Lisa Corrado (City of Henderson, Community Development) oral history interview conducted by Kelliann Beavers and Kristian Thymianos: transcript

An Interview with Lisa Corrado

Perspectives from the COVID-19 Pandemic: Leadership and Learning in Nevada

Produced by:

The University of Nevada Las Vegas The Lincy Institute

2024
Principal Researchers:
Magdalena Martinez, Ph.D. and Kelliann Beavers, Ph.D.

The following interview was a part of the “Perspectives from the COVID-19 Pandemic: Leadership and Learning in Nevada” research project. The recorded interview and transcript were made possible through the generosity of The Lincy Institute at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. The goal of the project was to understand and document how Nevada organizations and leaders responded to the myriad challenges that the pandemic engendered. The interviewees thank The Lincy Institute and their supporters for the opportunity to reflect on their roles throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. The researchers also acknowledge the following individuals who contributed to the conceptualization, data collection, and analysis of the project: Dr. John Hudak, Dr. Makada Henry-Nickie, Elia Del Carmen Solano-Patricio, Taylor Cummings, Peter Grema, Kristian Thymianos, Saha Salahi, Madison Frazee, and Katie Lim.

Each interviewee had the opportunity to review their transcript. All measures have been taken to preserve the style and language of the interviewee. This interview features, Lisa Corrado, Community Development and Services Department Director for the City of Henderson, and was conducted on 5/11/2022 by Kelliann Beavers and Kristian Thymianos. This interview covers topics including reflections on leadership, organizational challenges, and opportunities for collaboration.

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Interview with Lisa Corrado
Date: 5-11-2022
SPEAKERS: Kelliann Beavers, Lisa Corrado, Kristian Thymianos

Kelliann Beavers [00:03]
Okay. So we'll get started. And just confirming, to start, that you are comfortable with the consent form and are verbally agreeing to the form.

Lisa Corrado [00:13] Yes. Thank you, Kelliann.

Kelliann Beavers [00:15]
Okay, great. And Kristian will kick off the first questions.

Kristian Thymianos [00:19]
That's really great. Are you okay with the recording?

Lisa Corrado [00:23] Yes. Thank you.

Kristian Thymianos [00:24]
All right, no problem. Thank you for meeting with us, Lisa. I really appreciate it. We'll jump right into the questions then. First, can you describe your position in the organization that you work for?

Lisa Corrado [00:40]
I'm the Director of Community Development and Services at the City of Henderson.

Kristian Thymianos [00:46]
Next, is, how do you see your role or the City of Henderson's role during the pandemic? Or maybe, not just the City of Henderson – your specific department in the City of Henderson.

Lisa Corrado [01:02]
Okay. Well, we are trained under the FEMA structure for emergency response. And so my department of Community Development and Services, during the active emergency, played the role of – it's ESF 14. It's Emergency – what does that stand for? Let's see. I think it's just Emergency Support Function 14, but it's a long-term recovery basically.

And so, as soon as the emergency starts we're already starting – trying to plan for getting back to normal, whatever that may mean. And so our role is, if businesses are closed, even if there's a flood or some other kind of emergency, how do we get businesses open again, or people back into their homes, or kids back into school? Whatever that "normal" was. So that

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is our role during an emergency, and that was our role during the pandemic, and I can expand on that depending on what you want to hear more about.

Kristian Thymianos [02:20]
Yeah, if you want to expand on anything that you think would be relevant, that would be appreciated.

Lisa Corrado [02:25]
So we played that lead role for that support function. And then when the emergency's not active anymore, we're recovery support, and we go into recovery, so then we're doing some of those efforts. And it kind of just depends on the emergency; if it's a building environment thing, then we have our building and fire safety department, that's helping to try to secure buildings, or making sure that repairs are being done and getting code enforcement out for things like that if it's physical damage to buildings.

For the pandemic, it was more about getting social services out to the community and identifying vulnerable populations, seniors that couldn't get their groceries. We were doing – we literally had planners going to pick up food and distributing food to senior apartments and stuff. But a lot of those services got operationalized and funded through other funding, like stimulus money started coming in and other resources. But we were identifying those gaps, and then trying to fill the gaps to get people – to get their needs met in that initial phase of the pandemic.

It's kind of broad. So we do things like stakeholder engagement with businesses, and our economic development division also sits in our recovery support functions. So they're doing the outreach with businesses, and I would do, and my staff would do outreach with more of the social services groups, the nonprofits, and residents.

Kristian Thymianos [04:09]
Thank you, that was fantastic. I have a really quick follow-up question, and then Kelliann is going to ask a follow-up.

So you mentioned that you are just – about the emergency orders. Is that just coming from the state then, or are you waiting for like May 20th, when Governor Sisolak was ending the emergency order?

Lisa Corrado [04:27]
No. We have an emergency operations center in the City of Henderson, so our leadership can activate our emergency operations center depending on whatever situation it is. And so, we activated – I don’t know if it was March 17th or something – was it 2020? (laughs) I can't remember. Oh, you guys! Yeah, it was 2020 that year.

And then when the governor declared an emergency, then that we followed all of these other new rules and guidelines. But that was the – we were able to activate our EOC independent of a statewide emergency.

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Kristian Thymianos [05:15] Thank you. Kelliann?

Kelliann Beavers [05:16]
I have two questions. Lisa, I didn't realize that your department had this specific designation with respect to FEMA. And so my first question – and maybe the answer is "no." But does that mean that during this period of time you all had to have an ongoing back-and-forth with FEMA at the federal level, or not exactly?

Lisa Corrado [05:43]
We do it through the MAC. And I think it's the Multi-Agency Coordination through the county.

Kelliann Beavers [05:48] Mm-hmm.

Lisa Corrado [05:49]
And so, you may have heard of the MAC already.

Kelliann Beavers [05:52] Yeah, no. I hadn't.

Lisa Corrado [05:53] Okay – oh.

Kelliann Beavers [05:54]
But that's related to my other question, which was about how you worked with the county social services because we interviewed Tim Burch too.

Lisa Corrado [05:57]
Yeah. Well, I think the difference with the city is, we've been trained in it.

Kelliann Beavers [06:04] Uh-huh.

Lisa Corrado [06:05]
So the county staff probably – like my counterpart in social services, I don't think had been FEMA-trained on anything like this.

Kelliann Beavers [06:12] Mm-hmm.

Lisa Corrado [06:13]
And so our team went back to Fredericksburg. I think it's in Fredericksburg, MD, at FEMA headquarters. We applied for a grant, several years ago, to take our team out there and to do this training. So, all of our departments understand the FEMA structure, and the

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planning, like emergency management and all of that stuff. We even brought some people from the county to that. That was like ten years ago or something now, and it's been a priority for our training for all of our directors and assistant directors since then.

But the county leads the regional MAC. And so, for a region wide emergency, they're the lead and we just sit in the MAC. Our emergency management person has a role in the MAC. Same thing with October 1. If it's a shooting or a terrorist thing, they activate certain aspects of our emergency structure depending on the incident. So then our police chief will be sitting in the MAC for October 1 or some other terrorist thing. So there's the state, and then there's the county, and then there's the city. But we knew what to do probably quicker, and we're more responsive than other agencies because we had been trained.

Kelliann Beavers [07:33]
Thanks so much for sharing that. It's fascinating.

Kristian Thymianos [07:38]
Okay. You were touching a little bit on this, so it would be great to expand a little more. Which groups do you believe were hardest hit by the COVID recession?

Lisa Corrado [07:48] The recession?

Kristian Thymianos [07:51] Yeah.

Lisa Corrado [07:52]
And hardest hit economically?

Kristian Thymianos [07:53] Mm-hmm.

Kelliann Beavers [07:55]
Yeah. You can speak about the pandemic as a whole. Honestly, that specific phrase is one that we're sort of deciding how to articulate. Because now there's the conversation about "is this a recession" or "is it not?" So the question is really, just as a whole during the pandemic. And since then, what groups do you believe are the hardest hit?

Lisa Corrado [08:11]
Well, certainly, the service industry at first, when the Strip closed down, all of the events, all of that service worker component, our restaurants, entertainment, they were hardest hit. And then people who were most vulnerable and exposed were still essential workers, like people working in grocery stores, or some of those essential businesses that stayed open, those people were probably more affected from a health perspective.

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I'm trying to think what other businesses were affected...I mean, lots of our public sector was affected because we had to completely shift gears on what we do day-to-day with enforcing new roles and social distancing. And clearing out our parks and making sure – people weren't supposed to be gathering at our parks. They were supposed to be closed. Who was most affected? Children were really negatively affected from school closures and virtual learning. I'm sure I'm missing some really obvious ones.

Kristian Thymianos [09:38]
No problem. That was a pretty comprehensive list regardless. I appreciate it.

Lisa Corrado [09:43] Okay.

Kristian Thymianos [09:44]
Following up is, how, if at all, did your organization's goals change to accommodate these hardest-hit groups?

Lisa Corrado [09:53]
Well, definitely, we had to go into enforcement mode on closures: business closures, businesses that were not deemed essential. We had to make sure they weren't operating. The mask mandates, making sure businesses were enforcing mask mandates for the ones that were allowed to be open. Social distancing requirements.

We also shifted our focus with vulnerable populations and doing outreach where there were COVID outbreaks, like in assisted living facilities and skilled nursing centers. And so, kind of shifting our focus from – we don't have a relationship, really, with those institutions. I mean our fire department does because they do get a lot of calls for service. But that was kind of a new group for me to try to – we started calling them every day, and asking if they needed PPE, and what was going on there, if they needed testing kits and stuff. Or we could send out a "Strike Team," they called it. If there was an outbreak in a nursing home or whatever, we could send the strike team to go test everyone.

And quarantine – and so, yeah. We really focused on quarantine and isolation plans for our first responders and healthcare workers so that they could not expose their families. So we were calling motels and hotels that were willing to offer quarantine space. So yeah, it completely shifted what we did day-to-day for I don’t know, almost a year, it felt like.

Kristian Thymianos [11:37]
A follow-up question. It sounds like there was a lot of enforcement that was going on through your department. Was the pandemic impacting your department directly? Were people getting sick, for example, and that was impacting how you were able to enforce these different measures and stuff like that – impact your capacity?

Lisa Corrado [12:02]
We had some impacts on our staffing. But when we closed city hall and did telework and had – we really shifted the way we did business. Because, again, our focus was on recovery.

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How do we keep being able to develop, and do building inspections, and other parts of our operations remotely or outside? Instead of sending building inspectors inside buildings, they could do FaceTime with people, try and inspect the buildings that way, and do different things.

But yeah. I mean we had some people that got sick in the early stages. But I don't think that really hit us until this last Christmas season when that really contagious version of it was going around, just this last holiday season. So the initial, we closed pretty quickly, so I don't remember staffing capacity being a problem in the initial stages of the pandemic. And it wasn't just my department that was doing enforcement, and we had – code enforcement was helping, but our business licensing did a lot of that enforcement with the businesses too, which is a different department.

Kristian Thymianos [13:21]
Well, thank you. The next question is, can you discuss if there were any collaborative efforts across municipalities or agencies in the state?

Lisa Corrado [13:31] Yes- [cross talking]

Kelliann Beavers [13:36]
Or with nonprofits, Lisa. Really, any collaborations?

Lisa Corrado [13:39]
Oh, yeah. We were on daily calls with nonprofits and business partners, just on what their needs were happening. Especially when it came down to people losing hours and they can't pay their rent. And then we would partner – we provide rental assistance to a nonprofit like Cope [Link??13:55]. But then they ended up having a COVID outbreak and nobody could work. So we were monitoring all of that all the time, and building different partnerships, and relationships so we could have more than one option.

We also ended up sub-granting some of our rental assistance to the county because they invested in a lot of infrastructure to pay for rental assistance and a big software program. That's the CHAPS program. And yeah. I mean, we are very connected, I think, the city of Henderson, with our stakeholders, that we have a high value for outreach, and stakeholder engagement, and just about everything we do.

So we would get input from the hospitals on what they needed and get businesses to help make PPE. We did all kinds of that kind of stuff with private sector nonprofits and then, other public entities.

Kelliann Beavers [14:58]
What's the CHAPS program? Is that what you said?

Lisa Corrado [15:01]
Yeah. The County Housing Assistance, I think, is what that stands for. That's what they

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branded their rental assistance. So, all of that money that we got later wasn't initially – I don't remember when the CARES Act was first passed if that was within the first 30 or 60 days. But that's how they branded that assistance. They set up a big website so people could apply for rental assistance. And in subsequent rounds of funding, we ended up getting what's called ERA, Emergency Rental Assistance, later in the year, right before Trump's term ended, and then we sub-awarded a big chunk of that $9,000,000 to the county to administer for Henderson residents, just because they had already invested in the staffing and software.

And I participated in the county's emergency support structure for housing, so ESF 4, I think, so Emergency Support Function Four is on housing. And so I participated in that at the regional level, so we would share what we were doing – later. That took them a little while to set up.

Kelliann Beavers [16:12]
Are these ESFs, what you’re talking about, is it specifically associated with the pandemic? Or this is something that goes on anyway, and this was an instance of it?

Lisa Corrado [16:22]
Yes, it's any emergency. It's a FEMA-created structure, so it's the same across the country. FEMA has trained all emergency personnel on this. So, usually, it's the fire department and the police department that knows the most about what to do in an emergency, but we at the city have trained on all the recovery support functions. So ESF 1 is – they each have a name. And it's the same because it's a FEMA-defined thing.

And so the county, once they launched their emergency structure, they activated their emergency operations center, and they started staffing it. Then the housing one, they were coordinating that at the regional level, so I sat on that, and then we had our own at the city as well for our own city efforts.

Kelliann Beavers [17:20] Thanks for explaining that.

Kristian Thymianos [17:23]
All right. Moving into the next question. What do you wish the different levels of government would have done or could do differently, during the COVID pandemic?

Lisa Corrado [17:36]
Which government? Federal?

Kristian Thymianos [17:38] State, local, and federal.

Lisa Corrado [17:41]
Oh, gosh. How long do we have, guys? (laughter)

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Kristian Thymianos [17:45]
Let's do the top three things that could have been done differently.

Lisa Corrado [17:51]
Oh, boy. Well, they needed to give us more time to spend stimulus dollars, because the focus on spending that money quickly didn't help fix any of the systemic problems that were present before the pandemic and will continue after the pandemic. So things like our housing crisis, our housing shortage, and our vulnerable populations. And that money had to be spent in quick ways with the COVID nexus, and it was a ton of money that could have made some transformational difference, if we had more time, and if it could have been spent on capital. That was the other limitation, especially with the housing money. It could only be spent on rental assistance or paying people's mortgage bills, and not on new construction.

And so, the City of Henderson will have spent $20,000,000 on rental assistance after it's all said and done, and not a single unit of new affordable housing as a result of that. And that just makes me sick. And I'm not saying that – hindsight's 20/20, right? So it was an emergency. They didn't want people to get evicted. But then we ended up with eviction moratoriums too. And so, maybe we could have had more flexibility with that money.

So my top three would be more flexibility on the spending, allowing it to be used for capital that could address some of the systemic problems that were present before the pandemic. Extending the deadlines because we're still up against deadlines right now to spend this money. So many different pots of money and each one of them has a different deadline.

Unclear guidance – you'll probably hear this from others, working with the Treasury on this money. And they want us to spend it by a certain deadline, but they haven't issued clear guidance on what the eligible expenses are, so, that's an impossible situation.

Kelliann Beavers [20:00]
Yeah, that's interesting, what you were saying about the limitations of not being able to spend the funding on capital? Is the – correct me if I'm wrong – but the funding since then, that has been made available for housing specifically, does not have that limitation, or- [cross talking]

Lisa Corrado [20:22]
The stimulus money that came later has fewer restrictions. That there were rounds of money under the CARES Act, and (phone rings). Hold on. I'm sorry.

Kelliann Beavers [20:35] No worries.

Lisa Corrado [20:38]
I have you on speaker and I'm going into a loud place. ERA and CARES Act funding, I don't think we spent on capital.

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Kelliann Beavers [20:49]
Yeah. That makes sense. (others are talking in the background)

Lisa Corrado [20:54]
Hold on for me one second.

Kelliann Beavers [20:55] Sure. Of course. (pause)

Lisa Corrado [21:39] Okay, sorry. Are you there?

Kelliann Beavers [21:41] Yeah, we're here.

Lisa Corrado [21:43] Okay. Go ahead.

Kelliann Beavers [21:47]
I have a follow-up question about the funding for housing. So I did an interview, a while back, with a woman who worked for an affordable housing developer. Michelle Merced is her name, and I think you probably may have crossed paths with her. [cross talking] But anyway, she was describing to me the means through which they can apply for support to develop affordable housing essentially, related to the stimulus packages that have been released most recently. And one of these things she was describing to me, which I have never heard of before, was how certain programs work such that the nonprofit or the developer will have to front the money. Even if they've been awarded it, they'll have to front it, and then the county will pay it back to them after the development is underway, or something like that. Is that something that you’re familiar with or-

Lisa Corrado [22:41]
Yeah. That's definitely one of the problems that happened with some other rounds of funding too. But it's reimbursable. It's reimbursement-based, which is silly to think that these nonprofits are going to cough up millions of dollars to do these things, and then turn around and bill to get reimbursed. We fronted some of that rental assistance in the CARES Act, like 50% upfront, and then 50% at the end. But organizations like the county, that's against their rules. So if we were working with the county, that was a problem for us.

Another problem that's happening with some of that right now is, they have different purchasing and procurement rules. So, if you're a developer, and you have property management and construction in-house – so you build the units and you manage them after it's built – they are saying, at least at the Nevada state level, based on their interpretation of our purchasing rules, that developer would have to bid out those different aspects of the project, and theoretically, hire somebody else to build the project or to manage it. Even though that is their business, they do it all in-house. So that may create a situation where our affordable housing developers, that do all of that, won't apply for the money.

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Kelliann Beavers [24:17] No doubt.

Lisa Corrado [24:18]
[cross talking] work it out. And we've brought in an attorney from Chicago who has done this – they've already built projects in Illinois. And so we know that it can be overcome, or at least they are a little more risk-tolerant to try it.

And so, we're trying to get that guidance from another state. But it's kind of silly that we have to hire a special attorney to figure this out when the feds have given this money to every state. And is that just an issue for Nevada because of our procurement laws? Or could that have been done differently to avoid confusion?

Kelliann Beavers [25:05]
Yeah. That is really eye-opening, and thanks for taking a minute to explain it.

Kristian Thymianos [25:12] All right-

Lisa Corrado [25:13]
I'm not an expert on this, you guys. You may have to clarify some of that.

Kelliann Beavers [25:18]
Sure, I understand. There are a lot of nuances to it. And I think part of the problem is that nobody understands which is a real problem. But yeah.

Lisa Corrado [25:26]
Laughs. Okay, so- [cross talking]

Kristian Thymianos [25:31]
All right. So – no, no, you’re fine. Thank you so much for everything. We're going to move to my last question before passing it on to Kelliann. So this one is, kind of comparing different policies from the past [audio drops??25:50] Great recession. So if you feel you may not have a good enough answer or whatever, then that's okay. Just like mention that. I know some people haven't.

Anyway, moving on to the question. From your perspective, were there more effective policies or programs, from local to federal levels, that were in place to deal with the COVID recession, compared to the Great Recession?

Lisa Corrado [26:17]
Were there better policies in place to deal with the recovery from the pandemic than the recovery from the Great Recession?

Kristian Thymianos [26:24] Yes.

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Lisa Corrado [26:29]
I think, yes. I don’t know if it's policy guidance, but there's definitely been more funding and more diverse funding that's been made available over the course of these two years. At first, the CARES Act was very limited. But then the stimulus, when they started giving stimulus to the states and to the local governments that are more flexible, yes. I think that was better because it got into local hands faster than the Great Recession. If I'm not mistaken, the Great Recession was more infrastructure funding that went to DOTs and NPOs, and I don't think the city got any recession money to sustain our operations. So we had to get our staff – and being able to respond to a pandemic and a disaster and meet people's needs when you have to immediately cut your staff, we weren't in that situation with this pandemic. We were able to keep staff, and even hire some part-time additional people.

So yes. I think those different policies and funding that were made available were much better than the Great Recession. We had no recovery strategy in the Great Recession.

Kelliann Beavers [28:02]
Were you in your same role then?

Lisa Corrado [28:07]
No, I was in the city at the time, but I worked at the redevelopment agency.

Kelliann Beavers [28:11]
Gotcha. Okay. So thank you for that. The next question is – I'm going to ask this about the City of Henderson, but feel free to respond about the county or state, the legislature in general. But what were the city's biggest policy accomplishments? This could be either in general or during the latest legislative session. Just in general, what do you think are some things to be proud of?

Lisa Corrado [28:42]
Oh, boy. Well, gosh. I think we had the highest vaccination rate in the state, I want to say, and the City of Henderson. I think that was – again, looking at the earlier timeframe when the vaccination became available to the public. We just did such a great job with our community and stakeholders, engaging volunteers, making testing sites available, and making food distribution sites available. We coordinated all of that with different entities. So, I think we were really quick to respond and mitigate the damage. And then, as a reflection of that effort and ongoing communication with the community, we ended up having the highest vaccination rate, like 70%.

From the very beginning, we were – I think that was a huge accomplishment in direct response to this particular emergency. We've had lots of other successes since then: leveraging the stimulus money and reinvesting it in things like education. I mean, that was another area that we were very active in was making sure kids were online and checking with schools and principals. And we purchased Chromebooks faster than the school district did to get into schools so kids could get online for virtual school. Our response was just so much faster that we were able to address those things before some of that stimulus money came through to those organizations to address the most problems.

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We also had the highest response rate to the census survey. Which, if you remember, was going on during the pandemic. I mean there's a lot more. If you guys want a list, I could talk to some other departments.

The other thing I know that we've been really proud of is, our [??30:45] set up 24-hour childcare within a few hours of the shutdown, for first responders, city employees, healthcare workers, and even first responders from other entities. And so, if you're a metro police officer, or firefighter, or something in Las Vegas, and we needed your kids to go somewhere so that you could work and respond to the pandemic. The City of Henderson had opened up a couple of our rec centers for childcare.

Kelliann Beavers [31:15] That's huge, and it's so hard.

Lisa Corrado [31:16]
[cross talking] within a few hours of [cross talking]

Kelliann Beavers [31:19] Yeah, that's amazing.

Lisa Corrado [31:24]
So, it was huge. And so, we only opened it up to those fields, and then we were able to actually open it up to the public, so people could work, and not be ignoring their kids on virtual school and trying to work at the same time.

Kelliann Beavers [31:40] Yeah, that's amazing.

Lisa Corrado [31:44]
Yep. I don't think anyone else did that.

Kelliann Beavers [31:47]
Yeah – no. [cross talking] I mean it's a really hard thing to make happen. So it's incredible that you were able to make that happen.

The next question- [cross talking] Go ahead. Lisa Corrado [31:57]

Go ahead. Sorry. Go ahead...no.

Kelliann Beavers [32:01]
No, that's okay. And to follow up on what you offered, or stated; if there are any press releases, or things that other agencies want to highlight, that they feel have been accomplishments, or any kinds of summaries of data or programs that happened, we'd love to see them. If there's anything out there that's already on the internet that we need to look at, just feel free to forward me anything and we'll definitely look at it.

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Lisa Corrado [32:28] Okay.

Kelliann Beavers [32:31]
The next question – I just have three or four more questions. The next question is, how confident are you that Nevada and/or the Valley has the tools, capacity, and funding necessary to rehabilitate and recover?

Lisa Corrado [32:51]
Hmm. (sighs) How confident am I? Well, I guess – we have recovered, I guess. So I guess we're confident – I'm confident that we're able to recover. People are back to work. But the problem is, there are different problems now, with labor shortages and housing crisis, that we've had trouble with before the pandemic, and I don't think we're on the path to addressing them right now. So I guess, the high confidence in getting people – getting businesses open for – like that was a recovery. It depends on how you define "recovery." Are we still vulnerable to things that have not been addressed? Yes. But our businesses open, and events happening and stuff, yes.

Kelliann Beavers [33:56]
Thank you. The next question is, are there any additional legislative or governmental changes that you think would help improve responses to future crises?

Lisa Corrado [34:15]
Legislative changes...(sighs). We need to do – I'm not an expert on this, but I think – let's see – let me think. Legislative changes-

Kelliann Beavers [34:27]
Or governmental changes in general. It doesn't necessarily have to be legislature-based.

Lisa Corrado [34:36]
Well, we need to do something about the housing shortage. There's a huge market gap in the availability of housing choices for people of all income levels, and we're facing shortages across income brackets that the market is not addressing. And that's a national issue, not just for Nevada, but we have the least amount of more affordable housing of any other state, so it's definitely an issue for Nevada. We also have the lowest amount of investment in mental health and youth mental health. And so, you have this economic crisis and the least amount of investment, especially – we have problems that kids are having trouble, and trying to reconnect, and don't have tools for coping and managing stress. And then both parents and children then turn to substance abuse, and it's just a perfect storm. It's just really unhealthy. And so, in terms of change, we need more investment in mental and behavioral health for everyone, but for young people especially.

And we need investments in housing. Most of those folks have a substance abuse and mental health disorders as well. So it all is kind of like this convergence of issues and underinvestment that we're seeing play out on the ground with the criminal system and emergency rooms. Just a few.

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Kelliann Beavers [36:35]
Yeah, thank you for that. Kristian and I both worked on some FAQ sheets recently about mental health, and youth mental health in the state, and it is devastating.

Kristian Thymianos [36:46]
And I know we're doing two housing things right now too.

Lisa Corrado [36:47]
I mean, you guys know. I mean-

Kelliann Beavers [36:53]
Thank you so much. All of this has been so valuable, and I appreciate you taking the time to talk to us.

The only other thing is, and you’re welcome to send this via email if it's easier. But if there is anyone else that you think we should talk to, take the time to reach out to them and interview them. Obviously, the best interviews that we get come from people who say, "Oh, you've got to talk to so and so." So we're interviewing people, from any leadership position essentially, in the Valley or throughout the state. And so, if there's anyone that you think we need to be sure we talk to, just let us know.

Lisa Corrado [37:28]
Yeah. I mean, I would suggest – Ryan Turner is our emergency manager. And if you haven't already talked to him, he might be a good one. And then he could probably suggest all of those emergency management-type people that were really familiar with the response. And I guess, you’re more focused on the recovery. Have you talked to some of the economic development people, like the LVGA, and people like that?

Kelliann Beavers [38:02]
We do have LVGA on our list. We haven't spoken to them yet.

Lisa Corrado [38:07]
Okay, yeah. And I don’t know who would be best at this point. And then some of the social service agencies, like HELP of Southern Nevada and HELP LINK. Some of the senior groups do more services for seniors but can't think of any particular names.

Kelliann Beavers [38:33]
Thank you. The group recommendations are really helpful just as they are. So I think that's really it.

Lisa Corrado [38:37] Okay.

Kelliann Beavers [38:38]
If you do realize there are – like I said a bit ago, any publications or anything that you think

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we should make sure we look at, please do send them my way. We're happy to review anything to ensure that we have a comprehensive perspective.

Lisa Corrado [38:52]
Okay. Well, I appreciate you guys including me, and it was good to see you, Kelliann. Thank you.

Kelliann Beavers [38:57]
Yes, you as well. It's been too long. And it's great to hear about all of the work you've been doing and thank you so much for it. I know a lot of it can be tireless and intense, so I'm glad you're there to do it.

Lisa Corrado [39:09]
Thanks. Thanks, guys. Thanks for your research. I'll be interested to see your report.

Kelliann Beavers [39:18]
Definitely. And we'll share a transcript of the interview, once we have it ready, in case you want to look through anything.

Lisa Corrado [39:24] Okay. Sounds good.

Kristian Thymianos [39:25] Thank you, Lisa.

Kelliann Beavers [39:27]
All right. Have a good one, Lisa.

Lisa Corrado [39:28]
Thanks again. Okay. Take care, guys.

Kelliann Beavers [39:29] Bye.

End of audio: 39:38

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