Keeping the Human Connection: Harold Womble, Deputy Director, Brazos Valley Council of Governments

0:00Hello everyone and welcome to the Fortell podcast. Today I'm joined by Harold Womble, the Deputy Director of Brazos Valley Council of Governments. A BVCOG works across seven Texas counties coordinating an extraordinarily broad range of services. You know, I've been there but it's from housing to community action, workforce development, aging services, work, broadband, public safety. It's a big list, right? And today we're going to discuss what it takes to make public services genuinely accessible. The reality is facing families seeking housing and financial assistance and how regional organisations can modernise without losing, you know, that crucial kind of human connection. So, Harold, thanks so much for being here. Well, I'm glad to be a part of this.

0:37Yeah, and I thought we'd start with something that's not community action related, just a little bit about the Womble and the fact that you're from England originally. Just tell people in 30 seconds what that's all about. So we did research on our family history and stuff and we found that the Wombel family came from a little community north of Yorkshire called Wombel, which the word Wombel stands near the well. And so if it's one of my goals is to try to go to London and to actually go to the where our hometown is, to take a tour of it. And I've seen it on the maps. I've kind of took a few views from Google

1:16map and stuff like that. But I want to physically walk the streets and say, hey, this is where all the Womble in the world came from. All the Womble. And so, yeah, we've made a pact that I'm going to come over back to CU and you're going to take me to one of the pretty amazing football game I'm hoping. You get to there, I've got a come and see you there as well. So that's exciting. But I kind of just wanted to touch on, because what's interesting about what you guys do is, so, you know, people may not have understood or encountered accounts of the governments.

1:49So, what kind of, why does that regional model matter? Like, what do you guys do in terms of, you know, how you address some of the communities that's a little bit different to some other community action agencies? Sure. So as a council government, we are mandated through our state law here as a what's called a regional planning commission. And we have, we're kind of a quasi-government in that our board is made up of all the different county judges and the mayors of our communities. So they kind of set the direction of how they want us to work. And our goal is to try to find grants

2:26and things that a lot of our smaller counties may not be able to do on their own so that we can kind of multiply that factor across there. So if one county maybe doesn't have have enough that would qualify for a grant, and another county may not has that same issue, but they don't have the ability to do it, we can go after it and try to get it for all seven counties so that we can provide services there. And so our organization, we do multiple things here. We have a little over 24 different programs when you look at all of them. Everything from WIC, which is work

3:01infants and women's infants at children's program. We have our meals on wheels program. We have our weather station program energy program, which is all under the BVCOG program. We also have a affordable rent program that we have where we have 21 houses that we have bought through community block development grants in the community so we can keep those at a affordable rate between 60 and 80 percent of the AMI for the clients. We also have our housing program section eight housing where we have that over 19 almost 2,000 vouchers that we use throughout the 70 counties. We have our workforce services, child care management services, so we are able to help

3:43individuals not only find work but also put them to school to train through our WIOA programs and also help them those child care for our working families then for that might be in some of their high demand occupations or if they're looking for work. Then we have other programs such as 911 services that we do here. We have our Homeland Security programs and our public safety planning programs. So we do a gamut of things here and they all totally service this tie in together. So we have to look at what can we do in the community that helps the benefit especially since we're in a rural area. All of our seven counties, six of them are

4:23extremely rural. The Brazos County is done and one is considered a non-rule area in that we have about 49 percent of our areas in the rural area but 98 percent of the people live in the Bryan College Station area for this community. Sorry, when lives at your office, you showed me the map. So you showed me and it's a big, big region. So like talking about like you've got urban centers there and you've got some really rural areas too. So talking about the different needs and how you guys balance that and think about that across the different programs. So we do. We have to look at, especially

5:03some of our counties that are in the very rural areas, but they're about an hour and a half, like some of the communities out there. They may only have a population. I think they're been generous that they have 300 people living that community but they're very rural and so they have more issues. They don't have the housing structures that they might need. They may not have the the facilities, the such as emergency preparedness services and those type of things. And so we have to work with a lot of these communities with their mayors, their city managers trying to see what services we can bring into that community and work with

5:42the collaboration with them. And that's this part of working with our agencies here, especially with our community action programs. So we work with a lot of families that are maybe they're just on social security or some type of disability payments. And so they can't afford to pay their utility bills. And so that we're able to help out, especially in those rural areas, a lot to help them so that they don't struggle just doing those basic things. Or we do weatherization for a lot of those same households so that we can at least improve the weatherization so that we can help lower those utility bills for those families. And of course, there are

6:23community programs. We also work a lot helping them with rent and trying to help them get stabilized. Yeah, I see that. And actually, one of the other things I was thinking about before this conversation is because you ran, I think the housing programmer. I didn't direct the right. So talk to me about in those sort of years working in housing, we're starting to do more work in housing, right? We don't eventually work in Houston, I think I mentioned you some work in South Carolina. But from that experience, what does it teach you about policy that can't be understood simply from looking at stats? So when you're working in a program such as housing, you do have

7:02some strict policies that come out through such as HUD, but you have to look at the individuals. Each person has their has their own life and they have their own stories. And so you have to understand their situation whether or not. And not every person is trying to, you know, get onto a program and stay on those programs. They really want to improve their lives. And so through our housing program, we have another program that is called our family self-sufficiency program. And that program, we work with them trying to, that I'm on a five-year contract where that we work with them to try to, if

7:39they don't have their high school diploma, help them get your GED. And if they have their high school diploma with GED, try to help coordinate those services through like workforce services so that maybe they can take some training to learn high-demand occupational skill that would improve their job opportunities that they can go for. Working with them, trying to help them with child care if they need that and so they can go to school and to improve themselves. But we want to make them successful and try to help them who is part of that program as they do find better paying jobs into the FSS program,

8:15family self-sufficiency program. As their rent went up and they were paying more, we took the difference of what we were paying and putting it back into an escrow account for them so that after a five-year period that they had a pretty good size chunk of money that they could use for either to help for down payment on a home where they could have their own home or use that if they needed to like maybe buy a better car for themselves so they could get to work. And we work with our financial fitness people to help you know educate them on credit scores, how to improve their credit,

8:47how to you know how to put money down for a house, how to build you know savings accounts those type of things. So it's really a lot of education with clients and trying to improve their lives for them because as I tell people all the time it's really not about the family it's the parents it's really about the next generation. How do we break that cycle of poverty for that next generation so that those kids and stuff they can get a better life than it so that they can see that hey there is a better life than you know having to live maybe on housing or having to struggle from day to day operations. Yeah I see that and

9:25because one of the things when you were kind enough to take me around your offices right and see Scott and Topanga and the team and all the rest of it like you know you talked to me about long-term and short-term right. So you talked about you know CAP in a lot of ways is you know it's a bandaid right it's like to help one go through something and there in there are parts of your agency when you know it's much more in-depth what you're talking about with housing so just tell me how do you balance those things like when is it right to give someone you know a little bum, a little help and then when do you need to be

9:54much more involved in proper case management much more regularly. Yes and that's what you have your case managers trained for. We do a lot of training with our staff here to help them understand you know what are those barriers in people's lives some barriers are real easy to fix people have a bump in road you know they lost their job and they're just in that transitioning from you know to that next job that they're trying to find but during that meantime they still have all the bills coming in so CAP and those type of programs are really good to help with that you know to kind of get them to that next step you know that so that they don't

10:30get behind on the rent they don't lose their car their transportation that they need in order to get to work on especially in a rural communities like that if you don't have a vehicle you don't have a job because most of the time you're going to have to commute into a larger community to find work and so it's trying to help them understand that we can help them but then you do have those individuals that you see that have some barriers or maybe they have a learning disability they have a physical disability that may be a mental disability and so then you have to do those wraparound services that you have

11:01to look at you know do we need to help them with the counseling you know or do they need to be working with us with our financial counseling person here to help them make sure that they understand you know how to balance their own the budgets and stuff or do they have issues with the child care and so this causing them not to be able to work because they can't afford to daycare so trying to see if we can help maybe it's that part of it and so that you can along term and then there's those families you know that they may be on housing that they're not going to come off our house and

11:33because maybe they have some physical barriers or their age and stuff like that and we're working with our you know our agency on aging program that's another of our programs that we have here where we work with those and our disability clients so that we can help them you know maybe was making sure their social security is coming in those top things because they're pointing their lives at hey they're not going to go back to work you know i'm 78 i may not want to go to work and so I agree I agree I think sometimes there are days i don't want to go to work right now like that Monday they're Sunday

12:07but like tell me about case managers right because you'd work with a bunch of them and you've also had you know previous careers in different organizations that we talk about as well right so i'm interested in like what elite case management is and what kind of averages and what frankly not so good is right and and partly partly this is just you know it's an interesting topic but partly because we're doing this trial in South Carolina right now where we're using an AI alongside a case manager right that checks in that like follows up that someone can do some role plays with and I know you

12:37are interested in this area so tell me mostly what is great and then where do you see the role of technology and what has been for a hundred years like a super personal thing so for me a good case manager is one of those that anticipates the issues right they they will know how to communicate and they have a heart for caring i've had case managers that they just doing a job you know they're going to ask the the five questions that they got to ask and that's about it and then they're just checking a box and they're moving on but but you got to have those case managers those excellent case managers they

13:15take that next step they they listen to the client they hear what's the underlying problem there they're not trying to solve that that that shallow problem it's at the top they're looking for the root cause of the issue you know what do we really need to do to help this client and so that's where you have those those case managers that that really care for their clients they're the ones that hey you know today i haven't heard from Susie i'm gonna call her today because you know she was supposed to check in yesterday and she didn't check in so let me see what's going on with her i'm gonna call her right now just to see

13:49hey Susie what's going on today and those are the top of case managers that go to that next level and they care and they celebrate with their clients when you know when they have those successes even with the small success you know and that's those case managers that say hey you made it today you know this is the third day in a row that you hear on time man that's great and you know you're you're doing so good at what you're doing here or oh hey i heard that you had a great interview today for this job that you're getting at man i'm pushing for you to get that job

14:22does or anything i can help you with you know they're always looking to help that client but they also know when to back off and so when they start seeing that client starting to do better they're starting to do to let them delegate to them to say hey this is your life you're doing better you got it you know we're pushing for you i'm gonna be your cheerleader here in the back now but they're not gonna be the one that's going to you know smother them and say oh well i got to take over again no let it go but AI so there's things that every

14:54case manager dreads you know from taking the case notes to you know having to do those generic things that everybody has to do so if there's a way that we can incorporate AI into doing that initial assessment you know the basic information that you need to know every client let's get that out of the way so that when it's time for the case manager to really physically talk to the client they they have the basic knowledge that then they can get into more time with that client so they can find out what that root cause of the issue may be you know is it just because they lost their job or is it because

15:32they don't have the skill set that they need in order to be in the market we see all the time about every 10 years there's gonna be a change and i think it's even speeding up quicker now of jobs that go away you know they would come here relevant AI is doing that a lot to the jobs today and it's not just the blue collar workers it's white collar workers too that are starting to see their jobs go away back back we've even seen in the you know companies like amazon and em that are have been letting their own managers go because they replaced them with AI

16:02so that's so you have to retrain people and you have to learn what the new skill set may be and and see if there's something out there that they can do or if there's an issue that they might need help with you know if they don't have transportation as many years ago when i was a case manager i'd have clients that were coming out of prison we was working with them on a regular basis and that's they'd always say well the job's too far away i said well the lord gave you two good feet let's use our two feet when you get your first paycheck let's go down to goodwill and let's

16:34see if we can get you a bicycle and then when saving money up the next thing you do is we can maybe look at getting a used car but you got to take baby steps and this is you got to set up a plan and that's what a good case manager does they help the client see what that plan might need to be you know yeah you let the client decide what the plan is but you need to give them some options there yeah i agree i mean the thing that's got shuber who's part of our team now he used to run the connection agency in washington state

17:05he he or he talks about him being a great case manager in the people's stuff and a terrible case manager in the like let's take the case next stuff right so clearly you know that's and it's kind of the same with sales people as well as the best sales people are the worst putting stuff in their CRM right but the bit i found interesting what you were talking about there is like what the future of you know your organizational community action agencies oh so give you an example from our world right so Chris my co-founder you know brain the size of a planet i often say he's the brain

17:36brain's on the hair but you know that's fine the thing that he's you know we we co-founded a company together 10 years ago and obviously we've done this one and his world has completely changed his world is you know he's now got you know AI agents writing a bunch of the code and he's like prompting it and editing it and changing it but he's not having to physically write that code and but i think my world of meeting people connecting all that hasn't changed it's actually probably got a little bit harder because of all the kind of AI emails that people are getting right yeah so from so but i suppose where i'm

18:11i'm thinking in in your in in this sort of community action bit it's like anything that's happening anything that's repetitive anything that's bureaucratic should be done by an AI agent and anything that's human again should be done you know face to face or ideally you know i really face to face and so but i i feel like there are some agencies that are far advanced to that and then some who who aren't right and i know you guys are big levels of technology so but where do you see that transition happening and yeah where where are you guys on that all that sort of thinking as well

18:43yeah so we're we're right now trying to work on that you know we're working with our our vendor on the software that we use to try to get more of that into an AI system i know they're working with y'all on that too because what we need to do is get away from paperwork side of it and we need to get into the human interaction side of it well if you spend you know more than half your time doing the paperwork then that's that's half your time that you're not actually working with clients and you got to have both but if there's a way that you can

19:14eliminate some of those processes and say you know if you do ABCD every time and it's the same step every time that can be something that can become an AI process because you know that you got to do ABCD it's just a matter of you know asking those questions through whether it's an AI prompt or answering the questions and stuff and it's all courted for you it goes into your software system and so it's there so as a as a case manager you could come in at morning you know you've got four appointments today you got to see four clients this morning and you can look and say this is

19:48they've answered these questions here's here's what they put okay how do i how do i tailor now what i need to do with them based on the answers that they put into the system so you're able to go ahead and start lining those things up for them you know if you see they don't have transportation or oh they're behind on the utility bills and so that's one of the things that they need help with and one of the reasons they're behind on the utility bills is because they're their utilities have process have gone up but they're also living an older home and so that home property needs maybe some

20:23weatherization on it well let's talk to our weatherization guys and see if this home might be a potential fresh come in and put in new insulation put in new AC unit in maybe seal the windows whatever we need to do to get tips at process so it's kind of taking some of those things out but it also can help you especially on the AI stuff is to look at those kind of those trends that that client's been talking about when they put that stuff in there and it gave you some feedback too say hey have you thought about a b c and d also for your client yeah

20:55yeah yeah yeah no i see that i see that the bit i suppose i was also interested is like where do you see if you were going to go say five years in the future what do you how do you think the world's changed how do you like do you think the programs will change in texas for what you guys want you know what are the feds going to do is difficult so forecast but yeah where do you where do you see that maybe the unmet need and what you guys can do to change that you know it's changes with every administration we're about to have here elections here in

21:28november we'll probably see some changes in the house in the senate then another two years out we'll have a new presidential election we may probably have a change we never know and that could change how policies come out from the feds right now it's more of a more restrictive of what we're looking at but what i see long term on this is there's going to be the need for more more services we see the populations that are not decreasing we see not in texas yeah we definitely have a huge increase of people coming into our area and they're coming here for jobs uh we just

22:05matter of fact the the elan musk is building a new plant here the terrify a plant uh that's going to be a 56 billion dollar project that's been built and that thing's massive i just was at a thing not too long ago and they were talking about that if you put the pentagon you put the mall of america and there's two other buildings you put them together they would all fit inside of this thing and it looks like a spaceship we know we know space right yeah right but that's going to be some new jobs that are going to be coming to our area and they're talking about you know the

22:39lowest paying jobs will be starting at 75,000 a year so what's that going to happen that means we're going to have new housing that also means we're going to have new road structures because you'll have transportation needs to come into that area but that also means that you got to have construction workers that means you got to have people that are going to be trained in the the sciences and the engineering chip manufacturing and those type of things our our university out here matter of fact that that's one of the things that they're working on a program right now they'll be doing a lot of training for

23:09those chip manufacturing jobs when it comes to the engineers that you know those type of things so you have that but we look at the other things though it's like we run a solid waste this grant here too so we're thinking about well what do you do about all the solid waste is coming off of this plant you know those are things you got to think about what about the environmental waste that you have off of those are the things you have to look at what's the economic changes because we do economic development here and so you have to think about those types of things there's going to be

23:37major changes and then you're going to have the the increase in the info of people moving into the community so then they're going to need more schools and they're going to need more services just because you have families move in they may not be working there but that's going to have also a dynamic change in the workforce for some of our other companies here because as they're hiring mill rights and they're hiring these other skilled labor jobs they're going to be pulling those people away from other plants other companies that are already in our community because they're going to be paying more than what these jobs that are

24:13you know the small mom and pop shops so what does that do it does a trickle down effect in that those other places are going to need to be hiring workers so that gives us as an opportunity to help train those people and put them into a new job so there there's just this life cycle as you can say of this area that's going to be happening over the next 10 to 20 years it's it's uh this is a growing community here uh we'll be seeing more and more people moving in from the you know from out of state into this area to take some of these jobs you know out at this place

24:45but it's also bringing in other manufacturing companies we've already had two other companies say that they're going to be moving into the area just because of the terafab plant so we we see more and more of that happens so that's going to bring more job that's going to bring more construction work and that's going to be bringing more manufacturing work in so good times ahead but there's also those growing pains that you have to go through in order to get to those and so you you have to work through some of those things also as a agency for sure for sure i mean do you guys

25:16how do you think about hey how difficult is it for you guys to hire good people and be what are the kind of skills you're trying to bring into the agency yeah and you know that's a good thing we we sit here and we were always trying to hire the the you know good quality people and you do have people that come into especially in our top of market here we do have you know Texas A&M University here and so they bring in a lot of educated professors and stuff out to the universities out there but then they have a lot of master's degree programs doctorate programs and even their bachelor's

25:49degree programs where they have a lot of good candidates come out of it so the good thing about this has more and more of these places are opening up we see more and more of those students that graduate stay in this community which allows us also to have the opportunity to try to get some of those to work for our agency or we should you know we're always looking for the best candidate everybody is but we also know that we can't be as competitive as a lot of them just because you know you're working with government funds and basically you're limited on watching you can afford to pay you know you're you're trying to pay what market

26:24rate is we never would be able to do that so you have to look at what is your benefit package you know is it you know a good benefit package I think we have a great benefit package you know here for our agency but you but you also have to look at you know do you bring somebody in and they're great and they leave you that's fine but did they give you something while they were here you know it's like a they should have a boss that always said he says I really have a good employee for a short time that a bad employee for a long time

26:52I'm sure that's true yeah yeah it's uh you know we we struggle with that just like everybody else does in this community and I think what we'll see too is over time especially for our employers in this area for them to be a competitive they will have to look at their weights they're you know the wages that they pay and they will probably have to bump them up in order to be competitive not just the reality of it so that's something and as for an agency you know we're going out after more and more grants I know here's in the last 30 days I've written for three

27:25different grants that we're trying to bring into you know other programs into this area that's part of my job I look every day to say hey what's up there you know what the feds have out there what the state has out there what does the have the private industry have out there that way of grants what can I bring into our community to help out and just pile that in together and so and that's and that's one of those good things about AI you can take and say hey hey call us stuff that we do for all these 24 different programs tied together and help me write something that

27:54ties in you know all of our one-stop services together and so we can show a you know more holistic picture of what we do here yeah well I think you guys you know doing great work and you know I think it's it's exciting what you're thinking about it's exciting you know the ways you're already thinking about how technology can improve things without losing that kind of human action so so I'm excited to come back get a football game or a softball game that you were telling me about whatever yeah yeah it's probably easy to get a softball tickets that's what I reckon yeah I was lost fun man yeah yeah and yeah carry on the

28:28conversation hour but thanks so much for being really appreciating well thank you Rob look forward to seeing you again