 Emily, I thought we didn't have to be televised, but this is one of the committees it does. Oh, we do, yeah. Yeah. I was just telling the mayor, well, when Josh interviewed, he grilled me on one of our most recent commission meetings because he went back and watched it. And I was like, oh, this guy really prepared for his interview. Wow. Oh, wow. You gotta watch everything. You do. You gotta know what you're getting yourself into. That's right. Okay, it is eight o'clock and I will declare the Senior Activity Center Commission meeting open and we start with the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Okay, thanks. Thanks. Why don't we, for those who may be watching or watch it later, why don't we introduce ourselves? Barb, you wanna start? Hello, everybody. Good morning. Hi, I'm Barb Felde. I am the council president and older person for district one. I'm Josh. I'm the new program wellness coordinator for Uptown Social. It's been almost a month now. So, yeah. Emily Rendell-LaRauho, director of senior services. John Schulke, commission member. Rich Miesfeld, chairperson of the commission and friends member. Sugarski, just friends member. Okay, very good. Thanks. We have the first item agenda as approval minutes for the May 19, 2021 meeting of the commission. I'll make a motion to approve. Second. Motion, okay, discussion. Okay, I'll in favor of the minutes signify saying aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposition? Okay, so it looks like Emily, you're gonna be taken over for the rest of the meeting. Sure, let's talk about it. So if you wanna give us a program update on what's going on. Sure, well, I'll defer to my new colleague, Josh and ask if Josh wants to let the commission know anything about what's going on with programming right now. Yeah, programming is still going pretty strong. We averaged about eight to nine a class right now. In September, we'll be moving to Kiwanis. Can't hear. Yes, sorry I'm deaf. So starting September 1st, we're gonna move to Kiwanis and we're gonna be moving bridge to Wednesday's and afternoons might try to get a couple more programs at City Hall here. Been talking with Sarah about including maybe like the writing club here on that Friday and everything. So might be on the move some days in September but excited to have more space at Kiwanis. So very excited for that. Yeah, if you haven't, well, if you haven't been to Roosevelt or Kiwanis, Roosevelt is pretty small and not the best space conducive to programming, the floors are tough and whatnot. So we're pretty excited to move over to Kiwanis where of course the room is bigger, the floors are nicer and there's a second room so we can have multiple programs going on at the same time. And so then my hope fingers crossed is that we'll be where we stay until it's time to move into the new building. But so with that change and moving over there September 1st, we're working on, Josh is doing most of it, reevaluating the program schedule because initially when a lot of these programs came back, starting up in March, April, May kind of thing, we were limited to one program at a time and so a lot of folks didn't get their preferred time slot and now we can better accommodate everybody to get them in when they want. So I think it should make some people happy. Good, good thanks. Josh, I heard there's a room where you may start kayaking. I would like to. Well, the reason I thought about that then I just saw a picture of my 80 year old cousin on his 80th birthday kayaking in Lake Michigan. So I guess anything's possible. Yeah, exactly. We are doing an outing in September with sailing education. So that's pretty close. Good, good, thanks. Thanks, well, welcome, Josh, on behalf of the commission. Thank you. We hope you have a long and fruitful and the only other question I have for you, Josh is, how's your dancing coming? It's good, good. Everyone said that I'm doing pretty well and they're teaching me a lot of it still. So it's a process, but I haven't made myself look like a fool yet. And Barb said she'd help you learn. No, Barb Grinke. So. Oh. You have this one. Yeah, it's funny. Well, Barb Felde, I don't know, you can make little X's on the floor. So, okay, the big news is our, how's our building come along and are we on target yet? So we are behind schedule, a couple things. The funding for phase one of construction, which is $2.7 million for the construction, is CDBG Community Development Block Grant loan that we will be paying off over a period of time. That paperwork to progress the loan was delayed coming out of Washington, DC. So my colleague in the planning and development department, put some pressure and asked for help and got things moving. So my understanding is that the funding that loan should close sometime in later this month or early September and around the same time, we should be getting approval from the state of Wisconsin on the plans to move forward. So my understanding right now is that we will be going to bid for contractors in September. The original timeline was that we were to go to bid in June. So we're about three months behind because of that. I'm not particularly surprised. Yeah. But, you know, because we know that these types of things happen. So that is where we are at. No changes to the floor plan or anything like that have occurred in that time. We still feel pretty strongly about the direction we're headed and yeah. Okay. Thanks. Any questions from anyone? Okay, thanks Emily, I appreciate your updates. Now, the next item agenda is fairly important. Been over the last couple of years we've, since I've been on a commission, I've always questioned, you know, what really is our role of the commission? And now with the building and the friends doing more involvement on the fundraising side, Emily and I have been talking about what our direction is and she was hired as a senior services director, not a senior activity center director as in the past, which she and eventually is going to have an expanded role. And one thing we're going to have to do by a bit, some point because it's by statute, we're going to have to change the name of this commission because we change the name of the, because it's not the senior activity center. But one of the things we had talked about down the road is making this actually the senior services commission, which we look and look at all the senior services within the city, not just the activity center and making more in line with Emily's job description. So that's kind of what, you know, my dream would be, and I know we talked to Emily and I think she's on board with that concept to make it a more all encompassing for the services for seniors in the city, not just the one building, because that's what we want to do. We're not just one building. We're a whole community, we're a whole city. And then, but part of that is a couple of years ago, and it's kind of been put on hold. If you look at that Liveable Communities Action Plan and Liveable Sheboygan, and if you have it and you open it up to the second page where the committee members, you can see there was a whole host of, it actually is on page one behind the contents, but there's a whole host of community members that put together and met because ARP came out with a program on the most livable cities in the United States, and Sheboygan had been one of those, and we decided to get on board and so we could get recognized by nationally as one of the most livable cities for, at this time it was for aging, but we looked at it and why can't we make this so it's most livable city for everyone, including those when they age. So these are the people who got together and put together that plan that you see later. So Emily's got some ideas on how we want to move forward with this, and we thought this commission could be a very vital aspect of making this work because it's a five-year plan which has been kind of put on delay right now, but we're gonna have to start moving forward on our action plan. So Emily, you got some thoughts? Yeah, yeah, so I think everyone has a copy in front of them, we sent them out ahead of time. As Rich said, this has been put on hold basically since COVID hit. I know my predecessor, Vicki Schneider, was working on these things and then the world threw a wrench at us. So I would say in terms of the action plan, we're not necessarily behind because the action plan was completed and it's a five-year plan and we're smack dab in the middle of it, but obviously we can't ignore it for too much longer without not fulfilling our goals. So what I wanted to do today was to just walk through, if we get to page, it's not a page number. This was started when Wendy was director. Oh, it started, yeah. She's the one that spearheaded it and then when Vicki took over, she continued it. Yep, yep, so we had focus groups and stuff like that. We had all focus groups and stuff like that. Yeah, and so what Rich and I had talked about was that this commission could really be the leader behind continuing this project and seeing out the action plan. So what I wanted to do today was to walk through the action plan that starts at the end of it, the appendix and just kind of go through line by line and see where we're at, how we're doing, where we want to go from here. What's nice is that, well, maybe I'll back up and say, you know, if we look on that first page of everyone who was part of this the first time, I'm like, I don't know, does it make sense for us to reconvene that entire group? I look at this list, a lot of these people are tired or left or moved on to new things. Like maybe we want to reconvene that whole group and do a big check-in, but for now, let's just kind of go through line by line and see if, well, a lot has changed in the world overall. So there might be things on this list that we want to say like, you know, that doesn't make sense anymore or we want to pivot. So without reading it, everybody, I guess I'm going to read it everybody. So, you know, the first one here, communicate and promote City of Sheboygan's Americans with Disabilities Act assessment plan and advocate for all city facilities to be brought up to standard. And that was assigned to the entire task force, should be completed by next year. I'm not sure where that's at. So I guess that's, I could check up with, oh, there's all right, I don't know. That might be one where it makes sense to reconvene the group and see where the group is at, so thank you, since it's assigned to the whole group. Inventory and promote current accessible public amenities through the City of Sheboygan. Again, that's probably like an overarching city project that we're not necessarily, that's not up to senior services. Improved perception of safety in our neighborhood. That's departmental teams, Mayor's Neighborhood Cabinet. I'm not sure, we have a new mayor now since this plan was put in place. I'm not sure if the mayor has a neighborhood cabinet or has, I don't know. I don't know. Well, there's neighborhood associations. Do you know, Barb? I don't, I can't say. Okay. So, so far those first three seem like different city departments. On the next page, provide education on the diverse forms of communication tools which offer public information and wayfinding in the city, such as apps, large font maps, appropriate signage, and directories with the planning department. I know that conversations are happening there. I'm not sure where they're at on that front, but I know they're working on it. So yeah, I can check back on that. So the next one, research and recommend programs and activities which encourage people of all ages to be connected to their communities and to remain in their homes. I don't know that, Rich, you haven't heard anything about this going on anywhere, have you? I haven't, there not much really going on with any of this right now, as far as I know. Okay. I might just skip, let's just kind of skip down. So the next page, we've got one that's specifically assigned to us. Invite and encourage residents of all ages to attend public events such as farmers markets, concerts and community festivals. And that's assigned to what was the Senior Activity Center. You know, I think, I know I personally am trying to promote more community events to our people. Since I started, I've added a weekly e-newsletter that goes out every Monday that includes what's going on for our programs, but I also try to promote other things going on in the community that I think will interest people. One of the things, one of the needs we've found going through our task force is that is communicating with the seniors in the community was one of the biggest gaps. You know, because at that time, more and more of them were just, had relied on the old Sheboygan press and a few of that. Well, that has certainly changed. Now it seems like I see more stuff in the sun than anything that's kind of taken over to local. But I think my sense is since COVID, more and more of the seniors are getting more electronically based. So it's making sure that we continually use that. And I do know, we had a gentleman from Coler and I did a focus group with all the department heads and talked about how they can communicate. They, I don't know, you may wanna check if that's still going. But they came up with a plan on how they were gonna communicate to the public and not necessarily always duplicate it. Now, it may be through the city newsletter, but you may wanna double check on that, Emily. Yeah, well, and I'm wondering, I know a few years ago there was talk, I think the Chamber of Commerce was spearheading it, but there was talk about developing a community calendar. Have any of you heard anything about that since then? That would be good. I think a lot of that is being done through Plymouth as far as the event calendar. Like the city of Plymouth has one? Or the Plymouth Chamber? The city Plymouth Chamber. And then it's like, so like all their events in Elkhart Lake would get priority. And then Sheboygan was on the back burner. That was like two years ago. I don't know if that's changed, I hope so. Yeah. Because that's important. Yeah, well, and I think that's one of the big challenges is that there's a million different places where you can look and some things are one place and other things are another place and there's no centralized location to know what's going on. Right. I think having this project that we're kind of in charge of inviting and encouraging residents for events is going to help our perception of the center, not just being for old people sitting around playing cards. Right, well, and I will say anecdotally, over the past few weeks, I've gotten a number of calls from folks who are not 55 or older, but are disabled and they asked if they could utilize our programming. And I said, absolutely. You know, really like a 20-year-old could come and use things, it's just they might not get as much out of a yoga class as if they go to yoga on the lake, but, and I think that was part of the impetus for the name change was so that we're not pigeonholing ourselves, but yeah, it's just, it was interesting, I wasn't expecting that. Okay, well, I'll do some, I'll do some investigating and see, because I feel like a community calendar would really help with a lot of those, and I know that's not just coming from me, it's been a conversation going on for a long time. All right, so next up, develop strategy to expand programming to include diverse populations. That's on us, the library, the ADRC, Community Rec and Ed. I know we're talking up, like we're talking about that, but we haven't really acted on anything yet. And Emily, I have talked about that, to expand this. We have, we need people on this committee right now, and if you have any people that you think would be valuable, but one of the things is that Sammy had represented the Hmong community, so we'd like to replace her with that and reach out with some members on this committee from the different populations in Sheboygan to be able to expand knowledge for that, and they can help with reaching out to the diverse populations in the city. So what I'm thinking with this line in particular is what it makes sense, would it make sense to convene these parties specifically to talk about, because I think we're all doing things, like I know the library is doing things, partners for community development has a new executive director who's fantastic and wants to be more engaged in the community. I wonder for that one if it makes sense to convene those groups in a meeting to talk about what we're doing collectively and how we can move in that direction together. Sure. Would any of this group like to be, I don't think it makes sense for all of our commission members to be a part of that conversation, but would anyone in particular like to be part of that conversation? Rich, yes? Sure. Okay. I just love working with retired people because your schedules are so much more flexible. Okay, next page. Initiate pop-up meetings to gather community input by us. Initiate pop-up meetings. Right now you're the only senior services department. Yeah. It's us. I'm just thinking about that. How many calls do you get that, to do pop-up things where you can gather the community and get their input? Right now, I haven't done any since I started like an open listening session. Phone calls. Yeah, I mean, people call all the time and say, What? You know, lately it's been a lot of calls of like, is the new building gonna have X, Y, Z because ping-pong tables are important to me? And then I say yes. I know what they're talking about. What? Can't hear you. Oh, I'm sorry. I said I don't know what Barb's question was. I'm sorry. Do you wanna repeat your question? Well, the question was how many, where would you get these and how can you get them out? And right now, Emily has said that the best thing is people are calling her, but mostly asking about what's going to, if there's going to be things in the new building. So, maybe the pop-ups, maybe coffee, invite them to please the officer, and walk up the steps and it's coffee and a cop. So, maybe we could do uptown social and coffee. Coffee with us? Yeah, when we had the focus groups, we had at the one coffee shop often. Yeah. But now that coffee shop is closed, but yeah. Well, you know, now there's that new parklet. We could do a parklet outside of Paradigm in the ale house and could do it pretty safely, pretty easily. I think it's called, isn't it called Uptown? The Uptown Parklet. Yeah. Let's do it. That'd be pretty easy to pull it off. I'm looking at you because I want you to do the work. You should have stayed remotely working. He loves Paradigm. I love Paradigm and an excuse to hang out there. Yeah, that would be, and to hear from people of like what they wanna see and, but I think too, like the whole purpose of this is that it's beyond just what we can do as an organization, but even I think if we do a pop-up like that, we'd probably wanna invite like someone from the planning and development department, you know, whether it's Abby or Chad or Janet or one of those, but just so they can hear from people. And I know we talk as a city about being more accessible and approachable by the general public and how to open that communication from both directions. So speaking. And a less intimidating way to come in and, you know, hear somebody talking and see them. Yeah, yeah, we can pull that off. All right, next one. Partner with institutions of higher learning for lifelong learning programs. That's a sign to us. I'm happy to say that even without having had to look at this livability plan that was something I was already working on, we, my connections with Lakeland are strong as are yours, Rich, I know, Professor Rich. We did last spring, we did a couple virtual school for seniors programs. The first one, Lakeland made the connection but it was with the Better Business Bureau on anti-scamming and we had a good attendance there. I wanna say we had like 20, 30 people. The next one we did was on technology and it was via Zoom and the attendance was not as great. And I think by then that was April or May and that was when a lot of people were vaccinated and everyone was just sort of over Zoom. So I've kind of put that on hold because Lakeland is not really doing live events quite yet. But I think when we get the go ahead to do those things in person, I think they'll be gangbusters. They're teaching in person with masks this fall. Yeah, yeah, but it was, and it was the person I was working with, Chuck Grubasek on the technology one, he was all ready to have, to do a presentation in person so that people could actually practice with their devices. And at that was last spring and at that time Lakeland said they weren't really allowing anything in person that wasn't, you know, they're prioritizing their students, which makes sense. But so that's in the works and kind of on hold until it's safe to do so. So the next one, educate and encourage older adults to use the Volunteer Center program through United Way. I haven't done anything with that yet, but I'm very excited because next month is gonna be their day of caring and we are gonna host a project. I would imagine that the center probably hosted projects in the past for either like fence painting and whatnot, or, you know, gardening usually, right? No, they would come in and paint and we did have some gardening. There would be a few helping with the gardening, but we had, they took out, I think they took out the lockers and they redid that one whole area. They did a bunch of painting and. Nice. Yeah, so. Well, so this year, because we're not in our new building or our old building, what we're doing is we're having an extended greeting card making class. So volunteers are gonna come, like the volunteers that run our greeting card club are gonna be there and we're gonna offer up the opportunity. Really, I'm excited because I know the Volunteer Center has a hard time finding projects that are good for people who cannot do hard physical labor. So, and they do mini grants to buy supplies. So I'm hoping that they'll give us some funding to purchase supplies and then we can have folks come in and they'll be making greeting cards for the day. And then we'll have that inventory to sell and just a way for people to get engaged a little bit. But on the flip side, I'll be promoting Day of Caring as an opportunity for our people to go out and volunteer in other spots. So that's kind of in the works. I did just here on a community meeting yesterday that there's going to be a volunteer fair. It's the Volunteer Center and Just Serve, which is the other local organization that houses volunteer opportunities. They're partnering to do a live volunteer fair in late October. So that'll be one that I'm really hoping to promote to our people a lot to encourage people to get out and... When is the actual, the other volunteer? The Day of Caring is. Day of Caring is September 16th, whatever that Thursday is. September what? I think it's the 16th. Oh, okay. Yeah, that Thursday. If there are people that want to do something physical, we can do a cleanup of the... You want me to add that as a project? Sure. Okay. Yeah, because it's, stuff has really grown very well at the center. So getting rid of it would be good. Cool. And I'm assuming I can use you as a team lead there? I'll be a team leader, yeah. John, do you need any more volunteers for the MHA walk? Are you pretty well set? We're pretty well set. John's one of the committee members for MHA. Oh, nice. There's Hope Walk. What's that September 11th? I will promote it to our people. Appreciate it. You betcha. So then on our next page, expand senior activity center newsletter to include community news items. Hey, we're doing that. Sweet. Check that box. I do want to pursue that community calendar thing more because right now it kind of, how much I include from the community sort of depends on how much free time I have to go out in search of it. Cause, you know, it's just sort of like, if I'm exposed to something I'll throw in there, but it's hard to like track down all of the things. And I'm positive that I miss things that people would want to attend or know more about. But we're doing that. So that's good. Discover and promote or develop technology training and ongoing support for older adults. So that's one where Josh, you're new, so you don't know this yet, but we did, we have had calls from people specifically asking for that type of thing with our current transient state. I didn't think it made sense to develop a specific program just for that, but what we did was Rachel, our former program coordinator actually did just like one-on-one coaching with people who needed help with technology as she fit it in her schedule. She really enjoyed it. So, you know, and I'm happy to do that too, but. And we did have a former member that would do this tutoring, but unfortunately she moved up North. But people really did like that help. Yeah. And I think when we're in our new building, I'd love to see that as part of our regular programming, almost like an office hours type thing to say like, this is when you can come in and get help. And then also once a month, like, hey, we're gonna talk about this topic today. So we're kind of working, that's one of those like on hold till we're in our new building things. Next up, research and recommend community connections for residents which promote wellness as well as health and active aging. And that's everything, or that's us and the entire group. I almost wonder if this is another, because it's so many different organizations involved with this line item. I wonder if that's another meeting to just reconvene the group and talk about, because we're all doing things individually, but I don't know that we're necessarily. It may be if we have a meeting with other groups just to let them know to always keep us informed of what's going on so we can promote it. We don't need to do everything, but we can promote what they're doing. I think that's a concept of the senior, turning this into more senior services in your position as opposed to just the building. What we would do is maybe we'd be the clearinghouse, not this committee, but we'd be the clearinghouse for organizations to help get the word out. Yes, yes. And that might be one that I kind of shuffle over to your plate, Mr. Kinesiology. It's going, yeah. Oh, I can do that. And the other thing I think our commissioner, whatever our thing is to help support the city side of the senior activity center. You as your employees went to, we always had to at least test, just tactfully approve the budget, but maybe we can help and lobby or support you and your efforts with the city. So that's kind of, I see it as one of our roles too. I'm sure that will come in handy, thank you. I will just share, I know in the past this organization has had a mix of employees split that some were employees of the city and some were employees of the friends. We currently don't have that, both Josh and I are employees of the city and I don't know if you know this, but the friends is basically paying the city to pay you, which I think is nice, because then you get benefits and all the other nice things that come with being an employee of large organization versus, and then logistically, it's nice to not have to do two payrolls. But so what I've shared with the friends and also city leadership as we move into budgeting is that I'm not necessarily interested in ever having employees of the friends again, because I think it's messy and complicated and can create a hierarchy of employees of like, well, why does one employee get benefits and the other one doesn't? So I think in terms of budgeting, I know the plan is to keep the friends very close with how we do the city budget, knowing that there are stronger limitations on finances of the city versus the friends where the friends can be a lot more fluid and whatnot. But I just bring that up because I think every year it's gonna be a conversation around budgeting of like, okay, we think we're gonna need to bring this new employee on next year and like for example, as we're getting ready to move into the new building, I do plan to bring on a full-time person, not to refill the operations coordinator role as it was, but to have someone with a greater focus on communications and volunteer coordination. That was a little bit of a ramble. Does that, did it make sense? Yep. Okay. So any questions for Emily on this? I mean, this will be, I think this, I think maybe this could be one of those ongoing agenda items each month to give updates on the livability and where we're going. So with that, I think. Can I give you a little bit of, this is hot news, as far as livability item, that's kind of going on. The above and beyond museum is, they have a garden next to their building and the city has worked with them and said, you know, it'd be good to have a playground there and they're thinking of doing that, they're working on doing that. And one of the thing is fundraising and I'm a member of the Lions Club and last night we're like this close to getting final approval for, we will be contributing 5,000, that's town of Sheboygan Lions Club, the noon club has committed 5,000, there will be more clubs, hopefully we're gonna get 25,000, that will get us another matching 25,000 and then there's another donator that's gonna be donating another 25,000. And we saw the drawing for this playground, it's gonna be for all accessibility it has is. Octopus theme, it looks so cool. But anyways, I think we're gonna make really good progress for that so that'll move on nicely for the downtown. Sue as the person who was working at the Children's Museum won that conversation about that project just started and as the person who like secured that company that designed it, you're making my, I'm getting chills, I'm so excited that it's really happening. Yes, it was so neat to see, you know, it's going to be something that is really gonna be unique and you know, I think it's really gonna be something that's gonna be, that's gonna draw people to Sheboygan or when they come, they have some place unique to go to. Yes, well, and that was the impetus for putting in a playground like that, that's pleasing and exciting to look at as opposed to a traditional, if anyone hasn't seen the plans yet, I'll send them out, they're very cool. It's very cool. So I thought I'd, like I said, it's just a proof part of that approved last night, so. Congratulations, thank you. Any other comments or questions? Well, thanks, John and Barb and Emily and Sue. With that, the next meeting is September 20th at 8 a.m. and we'll keep moving forward and thanks for your participation and the meeting I'll ask for a motion for adjournment. Motion to adjourn. Second. Okay, made in second, all in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Okay, meeting adjourned. Thank you, Mr. TV8 guy. Thank you for covering for Scott this week. He's on vacation. He likes it. Right, Robert, you like it?