County may offer schools more funding for mental health needs

The Hays County Commissioners Court discussed dedicating more funding to assist independent school districts with mental health resources due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Every one of these school districts is experiencing the same issue, and those issues are complete oversaturation of need,” said Commissioner Walt Smith as he spoke to the importance of addressing mental health needs among youth as a result of the pandemic.

“If we don’t address it now, in two to three years, we’re going to be asked to address it in a much larger way and a much, much higher financial awareness way. It’s going to be an expensive problem,” Smith said.

Smith proposed funding each of the school districts at $50,000 citing that the need is based on demand, not population; through conversation, he found that each district addresses mental health differently, whether that is contracting out services or providing services within the school.

Becerra suggested increasing the total amount of funding and allowing it to be apportioned based on population. “I have the tendency to believe that demand and population are interwoven ... I still want to bear the footprint of what your goals are, but I still want with the idea that it should be based on headcount, because that I feel is most fair and most defendable,” Becerra said.

The commissioners will discuss a further developed version of the mental health funding plan at a later date.

They also discussed putting out a Request for Qualifications for the Hays County Parks Bond Projects in December, which would allow the commissioners to review the Statements of Qualifications in January and negotiate a contract.

Bond issuances likely wouldn’t occur until March.

The commissioners approved a $197K contract amendment with Tyler Technologies, Inc. for software and implementation as budgeted in the FY21 budget.

The software program is a complete Civil Service software solution that will bring the civil side of law enforcement in line with the criminal side as far as digitizing payments and information updates.

The commissioners appointed Becerra and Smith as Hays County representatives to serve on the Tax Increment Reinvestment Zone (TIRZ) Number 2 Blanco Vista Board of Directors.