if you're just fighting to keep food on the table with a family of four or five or six or eight, absolutely, you could be in a food pantry three times a day and still not be getting enough food to keep it absolutely.

Yes, yes, especially when the government shutdown happened, right?

A lot of folks were worried about their calf, and you know, we have families that are depend on that, it's children depend on that.

Sure.

And so when we did it when that was happening, eBAC, we have a nice group of volunteers that mobilize and they donated, they were able to do a food drive, and all of our family resource centers had a very robust pantry that we were able to just give folks to.

It's it slowed down a little bit, you know, because we were able to like push it, right?

And like give people when they needed it.

So you know, we always get food donations, yeah, to give out.

Thank you.

Yes.

Other questions?

I want to offer my appreciation for the specific numbers for St.

Andrew.

I always like it when presentations come to you know the received funds that we can see the direct impact.

So I appreciate that.

I just wanted to share that with you.

Of course, thank you.

Thanks for coming in.

That's it.

Okay, you do.

Thank you, of course.

Thank you for the pen.

I didn't have to steal it.

Let me give you this back.

Oh, that's right.

Thank you.

Very well.

I'm glad that worked.

Well the other.

Yeah, that's what I was frantically trying to figure out where they were.

We can go through the rest of these.

Yeah.

Shall we have thank you for coming?

Okay, uh, since our other guests have not arrived yet, uh, shall we move on to the consent consent calendar?

Did everybody review the uh minutes and are we ready to make a motion on accepting the minutes from 1022 25?

We'll make a motion to approve the October 22nd minutes.

Thank you.

Do we have a second?

A second.

Thank you.

That was uh Commissioner Lum and Commissioner Mason.

Yes, uh, all in favor of accepting.

Thank you.

Uh um well, that's done.

Moving on to number four, uh, staff reports and announcements.

Uh uh, do you want to talk about the pit?

Yes, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, I know it's a half report, but I do want to invite um yourself, uh, Commissioner O'Brien to talk about it from a volunteer perspective.

So we had the pit um in January last month, and for those of you who may not be familiar, it's basically a census count of our unhoused folks.

Um it is federally mandated every year, but only every other year is for unsheltered folks.

So sheltered folks, um, it's done every year.

And um, it takes a huge team of volunteers to conduct it.

We are up at 3 45 to get to the senior center by 4 45.

Um we had 18 teams um and 52 volunteers, which I think is just so impressive for what you're volunteering for to get up so early in the cold um and dark.

Um this time around, this is I think my fourth or fifth pit count.

Um we had a lot more, uh, I want to say expert teams.

Um, we have the ARU now.

We didn't have the ARU before, and the ARU is very familiar with where our folks are located, and they did a lot of canvassing before they went out.

Um, the World Basquez Health Center has a team with that the county funds, and they were big team.

I want to say there was like four or five of them, and they had a huge they did a huge undertaking of um a very massive encampment that has probably 20 people.

Um that took them almost the whole five hours.

It starts at 5 a.m.

It goes until 10 a.m.

If you need the whole time.

Um we were very fortunate.

San Leandro was able to get really close to our quota.

Our quota is 60 volunteers.

Um, the way it works is that um there's a team that the county hires called Sim Tech.

Um, it it's like the county bought an app, and the app is what the volunteers use to conduct the count.

Um, and then with that app, we get a team of folks who help support us through the process, and uh there they break out the census tracks, and then they based on his historical numbers, it's like a sampling occurs.

So, not all the census tracts will count.

So, there was only one census tract in San Leandro that wasn't going to be counted, so I did not send a team there since we were a little short.

I was like, oh, perfect.

Um, we did have a whole team that didn't show up, and so we have to scramble and then redeploy a team with the first team that came back.

I was like, congrats, your prizes going back out.

You win.

Um, that happened last time.

It's just one of those things that happens.

Um the uh numbers are turned over to HUD, which will happen in March.

There's a lot of cleanup happening right now in the background.

Sometimes surveys are duplicated by accident or something is you know shows up, the survey was done at a different address than where the pin was dropped, or something like that.

Um, so there the cleanup is currently happening.

Um, the numbers will be turned over to HUD in March, and I think we get the numbers in April.

I want to say by the spring, so that I will share those with the commission.

I mean, those will be become public, those will will be shared um with anyone who's interested.

And then that's just a very preliminary like snapshot of the numbers.

We don't get the full report until the summer.

Um based on like what information was shared during the surveys.

Anything you'd like to add?

A lot.

I had a lot of people with me.

Yeah, I had three people.

I had to take the baby seed out of my car and put it in the back.

Oh my goodness.

I I hope you know how difficult that is for a senior citizen to replace that.

It takes two of us.

But we had a great time.

It was wonderful.

Um we had a very what I would consider pretty clean tracked.

But I found more people than I would have thought.

Um we've seen a shift at April showers for fewer people unsheltered coming to take showers, more people in their cars, vans, whatever.

And we found more folks than I would have thought at different parks who didn't want to be bothered because it was 5:30 in the morning and they were going to work shortly.

So I'm sleeping, leave me alone.

This was the first year that I participated in the party time.

I was really impressed.

It was run so everything went so smoothly.

Um, the app was really helpful.

Um I only had one other person on my team.

The rest of the folks didn't come, but it was okay.

Um just moving around and talking to people, and uh we didn't we were we were on the railway tracks and then down the San Leandro Creek that was part of our area, so went to some places that I had never really seen or considered before, and um it was great.

I encourage people to do it next time.

It's really interesting.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I do know that a survey will be going out.

Have you received it yet?

Okay, please complete it.

Um because they also collect volunteer information, demographics on the volunteers.

It's very interesting to get full snapshot if we can.

Did you get it any kind of a hint?

Um, it seems that there is an overall county-wide decrease is what I'm interested in.

This is what I'm interpreting.

Okay, yeah, and we'll see what the numbers are, right?

And it's it's you know, it's interesting because these numbers directly uh affect our funding, right?

Which is very interesting because well, the the funding itself is slim to none to start with, and I I don't know how it can be cut any further.

Right, and that if you have less numbers, you get less funding.

But sometimes that funding is used as seed money to create programs, and then how do you sustain them when the money gets cut?

So we do want to decrease homeless in San Andre, absolutely.

It just that's just unfortunately the way it's those programs are funded, so it's tough.

Um, yeah, we hope I mean now we have the Nimitz.

We didn't have the Nemets last pit um two years ago, so and that's an amazing program.

So I would hope that our numbers are declining, but it is it can affect our programming if our funding is cut.

Any questions from anyone?

See y'all again in 2028.

Okay, that's it for that.

That's okay.

And then uh 4B, the um commission elections.

So uh the commission handbook, that's the yeah, the handbook has changed it to that elections occur in March now.

They can be postponed if for some reason they need to be, but last time elections happened with this commission.

Um a nomination committee was not needed, and this commission was able to come up with nominations on the spot.

I'm all this is just a reminder we're not doing elections tonight.

Elections will occur next month, but if you're interested or if you think someone should be nominated, please consult them so that they're not surprised on the day of why not surprise them.

We'll see what happens.

No fair walking.

Um yes, hopefully we'll be able to have a chair and a vice chair for this next oh well, we're done with presentations right.

Um for this next year.

I do know I mean uh one of our council members has resigned, retired.

Um but uh you will stay in your in your seats if I don't know who's district two here.

Um okay, until a new council member is appointed, and that takes time, so and then even then when they come on, they may not make adjustments.

Um so I've reached out to the city clerk to get more information, and I'll keep you posted.

But for now, you're you're here.

Except we did misspell your name on here.

Okay, so next time we're looking for nominations from the floor.

Yes, um, it we will take nominations and elections in the same meeting.

Great.

Yes, that's it for them.

And did we have any public comments?

No, no e-comments came in.

And we have no public comments here.

Um I don't know what happened to our friends from community assistance program.

Uh it's restorative pathways.

Yeah, they're a cat partner.

I hear somebody.

Oh, I think it's the uh janitorial stuff, unfortunately.

Yeah, they just confirmed, so I'm not sure what happened.

I sent a message, I haven't heard back from anyone.

Um so that's too bad.

Um, this is this used to be Ruby's place.

Um they changed their name.

Yeah, yeah, and it's the same initials, RP, but they've changed their name to restorative pathways.

So I will find out what happened, I'm sure tomorrow.

Yeah, somebody will help somebody with sick or something.

Um hopefully that's it and not something else.

Yeah, and um I will try and reschedule them for next month.

Next month I will also bring the um calendar with an idea of what we'll be looking at for the rest of the year.

Um, there's been a lot of shuffling around of schedule, so I haven't been able to finalize it yet, but hopefully by next month.

Okay.

Uh I see no action items on the calendar.

So shall we move to commission reports and announcements?

Um I have nothing to report or announce.

Commissioner Bailey.

I also have nothing to report or announce.

Commissioner Lum.

Nothing to report, Commissioner O'Brien.

Nothing to report, Commissioner Mason.

Nothing to report.

Commissioner Roby.

Well, I always do.

So I just wanted to uh extend my appreciation out to the St.

Leandro Senior Center.

Um, the company that I work for and them have been working on some things together, and so um I just appreciate everyone there.

So if that can be extended to um to their commission, I would greatly kind of appreciate that.

I will let them know that's part of our department, so yeah, just appreciate the shout out.

They're always just amazing to talk to.

So friendly.

So I I greatly appreciate that.

Thank you for sharing that.

Yeah.

Um you have anything to report to show not on the commission.

Um, April showers is probably going to be revising hours.

Oh, okay.

Um, we'll still be first, third, and fifth Sundays as always.

Uh, but our program hours will move from 11 a.m.

to noon, and that will accommodate um public swimming on Sunday morning.

I see.

And I had spoken to um recreation director, uh Samiga, and then Gloria.

And I had Bob Kraut with me, and he broached it very gently and gingerly, and Bob, who is a very devout Presbyterian, said that would be so lovely because then us who are church going people would be able to stay in church.

So I think it's gonna work out well.

I think we're gonna start July 5th with a later program.

Is the same amount of hours?

It just shifted instead of being 11 to 2, we'll be 12 to 3.

Okay.

And we uh I'm we have seen a very different demographic.

Um I think we have not done a survey yet, but I would say that probably part of it does have to do with um the Llewellyn Center, the transitional housing, and the drop-in center.

And it's it's difficult for people to move on foot that far.

So some people have moved down south waiting to get into transitional as it comes in, but the we're we're still seeing a light week would be or a light shower event would be 60 to 65, kind of normal as 75 to 80, and of that we'll see probably 18 to 20 men showering as opposed to the 30 we used to see showering, and we'll see eight to twelve women.

So they're coming to us to meet with folks from Building Futures to get clothes and to get food.

Food to eat, food to take with them, and um we've had the little store there, and we actually did get another grant from San Lorenzo Church, San Lorenzo Community Church.

Um the store is still going and you can still get protein and bread and um Advil body wash, whatever you want, whatever you want.

If you if it's not there, and you ask Noelle, who runs the store, hey, I need a sewing kit.

There'll be snowing kits next time.

So but but more and more I think we're seeing folks who are living in cars and vans and motor homes.

Many of these folks are working poor who cannot afford a place to live without subsidy, and there are not enough subsidies, but they do have some money coming in, so they belong to 24 hour fitness and planet fitness, and they shower in there.

So now that the Luim Lewin Center's been open for a while, can we get a report out like how they're doing?

That actually was supposed to be tonight's presentation.

They're actually I think doing very well.

I was there Monday.

Uh it was driving rain, and they had probably eight people in the drop-in center.

And what we do is if we have extra lunches and extra um soup from April showers, I take it back to the food pantry and put it in the fridge and then take it over on Monday morning, and um, I I think the number I had gotten from Cecilia about five months ago, is they have 29 units of transitional housing, and they had um like 19 people permanently housed, and so those rooms are filling up again behind them right away.

But that that's not an official report from that nuts, but they're doing great.

Yeah, originally it wasn't supposed to be the presentations that we had scheduled.

ARU and Lilie were supposed to be presented tonight by the department director.

She's hard to pin down.

Um, so we have to bump her because she had to make another presentation elsewhere.

Um but on the calendar that I'll bring to the commission next month.

I'll confirm when I can get her in here.

She's the one who'll be presenting on that.

So she presented to the council recently, and they presented to the council recently.

Um I don't think recently, I think it's been some time now when they presented last more people turned into that than they do our little meetings, so it's got the word out there that it's actually doing good things.

I feel like there was such complaint through the process happy endings are nice too.

Continued happy progress is good.

So if anybody wants to come to April showers, we're open this Sunday starting at 11 a.m.

at the boys and girls club enter from marina.

That's it.

All right.

Um I would accept a motion for adjournment.

So motioned.

Second, um, Commissioner Roby and seconded by one.

Um, okay.

And do we need to vote on that?

Uh yes, okay.

All in favor of adjourning at 7 35.

Uh opposed stay as long as you'd like.