 Good day and welcome to the Cove show We're members of the Committee on Elders from on elders and my name is Don McDonald and Tony Reddington is with me and Linda Della Ducca is also with me and have them introduce themselves Hi, I'm from Tony Reddington again. I'm from Like Don and Linda and from Burlington. I live in the Old North End and my areas of primary area of interest is Transportation and transportation safety And I do have a background also in housing housing planning and I'm Linda Della Ducca and I'm from Burlington, too I'm a retired teacher and my back main interest is in issues around housing and nutrition and Medical needs for seniors and our growing concern about our growing population of seniors in Vermont and my name is Don McDonald and I'm with Vermont Alliance vCAPT Vermont Community Alliance for Public Transportation I've been involved with public transportation in Vermont for quite a while and like Tony and like Like Linda we're on the Policy Committee for Cove We have a few questions Question and answer at first one. What what is Cove? Maybe Linda you could give us an idea sure Cove was established in 1981 and basically it started out as a group of people who were doing provider of service provided For seniors and they were separate organizations and they realized they would have a stronger voice and stronger advocacy if they joined so Cove really stands for the community of Vermont elders and You can be a member like the retired teachers from Vermont are members and nutrition groups are members but also individuals are members and they are Have maintained a very strong and consistent voice in public policy Decisions around senior issues in in Vermont for example like you know people say well that a bus goes a certain route Anybody can get on it, but if you're a senior maybe the distance is too much or The bus doesn't run at convenient times, you know, they and so on so We sort of advocate for the fact that there's a large number of people in Vermont who are not 25 years old and it make You know the public policy makers are aware of senior issues Yeah, that's One of my interests Don has been the and it's been thanks a great deal to Linda again is as a Recent member like as you are to the policy committee has been the demographics or the change of population of seniors in Vermont and as we looked into the the projections the official state projections of population for Vermont for the period 2010 to 2030 we're right in the middle of that 20-year period. This is 2020 the projections were quite startling and if you average the look look if you evaluate the and look at those projections that showed that Vermont for over a 20-year period starting in 2010 and we're going through 2030 there would be 4,000 more Seniors 4,000 more persons 65 and older every year. Yep adding to our population Mm-hmm on the other hand as I think we all know We have a we've got a baby bust and a lot less kids and there's big fights going on among a lot of towns So what they're going to do to consolidate their schools? Why because we have we have actually had a having a decrease in Under-65 population so the seniors are growing the non-seniors are declining and that means Two things first we as seniors and on cove have a larger group of Increasing markets you might say that needs services and but in health care and transportation That is a growing need and so therefore there's more of a need for cove than ever so to speak because of the demographics Yeah, no, and I think a lot of people aren't aware of the fact that the population turning 65 has Implications not only in the area for example that I mentioned of transportation, but in medical care and For example having doctors offices not accessible to public transportation is it becomes a problem Nutrition becomes a problem We're concerned about housing for seniors for example if there are two people on social security living in a house and one person dies the social security income drops and often they can no longer maintain their housing and Then the of course the issues around maintaining your housing because of it's either not accessible or it's difficult to live in But but economically it's a huge issue around the state for the number of people who can no longer afford to live in their housing the one of the things the main thing I'm concerned with is transportation and Transportation for seniors it was a mention of the Especially with the medical facilities Around the Burlington area Chittenden County northern Vermont one of the problems is Tilly Drive In my opinion, that's probably the toughest problem around the Burlington area Not only affects seniors it affects everybody. It affects the refugee community They used to get their services from the Community health center right over here on Riverside about a block down from where we are now and They switched that out to Tilly Drive now You can't get a bus to Tilly Drive and it's a long long walk from the nearest bus Pretty much close to a mile if you have and they're not sidewalks even no not while they did put it in a cup I mean, this is real rudimentary stuff, but you're right. There's no sidewalks. They're not adequate There's some new parts of sidewalks. They put in mainly because they have new housing going in hey, you know and The maddening part is they've tried the ssta With a shuttle service from the Union University mall and You have to make a reservation two days in advance and you have to make the connection in other words if the number one bus coming from downtown is Two minutes or five minutes off, which can happen a lot because you have to go through Dorset Street and Wilson Road in that area You you you're out of luck You can't make it and the thing is that the experience now with the ssta is that their numbers are way down Because the people just can't make the connection like There one thing I think would work if they had a bus running from directly from the community health center out to Tilly Drive and Just shuttle back and forth between those two points maybe making a stop at the downtown transit center or something like that But the cost of that is high And so the cost has to be would be born by GMTA or in the way the structure that they have now I understand it's born by GMTA The developers the hospital and the developers are the ones that are making are benefiting From the Tilly Drive situation some of these other satellite use Tilly Drive because it's been there a while It's got a history But some of these other Satellite operations that are opening up. I was at the VA the other day for example, and that's down on pine Street and that's In the old General Electric building and the defense plant and it's about About 1,500 feet from the nearest bus stop to the VA and I have high blood pressure and The doctor a while we're getting on my back, but they're not doing it anymore. They say well, man. Let me tell you that's a long walk From the bus stop to the second floor Here and that's maybe that's one of the problems that we have right well You know the thing is that I've noticed being involved in this for a few years is that they're so all intertwined The the four issues that I mentioned transportation, right medical care housing and nutrition and if you can't Coordinate those and if they're off by a little they might as well be off by a lot on a really In Vermont weather in the winter to say well, there's a bus stop three blocks away If you're not able to walk three blocks It might as well be six miles Yeah, and that impacts your ability to get to grocery stores to the senior center to how to nutrition places it impacts your medical care and It impacts the housing and I know we we were all at a meeting when we were talking with some people from Transportation and they said well people are going to have to give up their houses in the country And they're going to have to move in to more congregated areas But I thought the Vermont policy was people could age in place and if you age in place That doesn't mean you necessarily want to live in downtown urban areas. You you want to age where you right? Where your place is right? So that's and that's becoming an increasing problem I know we were talking about it on on the Vermont poverty council And we were saying that the baseline we have to worry about is housing because if you don't get stable housing Then the transportation gets to be a challenge nutrition gets to be a challenge and medical care, you know It's not only with people in our age group, but it's throughout we've had problems of retaining people right here at Channel 17 If at situations where people moved in they haven't been able to find adequate housing after a year or two, right? And because it's too Expensive that's the problem. There are things that are not so much in place here in the States But say like in in Canada in Quebec You have a central housing in mortgage situation, right? It's You know, it's differences. Well, they're just they're just our ways that they have of taking care of me Let me go let me talk. I'd like to offer Something that looks like some good news that were That that could make a real change at least in transportation and that is there's been a discussion as you know on our Cove policy committee of a fair-free transit now for some months It's one of certainly a priority One of you know expanding public transportation is one of our policy explain what that means So fair-free transit would basically mean this that Let's take the example of White River the two-state Local transportation service that serves Lebanon Hanover and White River Junction area is actually does have free Affairs today in other words you just get on the bus and to where you want to go and you don't have to Fidget in your pocket to find 50 cents or a dollar or whatever or pull out a card and have it in the machine That doesn't work as you point out Don a lot of these these fair fair collection machines They break down and and the the driver doesn't have to try to Explain what's going on or have to worry about a wait for the these people these these passengers to get on anyway the point is it's free and most in our local transit systems in Vermont the amount of money that's collected at the fare box is about 10% of the total cost of operating so to say fair-free transit is gonna cost a lot of money It doesn't cost that much, but you get a tremendous benefit because you can expect anywhere from 40% an average of 40% increase in number of passengers plus the savings to the the Local transit operators are not having to count the money every night and put it in the bank and and buy the equipment to To handle the tickets and the money so it's also an environmental Well, this is the the limit. That's the point suddenly Free public transit and encouraging public transit is very popular with the climate change issue And and also the legislature is looking and the governor and other political leaders are looking for a win Well, here's a win without without a great deal. Maybe a couple million dollars difference In cost they would have tremendous benefit to local communities to us to our seniors So we're most concerned about and to help boost For the discussion of the connections to Tilly Drive and other problems within each area, so Talk to your local representative. I think you're going to hear a lot more about for a fair-free transit and it For Burlington we would be one of the biggest beneficiaries The the thing about its cost-benefit ratio The fare box is The Burlington the collections are are high compared to national in other words We collect a large percentage, but the percentage is not when you dollarize it Yeah, and you also add on you have to think of they cause controversy a lot. There's arguments There's weights. There's people that are cold. It's cold weather And when you haven't and when somebody pays with any kind of coin it seems to have a problem and You know we have the Canadian ink American coin thing. Well, yeah, but yeah, but they don't That's actually that adds to it. I think in the way because you don't look at it the fare box isn't set up for Canadian money, okay, and We have a lot of visitors from Montreal and so therefore that creates an issue. Okay There's just negative issues with it and when you sit down on a pencil and you figure this stuff out It doesn't make a whole bunch of sense to have a fare box recovery system Well, think just think for a moment and I'm I'm into statistics and data, but even I am Amazed the fact that the people of the low-income area and I live in the old north end Yeah Along with King Maple of two neighborhoods with the lowest incomes in the city But in the old north end almost about one in three households has no access to a car Right, so they are dependent upon walking basically in public transit. Yeah, so this is not an academic issue one of the suggestion one of the comments about fare free transit from the public transit office in Monterey was that well, you're gonna have a lot of the people who will be taking advantage of this will be low-income and seniors and I being a senior and but I'm not that low-income I'm saying well, that's exactly why we should have low fare free transit because Seniors and those of low-income are prevented from getting to the store doing trips to to for medical or social appointments because of Even 75 cents or a dollar per ride Barrier financial barrier and just to weigh in on this a little bit having grandchildren who are in their 20s They don't own cars. Yeah, they use a lot of younger people are now using public transit Well, let's get back to some of the cove things though because I'm gonna run out of time. I think yeah, yeah The second question here is why was cove developed well as I think I said because we wanted to have a stronger united voice so people like AARP people from nutrition fields people from areas of transportation all Connected with housing people all get together and cove is a coalition of all of these people And I think a fairly effective lobbyist for senior issues Okay, what was the main focus what is the main focus of the coal well right now? I just have a list right here in front of me of the areas that we Lobby on and when we say lobby it means we have a we do have to pay lobbyists And we do have a paid director and as well as volunteers like the three of us who do our best to To to bring information to legislators and to watch important legislation Okay, our policies that we agreed on last summer for this for this year are And I'll just list them. They're not necessarily an area priority Obviously health care reform and medical consumer rights long-term care Senior housing that Linda's referred to transportation at you and I particularly work work on done Protection of vulnerable adults. This is the area where particularly those in nursing homes or in Who are ill in hospitals and so forth where it's it's very important There's a real issue of making sure that those those people are not exploited at all Then of course fuel assistance, which we're very sensitive to here in Vermont good nutrition and senior housing a fair taxation we are a member of the One Vermont that seeks both the tax reform for fairer taxes as well as recognizing. Hey, our population is going We're gonna need some more money to to provide services and then finally as we mentioned we work with other groups on shared concerns whether it be the Whether it be those who are like ARP or Green Mountain care board and so forth We try to work with other groups on common issues. One thing we also do is the growing population of kinship Families which are families because of the opioid epidemic I've ended up that grandparents and aunts and uncles are ending up raising grandchildren and That has become a growing concern because you have people who are Caregiving for them their elderly parents and also raising grandchildren and then in some cases It is actually the elderly elderly grandparents who are raising Young children and they find themselves with their own health issues and then having a three-year-old or a four-year-old Yeah, so that's another area that we've been raising awareness of because the legislature wasn't really aware There's probably if we were used national statistics They would say 20,000 I would say it's a little less 15,000 kids in the state of Vermont that are not in foster care but are living with Relatives and they're they may have set up their each their lifestyle They didn't think that they were going to be buying hundred dollar sneakers and feeding the the appetite of a 15-year-old Football player, you know, so they're their whole financial and housing and social life is all designed Around being a senior right and all of a sudden they find themselves Going to soccer games and buying sneakers, you know So We try to cover a large area of senior issues How can individuals join Cove Now if you go to the Cove website, you can donate and you can become a member and there are quite a few Group service groups and service providers that are members as I said Vermont retired teachers are our members and then individuals can join and I think it's like $35 I may be awful, but I think it's about and I think it's a worthwhile organization Because that helps pay for a very limited staff like one one-and-a-half people kind of thing But also pays for a lobbyist who is in Montpelier to be at the Legislature in the committee room saying how is this going to impact seniors? Which is you know often something that they're not thinking about the unintended consequences of a particular item may impact Seniors in a different way than it does other people. That's true This is the big point It will how do they join? They Anybody can just send the $35 to the Cove if you go online you can get their email address or their and their address I think it's a Main Street address now, but if you go to co send a month here Yeah, they're in Montpelier and if you just send an envelope to Cove Montpelier Vermont I'm sure they'd get the $35 and be happy to have it. They're also out of Cove. They've developed It's called the older Vermonters caucus which is now meeting Weekly in at the leg when the Legislature's in session again trying to raise the concern and the issues around the Demographics that Tony mentioned of the the town of what Stowe plus That's correct. We have this this year 2020. We're going to have 4,000 seniors Join the rest of us and those 4,000s are equal to the total population of Stovermont That's that's a lot of that's a lot of seniors. Yeah. Yeah, it's almost as big as it's almost as much as the new port Right, it's one of the newest cities, right, right? Yeah, a hundred years last year or the year before wait You don't really when you say the equivalent to the town of Stowe Yeah, and this small state is turning 65 and in the other end we're living longer Well, that's true. The the thing is Stowe is also Interesting yeah, you have this is this is where the ski bumps come in yeah, right Years gotta switch this to which to Bennington or something But but but kind of interestingly the fact that I'm on a pension board for retired teachers And we're looking at the demographics and not only are more people people turning 65, but the people who have turned 65 their life Expect to see so they're just the bulk of the numbers of people that are that are 65 and over is is becoming a Major concern. In fact, we've just decided looking at retired teachers That there are many small towns in Vermont that could not operate without the volunteer efforts of the retired Citizens in their town Staff the libraries to run them after school programs to do work in the town ock clerk's offices All of that is being done by seniors now Yeah, the The thing is that a lot of people we had a population spurs jump Between 1960 1970 I think in 1980 The hippies gave it. Yeah, well, we're all In our 70s and 80s, right exactly. Yeah, I mean you got to do the math What's a may one number? I happen to remember because it's an easy one the growth of the state of Vermont total population between 2010 and 2018 that's eight years out of the you know 777 additional people living in Vermont You're you're right. We had the baby boom come through there in the 70s 80s and 90s and now We're in the baby bust and our population is just flat Well, the thing is that the state also promotes Vermont as a retirement community in a lot of ways back I can remember in the 60s. It was promoted as beckoning country Well, and I think it also the the people I'm a native Vermont or I was actually born in Burlington and But I can remember the people boom in the six late 60s when all the hippies sort of descended on Vermont Oh, yeah, but the hippies are sitting at this table now So yeah, that presents a problem and part of the problem the only area that I think is really not Having demographic issues of a declining population is Chittin and County and a lot of that is due to the refugee in the New American community that have moved in our schools are stable and It it's going to end up now because of the national policy It's impacted the fact that The rest of the state hasn't grown as fast as it probably could have if if we had been able to have the number Welcome the number of new Americans that we probably would have wanted to you would be in better shape financial Well, we we have to do it. Huh? That's the way the country's it grown for since at least the 1840s Is immigration I mean, you know, yeah, exactly I mean, I happen to be part native American So I was part of me anyway was it was here to begin with but but you're right That's what's grown the population and we've we've put a squeeze on that And the impact unintended impact of that is we do not have the people we need to run businesses to Do the day taking care of people Burlitton Chittin and County area has almost a zero unemployment Yeah, so close. It's you have guest workers, right? If we didn't have the people coming over from Plattsburgh That's why the ferry boat up between both Plattsburgh and Grand Isle is like a New York City subway That thing runs every five minutes right 24-7. No, I'm telling you it's crazy and The popular, you know, the the people that work in Vermont that live over in Plattsburgh Plattsburgh has the lowest electric rates in the country The they commute to here. It's it's called guest workers. They used to have that in Berlin when I was in the army in Germany The biggest one of the biggest issues why they didn't want to pull the wall down Was because the Turkish community which were guest workers We're right next to the Armenian community in eastern Berlin a lot of those guys were military guys And so when that wall did come down You know, it's not just the you talk about the the the ferry go down to Addison County Oh with the bridge the bridge there. I know of Significant number of people who live in that area of across the bridge in New York who commute up to Burlington I know well, they well they had to run the one the bridge dropped. You remember that created a chaos. Yeah, because the It was immediate It took them a little bit of a time before they could get the sub the ferry boat running back and forth And then when that was running that was an equal all 24-7 type of thing every couple minutes Because you had to handle the volume. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's true So I think one of the things that that we we hope people take away from this is that The population in Vermont and the demographics in Vermont matter a lot And we need to be paying more attention to it because it's going to have implications across the whole state, right? What we'd like to do is to wrap up right now and Get a hold of people at Cove if you have some ideas if you have some questions or ideas Thank you very much