Features

By: Kira Villareal

It has been a busy and productive couple of years for the Schertz Emergency Management team. From distributing Covid-19 vaccines to rolling out an enhanced emergency notification system, the department has celebrated some noteworthy accomplishments that are making Schertz a safer, more informed, and better prepared community. Leading these efforts is Emergency Management Coordinator Summer Hall, who has faced some unique challenges in her 18 months on the job, having joined the department during the height of the Covid pandemic. Hall spent the majority of her first year on the job helping to coordinate the City’s pandemic response, but she has nonetheless maintained ambitious goals for the department in other areas and looks forward to the opportunity to focus more on these goals in the coming year.

With the rollout of the Covid-19 vaccines to the public in early 2021, the Emergency Management Office led the City’s effort to support the vaccination effort. They opened clinics at several sites throughout the city, including the Schertz Civic Center. The clinics provided a valuable resource for residents in an area where it was most needed, as San Antonio area clinics were overwhelmed at the time, and it was more difficult for residents of Guadalupe and Comal counties to get to those sites. They also partnered with SCUC ISD to set up vaccine clinics at local schools specifically for students in the approved age groups who chose to get vaccinated. Other clinics were set up in nursing homes and assisted living facilities, and there was even a program to provide in-home vaccinations for homebound residents.

Hall notes that the vaccine effort was one of the most rewarding accomplishments of 2021 for her personally, and for the more than 200 community volunteers that came out every day to help.

“We worked side by side with an amazing and dedicated group of volunteers who became colleagues and friends,” she said. “It was hard work, but it gave us all a sense of purpose and a feeling that we came together to pull off that effort along with the community.”

The City of Schertz vaccine clinics have closed as of March 2022, and there are no plans to reopen them at this time, but Hall says that the department will continue to assess the need and could potentially open them again in the future if necessary.

Along with the vaccine rollout, the City also deployed its new emergency notification system, CivicReady, which allows residents to opt-in for phone, text, and email notifications regarding severe weather and any other type of important community information. The system currently has over 10,000 individuals enrolled, about 2,500 of whom were rolled over from the old system, and 8,000 of whom have joined since the new system was rolled out in the Spring of 2021. CivicReady immediately proved to be a great resource, as it was made available during the height of the vaccination effort and was used to notify residents when vaccination spots became available.

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The other major effort that Hall is leading involves conducting a schedule of master planning training exercises that will be used to update the City’s emergency management plan. The plan consists of 23 different functional areas, called annexes. These include key processes and issues that would need to be managed during a crisis, such as emergency communications, shelter management, and disaster recovery. Her goal is to conduct a major training exercise in each of the 23 areas in the next 5-7 years and she has held two discussion-based exercises during the past year. One of these was for a civil unrest situation and the other dealt with a winter weather event.

During the exercises, key city officials and department heads meet to review a hypothetical emergency situation and work through every aspect of the City response, including timelines, responsibilities, and coordination between the departments. After evaluating the success of each exercise, the insights gained from the exercise are used to improve and update the emergency management plan. The winter weather exercise conducted in 2021 had the added benefit of preparing the City to manage an actual winter weather event that occurred a few weeks later in early 2022. The event was less severe than the large-scale winter storm of February 2021, and it gave City officials an opportunity to put into practice some of the learnings they had gained from the planning exercise.

Hall will spend much of the next year evaluating the state of each of the annex plans and planning future training and exercises. The next two areas that she will focus on are Public Information and Emergency Operations, the latter of which she has a training planned for September 2022. Hall also hopes to be able to hold an emergency preparedness fair for the public this September to coincide with National Preparedness Month. Plans for the 2021 fair had to be put on hold due to a rise in Covid cases. In the meantime, citizens can receive valuable information on how they can be better prepared for an emergency through a special public education effort – Ten Minutes to Preparedness. Each month, the department will focus on a specific topic and offer some simple tips on things that residents can do to prepare for an emergency. These will be published in Schertz Magazine as well as on the department’s website and social media.

Despite the challenges, Hall is proud of what her office has been able to accomplish this year and she is looking forward to the coming year. She’s cautiously optimistic about the opportunity for more in-person activities and the new opportunities that these will bring. “Personally, I found one of the biggest challenges so far to be the fact that I wasn’t able to get out and meet counterparts and other agencies in the area,” she said. “A year and a half in, I’m still working to make those in-person connections, but that’s starting to happen again and I’m excited for the future.”

By: Madison Porras

Over four years ago, Parks Manager Jared Montney paid a visit to the Schertz Public Library to go over the landscaping condition of their courtyard. In the corner of the courtyard, there was an overgrown planter. Montney felt that the space needed something better, and the idea of creating the Discovery Garden that changes seasonally was born: “We wanted to give kids an opportunity to learn more about what it is like to grow plants and interact with plants in an outdoor setting.” said Montney.

To help bring this idea to life, Jared partnered with Youth Services Librarian April Toman. In December 2021, they invited the public to help plant a sensory garden in this space. After planting, the community was welcome to walk through the garden and experience it with all five of their senses. Come springtime, Schertz Cibolo Universal City ISD program coordinator Marypaz Buitrón-Gines reached out to the Schertz Public Library to partner on an event for their Bilingual/ESL/ LOTE program. April jumped at the opportunity, inviting Jared to do a joint event for the Discovery Garden.

On April 14, 2022, students and their families were invited to a special story time with April to read Harvesting Friends/ Cosechando by Kathleen Contreras and Gary Undercuffler, a

story of two friends who plant a community salsa garden. Following story time, the students joined Jared in planting all of the essential plants for salsa ingredients: tomatoes, peppers, onions, cilantro, garlic, and more. Alongside a tour of the library and it’s bilingual resources, each child left with a complimentary copy of the book as well as seeds to plant their own tomatoes at home.

The turnout and response from this event was tremendous, and the children are excited about the new salsa garden: “A couple of our young patrons check the garden during their weekly library visit and update me how the plants are growing.” said Toman. “Now that the salsa ingredients are growing, we invite the community to harvest the ripe vegetables and take them home to enjoy.” For Montney, the Discovery Garden is a way to help encourage children’s natural curiosity in a hands-on way: “Where does our food come from? Why do butterflies like some plants better than others? Why do some plants smell good and others stink? We all can google questions like that but the

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experience in person is priceless.” said Montney. In addition, this partnership between Schertz Public Library and Schertz Parks and Recreation fosters nutritional literacy, environmental awareness, and provides opportunities for family engagement in outdoor spaces.

As for the future, Toman is hoping to add more nature programming to the library's calendar and possibly create a Library Garden Club that would help maintain the gardens and help develop other gardening projects: “The future will depend on the community's involvement and engagement with the Discovery Garden.” said Toman.

With this program, the seeds of early readership and outdoor learning have been planted and the open invitation stands to watch the garden grow into the opportunity to harvest their efforts both in the garden and between the pages.