 Hi, hey, hey, how's it going? Good. Hey, listen, I just realized, hi, Sarah. I can't find my blurb that I'm supposed to say about the beginning of the meeting. I don't know where it went, but it disappeared from my folder. Let me see if I can come through my email. I was trying to do that because I know you sent it to me at one point, but I couldn't. I haven't been successful finding it. I don't think of what it was called in the most. Hi, Mark. Unmute. You're unmuted. I'm unmuted. Now you are. Okay. Thank you. Sure. Gene, just to let you, oh, Gene and Haley, just to let you know, I sent both of you an email like a couple of minutes ago. I don't know if you had a chance to see it. It's from the Amherst neighbors. So I thought I'd send it, it has to do dementia. So I thought I'd send it over. Okay. Okay. So I'm just trying to look something up for Gene. No, that's fine. I just wanted to let you know when you get a sec, take a look at it later. When you have no time, I mean, when you have time. Someday I'll have plenty of time. Yeah. I do know why it's not in my folder, Haley, because our last meeting, I was at my granddaughter's house. So in my excitement to wrap things up, I did not. Did I first send it to you in an email? I thought so, because I've gone through your emails and I has not. I might have forwarded it to you from Angela. I like the background, Mark. I was just playing with it. Yes, I noticed that you were in the forest and then you are the jungle and now you're out of space. I didn't realize that you could do that. This is wonderful. I'll have to find something for the next meeting that works better. There, I'm back. Glendon. Hi, Christina. Did you hear me? Yeah, so that was a little staticky, but in Jacqueline. I can log off and log in with a different... Well, actually, you sound fine now. You're sounding nice and clear now, so I think we're good. I think we are one, two, three, four. I do believe we need one more member to be a quorum. Chad is in the audience. Chad, I'm clicking promote to panelists and you have to agree to that in order to join as a panelist. I don't know, Jean, I'm not finding that. I can't find it in my email. And I tried googling the text, but... OK. Not the easiest thing to search for. Yeah, I'm sure not. OK, excellent. Chad is with us. Hi, Chad. You think we'll be OK if I... I think if you can ad-lib it and then we can maybe just make an amendment. Maybe next time just to clarify, but do you remember enough that you could ad-lib? I'll do my best. OK, let's roll with that. All right. Welcome, everyone, to the Council on Aging Meeting. I'm going to call the meeting to order. And the decree by Governor Baker. And I don't remember the Massachusetts General Law chapter 18 section allows us to conduct the meeting via Zoom. And that's exactly what we will do. So want to take roll call, Mark? Sorry, here. Thank you. Sarah? Here. Christina? Here. Jacqueline? Here. Chad? Yes. I don't believe Terry. Dawn and Dennis are both sick. So all right. Public comment. Do we have any members of the public? We do have an attendee. If they would like to make a comment, they just have to raise their hand. And since I can't see them, there hasn't been one. OK, OK. All right, let's move on to the director's update. Yeah. So. Been a busy couple months. One major update is that our Silver Shuttle van has some electrical malfunction. So we were scheduled to go to the Mead Art Museum in early November and go out to lunch. And we couldn't get the car out of the DPW driveway and end up having to be towed to a parking space at DPW. And we're not able to even get it into the repair shop until December 8th. So it'll be a little while before it's back and operational. We are doing our best to deliver on rides that were already booked. So Rob is using the minivan. And for people who needed the lift, you know, we're referring them to the PBTA paratransit because we just don't have the capacity to accommodate that right now. The consensus from DPW is that it should be fairly easy to fix. It seems like there's an indicator that's malfunctioning. So it's telling the van something that's not true. And then because of that, we can't operate it. So I'm hopeful that once we get it in, it won't take very long to make the necessary repairs. Up until that happened, we've done over 100 rides just in this year, year to date, which is pretty fantastic. I'm really happy about that. It's definitely taken off. I'm hopeful that in working with PBTA, we'll be able to expand the number of days that we are doing rides, possibly the hours or geographic radius. But at least if we could get five days a week service, if we're doing 100 already at this point, with just three days, imagine what those extra two days would bring in in terms of number of rides. That's been one of the main things. You know, I've made an offer to someone to be the new activities coordinator for the Senior Center. So I'm hoping that we can get them in by next week and start training them, start having them take over some of the activity schedule and coordinating, which does take a lot of fine detailing. As you all know, Helen's last day will be the 29th of December. We are planning a little something for her that I don't want to share and zoom. But if you want to know, just call the center and we'll tell you she's been with the Center for over 10 years and definitely contributed a lot of knowledge and expertise. That candidate search has not been particularly fruitful. There was one person that I thought was going to work out, but it turns out they're not moving to the area, so they can't take the job. So I have asked the HR department to push it out again and kind of broaden the range. We're going to try to target some of the universities that have social work programs, and we're pushing it out through the MCOA network. So hopefully we'll get a little bit more traction there and then we'll just be working with Helen to kind of triage, you know, case management as best we can at the center, but it's likely that for some of the more nuanced things, we might end up referring out to Highland Valley. So it shouldn't mean that people won't get services, it just might mean that we're having to collaborate more and bring in another people. It is the start of the FY25 budget season. You know, if there's one thing I can ask of this group, it's to be vocal with your town counselors, go to meetings, talk about how the senior center needs more funding. You know, I am putting in a, what will likely be a substantial request for this department, I think if you look at the last 10 years, the increases have been very modest, but we've seen a lot of growth and certainly I want to position us in a place where we can build. So looking at perhaps adding some new staff, increasing our operating expense budget, it's always a tight budget year. So, you know, if we can get out and start clamoring for more support, I think that would be tremendous. I've read the recaps of some of the town council meetings and it seems like other groups are going and saying that, you know, we need funding for X, Y, and Z, not related to the senior center. So it would be good if we were at the forefront of that. You know what else can I say? Those are the big ones. You know, we continue to have some behavioral issues. There was a gentleman who came into the center today and was screaming for fancies at our admin, assistant to the point where she had to ask him to leave. It was that bad. That person I will be talking to when they come back and telling him that, you know, you just can't come to the center anymore. You can't use that language and you can't treat people like that. And, you know, that's never something I look forward to, but, you know, we definitely want to make it a place where people feel comfortable at. And if that's not happening, we need to make it happen. But other than that, you know, the team's been working really solid. It's been so wonderful to have Highland Valley come in and oversee operations of the meal program. It's taken a lot of pressure off of all of us. It's allowed Julia to kind of plan some the winter fest activities, coordinate more with student groups. So we're, I'm really happy about that. We'll definitely be picking up steam a little bit. And, you know, just kind of working with some more collaborations, trying to get different programming to target different populations. I'm working right now with Bill Laramie at the police department to maybe take a field trip to a UMass basketball game. And that would be intergenerational, and I think just really a fun way. Someone was at the cafe playing with Augie, the dog. And had mentioned how much when he lived in Chicago, he really loved basketball and he misses going to games. So it'd be a nice thing to do for people. And definitely if we can make it intergenerational and start collaborating that way, I'd be happy. So yeah, the big things are the van not being in use, good synergy on the team. And definitely if we can be plugging that there's a need to expand the budget. I ran the numbers and for the last decade, we've averaged 0.28% of the town's budget. I'd like to see that increase a little bit or at least keep pace with growth in other areas. I have to say, I just find that number stunning. It is stunning and it still is, but I did see that we're not the only departments that has such a sliver, but it is still a worrying trend. I don't wanna misrepresent things and say that it's only us. There are a couple others who share that umbrella, but nevertheless, I think we need to be hitting at least 0.3. We can get to 0.3, I'd be happy. What number is that? We currently represent 0.28 of the total town budget and that has been consistent for the last decade. If you go back to 2013, you know, there is a little bit, but overall, that was the average. Not even a percent. No, and actually there's, so I actually, and then little MBA student that I am, I went through and compared it to other departments. There's not many that crack the 1% mark, but there are a great deal that get much closer to that 1%. And there's some things we'll never compete with like DPW. They're always gonna have the lion's share because it's very costly to run those departments, but I don't think that should mean that we can't get a little bit more than we're getting now. Well, especially the other thing that surprised me when you were telling me about the budget is that you don't, basically your budget is covering staff salaries. You don't have operating. I should have brought, I should have uploaded my spreadsheet to the cloud and I'll do that next time, but if you look at our overall budget, 99% of the budget goes to staff salary and that's not even all staff because we do have one employee that's paid through formula funds that we get through the state. And then the other 1% is the office supplies. And then so if you look at the total senior center pie as we have to generate almost 200, don't quote me on this I don't have my spreadsheet but almost 200,000 in supplemental like grants and donations, you know, or in kind salary like we get through the senior employment program. I compared the budget and so the town pays about maybe like 65% of our budget but we have to add in that extra 35% for grants and donations and things like that. So we really do augment a sizable chunk of the budget with our own means. And that also means is some pressure to secure those grants into raise those funds. Especially if Dennis was here I would ask him to jump in as a friends member or Mark, you can also speak to this. Donations are way down for the friends. So we are definitely, you know, it's time to pull ourselves up and tighten the budget a little bit but I am hopeful we have a lot of good fundraisers on the horizon. So that'll help mitigate some of the losses that we've seen thus far. But yeah, financially, a little work there needs to be done and Chad has had his hand up. Yep, Chad. Yeah, we talk about elevator speech and supporting the center. I have none of that information. If there's some kind of way, you know all I know about it's the $12 per citizen that comes in February. It's actually gone up to $14. So the mass formula fund has gone up. So which is really nice and we have more seniors. But still it's such a small part of the whole thing. You know, I have no idea. Some of the numbers that you just peeled off went by me pretty quick. Is there a way that we can get a little sheet that says some of this information? I would just say, let me know the numbers you need. I can pull them, I've been, I actually have a five sheet spreadsheet with a whole slew of budget analysis. I'm happy to share, but if I don't know what information you're all looking for, I can't provide it. But you also put something together before Haley because you had a meeting with some folks and then- For finance? Well, talking about like an elevator pitch in five minute or two minute or- Yes. For many minutes. But I happen, you know, this is the first year where I really had an opportunity to go and felt like I had the knowledge and the skills from having now taking an accounting class to really look at and examine thoroughly the budgeting process. So I have a lot more information than I have had in years past. And I, you know, and I'm happy to share that. Yeah, I've got the pie charts and I've got everything. And we did an elevator speech thing. And I think, you know, making sure that people know, you know, 5,500 older adults, about 15% of the town's population, year round population is even bigger. If it's 15% with the students, once the students leave, it's more like 30%, 60 and older, you know, those are really a significant number, a significant voting block in the town. What are some other really good ones to know? So you did put this on paper. So I think we need to dig it out to everybody because it was a combination of how to frame your comments, you know, kind of be savvy and be an effective lobbyist, if you will, or marketer. I don't know, whatever word you want to use there. Marketing sounds better. Marketing, okay. Marketing center, as well as some numbers and percentages. So I think, I just made a note, we'll dig that out and send it out to everybody. Because- Well, for me, my question was specifically about dollars. I've got all that other stuff. I don't have, I mentioned, I don't have anything on, you know, for instance, today she said, what was it, less than 1% of the budget goes to the senior center? 0.28%. So that's brand new to me. I don't know, you know, how many dollars that is, how it's split. I mean, we should, Sean O'Malley or whatever his name is can split the numbers any way he wants. For instance, he doesn't have to put in the amount of electricity and heating and all that kind of stuff that the senior center uses because it's only what, four rooms or whatever. I mean, there's always, you can do it, but something that is a beginning place on I guess you would call it budget. Yeah, I would say I got all that information from the town budget that it puts out. I literally just went through the town budget. All our information is up there, how much the salary is, how much the operating expenses are. And I just took the total of the town budget and what they gave to us, you know, what we had appropriated. And then I just did simple division. And that's what I based my calculations on. If there are specific figures that you're looking for like a dollar amount per senior say, or percentage trends, you know, I've done a year to date analysis, I've done year to year. So if there's something specific that you're looking for, I just don't wanna dump information on people if it's not gonna be particularly helpful to them. So if I have some kind of frame of reference, I can generate a report. So can we look at if folks have particular questions, they can just email? Yeah, and I'll do that. I really wanna have that done for the next meeting because that's gonna be right in the thick of budget season. And we all wanna have that info or I'll maybe send it out sooner if I can get it done. Okay. I would be, I'm trying to figure out, I can't get, okay, I want it to raise my hand. And I would be interested in knowing how much income to the town is generated by the presence of the elders. What kind of funding do they get? What kind of funding are the, I don't know if I could tell you the income generated, but I could definitely tell you how much funding is given to the senior center and give you even a number that's per senior. No, how much is generated to the town as a result of the presence of the number of seniors who are here. How would you measure that? Are you saying like taxes? Taxes and there may be state either local taxes and the state budget, how much is allocated for the population. Okay. Yeah, I can get you the formula fund number. That's the, like the grant that we get from the state based on the number of older adults who live in Amherst. And I can ask the assessor if she has any tax information. And I'll have to just start there because I'm not sure how else I would get those figures. Yeah, and I don't know exactly how it would be done, but I'm sure that there's somebody at the town level who would know how to secure that information. Okay. Mark, you have your hand up. Yeah, just a quick question. When Mindy was at the senior center the last meeting, she offered to assist us. And I'm just wondering is because we get so few dollars and I'm wondering, I'd like to add there what Jacqueline was saying, maybe we could ask Mindy somehow. Oh, yeah, yeah. Maybe she could help us figure out how much of the dollars that come in are from the seniors. Where do the dollars go? And where do we get for our money? Yes, yeah, well, that's what I asked for. Well, it goes into a slush fund. Well, but that, I mean, those are interesting questions. I don't know that you can get a... I don't know how you... I don't know if I get an exact answer, but I can at least try being at the assessor, knows how much taxes are collected from older adults. And I can definitely get your formula fund information. We can start there and see if that leads us to anything else. And when finding out from the state rep, you know, how much is allocated on the basis of the demographics that would include seniors or elders, people over 60, there are some funds in most states, and I don't think Massachusetts is an exception. Christina has her hands up. Yeah. Is that something we can ask Mindy Doome to help us with? It's worth, she can say yay or nay, it's worth asking. She has enough political experience and savvy, I would think. I think that's an idea. Either her or no, it is pretty much at the state level. I don't see how locals could really do that because some of the money goes to senior housing. I mean, it spread all over the place. I thought, Jacqueline, you were talking about what worth did the seniors have in the town which would include things like running businesses, buying houses, putting gasoline in their car. I didn't think you meant just taxes because they're- I will follow up by saying not just taxes, but they constitute one way. What are the other ways? I'm not sure if we could get that kind of data because that would rely on like businesses telling us who's shopping there and I'm not sure that they would, you know, give up client information like that. But I think it is reasonable to say, can we find out how much taxes because the taxes are what are used for things like funding the library or the capital projects, you know, how much are older adults contributing and what are we spending per senior, I think is a much more, you know, is a more tangible ask that we could figure out. We're talking about taxes. Talking about, I'm sorry, Mark, but I never finished my thought earlier. And that is that, you know, there's a formula for everything and know how many taxpayers there are. They know what the population is in relationship to how many senators we get, how many legislatures we can have and all of that. And so it shouldn't be too hard to find out what taxes in Amherst are allocated for specific services. More importantly, our senior services. I'm done, I'm sorry, Mark, you can go for it. No problem. I was just wondering if Joe Comerford might be able to help us also. Mm, good idea. Might as well get them with a team with us. Yeah, yep, yep. The MCOA as well, you know, the MCOA? Yeah. They might have that kind of stuff too. Sorry, I'm gonna, I just wanna bring it back. What are we asking them for? Or what are we asking Joe and Mindy to do? File legislation for us or identify funding sources? Identify the resources that the presence of seniors or elders in this community generate. And there are some categories. And the resources we generate? Not just by our local taxes, but at the state level, what funds are made available to various locales based on the number of seniors that they have. I don't know, there must be other formula to do that in addition to, but just starting as a starting point, that's one. And chances are they will have some ideas as well. Okay, thank you, I appreciate the clarity there. Okay. We good on budget for now. Obviously this is a really important issue that we will continue to discuss in meetings. I, since we did go into the budget, which is under new business, I'm also going to deviate a bit from the agenda because one of the things that I think is really important for us to do as a council, in order for us to be really effective and to look to increase our budget and undertake additional things is, we need to be more active. We need to become advocates for the senior center. We need to raise the visibility of the senior center and council on aging. And something I'm going to ask everybody to do, since you're all on the council, I know you're here because you're committed and you want to make a difference. And so I'm going to outline a few different things because I totally respect people have time constraints and some people are working. So I'm going to give you flexibility about what you would like to pick, but I am going to ask everybody to commit to something. One is to go to town council meeting. And at the beginning of the meeting, they have public comment time. And that's when anybody can get up and speak. And that's a wonderful opportunity for us to remind them about us in our needs and what we're looking to do. So there's two meetings in December. And I would like, I'm sharing my screen so that you can see when the meetings are. Yeah, I had looked them up, the fourth and the 18th. I think minimally we should have two people attend the meeting. You can either go in person or you can zoom in. So those are in the evening, and I believe it's 6.30. So that's one option. Another option is to email your town counselors and again make the, and we will send out the elevator pitch and whatnot. So you have good information to use in your email but to remind them of not only remind them but ask for their support in considering the budget with regards to the senior center, some of our other issues in terms of security that have come up, we have a lot of things that we need the support of the town counselors. So to email town counselor. And then the third would be to meet with town counselors. And I would say, I think one-on-ones are great. I think what would make sense is to start with your own town council, whatever district you're in. And then we can tackle the at-large counselors separately. So those are the three ways that I feel like if we can go to the meetings, if we can email, if we can meet with them, we can really start raising the visibility of the senior center, particularly on the minds of those that are making the decisions in town. Something that we tried, we worked on last month and I am embarrassed to say I don't know where this stands because I'm still trying to figure out how this town operates committee-wise. But there's a group of town counselors that set the goals for the town manager for the upcoming year. And we, a number of us tried very hard to make sure that the senior center was on that list. I do not know if we made the list or not. Several of us emailed town counselors and met with town counselors, but I don't, in the committee that, sorry, I don't remember the name of the town governance committee or something like that. They're the ones that set the goals or at least draft the goals, I guess maybe the town council then votes on them. But I don't know where that is at. I don't know if we are a goal or not, but irregardless, if we are awesome, if we aren't, we still have to get cracking on this. So, yeah. Mark. Mark has his hand up. Your hand up. Yes, just a quick question. Because of the elections, I know we're going to have some new counselors. And my question is, I know we're going to try to get in front of the town counselors in December. And I'm a big advocate for email and everybody as you, everybody knows by now. And I don't mind meeting with the counselors, but I would need like you're like, like Chad said, the two minute pitch to what I should be talking to them about. And I would like to know whether or not because everybody's changing over in January when the new counselors take effect, would it be Hoover's to wait until January to start emailing the new people? That's an excellent question. I, and here's what I would say to that, Mark, to the best of my knowledge, we have some people that are returning to the council. And so it would make sense to me to start focusing on those folks and email them. And then in January, we can certainly reach out and meet with the new counselors. It just a follow up, Jean. It's my understanding that if you email the main email for the town counselors, they all get the email rather than individually because I was emailing everybody individually. And then they told me, well, we get them anyway because when you send it to the main email, we all get them. So I don't know whether or not that would be a way of getting around, you know, the new old versus new members. I would double check with personally with what's her name, Angela at the town. She works for the town manager. Yeah. And I will ask her, and the other person was the town manager, no, the town, what do you call it? The town council's chairperson. I think that's what you call the title. Is it Lisa? No. Grease Meyer. Thank you, yes. I will send the email to her to make sure that we can do that and make sure everybody gets what we want. Okay. I have to say, Dennis and I met with some counselors a while, a few months ago. And one of the things that they said, we met with two of them and they said, we pay attention to our email. And so I made note of that. I think it's in one of my takeaways is one email to town counselors isn't enough. There are groups that are emailing on a regular basis. So we need, I just want to be clear and I'm not asking for everybody to send emails every week or anything. That's not what I'm saying, but it can't be one and done. We go to one meeting, we send one email, okay, we're good. We've got to keep that up. And I think as we start doing this, we're gonna learn and we're gonna figure out what kind of the next or the logical step would be. I will just readily acknowledge all of you. I am not a lobbyist. This is not my forte. So I will appreciate if any of you are uncomfortable with some of this, what I will offer is I think if anybody is willing to meet with a town counselor, I would be willing to join you. So at least there'd be two of us. The other thing I would ask is if you choose to email that you are CCing myself and Haley so that we kind of know who we've reached out to or who we've heard from that we can kind of just keep track of things. And certainly the town council, the two December meetings, very much want to know if you're able to go so that we can make sure that we don't have five people at one and nobody at another. So. Jean, can I interject one? Oh, I do want to, can I just say that? I just want to say this because I know it's been a while. Chad and Christina have their hands up. Sorry, go ahead. That's okay. Okay, sorry. Since she's got it up, everybody's little right now. Actually, you could, can you? I can't hear you. Thank you. Yeah, it's easier for me to see. All right. I honestly don't know whose hand was up first. And looks like she's talking to Chad again. I'm not going to argue with Chad. Chad, if you want to go first, go for it. Mine is pretty simple. It's just one sentence, a couple of sentences saying send me the blurb, Jean. I appreciate everything you said and acknowledge it and feel that we have to continue the momentum. And I'm happy to do that email. If you send me the blurb, I will send it in a consistent way. And as far as going to the meeting in person, that's not going to happen. But if I can go to one meeting on Zoom, I would do that. I noticed there was one on a Saturday. I just don't see the hours and that's what I needed clarification on the hours. And that's it. My understanding is the town council meetings are Monday evening, the fourth and the 18th. Yeah. And I think... Do either, would you want to pick one of those, Christina? Yes, the 18th is a Monday, you're saying? Yes, both of them are. The fourth and the 18th. All of them, okay. Let me look at my calendar and then I'll let you know. In the meantime, I'm done speaking. Thank you. Okay, thank you. Chad, I think you were next. Yeah, I'm usually the contrarian, so I'm going to play that again. I feel a little bit of shame. Our last director or the one before last would get out the whip and yell and say, you guys don't care about seniors, you're not going to meetings, you're not advocating for us, et cetera. And it was because we didn't have any information. You can go there and just say, the seniors need help. But I think one thing, our strategic plan, when we have the strategic plan that says these are the points we need help from the town on or if we have this little elevator speech, I think we should have, what do you want to call it, an outreach committee of public relations and advocacy, marketing, whatever you want to call it, and a consolidated effort so that we're coordinated and so that we can really do a good job at that. So we certainly, we're committed to sending you information so everybody has solid numbers and lots of facts and figures, because obviously we want to present well. So having said that, once you have that information, Chad, what would you be willing to commit to? Would you email, would you attend? I'm in and out of many of those meetings personally myself. So, some of them, they'll look across the table and say, is there anybody looking right in my face who has something more to add to the conversation right now? And that's when I would say something. So you would be willing to come over? For instance, this 1%, 0.23%, that's something that has some teeth that I can mention that will grab people's attention and they'll say, oh yeah, okay, I need to know what the other percents of the other departments are and that sort of thing. Okay, can you, do you know your schedule? Are you able to go on the fourth? No, I'm not going to commit to anything until I have the background that I'm talking about. Okay, can I say one, I want to add one thing though. I do it in a general way and I just say, we're one of the six groups that is disenfranchised in this town and I tell them why that is and all these general kind of appeals to emotion but I need to do it more on facts. I'm sorry. Yeah, I definitely want to say something because I know that there's been, from you, Chad, I've heard a lot about prior directors and what a senior center director's role should be on a council. And I would also say that there's an element of personal responsibility. All I did was look at information that's available on the town website and divide the part by the whole and got a percentage. Anybody can do that. You don't need me to tell you that. If you were really interested in knowing it is available. There's some information that you wouldn't necessarily have access to when I can certainly provide that but I have sat at these meetings for almost two years and said, hey, who wants to come to this event? Who wants to table at this? And if no one does it, it's not on the director anymore. And I'm not going to say anymore but I think there is an element of personal responsibility for advocacy. Okay. I am going to be so bold as to go around the room and ask people what they're willing to do because I think it's really important. We need to do more than just attend meetings once a month. We need to raise the bar here. Mark, is that a new hand or is that a pool? That's a new hand but I have a question. And it's just to give you an answer, I'm willing to do emails and I definitely want to meet with my counselor. I guess it's counselor. And I believe I'm from ward four, four because that was one that we're going to have a new counselor. And those are the two things I'd like to do myself personally. And the reason I'm asking is for the emails, I know that the senior center is moving away from what we call the newsletter and we're going to be producing everything online, which would give us a great opportunity to possibly email the seniors and let them know that we want them to help us get a hold of the counselors also. So now it won't be just the six of us or either was on the screen. It would be if it's 5,500 people in the town and let's say even 2,000 get the email, that's a lot more of us saying to the counselor, you know, counsel help us. No, that's an excellent point. It can't just be us. We've got this and talk this up with our neighbors, our friends, our folks we're doing, going to the gym with or church, whatever your affiliate groups are, we've got to raise the awareness. People recognize, you know, what's going on and what we need and how many of us there are. I have to say that was a real eye-opener for me the first time I heard those numbers. Can I just ask a follow-up question very quickly? Haley, do you have any idea how many people we might have on our email list as of now? Just a round part? I'd have to look at my spreadsheet. I'm just wondering because it would give us some place to start with and to grow too. Oh yeah, for sure. And one thing that I have had Julia create is a form so that when receptionists are on the phone with someone, we have a whole list of questions to ask them to update their contact information for our records. So we're getting new phones, new emails, new addresses as a way to kind of help curate that email list. That's awesome. Hi, Terry. I'm concerned about elders who are not on email and who may not be as proficient in the use of technology and as reliant on technology as we assume they are when we say everything is going online. It's a great ambition for the year 2023, 24, but in terms of reality, I think we have to have a counterplan as well or another plan and getting that listing. I think we would do well first of all as Chad said, being strategic means we have to outline what we're going to do. Secondly, I think who we are going to target. And thirdly, who will do it so that it's not left up to a volunteer every month, but if we are strategically organized, then we will have some accountability built in. And the expectation and we're not just waiting and hoping and wishing that somebody will step to the plate. If we have that subcommittee, like he's saying, that will also reach out to the larger committee, that would seem most fitting and proper, especially in a situation like this. I'm not a lobbyist, but I have done policy making work with state departments and it's a matter of having organization to what it is we're doing. Yeah, so I do wanna give some background on the newsletter thing. And it was mentioned in the newsletter and I mentioned this last month that for people who need it in print, it will be available at the senior center and they can call and we will still mail it to folks who are having computer problems. We don't want people to feel isolated. So that was front page of the newsletter. I know I said it last time. I wanna also just say that the newsletter cost about $30,000 a year. So there was no financial way that we could continue that given the decrease in donations from the friends group. I'm hopeful that if we were to get more donations that we could at some point maybe resume that service. And I have also talked with the friends about the importance of doing some sporadic postcard mailings to remind people of how to sign up for the newsletter, how to engage with us, invitation for special events. So we will still do some mass mailings but we just can't afford what we have been doing any longer. I'm just gonna get to folks we haven't heard from and then I'll tackle those hands. So, Terry, you, I don't know. I know you joined late. I don't know if you heard all the discussion but we're trying to obviously raise awareness of the senior center in our needs. So I don't know, did you hear the three options? Not really, but I could email. Email, awesome, awesome. Thank you. And Sarah. I'm also willing to email. Email, okay. And Jacqueline, would you be willing to attend a town council meeting either via Zoom or in person? Via Zoom, I would be either attend or what I have down here are three things. Attend the council meeting, email, meet with your own district counselor. Yep. Is there something else? No. I would be willing to do either one, the town meeting and or the district I think is important, very important to meet with the district counselor. Okay, wonderful. But I'll take on one, I'll take on one and I'll put the other on the side as something else that I might be willing to do because I have a lot of stuff coming up here. Yep, yep. And the fourth is not going to be possible for me. Okay, okay. No, I wanted to present flexible options because I will appreciate, you know, many of us have lots of things going on in our lives. So, but I feel like it's not unreasonable to ask somebody to send an email. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, you know, I want to be reasonable and certainly if ever you hear me say something and you don't think it's reasonable, you know, by all means let me know. Christina, you have your hand up. Yeah, I looked at my calendar and I'm committed to the attending Zoom on the 18th. Awesome, thank you so much. Especially if it's in the evening, that's perfect. Yep, yep, it definitely is in the evening. And I send a confirmation email to both you and Hailey stating that I will go on the 18th and I need that script. If you can reply to it and give it the script, I'd be most thankful. Yep, absolutely, we will send that out to everybody because again, it's really important that we are all, we're consistent in our language, in our numbers. Yes, yes. Yes, if you will. Not that we all want to say exactly the same thing but we want to make sure they know that we know what we're talking about. So yeah, we have to do some homework first. Okay, awesome. Thank you all so much. I really appreciate your assistance with that. Okay, now we're gonna go, we're gonna go to old business and I'm gonna do the agent dementia friendly action plan review first before we get to the calendar because this has been sitting on our agenda for multiple months. I don't know if any of you looked at your email today but I did send out the goals that folks had sent me. I appreciate all of you that were able to get back to me with your goals. And I also respect the fact some people, it was a challenging assignment that you didn't really discuss a whole lot since there were 12 different domains. There was a wide variety. Some involved lots of organizations, town, community, folks, different agencies whereas others were primarily the senior center. The cost of implementing some of these varied greatly from investment of staff time to others more significant major investments, transportation, housing and certainly new facility. And obviously timeline, some we can do quicker than others. So something that we were hoping to do is identify a short-term goal that could be completed within maybe like six months and then a longer term goal that would maybe take one to two years to bring to fruition. So did everybody receive the email I sent out? I have been having snafus so I have not gotten it yet. Okay. I'm one of those people who seems to have quite a few challenges with technology. Okay. So Haley, I don't know if you can share it. There was one, the top one here, identifying reach out to family caregivers to connect them with support programs and opportunities for meeting with other caregivers, the people with dementia. There were, it has four stars because it was mentioned by four people and it was the only one that received kind of that many endorsements if you will. So that's why it's sitting at the top there. It seems to me like, I mean, I would like to offer my endorsement for that one as a really important goal, I think. I think for us as a community, I think all of us probably know people either within our family or a neighborhood who are challenged with dementia and the difficulty that the caregivers have in trying to support them. So I think that's a great goal. You have a hand up, Jacqueline has her hand up. No, I'm trying to lower my hand but to say I agree with you. I don't know if folks want to read through all of them and then offer their endorsement or how would you like to do this, Haley? What do you think, Wynne? I would definitely be interested in hearing what other people think. I'm just revealing this. There's definitely some things that we can do right away, something like shortening the housing, the wait list for senior housing. That would take a lot more of a groundswell kind of of an approach but developing intergenerational programming, working with family caregivers. I mean, Mark, does this touch upon what you had emailed to Jean and I? The very first one listed, identify and reach out to family caregivers. Yeah, I'm sorry, I meant to send it out to everybody but I didn't have everybody's email, so my apology. They're doing something, I'm paraphrasing, of course. This is the Ambrose Neighbors Group. They're working with the Pioneer Valley Memory Care Initiative. And without going into detail, I was just wondering maybe for first of all, if we could send this out to everybody in the group. I didn't forward it to everybody. And I was just wondering, maybe they've been doing a lot of work on dementia and they're offering some programs and not just them, but other people or associated with them. And I'm just wondering, maybe is there a way, or is it possible, what you guys think, of working with the Ambrose Neighbors and their programs to possibly get some of our goals accomplished also? I don't want to look a possibility of resource and push it aside. I know we're two different groups and I know that we interact sometimes and sometimes we don't, but this is a very important topic, obviously, and I think a lot of people might be interested in seeing what they're doing or at least what they're offering. And maybe we could, is I don't know if this is kosher, maybe we could invite their spoke person or whatever to possibly be on the next meeting with us and possibly get some of their thoughts of maybe how we could work together. I agree. I agree. I could see utility to that after we got our own stuff together about what we want to do. I'm still thinking we're not even at a point of whether we're saying we're going to pick one long-term and one short-term or are we striking a committee to start to begin to work on these specific goals. I can fill you in on your question mark. There's a national dementia, what can you call it, federal bureau that has churned out a program that trains through senior centers in different places, a program to help people with dementia. We have what Haley does at the center. There's this program that goes through many neighbors' programs and senior centers. This one could be a long-term goal, but it says two family caregivers would support programs. So I don't know if we're talking about the shortage of home health care agents or personnel or just what is your bite out of the apple going to be? And talk about that before we start working with others. What do we want to do? Then we can figure out who can help us with that. Do we want to work on a short-term, long-term, what aspect of it? I'm sorry to keep piping in here. I think it does make sense for us to identify our goals first and then kind of look at what resources and potential collaborations would make sense in meeting our goals. Jacqueline, do you have your hand up? Yes, I want to make sure that I'm following you correctly. The first one is the one that we're looking at as a priority. And when we say short-term and long-term, I think the housing piece should also... I don't want to be jumping too quickly here because this is the first time I've seen this. Sure, so many of you identified goals, what you thought should be a goal that we focus on. And so this is a compilation of those. And I listed the first one at the top because multiple people had identified that as a goal. So I don't know that what we had talked about was identifying a short, one short-term goal and one long-term goal. So I think we need to narrow this list down. It doesn't mean that we don't want to accomplish everything, but I think we need to be reasonable. And so our task tonight is to identify a short-term and long-term goal. Okay, okay, okay, thank you. Sure. There might be both in this very one and individual item. I like that idea because the most personal motivation for people have come to identify this. I can throw my weight behind any. My concern is that we do it in an organized fashion. But the first thing to do might be to make a paragraph out of that sentence. What does that actually mean? To define the goal as best we can. Well, I think number one, I don't think we have time in our meeting to do that. I think once we kind of settle upon which idea, I think we can flush out more specifically like what the metrics are and how we're gonna measure success with it and what the next steps would be. But I think first we have to kind of take a step back and decide kind of topically which one is most important to us. I mean, to me, number one also matches with the AARP flagship grant that had a specific portion of the grant that talked about caregiver services and Sarah might remember more of the wording than I do. But number one could potentially be a long-term goal, right? Because it'll take us time to apply for the grant, potentially be awarded the funds which would have to be expended by next November. But that's an opportunity. And also part of that grant application was kind of what have you done so far in this area? So I think it would feed into the, there's some short-term things we could do around this and the grant could be to help with some medium-term that would work towards long-term. So it would align very nicely. Yeah, okay. Is there anybody who would be opposed to that being a primary goal? Let me do this and see where it goes. I propose that we strike a committee. Excuse me. What are you? I propose that we strike a committee that takes this sentence and sort of massages into a paragraph that we can sink our teeth into and take pieces out of to actually make milestones, timelines, budgets, all that kind of stuff. Is that clear? Chad, would you be willing to do this? No, I'm, let's not even talk about that. I'm saying I like to make a motion that we strike a committee that looks into this specific goal in more than a sentence that defines what this goal is in part and parcel so that from there, that committee on this board and in its entirety can put on milestones, timelines, budgets, assignments. With all due respect, Chad, it's taken us three months to get here to identify a goal. And I don't think subcommittee is the way to go. I think I did not hear any opposition. So I'm gonna move ahead that we're going to use that first one as a goal. It certainly seems like it fits very nicely with future plans with regards to grants. And I think Haley and I can work together to draft some metrics in some ways that we can measure success of this as well as kind of logical next steps. So no discussion on my motion. Well, you'd need a second if you, if somebody seconds your motion, you can discuss it. Yeah, but it's being rejected out of hand. I don't see anyone seconding. All right, thank you. I gave it a shot. Okay. All right. Next we have our calendar. Yeah. We have our calendar. We've added a couple of things, like winter fast. And yeah, here's the MCOA walk challenge that you had said. And then that was yeah, AARP grant, but a couple of things were added. Okay, sorry, you're flipping fast. Can you bring up like November, December so we could just see what we were at? Okay. So the service incentive grant, is that the one that you were mentioning before, Haley? Yes, but we missed the window. So that one, not for this year, but definitely for next year, we can apply. Okay. What is that? I'm just curious. Oh, sure. The service incentive grant is awarded from the Mass Councils on Aging. Usually the two target areas are like outreach and family caregiving supports. So last year we received an $8,000 grant to do a big outreach mailing to people to kind of welcome them to the center and promote our open house. When I was working in Bernersen, we had received the service incentive grant to pay for our outreach worker and some related expenses. So it's a really helpful pot of money. I will say it's probably one of the most competitive grants that MCOA offers. Usually there's a lot of applicants and only so many are selected. But I think they cap it at like $8,000 per Councils on Aging, but they offer that grant every year. Thank you. Okay. So this looks to be a fairly busy month with holiday programming, festival of lights. Is that Nick? That's tomorrow, we're putting up some lights. We're gonna brighten the very dark hallways of the Bang Center. So if you wanna come have hot cocoa with us, I'm putting on a fake log on the fire via YouTube and stringing up some lights just because it's too dark. And clause for clause is going really well. We've gotten some really nice donations from people. I think we have about 35 people on the list to receive bags. And I'm gonna probably add another 10 or so. And yeah, I'm really excited about that by participation from other town staff or people in the community. It's been very well received. And definitely looking forward to hearing how volunteers, what their experience is once they deliver bags. You've received a lot of donations, haven't you? Cause I, one point I was in your office and there were just bags full of. Oh yeah, I have to. Yeah, there's a lot of bags in my office. It's completely changed the landscape where I can walk. But it's really nice. And there's been some wonderful items, you know, like beautiful sweaters and puzzle books and all kinds of really fancy hot chocolate and stuff. So it'll be nice when people get those bags, they're gonna, it'll be special. I got a, I know, Mark, you have your hand up, but just real quick, I got an email from a woman who emailed the birthday card too. She was very, you know, she said, it was so nice to be remembered and how she appreciated it. And so imagine that, but magnified when you get a gift around the holidays and you think, oh, this person remembered me and you know, it's really nice. Yeah, that's wonderful. Mark? Just a quick question, Haley. The housing authority has a lot of seniors. And I don't know if any of them are on your list to receive any gifts or your bags. Is there a way that we maybe possibly, I could send either a flyer to the senior, to the housing authority, they could post it if people want to get a bag or how does that, how would you need? So getting it, it might be difficult this year just because I'm pretty much basing it off of what we have for donations, but I will say some of the folks who live there are on our radar. For this first year, it really kind of is someone that we have a connection with in some way or another throughout the last two years that I've been there and I know them. But if you or anybody in this group knows of someone, I'd be happy to add them to the list. I'm banking on the fact that this will grow and word will spread and more people will get connected. So my goal was to do between 50 and 75 bags just so that we could have that launch point. But yeah, if you know anyone, I'd be happy to add them. That's great. And remind us again when the, I would love to have everything in by next Friday, but we will be making the bags on the 12th so things could certainly roll in until the 12th. It's just the drop in day, nine to three. We're gonna sort all the donations, lay them out and package them up nicely. Julia is doing a card making group with some students from UMass tomorrow and we're gonna put the cards into the bags. So that'd be really nice. I've volunteered for delivery. When is that? That starts the week of the 18th. And Haley, have you had an opportunity to go through to see if there's anything in particular that you need? I had to volunteer the other day, go through and itemize everything. It's funny to watch somebody catalog like a can of pasta and, you know, peas, but she did it all bless her because it took a long time. So I need to just review that. And then my plan is next week, get whatever else we might need. Okay. I mean, I for one am happy to contribute something. I can send that. Whatever you might need. I mean, if you... Okay. I'll send that out to everyone then, just if you can. Great. If you can't, that's fine. No, okay. Wonderful. Wonderful. Okay. Can we jump up to January now? Yes. But we should also say the merry maple is tomorrow. So if you're trying to go downtown, be wary of where you park because they do that whole parade down Main Street. Yeah. Program review in Winterfest. Do we have a date for Winterfest? It's the last week of January into the first week of February. Okay. Something to that effect. Wreck is planning that. But we are going to do a senior dance, like a senior prom as a Winterfest event, which will be really fun and try to make it intergenerational. Julia is working with the program director, Becky, from Amherst Wreck. And so we're excited to put that together. Awesome. Okay. Program review. That fits nicely. So we do have a programming committee. We've met a couple of times. We are compiling. We created an Excel and we have inventoried all the programs that have been offered for the past couple of years at the senior center. And we are filling in our chart. So I don't have a specific chart to share with you today, but rest assured, we are hard at work on that. So I think once we have that chart completed, it's going to help us better understand what we've been offering at the senior center, areas where we just have extensive offerings, and then potentially other areas that maybe aren't, is areas that we might want to focus on going forward to reach other populations. So I think it's certainly a worthwhile task and one where those of us that have been involved with have been learning a lot. So more to come in January with regards to our programming group. Anybody have any questions about the programming or I should just make mention, one of the things that I asked Haley to add to the calendar in May is the walk challenge, which is offered through AARP. They do all basically the work you just log in, create an account and they'll ask you to, they have different goals. So you can choose, for example, I participated this year and I chose to walk 30, I committed to walk 30 minutes a day for I think the time span is 88 days. It begins in May and it runs through the end of October. I foolishly learned about it 89 days before the end. So I was under pressure to walk every day. Be that as it may. My husband also did it, he is more ambitious and he picked one of the mile goals. So I don't, I couldn't tell you how many miles he walked, a lot of miles, many more than I did. But they have, I don't know, six or eight different goals. This seems like a win-win, AARP has a website. All we have to do is create our account and we log in, you know, when we've done it and click on the day that we've completed our goal, it tracks it for you. And the more people that are involved, the greater the chances, the senior center, they pick a senior center is the beneficiary. So there will be a monetary reward for the senior center that's selected. I view this as a win-win for us. This is a good thing for us to do. We all need to take care of ourselves and walk. Yup. It's a win for the senior center and I think it's a wonderful program where we could engage the entire town. It could be in a generation, getting kids in schools. We could, you know, we can make it really fun and Amherst can be known as the walking town or I don't know, somebody will come up with some clever logo, but I'm excited about it. And I hope other people will be as well, but that's what that is in May. So, just one. Looks good. It sounds good. Yeah, excellent, excellent. Okay. We do not have our meeting minutes. We will tackle that next time, right? Am I right on that? Yeah. Don couldn't get them in, understandably, so. Yep, yep, okay. No topics. Who's doing the minutes for tonight? Excellent question. Ooh. Someone who perhaps would like to go back and watch this and take a minute. Oh, excellent. Is Dennis here tonight? No, he's not. He's not. Oh, I didn't even think of that. Oh, goodness. I'll do it. Thank you, Terry. Thank you, thank you. So sorry, that didn't... Yeah, both of the people who would normally have. Yes. But it does lead me to say who would be willing to volunteer for January and February. We have been doing our rotation every... Well, Dennis isn't here tonight, so maybe he can do December and January? Oh, right, right. Dennis hasn't done it yet. Yeah, yeah. You're right, Dennis has not done it yet, yes. It's just what we'll do. So he can do the thinking for January. Yep, yep. He's gonna be so thrilled to hear that. Are we having him keep volunteered? So what are you gonna do? I know. Are we having a December meeting? No, we are not. So our next meeting is going to be Thursday, January 11th in 2024. And it's going to be in person. All right. Where do you hold the meetings? The bank center. Okay. Do you do it during the day or? No, same time. Only unless everyone wanted to change the meeting time would we pick a different one. So it would be 6 p.m.? Five. Five, okay. On the second Thursday. Yep, the 11th. Yeah. Just can I throw a caveat? And everything we've been talking about tonight is wonderful. And I forgot to mention that I just joined the Amherst Media. Oh, congrats. And that's my background, which is producing media. So I'm going to be talking to Jean and Haley and maybe Chad, because I think the three of you might be good people on camera. And the reason I'm saying this is because, well, you're a good spokesperson Chad. And I think people would identify for some of the things we're trying to do and it's free advertisement for us. We don't have to pay for it. You do 25 bucks. Yeah, I already did that Chad. I'm writing that off. But the thing is, they did the open in house last year and I saw, and they do keep playing it, but it's also available on YouTube. So I talked to Alexa, not Alexa, is it? Alexa or Alexis? I think it's Alexa, no, Alexa. I'm sorry. Anyway, I spoke with her and she's more than willing to help me so that we can produce some more spots for the senior center and for the council on aging. So I want to throw that out there. So everybody could sort of think about things maybe if there's events happening or anything like that, we would have to, I guess I would have to coordinate with her to get equipment and that kind of stuff. And then of course we'd have to mix it all together. But I'm just throwing it out there because I know we're talking about a lot of stuff in the future and I think it, because we're talking about getting to hold the counselors and getting to hold the public and that kind of thing. It's just one more free way that we can get our message out. Yeah, excellent. Just throwing it out there. Yeah, great. Christina, is your hand up? Yes, I just need for you to repeat the January meeting date in person so I could put it on my calendar. It's Thursday, January 11th. Okay, wonderful, thank you. Sure, sure. And for folks, I appreciate folks may, everybody may not print out the agenda but it's always listed on our meeting agenda when the next meeting is. So we're trying to make that easy for folks but we'll also send out reminders because we will have a little bit of a gap now. We won't have a meeting in December in part because this meeting got pushed back but also with holidays and whatnot. Wanted to give you all a break since you'll be doing plenty of other things in terms of attending town council meetings and writing emails and whatnot. But I just wanna say I'm very excited about the direction we're going and the ideas that people have generated and some of the new programs we're gonna be tackling and the potential for grant money to come in. So thank you to that subcommittee for starting to look for some good dollars for us to be able to spend. I think that'll be wonderful. Terry? If you can't make the January meeting in person, is there? You're a microphone cut out. Will there be options? Yes. I'm guessing what you, I missed the second part, I'm guessing you said if you can't make it in person is there an option? Is that? Right. And I'm joining her in that. Yeah, okay. If you can't make it in person we would look to have you participate via probably via FaceTime so that we would, depending on one or two of you we would have on our respective iPad so that you could be present for the meeting and obviously engage in the conversation or whatnot if you weren't able to come in in person. Okay. Some board members have used the telephone for other commissions and committees. Is that no longer possible? I mean, we just, we're talking about using a phone. Yeah. I mean, it looks like a Jacqueline, you know, the blank, blank screen. I don't know what they used. I have to say, if possible, I would like to see people's face on the screen just cause. These people were calling in from Europe. These people were calling in from Europe and things like that. They just couldn't make it. And they made the quorum. They made the quorum. There is a law that you can do that, but we don't want to use that unless we really need to. Yeah. So I would say this, if you can't make it in person, want to utilize that to just confirm that with us ahead of time so we can make sure that we've got everything worked out with the technology for you. Okay. The other thing I would just say is if anybody is uncomfortable and would like everybody to wear a mask and or have, you know, open windows or chairs spread apart, you know, we're certainly open and amenable. We want to make it a comfortable environment for all. So if anybody does have any of those concerns, certainly feel free to be in touch with Hailey or myself and we will certainly work to make sure it's comfortable for all of you. Mary? When will the minutes or the meeting be on tape? So I can listen to it for tonight. I think Serge told me he usually does them on Fridays. So next week it should be up. Okay, great. Anybody have any final questions or comments? Okay. We wish everybody happy holidays. Oh yeah, happy holidays. Yes, absolutely. I hope you all have a very merry one, wish you good health and a very happy new year. And you'll certainly be hearing from us in the meanwhile with all of these fun back sheets and what more. Yes. Yes. Yes. And thank you very much for all of that. Motion to adjourn. Somebody second. I second. Excellent. Well, in favor. Hi. Hi. Nice December. Yes. Happy holidays everybody. Yes. Bye guys. Thank you so much. Okay.