 Hey, how's it going? It's almost Friday, which is a really good thing. Yeah. Yeah. Aaron, are you ready for commencement? No. Ready for it to be over. Let's put it that way. Yeah, that count. Yeah. Hey, you're going to have to. I'm going to have to promote some people to panelists. I'm not sure why I didn't. Launch them as such to begin with, but. Oh, okay. It looked a little different. To me when I. When I tried to get on. Wow. Al is out this week. I'm just going to. No more vacation. None of that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There's Jacqueline. There's Chad. And there's a summary day out there. Isn't it gorgeous? Beautiful. Beautiful day. And be dangerous. I don't see any more people. I'll promote. Dick, I'll promote you when we do the new business. But I don't so far see anyone else from the council. Seven participants, but I don't see them all. No, two people are in the audience. I don't see anyone else from the council. I don't see anyone else from the council. President. I figure I'll promote him when we do new business. That's your good guy. Yeah. That character. Hi, Terry. He might be on mute. Yeah, I think she's. Probably turning things on. Just like I do. We can join the club. Yeah. Yeah. I'll call Mr. Vice chair. When do you. How much longer you want to wait? We do have a majority here. And I know that Ann said she might be late. Gene, of course, will not be here. And I'm not sure about Christina. Okay. The time that I have right now at the top of my screen is 505. Shall we give it until what 507? Yeah. Yeah. You okay with that, Jacqueline? I'm fine. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Give us crack the stragglers. An opportunity. And then we'll, we'll start. My first meeting in charge. Oh my God. Don't that go to your head. I know. Power mad. I don't know. 506. Oh, do you have the call to order speech? You're supposed to do. Yeah. I still look someplace else. The last meeting. I wrote it down. As well as I could. Okay. Chad. We do have enough. We've got, we've got, we do have five, which really is going on. Here we are at 507. So God save the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Welcome to the meeting of the town of Amherst. Council on agent. Thursday, the 11th of May. Pursuant to an order issued by governor Charles Baker. On the 12th of March of 2020. Suspending certain provisions of the open meeting law general law. Chapter 30 a section 18. This meeting is being conducted. The remote participation. And it is also being recorded. And so here we are. Let me just do the roll. We have today. Do we have an. No. We have Terry Carr. Yes, here. There you go. Hi, Terry. Are you doing. Chatter you here. Yeah. Good. Karen. I'm here. Good. Thank you. Christine. Not here yet. Jacqueline. I'm here. Hi, how are you? Yeah. Okay. Anna's here. Jacqueline, you are here. I'm here. And Haley's here. Okay. Good. So welcome aboard. We, we've got. Okay. We've got a pretty good turnout. And we've got basically welcome. First of all, we've got the, we've got three minutes for public comment. Do we have any members of the, of the, of the, of the, of the public. We're hearing who care to, to offer a comment within these first three minutes. All they have to do is raise their hand if they want to speak. Do we see any raised hands apparently now. Okay. Then shall we move on? Yes. All right. Very good. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Welcome. In a second. And then we go straight over to, according to the, according to this. To the agenda. We've got a director's update from Haley Bolton. Yes. So lots of. Happenings at the senior center. You know, just to, to give you a number. So we had an average. In the last month of April, which is the largest, you know, monthly count we've had since October of last year. So that's a good sign. You know, April was, we talked about it last month, but. Volunteer appreciation open house. So lots of big events that garnered us some attention. You know, we're, we're serving roughly about 300 to 330 people every month. We are, you know, our volunteer count has improved dramatically. So we had a low count of maybe a hundred hours back in February. And we just clocked in at over 300. Or April. So yeah, people are being more consistent, which is. Yeah, it's really nice. It means more accurate statistics at the end of the year. Yeah. You know, and the, the programs have remained pretty steady in terms of participation. There's no serious dips. But we're not seeing a huge amount of growth, but except for the special events that I mentioned earlier. So I think that all in all is a really good sign that at least there's some stability and some improved tracking measures in terms of volunteers. You know, we've been doing our memory cafe now since. We've been doing it for over a year. We've been doing it for over a year. We've been doing it for over a year of last year, where we maybe had a handful of people the first few weeks of, of it being a thing. And, you know, now we're regularly logging like 25 to 30 people. We have about five to six caregiver pairs who come. We usually have a few student volunteers, which makes it an intergenerational event. You've been really fortunate to have Atkins donating to us every week. You know, I'm, I'm eyeing a title three grant through Highland Valley elder services, which if it was awarded would allow us to kind of have a little bit more money for performers and for food costs and for promotions and marketing. As I really think we could do even more promotion and make it an even bigger program. I'd like to see, you know, 40 to 50 people every week. And I think that really is doable. If we get the word out a little bit more, you know, and it's, it's definitely my favorite program. We have people from all walks of life, people from all different ethnic backgrounds, people who are part of the LGBTQ community, people who are unhoused, people who are housed, people with dementia symptoms, people without. So it really is a nice cross section of the community. And it's, you know, we, we try to have an activity every week. But to be honest, even if we didn't, people would still come and they would just chit chat and have coffee and snacks. And I think that alone is great for people, socialization, you know, to just have a thing you can come to every week in a group of people that you really connect with and get along well. So I'm quite pleased with the way that that's turned out. Unfortunately, we will be losing our intern after this week. So it'll be, you know, a little bit harder to pull everything together because we'll be short one person, but, you know, she was, she helped really get that off the ground. So we, the senior center and, you know, we owe her a big thanks for all the work that she did on that project. She a student? Yeah. Yeah. At Elms college. Oh. Yeah. Yeah. So we hope that she comes back to visit sometimes. But, you know, that's, that's the way it goes. And, you know, but thankfully we have a nice, strong, healthy base to keep that program afloat now. Yeah. Yeah. Fortunately, in terms of an update, I do have some bad news to report. We did have some donations stolen from the senior center. There was a police report filed. It wasn't a lot of money, but that was money. People donated to support the cafe. You know, it's, it's really just hard to put into words. Because this is being recorded how I feel. You know, that to me is the worst case scenario that people are giving sometimes quite honestly the last dollar in their pocket. And that was taken. And then we did have a couple of incidents yesterday where we had to call Amherst police about three times. Because we had someone who kept coming back and creating a disturbance. So that made the day a little bit more challenging, particularly when, like I said, we do have one person out, a planned out. And we've also had some other people be out or needing to take time off to prepare for an event that we're doing tomorrow. So, you know, it's been a little stressful and chaotic. But I will say I had a very good meeting with Paul today and he's taking this very seriously. And I am taking this very seriously. And, you know, we're going to be looking at making some improvements to the bank center to make things a little bit more secure for everybody. So while it's, it's not happy news that I have to relay, I do want to assure people that we are working very, you're going to be aggressively working to, to correct some of these issues so that people don't have to experience this when they come to the senior center. So if people have more questions about that, I can fill you in kind of a blur, but if I, if I can give you an answer, I certainly will. When, when it came to that person that you had to call the Amherst police about, was it the same person in all three times? Yes. Yeah. It's, it started as he's known certainly to the police department. So they, you know, they were able to address it really quickly, you know, asked to leave once left for a few hours, came back and each time more and more agitated. So, you know, that is part of that. No, and I wouldn't be comfortable sharing any names. You know, we want to respect people's privacy, but it was, it was not the individual you're referencing, but. Cause he was seen at grief. Yeah. Well, you know, again, I think we do want to, you know, not, not name names, although that is just the first name, but that also kind of leads into, you know, we do have some problems with other individuals, you know, not just the ones we're talking about right now, but some that were, you know, they're, you know, there does tend to be sometimes little periods of time where we'll have a, you know, a spat of incidents. Does having the crest office at the center help you at all? Or do they? It can be helpful. You know, sometimes, sometimes these things happen so quickly that, you know, it's nice to have them come down after the fact to help us to kind of like debrief. But sometimes it's just me having to deescalate, call the police, make sure that everyone in the building is okay. Do a sweep to make sure that the person is gone. You know, some of the, one of the instances yesterday happened in like maybe five minutes, you know, and it's hard for anybody to, to react in that span of time, but. I don't know if this is a question or a comment, but this is the exact thing. I don't know if this is a question or a comment. I don't know if this is a question or a comment. But my staff handled, there was actually one incident yesterday where I was not at the center. I had a meeting off site and a huge credit to my staff because they still held it down and they, they made sure everybody was safe and they were very quick to get the appropriate response. Okay. You have a question, Chad. Or a comment. Can you start from the beginning, Chad? I think this is the exact thing that Crest has formed to help with. They are in the building. I'm just a board member. I don't have any. Any pull or anything, but I, I'd request you use that service instead. This is a human service agency. And cops and many cases escalate. I don't know if this is the time to ask more about your report. I'm not sure if you're done or whether. I mean, that's part of the report. So if you have questions about, I can certainly answer them. Well, again, just for that section of your report, I'd request that press be used. I'm sorry that you had to go through that. It's not very pleasant. But they are there for exactly this kind of. Accidents. It's nice that they're right there in the building and you work with them anyway. And we do use them when appropriate, but our policy is when something happens, you call 911. You know, Crest will be a part of the 911 response at some point in the future, but. You know, I'm not sure what happens that could easily escalate into someone being hurt and we need an ambulance. You know, my, my team are not entirely trained. I thankfully have had a lot of de-escalation training and given that I've, I've worked with homeless individuals before I've worked at the survival center to me, it really is second nature and I'm on it. You know, but it's seconds matter and the second that they take to hesitate on who to call can be the difference between someone laying on the floor, potentially being hurt very badly. You know, because they can be on the phone with dispatch, they can be describing the scene and ambulance crew could be brought. You know, it's, it's not just a police response. You know, and certainly when we are able to get Crest, we use them and we have used them quite a bit that it's not uncommon for them to do a patrol of the building or, you know, to help us in a situation. Earl was there on site for part of it and helping to remove this gentleman from the situation and from the building. So we use everything, but I trained my staff, you know, in an emergency, you, you call dispatch and you let them make the call. And Jacqueline, you have a question. Jacqueline, are you muted? I'm unmuting. I'm unmuting. I hear you now. Okay. Yes. I think that it's, Crest is a new concept. And I think that it's easy enough for us to fall back on the familiar. And if indeed. We are working together. I think one of the things. Working together means that. We'll start to think differently. And the first inclination is to see it as. Having the potential for. But the other is, is there some way that we can divert this? That's one of the reasons I think the Crest exists so that we can begin to use other ways of responding to tense situations. Yeah, that's a, you know, that's again, a really good point. You know, what happened yesterday in particular where this individual is being quite aware of. You know, you do sometimes have to have to just make that call. And. Like I said, go with your gut and you call 911. And the wonderful thing is that in the very near future Crest, when you call 911, they will take calls. So it won't be a matter of having to dial an additional number. You know, because I, there are situations when it's really helpful to have them. We're very glad to share the building. You know, but part of the issue is that this person was being fairly violent. Person has a known history of drug use. You know, I don't know if this person has a weapon. I don't know if they're going to try to hurt a senior. Yeah. You know, it's. Those to me are the worst situations because, you know, for example, what if one of my frailer seniors is. Coming out of the bathroom and this person. Takes a swing at them. A fall can kill you. You know, quite honestly, if it's not the fall, it can be the injuries after. So I take those things very seriously. And like I said, it's when you call 911, you're not just getting the police. You're also getting EMT services. So. You know, that's another reason why we need to make that call. Yeah. But yeah, it's, it's great to have all three services. You know, it's great to have all three services. I mean, that is the benefit of the town having created the Crest department is that now we have really a. Complete package, you know, in terms of a public safety response. So I'm really glad that we have all those options at our disposal. Yeah, I agree. If someone is being violent, then. Probably the automatic and the most reasonable thing to do is to just plain call 911. And then have them figure it out, especially based on the fact that someone is actually swinging at anybody else. That's. Yeah. That that's where that has to stop right away. If they're just sort of like. Passively. Going where they're not supposed to be. Then that's. Still 911, but it doesn't require a police response. No, and we've had situations where people are just being. They're having a really bad day and I de-escalate and I just asked them to leave and that's the end of it. You know, we don't have to call the police in that circumstance, but when you have a lot of unknown variables and you're dealing with someone who's potentially. Not thinking very rationally and capable of hurting people. You know, your backs against the wall in that case, but you know, like I said, I've got a lot of de-escalation skill and there's been quite a few times where I've been able to successfully remove somebody from the building when they're causing a disturbance. But yesterday was just out of my depth. Yeah, if that's how you felt about it, then what you do is obviously the right thing. Earl also is, is terrific. Very, very cool kind of guy. And I'm sure he can handle situations like that extremely well. He's got the training as well. And besides that, he's got the temperament. Yeah, he does. Yeah. And he was very calm when he was working with this individual outside the bank center. I give him a lot of credit because that guy was. Not being very nice. So he's got more patients than I do. Awesome. Okay, good. Well, thank you. Thank you. Yes. And like I said, Paul and I are taking it really seriously. So people shouldn't feel alarmed. But I do think it's, you know, I want the council to be aware that that kind of stuff happens. I'd always put it does happen on occasion. Yeah. We would appreciate it if you keep us informed as far as, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you don't need to keep us informed as far as changes to be made and improvements to be made to, let's say the security of the bank center. Absolutely. Shall we move along? Sure. Okay. I next item is I believe under old business. Somewhere recruitment strategies. And we've any, do we have any, We've got one vacancy, I believe. Yes. As of right now, we have one. We have any- I do. I have someone in mind. We're doing some interviews at the end of this month. I'm happy about that. I think we'll be able to get that filled and then I'm working with another person too. I don't want to say Khan, but encourage them to participate on the council. I'm hoping that that takes off too. But that's the lead because of one vacancy, and I think we touched a little bit on this last month. But just thinking about what are the skills that we might be looking for in someone, maybe someone with a background in gerontology or some connection to the university. I think this is a real opportunity to think, where could we really maximize the potential that that vacancy holds? Yeah. Anne, you have a question and you're muted. You're muted, Anne. All right. I'm going to hold my question for a while. Okay. Do we have comment from anyone else? I'd like to know if either of those two new people are interested in being the secretary. I don't know. And that is a big ask for new people. So what I would propose is that we take turns. That's probably just the fairest way to do it, and it's never a job people want, but it has to get done. That's part of being on the council is that we have to take those minutes and turn them over to the town. I tried. Thank you, Terry, for drawing. You're welcome. A comment from anyone else? I wish I could think of other. I mentioned last time retired faculty. I don't know if that helped at all. It wasn't their newsletter. I haven't gotten any calls from it, but it at least gets the word out. So thank you for that. And remind me, do we have a Facebook page, Senior Center? Senior Center, yes, not the council. If it's reposting something, a blurb on the Senior Center's Facebook page, that might, you never know. It's actually good. I can do that. That's perfect. I was also going to talk about so we're doing the volunteer fair tomorrow from 10 to 12 on the common. So tomorrow morning, I plan to make a little flyer, advertise that we have the vacancy. Maybe someone will want it. If we find someone who's interested, who would be the person to approach? In other words. They actually do it themselves. So if someone is interested, all they have to do, yeah, the town form. Okay. And then what happens is that they fill out the participation form, and then eventually they do a little interview with myself and Paul and I think one other committee member. And then if the person is a good fit, is a good match, then what happens is that Paul will recommend that person be appointed by the town council. And if that goes through, then they'll join the COA. Yeah. Put my hand up now. Oh, and yeah. I do have my hand up now because I've served for a very, very short time and I'm going to, you know, cause one of the vacancies. I have a suggestion as well as a question. The interview process, I would think that the chairperson of the COA would be the main person in the interview process. I was very confused when I joined the council in that I've chaired two town committees and we've always had a liaison with the town offices, but it's always been the chairperson of the council who has offered the leadership. And we have the luxury of having Haley who's a wonderful leader, but she's not the chairperson of the council and the council is really a separate agency from the senior center. It should be advocating for many things that seniors need that perhaps the senior center is not involved with. So I think there needs to be in the interview process more presence of council members. And I think it's really important that somebody joining the council know who's chairing it. And that is Haley, I don't want you. This is negative about you at all, but I kind of in the short time I've been attending the meetings, it does seem that the meetings are centered particularly on the senior center. And I think the council needs to be involved with a lot more than that. And it's not that I would like you to step back. It's that I'd like the council itself to step forward. I'm not sure what happened with your interview, but I know that when I was doing Terry's and there was somebody else too, I think, but that chair at the time was part of that meeting. So it was myself, the COA chair, a member from there's like a governing board for committees. And then Paul, so it was the four of us interviewing the person. And we had actually interviewed other candidates as a team as well. I'm not sure what happened with you. I don't know. I just know that I chaired committees and was a member of them before the new governmental package took over. And I actually interviewed for the COA a couple of years ago. And there were five people at my interview. And no one had the courtesy to even thank me for giving them an hour of my time and saying, no, thank you. We filled the seat with someone else. So I'm basically saying that I think the entire COA needs to consider that interview process if you're going to expect that new members will be active participants. They should not feel that the Council on Aging is the senior center. It is not. I would hope that we are a support of the senior center. But Hailey is the director. She's a professional. She knows what she's doing. She doesn't need us to tell her about programs. She's reporting to us about what's happening there. And I'm really hoping that from the get-go when somebody interviews for the council, that it's quite clear that there is an active council that's involved with advocating for all of the needs of seniors and amateurs. I'm sorry to have made a big speech about it. But I think that's important from the very get-go. That's a good comment. Jacqueline also has her hand up. I don't know if you want to respond to that, Jacqueline? I couldn't agree with you more because I find myself engaging. And I'll do respect to you, Hailey. I think that you do well what you do. And my concern during interval periods between meetings, I feel that it is about the senior center when part of the reason I joined, believing that the senior center director knew what she was doing and she had a handle, how can I be instrumental in doing some of the things that I really enjoy doing as an advocate? I've been director of a family life center, which encompassed an intergenerational population. So I know that you face a lot of challenges. And in addition to that, we had parts of one of the components was that of hearing the voice of the education advocacy and other work that somebody could supplement the work that the senior center director is doing. And that it revolved, the council revolved around the needs of seniors outside of the recreational component, taking into consideration things like advocacy, looking at the issues that confront so many more since COVID confronts seniors. And I just agree with you, Anne. Christina, you have your hand up. I guess I'm going to be the voice of dissension. I do agree with what you're saying, that we should be more about it, but it isn't Hailey. It has nothing to do with Hailey. We are not an active board. And you know what messes it up? Is that I've been on many boards and I've been doing boards and et cetera, et cetera. Is that we're bound to this law where you can't speak to anyone about anything outside of the meeting. And so this is just like the first board I've been on where all I do is sit. Number one, I have two part-time jobs and cannot fulfill the duties. I would not be on this board, but to have a quorum and to be able to share the things to the African-American community. I said I will, you know, stay my term because I can't just stop working to survive. There isn't another income. And so essentially, but more importantly, we don't have our own agenda. So when Hailey comes and gives us an agenda, at least we can support them. But if you put all of us in a room to create an agenda and to get active, we could not do that. This is based on my observation of this committee, not anything against anyone else. It's just not there. So we can't say, hey, you're taking over our agenda. We don't have one. Great. I know it's not going to sit well with anyone to hear that, but that's just my opinion. Jacqueline, do you have a comment? Yes. Yes. And I want to know, I want to say that it's not, it's not about Hailey. It's about the process that we're engaged in. And my frustration isn't so much about Hailey. It's about the responsibility and the process of the council, what it's about. And as one who's been one of the, the exciting things for me being on boards is that whether it be here or at Harvard Medical School where we were, we had committees that included the committee at the community. What can we do to make, to make life more livable? The totality of life more livable for elders. There are elders who are limited. And you know, I'm falling in that group of elders. But what are we going to do before crisis? Doing analysis to look at what the needs are. And some sharp people on this council and people who have access to resources, even if it's about the resources of thinking, policies that protect them in ways that protection is needed, that serve them in ways that services are needed, a broad range, a multiplicity of range of things. Yeah. All right. I'm going to, I'm going to make a suggestion. I'm not going to do the Roberts rules things and form a subcommittee or anything else. I'm just going to make a suggestion. We need as a council to be, to at least have a list of things that we see as individuals. And each of us have connections with different groups of people. We need a forum where we can talk about what those needs are, have a real list of them. And then when we meet, have an action plan to meet the list. I have heard from, you know, a couple of people that you, that you were in touch with parts of the community. And I think each of us is in touch maybe with a different part. In the past month, I, because you know, I'm concerned about safety and because the, our fire chief talked about lock boxes and those kinds of things. I just thought I'm going to interview a number of people, non scientifically. I interviewed 45 people to ask them if they knew about the existence of a lock box so that if you called 911, they could get into your house. Four out of 45 knew about the existence of the program. One out of 45 actually availed herself of the service. Then I asked another question. I said, are you prepared for an emergency? Do you have a most or a, an advanced directive or anything like that that would be findable in your home? One out of 45. My next question was, do you have a go bag? What is that? Okay. I said it's some kind of emergency bag so that if your house caught fire or if there were a weather emergency or a tornado or something like that, you have something you can grab and take with you that has essential things that you might need for 24 hours. Three out of 45 said they were prepared. Now my, I joined this council because I think it's really important that as people age, they, they have somebody to help them understand what it is that they may need. And I just don't see the council doing that. And I don't, you know, I, I understand open meeting laws, but there's got to be some way beside getting together on a zoom once a month meeting. I think it's really important that we have a group of people where we pull together an agenda of what we, as a group think are important issues. I mean, I did this little thing because those are my important issues. But each of you have your important issues. And we don't know about them. I mean, I think it's really important that we, unless we begin talking to each other about the things we think you need to take action on. Yeah. Yeah. I agree. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Very well said. Yeah. Very well. That's where the motivation and energy come to do the work that's needed. Yeah. When you can talk about what you want to talk about. Yeah. Well, that's pretty much it. Yeah. So I think it's really important that we have a group of people that really want to talk about it. And I think it's really important that we have a group of people that really want to talk about it. That's where the motivation and energy comes from. When I was at the C O A. Because all I really wanted to do was to meet with other members. Unofficially. And not to discuss business in a park. And. Basically got to know. Essentially. No. it's not recognizing people when I just only see them as a thumbnail, you know, I have a little trouble in recognizing them in quote unquote real life. To your point, and I think it probably be a pretty nice idea and I suggest that we, each of us come up with two things that we could put into a pot for our next meeting. I, of course, I'm related to the Friends of the Amherst Senior Center and so that puts me in line with that. All of you have other concerns. You and I have the admirable concern of safety and of go bags and other things. Essentially advanced directives on a refrigerator, which is sort of like my idea, my concept of that. And I think we could all just get the word out so that people understand that we're advocating for these things and that we need to communicate through social media as well as we possibly can and who knows what else. Possibly maybe even put on a public meeting or something that Haley, as well as she's, Haley's already doing a great job with a public safety event, which is coming up when? June 24th, Saturday. Yeah, June 24th, so that's right around the corner. And so possibly a pamphlet could, we could put together a pamphlet that would put these things out. So let's just, my suggestion is that we bring two of those ideas to the next meeting, each of us. And that means we'll have roughly 12 ideas. Now that I see a hand up there for Christina. I wanted to say that I got a member of my church who works part-time and she's also a senior, send me a flyer and I thought, this is interesting. This flyer says that there is going to be a fair on the 12th, on the Amherst Common. Volunteers? For volunteers, those are the kinds of things that the council can be, have a table and sit at. So I took it immediately to the work that I do, work for pay and they contacted them and we got on it. And I'm gonna be on the common representing the organization that I work with. But I found this in my email, sent to me by one of the trustees of my church. Chad knows all of us, but I won't mention names. And there we go. We're on for tomorrow to sit there and give our organization exposure. What organization is this? This is big brothers, big sisters of Hampshire County. Okay. But the council should be on these, should be there. Even if you're not recruiting the same population that we're recruiting, you're there. You have a present, you have a table, you have a sign, you have these pamphlets that you're talking about and you're giving yourself as a council exposure. So in addition to, and these are ways that we can meet. Like I don't have the time to just meet for coffee, but if I had to sit at a table and represent an organization, I could go around the corner and get a coffee, but there would be two of us and we would talk and get to know each other. And we wouldn't just be an icon on a screen. Those are the ways that we can connect and we can do things in our community and get to hear people and could have been there with a little survey to get more participants to say whether they know this, do they know how to be safe? Do they know how to, we need exposure and we need to, when we say, let's put something on the agenda, including me, I'm not excluding myself, I'm guilty. We don't put anything on the agenda. We should put it on the agenda as Anne said and take it seriously and not just try to dump everything on at once. If we're talking about safety, she already started the work. Let's help her, let's back her up. Let's maybe contact more seniors in the community. Yup. Let's set up a table and sit somewhere even if it's in the bank center and talk to seniors that come take a class, whether they want, do they know about safety? Or other places, it could be outside of the bank's community, anywhere where we know seniors are gonna walk by and we can talk to them. That's what I'm talking about. I have one day off a week, I always am open to doing something on that day off. I'm limited, but I'm not limited. You understand what I'm saying? But we have to have the oomph which is lacking. We don't have that. Okay. That sounds, okay. Anne, go ahead. I see that thing up there. Right, there are two issues. One is the issue of finding out from seniors what it is that they perceive they need. So we know what we're gonna work on. And the other issue is our, like with the safety thing, it's sometimes seniors don't know that they may need something until you bring it to their attention. I would like right now to say rather than having the fire chief come and tell us what there is, I think we need to tell him what we want. So inviting someone to come and tell us that this is what we have. And then after the fire chief left, I had a list of maybe 10 things that he didn't cover that if I were empowered to speak for the council, I would say, now, here's a list of the things we want you to make sure you do. That is what our job is. Not to listen to what is available now. Our job is to come up with, these are the things that seniors in this community need and want. What are you gonna do about it? Yeah, yeah. Would you like to get the chief back to another COA meeting anytime soon? Not particularly, not until we have, not until we have a list of, and I have the beginning of a list and I want other people to add to it, of what do we want them to do? The fire department, the fire chief is responsible for EMTs. So when seniors call 911, they get a response and the EMTs are terrific. What is it, what else is it that the EMTs need? They were super grateful, my husband fell a couple of weeks ago, and they were super grateful that I had a list of his medications and the names of his doctors. It was helpful to them. Could they have done their job without my list? Yes, because they're well-trained and they're wonderful people. But we really, as a group, need to tell the people working for the town what it is we need that they're not meeting. So having, inviting them to come and talk to us about, you know, that's, I mean, that doesn't do it for me. Yeah, so we need to create the structure before we invite them back. Yeah, I think so. So they will understand what we really want from them. Yeah, I agree with that, absolutely. It's not a simple matter of just listening to their speech, but we need to communicate with them. Like, for instance, as far as a cooling or warming center or whatever you wanna call it, we need to be able to express to them what we really want. Yes, yes. And I think that's, okay. The step for that, I think should probably go to possibly the next meeting when the chair has returned. That's my idea. I've had my hand up for a good while. Sorry about that, Chad, you go right ahead. But I interject, yeah. Please do. I think Ann may be our safety expert. And I'm a bit of an organization development expert. And this is early in my tenure, two, three years ago, I don't know how long it's been. Talked about a strategic plan. This would be what we're talking about. How do we move forward and what do we move forward about? I don't know how far off script we are because I don't have an agenda, but that's what this age and dementia friendly survey could be. Yeah, yeah. But we would have to own our agenda and put on, you know, the items there and begin to conduct business around that. Yeah. We'd have to have a little bit more committee, board members for committee work, but we can do policy. We can do advocacy. You know, we do have a fiduciary responsibility. So there's other pieces to the puzzle that a strategic plan could help sift into, you know, our tasks. To be honest about it, I think those are all great ideas. And I think what I'm sensing at this point is a certain amount of frustration on the part of some members a degree frustrated with a degree of inaction. And I think that our new chair would be in a perfect position to harness this sense of frustration that we're probably feeling and that we should probably move forward with more clearly defined directions. Do you agree with that, Chad? You said new chair, did Jean drop out? No, I mean, Jean. Oh, okay. No, she didn't drop out. She didn't go for this meeting, that's all. Anne, do you feel the same way? Yes. And I think one of the things we can do without violating the open meeting law because that's one of the things that's hamstringing us really. Without violating that open meeting law, I think if each of us did at least a list of it, a minimum of two things that they think they would like to see the COA address in the course of the coming year. And sent it to the chairperson so that it would become part of the minutes of the next meeting. And so that anybody tuning in, going online to watch the Zoom that we're having right now would know what issues we're working on. So each of us took two issues that we thought were important to examine. That would be a beginning and send those to Jean. Wonderful. I think that's a great suggestion. And why don't we all plan on doing that for the next meeting, okay? I'm data driven. I'd like to direct that towards the survey. And read the survey and pick them out of there. Let's put it to both of them. If we, well, we could have those two items, but one would be out of the survey and one would be your own private individual, what turns you on or it's important to you to have change. Yeah, and those two things, anyway. Okay, very good. Why don't, let's adopt that. And I'll pass that along to Jean. And so it'll be on the agenda for the next meeting. I, at this point, may we move on to the next, oh, I'm sorry, Christine. I just have one more thing to say, Dennis. My all means. That is, yes, we should generate an agenda. Yes, we should generate a list of our priorities. However, we need to focus on one thing and take it through to the end. In other words, Anne already started this. So instead of jumping around, we need to work on something and make that a successful accomplishment and put thrust ourselves into that before we move on to the next priority and not try to do all at once. I mean, you can count us. Look at how many there are to begin with. We're short, we're a short board and we need to have an agenda, pursue it, but not be all over the place. Let's work on something that we can accomplish from beginning to end. Okay. Chad. I have a question. Whoops, I'm sorry. Terry, go ahead. Last month, somebody sent in a bunch of questions about the resilience center. Yes. And we went over that last month and Jean sent that to fire chief Nelson and he's, when he finishes answering those questions, we're gonna have him back and you can talk about everything that we asked him about the resilience center, where's the cats, where do you go? Yadda yadda, remember? Okay. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Okay. I love that. That's half of what Anne said today because Anne wasn't here last month. Yeah. The very strong feeling that I'm getting is that thanks to all the fine work that Anne has done, that the safety issue should probably be the very first one that we handle and probably the one where we'll probably get our most immediate level of success. Right. You need to, whenever you're doing anything or whenever you're beginning to do anything, and indeed we are at the beginning because we've now officially come through the pandemic. And so I think that we need, we need to have a successful notch in our belt. And I think that, thanks, like I said, thanks to Anne's work, that's probably the most immediate, safety is the most immediate thing we can wrap up. Yeah, tie up. And so I think we should go for that. I think we really need to listen to Chad on the next one. I mean, because mine is simple for tying up. Chad's a little more complicated here. Yeah, and I agree with that as well. Good, let's concentrate on elderly safety or elder safety for the next meeting. Chad, you're waving your hand there. Go for it. He's down. Again, in terms of organization development, I'd like to second Christina, something specific, something that's worded in sentences. Yep. A timeline. And second, you Dennis, something that we can successfully do. So it's what many committees call low hanging fruit. Yeah, yeah, exactly. I agree with that. In order for the board to work together better, we're now going to be able to start to be able to meet in person. Yeah. Now we need to work together as a team. Yeah. If there's no team, no one's going to pull us back on task. Everyone's going to be going in different directions. So. Well, I have a lot of faith in our chair's Jean's ability to do that. And like I said, I've sensed a surprising level of perhaps frustration that we need to get rubber back on the road again. And we've been away from it. Well, I wasn't around when, before the pandemic, as far as the COA is concerned, but we need to get back in action. And if we can advocate much more actively for our seniors, and let's face it, that's why we're here. Yes. That's the real point. So shall we move on to the next? I have another question. Okay, Terry, go ahead. The Amherst neighbors that you're involved in, do they have anything like this, a committee? I'm not involved with Amherst neighbors at all. Someone I'm sure is, but I'm not. I'm with the friends of the senior center. Okay. So the purpose of our organization is to raise funds for the senior center. That's what we do. We're working on a number of things to get us rolling again. But the person who's really best qualified to talk about that is the next item under new business and has a nice little segue. Richard Yorga, Dick is the president, our very, very fine president. And Dick, you've got a report from the friends of the Amherst senior center. Lattery will get you an ice cream cone. I'll take it. Maybe a cup of coffee at lunch. I don't know. How you doing? We'll go to Cook Farms for dessert. Ooh, that sounds good. I haven't had my cup of asparagus ice cream yet. That's, we have to hurry while we have a chance. You better believe it. Strawberry's next. Oh yeah. Okay. Go right ahead. You're having the same, a similar startup challenge. That's right. And an example of it is we're having a fundraiser as part of the farmer's market on June 10th. And we've done many of these over the years. And it used to be when we were younger, it wasn't as much of a problem to set up tables and do things that required strong backs. So physically doing things like that is an issue for us. And we can't depend on things that involve a lot of physical strength anymore. So we have to figure out how to work more with our minds and our hands instead of our backs. What we're having at the farmer's market on June 10th started out as a jewelry and scarf sale. But due to the nature of the inevitability of people donating a lot more, we're actually gonna have a lot more available because so many other things are being donated. So they'll all be available as well. But we have- Where should people take the donations? Excuse me? Where should people take donations if you have a donation to the senior center? Yes. Haley has a vast warehouse of storage space available. I see her shaking her head. Spaces is always is an issue. But we have our group has to figure out how to get better at writing grants. Something that Haley is doing a fantastic job with. And we need to do that as well. And it's a challenge because the research I've done on my own looking for grant opportunities, they're all for youngsters. They're all for little kids. I'm having trouble breaking into the senior circuit on grant writing. Of course, I don't wanna duplicate what Haley is doing. I'm looking for new opportunities. So we share your challenges. And we're also always recruiting. And we're lucky to have some new members. And we enjoy their enthusiasm and that's gonna help everybody. And that's it. And do you have anything in your meetings to talk about things that seniors need? Like safety, like Ann was talking about earlier? Yes. Haley attends our meetings too. And that's one of Haley's strengths. And she's the one that's responsible for this safety fair that's coming up in North Amherst. And she initiated it that last year. And so we want to help her with that. But that's as much as we've done on that particular issue at this point. Okay, thank you. We're more focused on what goes on in the senior circuit. What goes on in the senior center building at this point. But Haley is doing a great job that she's taking things out of the building as well. And like having it at the park in North Amherst. So is that your report deck? Yes, sir. That's all the news. Mike Wobagon. Thank you very, very much for that report. I'm looking forward to being on the town common on the 10th of June. I think it's going to be a lot of fun. And we'll be able to, we'll probably talk to quite a few people about the friends and we'll also, I'll probably be also be able to talk about the COA while I'm out there. We're here for good weather. Yeah, oh yeah. Absolutely, absolutely. Okay, closing that on the seventh item on the agenda, we've got the approval of the minutes for the April meeting. And do we have any objections to those minutes as they were sent out by Terry? Could we possibly have a motion to accept them with those minutes? Thank you. Second? Second. Thank you very much. All those approved? Approved. Wonderful. Okay, then they have been, they have been approved and accepted. All right. Approved. Approved, approved. Okay, thank you very, very much. Okay, so now then, if I read correctly, we've got topics not reasonably anticipated by the chair 48 hours in advance of the meeting. What say you? Anything, anything at all? I've got a thing over here, a chat. No. Okay, I don't know what that is. All right then. Okay, then, then it kind of looks like I've actually managed to get us through our first meeting. And so I shall entertain a motion to adjourn. When's the next meeting? Oh, I'm terribly sorry. The next meeting is going to be the 8th of June at 5 p.m. Thursday. Thank you. Thank you very much for pushing that out of me. 8th of June at Thursday at 5 p.m. Looks like it's still going to be over here, although if our governor suspends the suspension, then I don't know, it may be a little bit different. We shall be in touch. Shall we adjourn? So moved. Thank you very, very much. Second? Second. Thank you very much. We're out of here. Next week is our dementia meeting. Hailey? Yeah, the 18th. 18th, yeah. It's our Zoom dementia meeting. Also at 5 o'clock. Yep. Alrighty. Sign up on the web. I mean, there's a sign in procedure just like this. Okay, very good. All right, well, thank you very much. Hailey? I want to say thank you to Dennis. Yeah, sharing the meeting and doing it expediently. Yes, I piggyback that. And I thank everybody for the input and not being silent when we came up with matters that needed to come to the front of the circle or to the center of the circle. That's exactly right. Thank you very much, Jacqueline. And thank you to all of you for your time. And also, your honesty, it kind of sounds like we're about ready to start making moves to being a bit more active in the community. And I think that's about time. We feel that same way at the friends. And I look forward to, and I'm sure our chair, real chair is looking forward to that as well. Thank you very much for your time. Thank you. I'll see you on the 8th of June. All right. All right. Bye. Take care, good night. Have a wonderful one.