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The Hays County Child Protective Board will have a larger Rainbow Room after the commissioners court approved a license agreement giving the board space. At its meeting on April 18, the court decided to allow the board to use space at the county property located at 401 C Broadway Street in San Marcos.
The Rainbow Room is where the board stores and displays goods needed by children and families and takes care of children. Speaking to the commissioners court in February, Karen Brown said the board had been using a 610 square-feet space to store and display supplies. She said there was no space for children to bathe when they are removed from homes on an emergency basis and need to be cleaned. The board had been renting spaces for storage because there was not enough room.
“We cannot take donations,” Brown said in February. “... For example, beds that are needed, we are offered donations of hundreds of diapers that are needed, and we have no place to put them.”
The board will be allowed to make changes to the interior of the building as needed and is covered by the county’s risk pool insurance, county officials said.
Also at Tuesday’s meeting, County Clerk Elaine Cardenas petitioned the court to use county records preservation funds to hire temporary workers to scan records in the clerk’s office.
“We have 400-some-odd boxes of old records sitting on the shelves,” Cardenas said.
The records are at risk of deteriorating and are taking up a lot of space, she said. Outside firms gave six-figure estimates for doing the work of scanning in the old records. However, Cardenas said, a temporary worker could do it for just over $11,000.
“I love that sound,” County Judge Ruben Becerra said.
The commissioners also approved a memorandum of understanding between the county health department and the state health department for medications for the outpatient treatment of sexually transmitted infections and tuberculosis. The state provides the medications at no cost to the county, and in turn the county is able to treat uninsured or underinsured patients at no charge.
In other business, the commissioners accepted the donation of a prescription drug disposal unit from the San Marcos Police Department. The unit will allow county residents to safely drop off prescription drugs that are expired or unwanted, thus keeping the medications out of the water supply and out of the wrong hands.
