 So hello, my name is Bill Fraser. I'm the city manager. Thanks for coming. I know there's been a lot of conversation about the senior center, where it's at, with the city. So my goal today is to address some of the rumors and things that have been floating around and to give you some background, talk about what our thinking is, where we're at, and to answer any questions and take your comments at the end so that we can figure out how we're all going to move forward together. We certainly want to have a thriving and successful senior center that's been the city's goal all along and remains. So let's talk for, oops, I'm getting ahead of myself here. We can see and hear. All right, thanks. Okay, so what I'm hoping to talk about today, I just did a little introduction. I want to talk immediately about a couple of the things that I know you're most concerned about, the space upstairs and the vacant position. So I'll hit those first. Then I want to talk about some background information about the center and its history with the city and its operations. So people have a sense of perspective. Go through some of the finances of the city and the senior center so that people understand where we're at now. You've heard that we're doing an assessment process. I'm going to describe that a little bit and then obviously take questions and comment. So that's my plan for today and some of this you may have heard from Kelly before, but I think it's worth, it needs to be repeated because it's all part of the, so I'm getting told that, can people hear me because some people are saying they can and some people are saying they can. It's muffled further. Okay, I had it further away and people were saying they couldn't hear. How's that? I'll try to do, okay, well, this is probably the best I'm going to do. So bear, got it. All right. Rock the mic. Okay, so people, you're upstairs that we use the two rooms upstairs. We did have a catastrophic flood in the city just two months ago. It wiped out all of City Hall, wiped out most of the upstairs. If people want to see, there's a video that I did on YouTube. You can take a tour of City Hall and see how bad it is. So we needed to move space rapidly. The people upstairs are doing essential functions. I think it's important to understand. The planning people are doing the permitting inspections for all the homes that have been ruined, all the businesses that have ruined, all the building, trying to help people get open. I'm sorry, I'm doing the best I can with the mic. And that's essential to the functioning of our downtown. We understand that it is inconveniencing the scene. How's this? Beautiful, I hate these things. So we understand that having the offices upstairs is a problem for the senior center. We don't want to be here either. They don't want to be here either. I mean, they want to be somewhere. But the functions that are happening are essential to the operations of the entire city and the senior center is part of the city operation. So we needed to put them somewhere. We need to make sure our businesses get reopened. We need to make sure the people who lost their homes are getting the funding they need to rebuild their homes. We need to make sure the buildings that are damaged are being properly inspected in an expeditious way so we can get them reopening. The downtown reopening that you're seeing is partly because we've been able to turn everything around so fast as well as the efforts of the landlords and the business owners. So that's what's going on upstairs. People aren't just taking the spaces to prevent you from having the classes that you have. Our finance operation is managing $10.8 million of damage to city facilities as a result of the flood. Trying to make sure we get FEMA funds back so that all of us as taxpayers don't have to pay for that. So I appreciate that it's in convenience. There's a lot of people that have been in convenience by this flood. So we're all sacrificing a little bit and we're asking you to participate in that and help support what we need to do. That said we've heard your concerns and actually the place like I said the space doesn't work perfectly for city offices either. So this week we're moving the finances office out. You will be getting your room back by next week. The police department is giving up their space so that the finance office can operate in there. And two people will be going back to the clerk's office which is not handicapped accessible which we are required to be by law. One of the reasons we are here is because there's an elevator and we can provide services legally. So I just want you to know that nobody put offices in these places to get you guys all mad. We are in an emergency. We needed to do something. You heard two years that was the worst case scenario. We think it could be as long as two years before City Hall is reopened. If we can get our offices out of there earlier we will. That's our goal. It's good for everybody. So I just am really concerned when I hear the rhetoric about the city doesn't care about us. They're taking our space. That is city owned space. This is city owned space. You're part of the city government and we're all in this together. Okay. So another question I heard was that the city charges MSAC rent. That is absolutely not true. You're a city government just like a city function like everybody else. It's part of a condo. The city owns this building with the housing authority upstairs. There are condo fees. Those are part of the senior center budget because it's part of operating the senior center. Anybody in this space would be paid for it but it is part of the city budget. So as I said we need to provide the essential functions. So we do understand. We don't like, like I said, we'll be out of there as soon as we can. You will get your space back. That is not a permanent change. They can staff position. You had a director who was here until June 30th and she left. July 10 we had the flood. We will fill that position. I keep hearing that the city says people saying we will not fill the position. That is not true. What we don't know is what that position will look like. Part of the reason we're doing the assessment is to know what skills and abilities are needed and best used strategically so that we can make this successful. And at the same time the entire city is in a hiring freeze. Why? Again, the flood. We are losing all our rooms, meals and alcohol revenue. We're losing all our parking tax revenue. We will have many, many tax abatements from buildings that were damaged by the flood. We're expecting to be running about $1.5 million short in this fiscal year. The budget year we're in now. That's our current estimate. So we're holding. We have four vacant DBW positions. Two vacant wreck positions. This one and a couple others. No one is picking on the senior center. Every week that we go without we're saving somebody to help close our deficit while we're giving some thoughtful process to what we need. So you will have a new position back. It's coming. We just don't know what it's going to look like yet and we're asking for your participation and how that's decided. That's part of the assessment I'm going to talk about in a minute. So some background information. The senior center originally started as part of recreation in the 70s. It remained under recreation and through the school board department until 2009. The last year it was with the school department. The tax appropriation was $87,000. But next year the senior the city took it over and immediately bumped it up to $125,000. I hear this sometimes because people say the city doesn't care or hasn't invested in the senior center. We also as a result thank I hate to say thank you but thanks to a fire we rebuilt this entire facility to a much nicer condition than it was. The current budget that we're in right now has $188,000. This is a 50% increase since the city took it over which is 10% more than inflation and 117% increase since the school last had it. So the city has certainly not shirked its financial responsibility. The recreation director some may remember Don Lorenovitch, Don served as the director of the senior center with an activities director underneath him for years. And when the city so the city got the senior center when the schools moved out of this building. So we took it over. At that point the rec department which by then Arnie was the director was still under the school. So we didn't administratively control the rec department. So instead we put the assistant city manager who was Bev Hill at the time in charge of the senior center with the activities director under her. That seemed unsustainable so we switched it to a director position with the assistant city manager as you've heard us talk about community services. So we have rec parks and senior center and assistant city manager kind of is their department head. That is still the case. Had the rec but under the city when they came over we would have retained that same structure. So the proposal to have this be a division of recreation is really just what had been done since the beginning of the senior center. It's not a new director. So the first senior center director was hired actual director was hired in 2012 that was Janet Claire and she was here until recently in 2016 and 17 the city council or at least a couple of members and I found interesting some of the commentary from one of your members in the recent bridge. But that council member proposed capping the budget to the senior center and spinning it off as a nonprofit in a way to reduce city employees. The city council as a whole chose not to do that and instead said no we're going to maintain it and we're going to fund it. In 2017 or so this the council chose to bring feast in as a city program maybe a little bit later than that. Well first it was run by just basics then we brought it in as a city funded program and then more recently we then brought it in house to actually be run by our own staff to save money ostensibly but it actually has gone just the opposite. So take a look at where money comes from. This is it you've seen this all before basically about 20. So what is called operating transfers is our budget accounting speak for tax money. So about 25 percent of you is of this is funded by our tax budget. You have your investment your fees and charges for service miscellaneous revenue grants etc. So that's what makes up your funding. This is an activity based program. It is intended for much of its activities to cover their own costs with the admin covered which the city providing admin to run the place. So as we take a look over the last few years you can see revenues and expenses were mostly good. The blue is the expenses excuse me the revenues the the brown is the is the expenses but the last couple of years we've been in a big deficit. The budget for next year for the current year of course we budget for it to be balanced but we don't actually know what happens until obviously covid things went way down. We got a bunch of federal money and all that you know that was kind of a wacky year but since covid we've really been running out of deficit. So the city has been making that up basically because it has to be covered somehow. What so anyway I'll just leave it at that for now. Excuse me could you point out the deficit. Here's the expenses. Here's the revenues 50,000 something like that. Thank you. There's also the year in which you lost your in which you lost the very experienced director who I think was also an excellent fundraiser. Does that have anything to do with why that's entirely possible fundraising. So the question was I rest for covid but also noticing that we had an experienced director who was a good fundraiser leave and I think that may well be part of it. So I think part of what we need to understand is what are the balances that we need and what are the skills that we need of somebody that comes in. So it goes back to so these are the funds that come from grants in other towns. You'll see the current year is really high that is one time grant from national life for specific things. It's not really an operational cost so it doesn't necessarily represent an ongoing external revenue. Senior center class fees not really a surprise that during covid those class fees dropped but you can see where you were in FY 18 and 19 and where you are now. So that is something we need to figure out as we as we take a look how can we build those back. I know you all want to we all want to. So if you look at these are just the program profits you can see we were making about a hundred and twenty two we're clearing about a hundred twenty two thousand dollars on class fees pre covid and it dropped down of course and as last year was a little bit lower than the year before. So we're you know a little more than half of where we were. So this is our challenge collectively. Same thing with membership dues they're slowly eking back which is great. Obviously again you can trace it really to covid and our membership. So we had a high of almost 1200 people in 2019 we're at 757 of which 523 are Montpelio residents. So that's that's all part of the challenge is how do we maintain can we maintain the same overhead and infrastructure that we had for 1200 members as we can for 800 members. And what does that look like. So general fund transfers like I said that's that's the fancy name for tax dollars. Again I keep hearing that the city has not put more money into the senior center. And actually what I find interesting is the best years that you had the years when it was the most robust were in here. And what this is saying is that this the taxpayers have had to pay more and more and more for less members less activities because of the shortfalls and in part because we adjusted pay for for people and we agreed to that. So that's fair. The staff here should be paid like the rest of the city. So that's part of it. Oh so just taking a look at our overall staff costs again you can see that the staffing has risen. And now here's the non meals staff costs. So this is just operating the center. So in addition to staff there's been other costs just operations costs. Now that's not a huge surprise. Everything costs more these days and city budget has no non meal non meals staff costs. That's everybody but the meals program. The question was who is in non meal staff. I'm going to Kelly can you help me out here. So it's the director the admin people the program people everybody but the two people that work in meals. Yes portions of irony. I don't know about Kelly and portions. Can you speak to the back rows please. Everybody's okay. So tell me this quick answer and I'll tell you the way that we're structured. What did that look like. So this represents one vacant position. One director or vacant position. Full time yes. One admin. One admin. Is that Norma. One fundraising communications person. Matt. So it was the what was Sarah Norma and Matt. Does that help. To us way back here please. What's that. Yes. So way back here because we can. So the the non meal staff are the vacant director position Norma and Matt. Does that help. So then the meals costs. Excuse me. Yes. Yes. Full time. Well some I think some might be split with wreck and so the funding would be split with wreck. Yeah they'll they're full time positions but yeah split between wreck. Well again you know that cuts both ways. We have tried to save you as taxpayers money by by blending wreck parks and seniors in a way that we can use class registration. We can get you that information. The question was how would he split out and I'm going to I'm going to tell you that we can get you that answer. I'm not sure it's getting into that level of detail is helpful for it is important we'll get you the information but I you know going into decimal points and budgets isn't really what we're here to talk about. So obviously with the food service we had been overseeing food service and you can see the last three years that's when we brought it in house and started hiring staff and those costs have grown. Now this is our non staff food service. Now again back in FY 17 that's when we contracted out those services and then at some point we took it over. But what's interesting is if you'd look at that total of what we're paying for food etc plus the non food the others together were actually paying more than we were when we were contracting it and we thought it was too expensive. Okay the vote in the room was for me not to use the microphone. I'll try to be louder. I apologize but the microphone wasn't really working for people either. We're gonna have a lot of time for questions. We're not all deaf back here but we said when people speak too fast too soft or turn their heads just you and them on the screen there's no way the voice can come out here so I respectfully ask if you'd be really considerate I can hear but these people can't hear. We're not deaf. Okay well I can try this again. How is that working for other people? All right well we'll do this until people decide we won't. So anyway we've had a lot of increases in a food program. We've also had a lot of improvements in the quality of the food program. There's no question about that. So one of the challenges is how do we match the revenues with the expenses and what does that program look like? That's one of the things we're looking at. Okay so our preliminary analysis is basically this we need a lot of attention here. We're not ignoring you. We're actually paying a lot of attention. We're trying to figure out hopefully with you how we could turn this around. The budget is clearly out of balance. The membership is dropping. Revenue sources are not matching our expenses and all of those conditions existed when we had a full-time director and two rooms. So just you know I think this isn't unique to the last two months. This is a situation that's been happening for a couple of years and we need to figure out how to come in and write the ship. And the best way to do that is to look at all of the programs and as I mentioned the city's finances are in in not great shape so to come in and just give a bailout isn't really a full time. Is it really the right solution? And as some I've heard some people suggesting that we take some of the reserve or dedicated funds the Jackman fund to pay for a position and I can tell you that is really bad financial management. It's taking your savings account to pay your groceries bills not for when the roof breaks. We use those bequested funds to pay for capital improvements one time expenses those kinds of things and we use the interest from that fund as an operating revenue for the senior center. So I understand that's a conversation we're happy to have it but I can tell you that as a professional and as our finance department we would strongly recommend against that if it were ever to come to the city council. So the process we got to remove all the all of our programs what's working what is it working what are we charging is what is membership look like what how does that go what's the correct amount of staffing that we should have for each position and what is what do we need for each each program you know we've heard from some of our external funding sources people that oversee these they've come to us saying your center is in bad shape you got to make some changes so it's not just us telling us this so we need to figure out how this goes we will be conducting you know have conducted will continue to conduct member surveys and meetings like this to hear from you we will be talking to folks we'll be making some recommendations and the goal obviously is we got a budget that's going to come up in a couple months November December we present our budget to the city council we need to be able to say something to them by then so the desired outcome is increasing membership and people really clearly understanding the value of members of being members and evaluation of the fee structure are we charging too much or not enough increased support for of and for member towns last year we didn't get all our member towns supporting us focus on fundraising through grants and sponsorships you know as someone mentioned correctly we had a very robust fundraising program here and that has tailed off why and who's responsible what does that look like what's the strategy for that back to basics let's make sure we're doing all the things that people like we want to have a great senior center and the and a staff structure which matches the needs not just because we used to have it it needs to happen now so how can you help i mean that's kind of open-ended question but i you know someone stopped me i think correctly before this meeting it said there's a lot of things that aren't getting done i don't doubt it a lot of things aren't getting done throughout the whole city right now because we're all pulled in a million different directions but what can you do are the things that people could volunteer for to pick up are there things that people get help is there activities that aren't happening in the short run and how can you help us work together to come up with a good plan for the future of the senior center i know i was speaking a little hardly and it's not because you know i just feel like these are messages that need to be said there's been an awful lot of criticism that was seemed like it wasn't necessarily understanding the basis of what was going on so i want to be clear what's going on and why you're going to get your space back you're going to get your position and we're trying to figure out how to build a solid foundation so that's kind of the end of my reason now you can have at it to worry actually two two things one is that another another another thing that happened in 2019 is that um the swimming pool up in berlin was sold to a different person who stopped giving the discount for people who belong to the senior center um i think probably that's part of the drop in membership that $15 a year which is what membership was at that time was worth it for a significant cut in the cost of swimming which is how i happened to get involved in the senior center at all in the first place and i have a feeling i'm not the only one so i would i would look at that the other thing is that when you um when you lose your community organizer something happens to a community hire a really good community organizer like you had for 10 years put the money into that and get them working in building community and you'll have the community back thank you so for those that didn't hear that the main comment was uh the suggestion that once we lost the connection to the swimming pool in berlin that a lot of people dropped membership because that was a big draw that the the cost of membership for having access to the swimming pool was really good and that obviously was something beyond the city's control we are as you know engaged in a process of discussing whether we should build a new community center at the else club and what that would include can't guarantee that would have a pool but it's certainly being talked about so yes we we understand that the other part of the comment was about having a good community organizer um and you know making sure we have somebody like that back can't agree more um and would also say that um i received a lot of complaints about that person when they were here so it's again it's hard you know it's tough to please everybody um all the time and that's one of the problems with these kinds of positions so i have a one question about the hiring freeze is it absolute and for how long is it in effect two-parter so the question was about the hiring freeze is it absolute and for how long is it in effect and the answer is it's not absolute and it won't be on forever um i can't tell you exactly when it's going to be over we are trying to monitor how much we're saving um the the good news good thing with hiring freeze is you can save money fast the bad thing about hiring freezes is that they're not at all strategic right so you just have a freeze by whoever happens to leave so you have a senior center without a director you have four dpw people out but no police or fire people out so you know it's not it's not like here's where the highest needs are so we will be assessing that i would suspect we will start filling positions i think with this particular position it's a combination of the freeze and wanting to make sure we hire the right person for the right work uh and not just hire someone and then tailor it to their skills so so that's that so that leads into my next question which is um how by the time this assessment is done and there's you know a recommendation about hiring that's going to be january and we're going to be halfway through this fiscal year and we're going to be really struggling so one of my questions is there's lots of things not getting attention now fundraising grant writing programming you know arnie and and kelly have lots to do but they've been assigned to do this and when you say get volunteers together that requires somebody in charge of you know really trying to make it all happen there's so many things that are not going on right now and i'm really afraid that six months from now then we go through a hiring process and maybe we'll have somebody next february and we're done that is a great point and um i don't know what else to say other than that's a great point and we'll think about that that's i mean i'm not trying to blow you off i think that is an excellent point particularly around the fundraising those kind of things so we will take note of that i i actually agree with almost everything you said so um i can't give you an answer exactly what we're going to do about that but i appreciate you saying it let's see you've had your hand up a lot thank you um about the assessment who when what process consultant national council on aging senior center institute involved how what is the approach to the assessment yep thanks we're doing it internally in part to save money and time to bring in outside people cost more money and takes more time we're trying to move this to the point of the prior person so it's being done led mostly by kelly and with your own uh there have been well do you know i appreciate that you don't like that and if we were to use an outside consultant we'd be a year before we have a result so if you prefer that we can do that but we're trying to move this quickly we're trying to use our expertise this is not rocket science we're trying to look at our programs and figure out what it takes to run them and with your help we can do that part of it is talking to you it's talking with your advisory council i think there was a member or two that were involved with the process um so i you know i can't remember there but we get it um but we're trying to move this along we'd like to be in a position to hire someone for you and we don't want to take a long time so i appreciate that um but that's the choice that we made and i understand the nation for comparison and best practices issues there are a lot of questions it's perfectly doable internally but i just want to be sure that some of these points will be because it's terribly important and we're really looking at what's the gap in how in meals cost what's the gap in programming what's the gap what do we need to get this back together what kind of skills do we need someone to come in so we're calling it an assessment this is in a full consultant project this is just something's wrong how do we fix it i do think when you're talking about a strategic plan for the longer run that having someone with broader knowledge we are consulting with the center for my council on aging we're consulting with people in the field but you know there aren't really many senior centers in vermont that compared to this one we are pretty far ahead of most other places already and they're all operating you know our facility you know i mean i'm not saying this to be a wise guy but our facility here even without those two offices is probably better than most places around um but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try to make it better so appreciate your question um if someone helped me manage the hands they're just offline and i don't know i'm the troublemaker but anyhow i'm just thinking outside the box can you hear me okay i i think we need to look a little outside the box and thinking about all this we're the problem there are only burlington in here that are part of the city government that we have senior centers i don't think of that as progress i think of that as being taken over senior centers should be separate we should be like the kelloch hubbard library the town gives money to them that's what most towns do i came from weightsfield evergreen place all the towns in the valley gave money to the evergreen place a great system of volunteers those who didn't want to come to to be there there were retired teachers retired economists required accountants who could do budgets we need to think outside the box it's not just about city government it's not about how we fit into their structure it's how we as a group can become ourselves and get help from the city and and i think we could maybe get all the recreation programs could come from the city but some of the classes that i see now you only have to be 18 years old to go to them so that is not a senior program and i think that we could keep the recreation program and all the recreation services without even using this building and then we could pay rent here to the city or we could look elsewhere for something better or build in the future and i probably won't be around for that but i just i think we need to think outside the box and in terms of the accounting i agree with this lady over here that we need to get some senior centers involved in and look to the national groups of senior centers hi thanks i'm going to try it at this angle which i think works better so um i'm going to lay this to a true the memoir which is like a senior moment for bill because when you say that the revenue was down and the membership was down and that existed with the director and all the rooms open you're talking about the last three years three years ago i was in my kitchen washing every box and bottle that i bought because of coveted to leave coveted out of the equation and a new director who was focused from what i understand on feast when we had a director and no coveted and all the rooms open we were golden so let's not i just i don't accept that explanation bill i agree with that um i think the point being is that some of the pushback is burned we need the director we need the rooms and this that's what's killing us i agree coveted was the big the big issue however we've existed really in a post coveted uh environment for a couple of years people are here oh i know that coveted still exists but programs have been running things have been open stores all that's we all did well most of us don't like zoom i can tell you that for sure well fair enough and i think it still means that the adjustments were not made during that era to correct the course you know you can't just do what you always did if you have changes in your programming and income stream so i think well you know it's true if you if you suddenly live at your house and say you get a pay cut you can't just keep doing what you were doing you have to make adjustments to it and that's part of the issue was what kind of adjustments need to be made so that we can live in today's environment and grow this back to where it was so i mean you're right i'm gonna try to argue with you certainly coveted was a huge factor i i have a couple of thoughts i'm went down uh first of all i think would really help um so we had job descriptions for everybody um it's very hard to get a job description but you hired arnie to be part of the senior center so what are his job descriptions i think if that part was clear um that would really help this whole um process the other thing is that meals on wheels has never made many money through all the iterations that it's had and i'm wondering what would happen if meals on wheels went somewhere else it's a great program but maybe it should um maybe it should be working with um food pantry now they're in a new um place also i can tell you that we're the only department that has to fundraise and a lot of us are really sick of fundraising i would do the answer is that a comment did you were you looking for a response or was that just a comment i assume we have them i i'd have to check on that um arnie was put in to oversee the operation much like it always was before until we hired jenna and in part because we are short right now um i mean he would be the department head there will be a person in that job whose job description has yet to be defined with regard to fundraising um appreciate that comment and the question was you were the only department that has to fundraise um you are an important function i mean recreation fund raises through its programs it makes enough money in its programs to cover its cost and then there's a set tax allocation there's a set tax allocation for this operation and then the difference has to be made up most senior centers fundraise um not if you go marialysis route and go to nonprofit you'll be fundraising all the time probably more than you are now um so i appreciate that and you know as i said we're serving you know i having a public safety department i mean comparing a department like police fire public works you know to this as far as fundraising it's just not really comparable you know those are essential not this is an important but those are essential public safety services when you think of any town in vermont regardless of its size what does it do they plow the roads they have a volunteer fire department and they contract with the sheriff like and they have their land records like that's what you do if you're a town those are the this is what you're at the very center of what local government does that's what it is having them fundraise um just seems kind of but i appreciate the comment and it's certainly one of the areas we want to look at is what how much fundraising is necessary and how appropriate it is and what's it for so i think those are fair questions i have a question about parks parks recreation and the senior center are all a part of community services recreation department did not run a deficit as i recall parks ran a huge deficit parks is also i mean i believe you i just don't remember oh um and somehow the parks has i believe north branch expansion was approved by city council certainly a lot of money has gone into the country club road program there's no i haven't heard a discussion about how is parks programs going to be looked at for cost and effectiveness and scale back if necessary why is it the senior center that's under scrutiny when our deficit was far smaller than parks and we serve a vital what 40 of the population of montpelier good question about land purchase none of that came that was all came from grant monies none of that came from city money correct that's all grants yeah it's on in fact the approval for closing is on this week's next week i'm sorry so the question is about a parcel of land expansion of the north bridge park it's going to be about 65 000 it's all grant funds it's off of guldhill road and actually the approval to purchase that will be on this wednesday's the final approval will be on this but it's all coming from grant funds it's not and the same with the the berlin pond land that we bought for watershed preservation also all came from grant money so i hear you it was regard to parks we could we they have not run systemic deficits and we look at those all the time and um you know uh so we're always looking at all our budgets to for deficits and fixing too easy questions um i think i missed this you talked about we'll be getting the space back at least for one office hope our one classroom maybe two with the possibility of them moving over to the police station i didn't hear a date on that and the other one is a date on when we will be expecting to get a new leader director activities director whatever that position is the first one's easy um thank you lindsay that room should be back to your to to cg center used by next week they're moving out now there's only one person left up there the one if you go up the stairs to the right so that one is being cleared out now um and the finance staff will be in the police station and in city hall the in the clerk's office so there will be split the planning office and my pillar alive at communications and kelly's offices don't know if we can find another place to get them with regard to hiring i i don't we don't have a hard answer for that we need to make decisions by budget time and we hear loud and clear that the longer it waits the harder it is so i mean we would like to speed this up but we again it goes back to who are we hiring for what purpose some notes just while you were speaking bill um you said at the beginning we're all sacrificing a little bit i think from the perspective of many of us here we feel like we're sacrificing a lot more than a little bit second thing um i remember a few years ago wasn't that long ago arnie declared that the pool would not open i can't remember why whether it had to do with couldn't hire lifeguards or some technical problem and the city council said no that's not acceptable the pool you will find a way to open the pool and miraculously the pool opened i would like to see that level of creative thinking going on at the city relative to the senior center let's get the equivalent of our pool open also many norma is the only person on staff who remembers how amazingly vibrant this place was pre-covid that's unfortunate we used to have a culture of excellence here there was a zenith when janna claire was the director the food under justin turcott was amazing this room was full of people on tuesday full a hundred or more people having lunch here people vote with their feet if the quality of the food returns and you said that the food program has improved it has not improved senior centers in other places serve gray squishy green beans i don't want that here we haven't had that in the past we shouldn't accept that the food was better before it was nutritious there was quantity quality it was amazing it could be that again there used to be a culture of excellence ms ac's problems didn't begin with the flood we all know the decline began years ago and we can't put it all at the feet of covid why didn't the city step in sooner when the numbers started to go south and lastly you're quoted in today's bridge as saying and this is relative to the fema trailers and and bringing in a 12 inch pipe instead of an eight inch pipe quote even in hard times you have to make good decisions looking forward so i would ask you and kelly and other leaders of the city to please make good decisions going forward for us thank you nancy appreciate that feedback okay good is this good referring to the parks department there's some money that was set aside for making confluence park is it possible that that money could then be used that's not going to be used for the park right now that's for sure and also the parks department was um creating has a plan for a mountain bike trail up behind the state house so those are two programs that probably could be delayed a little bit and that money used for something else can i comment bill okay confluence park is on the agenda this week for next week for the city council meeting whether to continue that program just so people know there is uh it's a little bit more complicated than just money it was a 600 thousand dollar bond that was approved we uh grant money was used to to to design the park if we do not build it we have to repay the grant money so that's about 150 thousand dollars that would leave the remaining 450 thousand which could either just not be issued which means the city doesn't have the debt payment on it or issued and used for something else so that is a conversation city council is going to have on wednesday night oh bothers me that the financial people are making the decisions about what i consider essential subject the subject or the heart of the senior center the advisory committee as i understand used it used to be that there was a governing board does any why did that happen why was that given up in other words it seems to me that the city is overstretched your offices by taking care of recreation this and community services i know it's easy for you to say oh but we share because so and so math can come over here and sit in the office and take care of our communication which is very important right now but there are you know it just doesn't make sense to me to have the decision of what kind of director is needed being made by totally financial people what what what was the governing board why was that changed so to my knowledge at least well i've only been here for 28 years but in my knowledge we've there's never been an independent governing body there's always been the advisory council i appreciate that i'd like to i'll check on that i'm not sure that squares with my understanding the the school board oversaw the rec department and and the senior center and the advisory board for example there's a rec which is advisory and they provide guidance on programs and input but they are not the governing body there's a parks commission which oversees the parks but at the end of the day if you're a city program the buck stops with the manager and the city council and i believe when it was under the school board that was always the way it was they just took what we said so Mary Alice is clarifying that they listened and took what the board said and i believe to your point we don't want finance people making these decisions we want to hear and engage the advisory board in these exact decisions um we as the city need though to look at all of our city finances you know again you're not the only hurting program right now everyone is hurting and we have to balance all of this i appreciate that you are here representing the program that you love and i that's i admire that that's awesome and we have to look at how we're providing all the other services as well as yours so there is a financial component we can't just let things continue to get worse and i you know to the question of why didn't we jump in earlier we were letting we we knew we were coming out of covid we knew there was going to be a couple of rocky years we were trying to guide for a course correction and we're not seeing it so we're trying to do the course correction now this is not going to be a forever thing we want to get back going as soon as we can so the advisory committee have can i see yes please do yes so the advice i'm tell you in the carry on chair of the group this year and uh the advisory council by governance you know policy is one that advises is one that advises the director and so our our conversations with uh at our meetings are always about what's happening in the center you know and um really getting a report from the director and occasionally being asked for advice that that could change but it is an advisory council we don't have any decision making uh possibilities in policy thank you diana to answer the question to answer to answer the question well i advisory committees are really important we tend to pay a lot of attention to them so i i do you know appreciate that to answer the specific question though um the last two times that we hired directors uh there were representative a representative or two from the advisory committee on the hiring committee uh and we would fully anticipate doing that again absolutely there should be involvement from members in in that i i guess i'm really stuck on what are we going to do right now you know um you said you know we all have to work on this etc etc well that's all fine and good but when we leave here who's going to be organizing fundraising who's going to be organizing getting programs who's going to be organizing getting volunteers when we have two people sort of in charge but they are really busy so what's the solution um i don't have the solution right now but i can tell you so far based on this conversation that's the number one question we're taking away from this conversation today so we will huddle and answer that because i i hear what you're saying loud and clear that there's an immediate need and we got to figure out how to address it so thank you i want to ask um i want to ask a question a couple of questions of the audience um let's see how many people here this these are personal questions so you don't have to answer but how many people here have been to a memorial service in the last three months five months for a close friend or a family member could you raise your hand if you've been to a memorial service in the last three or four months for a close friend okay thank you how many people here have lost a spouse or a partner a long-term partner in the last five years anybody yeah okay how many people here are caring for a partner who has Parkinson's who has dementia who has some sort of degenerative um illness that requires caretaking raise your hand please yes right right they're not here because they're home taking care of them i i had lunch yesterday with a close friend of mine she's a vibrant intelligent together person like many of the people in this room um and her husband's had Parkinson's for the last 10 years she presents as upbeat and positive with a positive attitude she is lonely she is stuck at home almost all the time when i asked her tell me really diane how is it going she said julia i'm up to my elbows in urine every day and when i sit when he sits down and i give him his food he stares at it and i come back a few minutes later cleaning up the kitchen i come back and he's got his spoon in his hand and he doesn't know what to do with it now i'm bringing these things up because i think that the the territory that we live in when we get into our 60s 70s and 80s is not only personal loss like a hip a knee uh our memory uh but it's also a series of losses of the people that we care about most the people that we're close to and we are constantly dealing with loss loss loss and if you then end up sitting in your apartment or your condo alone through the long vermont winter it is awful and i think and i heard this the last time i attended uh the the um discussion meeting here this place has been an absolute lifesaver it's not just a nice recreation center for people i think that's why you're seeing so much vehemence bill i i think it's hard to know when you're in your 50s and 60s what it's really like to walk through this territory of your 70s and your 80s and your 90s and it's not just a fun place it's not just an upbeat cool place to be with a nice meal it's a lifesaver for people they say so that basically that's that's my message is that this is really important to 40 percent of the people here and it can be as nasi said so beautifully it can be vibrant again we can't let it keep sinking we've got to rebuild it and keep it vibrant because it's a lifeline for people here thank you first of all thank you for that that was beautiful you know um my mom just passed away a year and a half ago at 91 and i watched her live alone for many years and i kept saying to her she lived in Maine i kept saying why don't you go to the senior center and because and she well you know i just don't want to and she was all that you described lonely miserable and ended up you know passing away i so it isn't a spouse but i hear you and i appreciate that i i want to be clear and i know i've said it and i realized we're in a tough spot here that we want i want this to be back to what it was so i'm going to ask a question if i may given what and i would ask you to be thoughtful about this and i know there are a lot of really thoughtful people here okay sorry i'm going to ask a question and i know there's a really a lot of thoughtful people here i'm going to ask the question if you were in our shoes right now with knowing what the information you've seen what would you be doing and the answer isn't just go hire someone or just give us our room back so how would you be approaching this challenge because we'll take all the advice we can get we want to get it right i find it interesting that one of one thing that you have been brought up which i've heard many people ask is why didn't the city go to the else club and you know you know one of the an answer to your question is that while you've taken over the senior center why wasn't the else club prepared to take the staff there rather than displace people who are already here and are providing a service thank you for that question kind of a complicated answer but uh basically the short answer is like most large operations we have an emergency response plan and we have a system in place for what to do and our plan was always to come to this building we practiced it we had done dry runs of it the building was set up for it the elks club probably will be the plan in the future it doesn't have all the internet connection and currently has a mold issue so we can't really occupy it anyway right now we are mitigating that issue that's a relatively new city asset it's a perfectly great question and i would imagine well i say in the future i don't we don't know what will be up there in the future maybe a whole new facility for all i know maybe a new senior center and you'll all be up there with the pool and the gym and everything else so who knows what's going to come of that but in the short term between now and whenever that happens that would likely be our location but for now this was a preplanned location and it's why we're trying to get out of here as quick as we can we understand but we as i mentioned at the very beginning we have there's really important work happening upstairs and we need you know there are people depending on that work as well first of all i'd like to thank you for your lovely powerpoint presentation um i do have a couple of questions um uh one of the first points was that we do not pay rent um i'd suggest that by virtue of the condominium approach we may not pay rent per se but we are paying you a fee for for the use of the building i guess i'd like to ask you um given the financial columns that that were presented if there will be an adjustment to our condominium fee for the amount of space the city is now using it's only it's only a financial swap from one column to the other but in what you're trying to demonstrate i think it's a very important swap thank you i'll answer that question but i would love to get back to your suggestions of how we move forward if we can um so the city owns this building and the city not the senior center the city is the partner in the condominium so the city is already paying the condominium fee it goes into a budget it is in your budget um but it's paid for out of the tax portion of the budget it's part of the overhead so um you know if you'd like footage that we use of the building it's based on the square footage that the city owns and so really what you're asking us to do is to make an accounting transfer and have the finance department or the planning department pay that portion of the space is that correct i hear you um and we'll we'll consider that i'm not sure at the end of the day it's going to make a lot of difference i would like to build on the point that you were making about this place being a lifesaver it's more than a lifesaver it's a spirit saver and i think as this group comes together they're oh as this group comes together there's an energy in this room right now that um feels like there's a spirit in this room too and we need to use that part of us to build on practical things that would attract more people and we must with COVID has only been mentioned once COVID is happening now in the community and we are um concerned about that and if people can't come here they certainly more people come on zoom i think we need to build um more um workshops or whatever that relate to the spirit of this group and the community on zoom that would help finances perhaps um and you know use that as um the spirit for practical matters hi i'm deb i'm deb robinson and i just wanted to make sure that we were aware that one of the issues for us as seniors is that many of us live alone and the COVID was really really difficult and not having the space here available the programs available means that that that emotional thing is still present with us we're not able to come together and see other people's faces you know i keep talking about three-dimensional people are really important you know and you don't get it on zoom and and that's i think that's one of the one things that most of us here feel is we need this space in order to maintain our our mental health thank you i agree george in the back's been trying to get in for a while in the back george wilson uh maybe i don't need the mic do i do okay um so my question billy back to your question um but first of all i want to honor what everybody else has said here it's been a wonderful discussion at this point lots of great questions and comments um hiring um a director is essential i think that's the piece that's important to us um hiring a director is essential that's really important we must have a director here and when jenna was here and prior to that um the place was vibrant and you can see the decline one of the things that happened was the advisory council this is the diane's point earlier recommended another director and unfortunately the person who was the assistant city manager at the time didn't take the um advisory council's recommendation and they hired someone else and and so i think that's a an important factor to consider and that was prior to kelly being here and i think then things then things declined a bit and and and of course uh the focus was on feast uh and that certainly uh didn't help this place because i was here a number of times with some old friends uh prior to this time and had a wonderful meal as everybody suggested so i really want to honor all that they said one of the things that i wanted to address a little bit was um about the decision about the endowment who makes the decision about the endowment and you also mentioned bill that uh in times of need maybe you could use money for that and we know that um i'm not sure what the will says what the jackman fund says who controls it um what was jackman's um requests at that time i don't know that and so if one of the things that could happen in order to hire a director at this point if we need money maybe there could be a one-time um use of that fund to hire a director um anyway thank you george george why you still have the mic george i got a question for you still have the mic because i i i hear what you're saying and i'm okay picking up on it so help me with this sure what we hire a director or an activity whatever we call it what do you think and i'm then i'm gonna ask you know others to weigh in what are the skills what what is what is that person capable of doing what's their skills what are their strengths what what are they bringing that we don't have do you have i mean you all are here what do you think well and i mean that sincerely because that's what we're trying to figure out um i'm sure that a lot of and your opinion your opinion but i'll give you i'll give it a shot so one of the things that was mentioned earlier was about the importance of kind of connecting with council on aging and community organizing and so forth that's an essential skill i think the people need the person that you hire needs to understand the issues of the elderly and of us of us seniors i don't like the word elderly i'd like seniors better uh and and uh i'm a senior this is my birthday today i'm 76 i always i always i always make yeah it's just not about me although i do try to make it that way uh i uh i so i think that's an important piece i think you need to look at who this person is and what they understand the issues of seniors and there are people out there who have those qualities and i think it's important that they that we look for that person if you're feeling and i'm going to yield the floor thank you bye bye jerry all right here i am again um so you asked in the senior director what we're looking for one thing we're looking for is a person who knows all the senior members that basically presses the flesh so they come to events they're out and about and they know who we are i think that that would be incredibly important the other thing that we need to do is straighten out this whole meals on wheels thing which i keep going back to because the president cook right now does not cook for the senior center so poa has to go out and hunt around to find people to cook the meals and i also heard there was some grant that was written to hire another cook which sounds kind of crazy to me so that certainly needs to be looked at and again a very clear job description because the senior center director also has to be really good working with volunteers if you want this place to come back we've got to you we've got to really use our volunteers really well thank you comments one is um you want to hear me oh okay one is um the statistics that you showed earlier show that for about 10 years things were fine financially and so on under the direction of the previous director and you keep wondering wondering around saying we need to figure out what the qualifications of a director should be you know that already you just look at that and say okay do we need to add something or subtract something here so it's not like this is a mystery but you just go back and say this is what happened but the main comment i have is that you keep saying we don't want to make things worse and we want the senior center to succeed at the same time you are taking away the infrastructure for the center to succeed and you are taking away the infrastructure which makes things worse you're taking away you're taking away classroom space you're taking away leadership and oversight of the programs who is right now looking for classroom space who is looking for classroom space is that arnie or is that kelly excuse me i didn't hear the last part of the question who is who is looking at classroom space right now arnie or kelly what's the word classroom classroom space got it got it who is writing grants is arnie writing grants is kelly writing grants who is directing the fundraising i don't know who is directing the fundraising who is planning the programs this is pretty like already in the in the semester and we need to plan the programs who recruits and supervises volunteers now so thank you for that those questions and i appreciate your comment about what we had worked i want to remind people that um you know jenna did a fabulous job this is not anti jenna but the but she was not the prime fundraiser you remember dan groberg worked here and that was his position and technically that's part of matt's position so this is what we're trying to figure out is who what are the strengths what are the things do we need a person stronger in fundraising than we've had in the past and um so i think you're right we do know what needs to succeed but we have to look at um all the pieces uh so jenna was great dan was great this place thrived and what's the right combo to get it back i'm carolyn ridd path and we talk about the advisory committee and i'm wondering if this isn't the time for them to take a look and see if maybe it needs to be restructured in a way they feel would be more effective hello my name is caro montgomery i've lived in montpellier for six years if i was 20 years younger i would apply for this job i have been an executive director of a foundation i've written grants i have a lot of ideas i'm limited on time for a number of reasons medical and family but i know this can be done i think you need an executive director i can help you write that job description if you haven't written it yet um i've brought up a fledgling organization to a foundation with 501c3 status it's not an easy thing to get if you've never done it it's a lot of work i think my motto has always been solutions not obstacles and i have a lot of respect for everybody in this room but i'm hearing about the past you can't change that we can only move forward and i believe the advisory should perhaps a little more power um i worked with a board and on that board there was a chair of fundraising there was a chair of membership there was a chair of many many departments and they reported they worked with the executive director to make it all happen and we were very successful but it takes a lot of people with the time the time and the background to give to that so that's what i think we should be looking for i have some other years but i'll i'll i'm writing them down so thank you taking interim director for that's what you need right now yeah um the not knowing the person i have no idea about whether um they want or should be the acting interim director but that is that is in fact what i would immediately do within the next two weeks is i would do what any social service agency does when they have lost their director um which is i would i would ask janna i would ask beth stern who used to direct the council on aging and anybody else with knowledge in this area who would they recommend who may have retired or may be available for some other reason to step in as an interim executive director within the next couple of weeks with the assignment what we need you to do is to plug the holes in the you know basically figure out where's the money going on not coming in plug the holes write the grants while we are in the process of over the next several months budgeting for and hiring an executive director with the skills that any other ed of an you know of a community organization that works with elders would have who can do fundraising who's good at organizing people who has understanding of the needs of older people um but first and foremost there's there's no reason that i can see why um there hasn't you know why there wasn't a plan for hiring an acting ed when you knew that the current that the most recent director was leaving and i would do that immediately just pull somebody out of retirement for with the understanding is this going to be for a few months to to you know kind of plug the holes and kind of keep things afloat while you're working on hiring a permanent person thank you does anybody else have any question i'll come back to this one up here too yes sure uh can you hear me without a lot of reverberation going on i'm going to change where i'm standing i hadn't heard a whole lot about the else club can you still hear me okay oh yeah i hadn't heard a lot about it and i was quite upset when i about what i did read about it and i'll preface my remarks by saying that in a few weeks i'll turn 94 and and i love to dance at the farmer's market so all of you come over and dance okay i have i have this sense that many elderly people have a being shunted aside because you don't know how valuable we are for one thing and you don't a lot of people have forgotten that the baby boomers are arriving at elderly and that is one mighty large group of people we've arrived right and we have to make sure that we have what we i'm not a baby boomer i was born the day after the stock market crashed in 29 but it went up the day i was born on friday and then it went back down on monday and tuesday and it was all over i also taught in this building five years when it was st michael's high school and i may have taught some of you folks i taught luce jeffords in sixth grade in burlington i taught pat lehi in this building and nobody else on the planet can say that so i feel i have the right to speak but i'm also embarrassed that somebody might say oh what a show off because i was a nun 20 years and you didn't get up and show off okay but i brought with me a copy of a few lines i wrote just a few years ago and pardon my bad that's not good teaching i'm sorry um the title is the old and if my voice starts reverberating please let me know or if you can't hear me properly all right the old our backs are now bent our eyes could be better our legs move with effort our arms can't carry much we once were the new builders of bridges keepers of forests makers of roadways we now are the old sharers of stories town criers of truth sages of villages we are the old we are here thank you thank you for that and we are almost at the end of our time and it kind of feels like we shouldn't go after that um so i would like to thank all of you for your time and um your frankness i was counting on it i got it and i really appreciate it we uh we do want to get this right and i know maybe you have doubt about that but we do and hearing from you today is very helpful i sincerely mean it when i when i said uh suggestions that you have about how we approach this and we heard what you had to say you know kelly's working right upstairs my email address is available phone call many of you know me see me down the street or whatever um we want to hear it and we my takeaway is you you want to know what we're going to do right now and i think that's a that we owe you that answer and well it won't be in the next five minutes but soon you got 15 okay thank you um so with that thank you for coming okay so the suggestions for committee in addition to the advisory council so we'll take a look at that anyway thank you all hope you all have a great day it's supposed to be nice out appreciate your time