 So, we have everybody here. Julie, Janine, Janet, and as a guest, Prudence, Sheila, Susan, Eve, and Art. What's your name again? Ruth, Randy, and Jeff. Thank you all for being here. Oh, let's see. Anybody have any pressing issues? What brought you back? Yes, I appreciate that. Thank you very much. So, I am Janet Beardsley. I'm sort of new to Lama, I've been here about a year now, and have really started to enjoy participating in lots of wonderful things that the senior program has here. So, I'm actually here because a few things fell into place very quickly. I thought, oh, I could come here on Wednesday and present this as a request more than anything else. I participate in the balance class that's over at the memorial building. And the teacher who is very, very good, her name is Kim, and it is filled with a lot of quite elderly people who are doing balance work. And they have a hard time hearing. And Kim has a lovely voice, but it's a solid voice. So, I went up to her afterwards and I asked her, is there any way we could get a microphone on you? And she said, we've tried that. It doesn't work because of the sound system in the memorial building. And she said, the only thing that would really work is, you know, we moved over to the senior center, but we can't do that because there are other things going on at the senior center at the time that she does her class from 1030 to 1130. Well, I intend to go to that meeting next Wednesday. I wonder if I could bring that up. Would you allow me to do that? And she said, yes, she would. And so, I guess what I'm trying to do is to appeal to you to, because it is a group that's having a hard time hearing, the system does not work well for her. Is there any way we could get Kim to do her balanced class here, rather than at the memorial center? She and many of the members of the participants would like to see that happen. And would it be okay if it stayed there if we figured out the mic? If you figure out the back. Yes, of course. There's many times that that class has gone on and the batteries die, or something goes wrong with the system as it is. Well, and it isn't just, the system, it's the sound in the room itself with the generators, whatever it is, the airflow going on. It's just, it's complicated. And I can hear, I have good hearing. So, it isn't a problem for me, but I just... It's a combination of factors, yeah. I mean, I wonder about, if we move it here, the gym that we have would be a similar echo issue. And they have the sound panels there. Do they have a sound? I do a yoga class there on Tuesdays, and there's no problem with that. And there's no microphone on the teacher. So, maybe it's a panel which... It's a facility issue. We need facilities. Okay. We are seniors. Yeah, the advantage that the gym here has is the ceiling has all of the acoustical tiling out, because when the senior senator first opened after the remodel, it was just a nightmare. You couldn't hear anything. So, let me do some investigation and see what we can do. Thank you. We really appreciate it. Thank you very much. Thanks for bringing this up. One more comment before we go to minutes like we're supposed to. I'm sorry. Go ahead. Would it make a difference that there was a time change in this class? No, it's the, it's the facility. That's absolutely correct. It's a facility. Well, Kim has a soft voice, but that's not the issue though. The issue is the sound within the room that just is muffled with other noise going on. And when they decided to have date camp at this facility and have that class at the same time, that was like... So, you know, I also, I don't want to sound like I'm just a confiner. I want to say I do the yoga class here, and I also do the line dancing class here. Oh my goodness. Is that fun? That is just absolutely terrific. I am really inspired with the line dancing. So, know that you provide some wonderful, wonderful programming for seniors. Okay, we'll accept your sequence. Thank you, Janet. You're welcome. Quick recovery. Okay, minutes from last month. Does anybody have collections? Um, down on action. Yep. Oh, item D. Am I in the problem? I didn't know I was part of the, or am I? The new interview process. You're not part of that. That was Julie and Art. That's my thought. Okay, so just scratch my face. Okay, and then I saw right above that, see that should have been Jeff, shouldn't it have been? Jeff updated one candidate. Yeah. And otherwise, I didn't see anything. I think it looks good. So, can I have a motion to accept the minutes as corrected? Art, Jill, who are we on? Prune's kid, you and Susan signed that. I bet you can't wait until February when you're not doing that. Okay, old business board candidate interview update. Art and June. June? Art, do you want to take Yeah, I can just say that we met, and very pleased with Beth. And she looks very interested, you know, she sounds very interested. She participates here. She's one of the peers here. She is a, I mean, there's no doubt about it, but she, she would, I like to say. What's Beth's last name? Olds. I like the B-O-W-L-E-S. Very concerning, like I said, she wants to become more accurate. So when does the city bless her or whatever they do? So on Saturday, they have virtual interviews the council does with various board boards. And then on December 20th, they'll make appointments to take to start in January. Perfect. Open house recap. You probably know the most pulled together. Well, I believe they pulled together all of the data here. You know, I know that you had some disappointment about only having 60 something responses, but that's actually a pretty good response rate for having had 360 people there. What is the percentage? That is, what about 20% of their doubts? Is this the results of the sort of open house? Yeah. And my question is, where is that available? I'm sorry. I didn't hear it. When is that report available? It should have been emailed to everybody on board. David, is it because the usually thing for things to be valid, it's usually 30 to 35%? Is that correct? Well, the thing that's up there, I guess, is that we had a captured audience. And we tried to threaten them that we needed answers before they left. That's right. I'm sorry. 20% for a mail sort of would be pretty good. But still, you know, still, we have quite a few folks. I just passed out an overall summary. And I sent the whole thing to, I went through and I listed all of the individual responses. My question, then I tried to summarize it, which was not easy because they're all over the map. Anyway, it didn't seem to fall in groups. That's an overall summary there. You got them? Okay. If anybody wants the whole list, I've got the whole thing right here if you want it. But I didn't think anybody would. Your compiled list was very good. Well, then I took the summary of the summary. And that's what you have in front of you there. And I think the thing that's really stood out is the exercise. People love the exercise. And I don't know, maybe this is, you know, this is stuff you all know, I think. But the main thing I found from the survey is that kind of confirmed, I think, the fact that they see that you're offering the right services, the like services, an affirmation, if you will, from this. And it's partly the way we framed the questions. And so we got the kind of answers that we got. But anyway, it was all very positive. So fitness, walking, hiking, silver, six sneakers, yoga, all that stuff. It was mentioned twice as often as the next cluster, so to speak, which was the go catalog. Everybody loves the go catalog. I didn't see one critical remark of the go. A couple of people felt that they could maybe do a better job of using the newspaper, radio, TV, nobody said TV. But basically, everybody was pretty satisfied that they were getting information, and especially the go catalog. Travel. I interpreted that to mean people want to get out, you know, our age would, you know, you'd like to get out, local trips, longer trips, all of that sort of thing. So that was very popular, and I should say frequently mentioned. Then to a lesser extent, painting, crafts, music, all of those kinds of things, counseling, mental health, they're all important, a whole bunch of different issues. They didn't mention a whole lot of issues that I recall that they did mention, you know, peer support counseling, going to people to talk to them about different things in confidence. And then the last thing was, party, I recall you wanted this question regarding frequency of participation. 14 said rarely, never 12 occasionally for, you know, so there's quite a bit of participation, I thought, given the 68 responses. So to kind of summarize all of that, it was a pretty positive exercise, I think, in terms of the feedback. But I had in mind for the feedback, new stuff, but didn't really get any new information. I don't think just an affirmation of what we had. Now, you push my button, so I'm going to keep going. I was looking through the annual report, I thought this was kind of interesting, maybe I'm talking more about this than you really want to. But in the annual report, I went through the areas of concern reported and heard against what we had in the survey. And there were a number of individuals correct me if I'm wrong here, but there are 1139 individuals listed as people, again, your service volume for last year. For resource specialists. I'm referring to specialists. And the kinds of things that they talked about were primarily financial. Over half of the responses that concerns were in the financial area. And then there's also housing, caregiving were the next big ones. Financial concerns were not the kinds of things that were mentioned in that survey. And again, I think that's a function of how we asked the questions, to some extent, because we asked them what they thought about the center and what we could do. And this is more one of the things that bothered you about, right? So I thought it was a little bit different. I think it's also unlikely that people would write on a form they're handing to a stranger that they have concerns about their finances. It's a pretty vulnerable thing. Yeah. Right. I'm wondering if their finances, the finances, the ability to pay here, is it both? What's being referred to in the annual report is people who need financial assistance with basic needs. So housing, food, medical bills. Resource issues. Yeah. Resource issues. But it makes sense to me that they wouldn't write that on a survey. Right. That's a tender thing. Which tells me, I don't know if we want to do this again next year, but if we do, I think I wouldn't want to approach it a little bit differently. And I think some of you felt the same way that maybe we might want to do it a little bit differently next year. And again, that's if we have an open house and if we do this. But I may be more of an in-depth interview with a smaller number, something like that. Focus group. Yeah. Focus group. I don't know. Maybe take a different look. Yeah. You know, one of the things I noticed, first of all, in almost four years that I've been a part of these, I've never seen that many people come. And it made my heart sing. And I also was greeting at the door. So I'm aware that a lot of people were walking in the door for the first time. And people that are coming for the first time don't feel as comfortable doing those kinds of surveys because they don't know about it. The other thing is there were so many people coming, especially towards the end of the hours, that they wanted to get back into the room where all the resource tables were. And so I think that had something to do with it. And if we're going to have that kind of questionnaire, it may be that that particular kind of open house experience might not be the place to do it. I mean, we have access to a lot of people, but not everybody is going to have the information or experience that we're looking at. But I was amazed. I really was amazed at the numbers. People were really engaged. One of the things that I think could be interesting is maybe once a month we have somebody out there doing a survey of all the people who are coming in and using the facility. Because you might get more of a response around who, what other activities that they would like to see here offered here at the center. And I like to go to senior homes, senior housing places, and go to them to get information about what they want. Because that may do two things. It may bring them here. And we also may have a place to gather information where they're feeling relaxed and have more time to spend with us. What about if you utilized your instructors and the last five minutes of a certain class on a certain day, you asked them to fill out some sort of a survey because they're people who participate in a class at the moment. And so they may have input as to what else they'd like and how they'd like to do it. If I can share some information, we have resource specialists at housing sites constantly and along the communication with residents at housing sites. We also do kind of a mini get appointed at housing sites when they ask, which is sporadic since the pandemic that used to happen regularly beforehand. So those connections are in place to be having that communication already, I would say. Survey wise, we've never done frequent surveys. I think because of probably the many time to go through them afterwards, but Michelle had, I would say at least every few years putting together a really large survey here in the past that was open for at least a month and people could just sort of continually give feedback. So we can look at mechanisms around surveying. Yeah, I mean, it could be interesting if we did something monthly where, you know, we have how many people on the board, you know, maybe it's a board member who comes in and spends, you know, half a day interviewing people or doing surveys and then, you know, collating and so do we have two questions? Do we have a one question on the comment? Do we have a demographic breakdown? Okay, because that would be helpful because when I think of resources, okay, there may be a gap between people who are 80 plus and people who are younger and have worked and have worked. You know, I'd love to do something like that. I think I asked you that once before about demographics. That seems to be that you were reluctant to ask that kind of information. What? No? No. Honest, I think we haven't asked that necessarily on the surveys, but we have demographic information from our resource system. Right. Absolutely. Because that's great. But you can't relate it back to a response. But you're not a particular response now. My other comment is that, you know, people who are going to classes, you know, they go to the class, they may have like 17 other things that they want to do. What I've seen is that there's an iPad set up and before they leave the class, they answer, it's very easy to read quick questions so that or four quick questions or five quick questions. So you have an iPad on the stand and you know, you ask whatever five questions you want or big questions you want, and they could just press and leave so that it is, first of all, it'll put together your statistics to begin with. We have new iPads, I'm present with friends along that way. We have brand new iPads that were really cheap, I have to tell you. We have a good drag road. And what it gives us is ongoing information during the book sale. So we can press how many people, some people still write checks. Some folks have cash, but we're moving people to the credit card because we can tap there. And we can see automatically how much cash like within minutes. So it could be you want to set up a few iPads at the end of a class and have people just press your three to five questions and one of them can be an age question. 64 to 72, 72, 73 to 82. So that's one way to do it. And it will take a lot less time in terms of compiling data. And I can tell you we bought I think three or four iPads that are connected to Quicken. And I think they were like 800 bucks. I mean it was cheap. 800 each or? No, total. You ordered them from Denver. So I think you can, you can get your information without having so much Mandela. Ruth, oh Sheila. Okay, I agree. Two things. With any sort of survey or data collection, you only get the response from the people who want to answer questions. Even saying, yes, this is my age. Especially older people like myself. We don't want to tell everybody our age. The other thing is I can see that collecting that information after each plus. You're going to get duplicates because somebody's going to come in for a yoga class and then tomorrow they're going to play billions and then the next day they're doing a balanced class. So you get through responses. What does that mean? Right, right. It's confusing to the same person. But I think getting demographics, getting democratic, getting not democratic information, democratic information is really important because I think when we went out to look at senior houses, we had one person in her 50s, one in her 60s, and one in her 70s, which is a big range. And we had, the senior centre needs to accommodate all of those ages. That's my two cents worth on demographics. And a really good talk, David. Well, I'll be the devil's advocate, but I think we have to be careful during surveys because people are asked to do surveys from every human single thing they do in their life. I think we need to be careful. I agree. Every time I buy something, I get from lows, I get a survey. I haven't made a survey for months. I like your ideas about maybe updating this. And if we do it again, I think we could certainly make use of more sophisticated approaches and spend a little bit more time analyzing just what it is that we're after. And it would take a little more time. But if we want to do it, I think that would be, this is just a kind of initial plunge. Right. Yeah, up front you may have to spend a lot. But then you may not have to spend as much time compiling. Okay, I think everything went well. I think we do. Well, like I said, I think going around, I think the creating the people when they came in, I think they felt so very welcome. This, I agree with two or three questions maybe next time. And even if we don't get the what you call it? Yeah, the act as or whatever. Even if we give us maybe a half a page with two questions and then put a watch right there, you know, maybe put a table and ask them if they would like sit down and just kind of feel like I'll put it in that box rather than giving it back to us. The one thing I do, and I don't have an answer for it, I just didn't, I just feel like at that particular function, you know, a lot of Hispanic population show up. I had one monolingual Spanish speaking person that came in and I talked to them for a while. But as far as I guess the more I think about it is that even for that one, it would have been nice to go and walk around with them because if there's not a Spanish speaking person, that's one of the what you call the booth, you know, it's kind of hard for them. But that's one of the concerns. And like I said, I don't have the answer for it. Well, I think part of the answer is that we're hiring a three-quarter to the recreation coordinator next year who's bilingual in my cultural and a big part of that work is going to be outreach. Good. That's real good. Yeah. Yeah, real glad to hear it. Marcia, just a comment that on what Art said, I had a really memorable conversation with a black person about why there was not more participation on the city boards by persons of color. And I said, we actually made some outreach effort to recruit a better balance. And she said, well, the problem is for me that I don't want to be the only person of color and that you should recruit in pairs. Which I, you know, and I found that to be I guess kind of an unreasonable expectation in some ways because it's a quota system, which is kind of something that we don't do. But what I came, the lessons I took away from it that I think speaks to what Art said is that for a time at least, we should do direct outreach to the Spanish-speaking community, direct outreach maybe to some of the churches that had, you know, it's hard to lack people in the long run or just scattered, but there are churches, there are places to recruit. And I wonder if some direct outreach might make people feel more welcome by being invited as something to consider. I think that it's okay to do pairs. It's not a quota, but if you come into a room and you are the only black person in the room, it is so awkward. It is incredible. So I think pairing two black people is perfectly fine. It's not about a quota. It's about reflecting what you want. It's leveraging the gifts to do specific outreach. So I don't have a problem putting two black people, two Hispanic people, two gay people, you know, whatever you want to say together because people want to see themselves reflected. And I think that's a very, very important thing when a white person comes up to a black person and well, if you're Hispanic, but if you come up to a black person, if one black person says, join our committee and all of us look like us, I don't think that's a successful recruitment tool. So I can accept that. And yeah, I don't know that I suspect having with your professional background treatments that you may know more because I don't know really what defines a quota or not and what is appropriate for us to do. So yeah, that's a perfectly good point. I mean, on this board, it, for example, I mean, we've sort of segue away from the subject of participation in the open house. But this board has a large enough membership that it might be possible to, to at least look at pairing, because I've lived in communities where I was the ethnic minority and it's weird when you walk in and everybody doesn't look like you. Right. It's not comfortable. And especially, I come with people of color because it's been ingrained in them, ingrained in many, many people that they will be the only one. And that's one more thing. One final comment is on this, is that, you know, as far as the Spanish, Spanish speaking, et cetera, the one thing I do know is there's a lot of them that come in for service, you know, need help with this letter, need help with this or that. And I go, I'm sure they're doing it, but if not, hopefully our outreach people are not that reach before you come in. Are you sorry for that, Steph? Yeah. The ones that will be with you on it, because you know, give out a gold magazine, talk to them a little bit also about being participating a little bit more. Well, they do. I'm sure they are. And we, we started this year making a monthly Spanish flyer of all Spanish programming in particular. So that the resource specialist can just hand that to people too in the front desk. Monica at the front desk comes make that. Okay. I will say about open house, I'm going to take the notes and put them into our tracking document. The staff have had a debrief about open house. And we think every two to three years is probably the sweet spot for open houses that annually we would get one like numbers pretty quick. But so we're tracking because it may be two years before we have another one where we're keeping track of all the ideas. And can I just say something? I wasn't able to attend. And I haven't been out of state with a good excuse. It sounded so successful and we'd love to have been a part of that. So I think well done to everybody else who participated and particularly to David with your survey. Moving on to Jeff. So senior services manager position update. So we have you didn't bring the champagne. So Ronnie Mayness, some of that of you met him during the interview process has accepted the position. His first day will be January 9. And Ronnie brings a vast amount of experience in administration, customer service, and I would say problem solving. And he's going to do a very good job and can't wait for him to get here. I have a quick question. Are both of you going to be involved in training? How's this going to work? It's a secret. We can't give up. Yes, Brandy I and Christina Czecho will be in that process. We are currently working on his onboarding process and actual schedule for him for that first week. And in dating him with all the information hoping that he comes back for week two. Some of the responsibilities be split differently than they were in prior to June. A little bit, yes. So that we can breathe. Yeah, and I'm not going anywhere. So I will be still coming to the board meetings and friends meeting for a period of time until Ronnie feels comfortable. Also, we finished first round of interviews for the director of human services, which senior services will be a part of. And I'm hoping that that new director will be in place sometime in January as well. So there will be a lot of support for Ronnie and staff here at the senior center. So his last name is M-A-N-U-S. M-A-N, excuse me, M-A-Y-N-E-S. It's pronounced M-A-N-S. What's his background? He has been in the education system. That's what you're asking? Yeah, and been an administrator at multiple schools as an assistant principal and athletic director. And feel like the skill set he brings is going to really work well with the age group. And once you get to meet Ronnie, he just has this personality that sucks you right in. And I mean that as a great thing. I think he's going to bring some real good things to all of us and really, really pleased that he accepted it. I might just say something. I love the idea of having the male minority as the leader of the senior center. And we do have two males on the board. That's not enough. I think we need to get more of a male influence. Influence is probably more important than what we offer. So I'm looking forward to that. She's not saying there's anything wrong with all the females in there? Yes. I'm not in my balanced class. I'm right. So the energy this young man has was just unbelievable. And he's been there with more with youth than he has it. But you know, I feel so comfortable with the staff that we have here that he's going to fit right in and they're going to help him in getting into where he needs to be. So he's, I mean, I met him on the parking lot when he was leaving. And you know, again, he emphasized how he really wanted this position. This is a good fit for him. And so I just see that he's going to fit right in. So I see it's really, I have to ask this because my name is pretty, it's his real name, Ronnie. How do you spell that? R-O-N-N-I-E. I have not seen it written any other way. Okay. Hosey recruited. Well, through the city process, we had put out things initially through Indeed and some of those processes as well as individual reach outs to different senior centers in the area. And then also on the Colorado Parks and Recreation Association website. And did both of those two different times because the first round was, I would say, pretty disappointing. The second round, Lori, who was our first candidate and ended up turning down the position and Ronnie found their applications the first way. Ronnie's application just came in way way later. Okay, trip registration update. I handed out 97 numbers for people that came to sign up for trips. It was a snowy day and I was afraid we weren't going to get a lot of people and I was really surprised how many people still came out for trip registration. And it seemed like it went really smoothly. It was Jamie Beckett, our Recreation Supervisor's first trip registration. And I think she learned a lot. I hope you had any other feedback, Jeff? Are there waiting lists on some of the trips? Yes. Yes. So again, a good assortment of things to choose from. Yes. And I've heard Jamie and Shar talking to us companies and doing their normal process of, okay, we have a wait list. Is there a way we can create a second leg of the street? They are so good at jumping right on that. In some cases, they're not able to get the price. Logistics together, there's not enough tickets, there's not any options, but when they can, they do. And then the restaurants that decide not to be open on Tuesdays that are already in the catalog and they find an alternate. Yes. Update on library, recreation, culture, text proposal. Harsh, do you want to talk about this? Yes. This is classic economics. We have limited resources and many needs. So to quickly recap the situation, we have one really oversubscribed, a creation center in Longmont. A proper allocation of resources for a city this size. We put one in each word. So, you know, we've got a third of what we ought to have, or if you count the Memorial Building Facility about, you know, which you realize, you're right, I don't either. Susan agrees. I don't do that class too. Yeah. The library, it's about 60% of what it ought to be. And that would be for, you know, going for dead average. And then I have really strong feelings myself personally about accessibility of other cultural issues or features, experiences. And I find that to be a real, that lack to be a real social equity option for us, honestly, as well as for our youth, which is my main concern. Because, you know, people in their prime working years who are persons of privilege, you know, at least middle class, don't have any trouble accessing things in the greater area. But if you are a child, whose parents have to work an excessive amount just to make ends meet, they aren't going to have the resources or energy to get you involved in things like performance class music, different genres, you know, it's going to just be whatever's around in your neighborhood. And it's the same for older people, because, you know, driving the Mackey Upatorium and parking, driving to the Denver Center for Performing Arts, driving to Fiddler's Green, those are incredibly inaccessible barriers, insurmountable barriers. So I really, I feel like I personally am fighting to keep that on the list of funded issues. And I shouldn't, you know, all of these things are really important and branch libraries are, I think, important for the same reason, you know, because not only is our facility inadequate, but it's in the center of town, and we have an edge, and we have whole neighborhoods where transit service is inadequate. It doesn't even touch them. So, yeah, we have many needs. It would be a quarter of a billion dollars to just haul off and do everything we think needs to be done. And that is just seeding the capital campaign for the Center for Performing Arts, and, you know, doesn't fully fund the building of it. So it's a terrible dilemma, and I want to raise the issue as well that there seems to be some kind of a public backlash against economic development, against growth. I don't understand it myself, because, you know, to me as an insider, it seems like it's being done very thoughtfully, and, you know, with an eye toward building a more accessible, more equitable, and richer, in the experiential sense, city. But, you know, that's an insider viewpoint, and I think that to get anything, you know, even if it's a third of what this asks for, to get any of it to pass, is really going to be an uphill battle. If anyone has ideas about approaches, or communications, you know, that would would change the way people feel about things, I would love to hear it. I don't know Jeff or Susan whether we have time on the agenda or not, but if not, maybe we can schedule it for soon, because this is, you know, we've got almost a full year before things hit the ballot again. But, to me, it seems like one of the most important things we're doing, but also one of the most difficult things, yes. Yeah, you know, thank you for bringing that up. I think that part of the issue is, lies on the sense of communication. So, I think that communicating about the hotel, I think, has been really poorly managed by the city. And I think that what you hear, even when people who don't even read the long, long times call, they say, wait a second, there are plenty of developers in Colorado? That's the first thing. And why are you giving a company who is out of state in which most of the revenue will flow to money? So, I think that that communication piece is really the issue. It's similar to the swimming pool in my mind, is that there is not a united effort council. They can vote on things, but there's not a united communication effort within their community's awards to have people understand why you're giving their money to someone from Mississippi, I think it is. So, I think that the communication is just really lacking. And I would recommend, not even suggest, that you hire someone from outside to do the city's communications. There are plenty of talented people out there who run communication agencies, and that that would be key in helping, not helping, but assisting the public to understand what is being done. So, I don't fault the issues. I fault the communication of the issues. So, I think that that's the biggest part of the problem that people don't support, as you say. All these initiatives, because it's communicated so poorly. I am on both sides of that issue. On the one hand, I feel like there is always a first time when everybody hears about something. And regardless of how gradually or how suddenly or the way it's introduced, my observation is that the initial reaction is universally no, which is kind of terrifying. And so, that is one thing. Another thing is, you know, again on the, that's what you said, side of it, you know, is that we have these, I'll call them memes, you know, that get started and are absolutely insurmountable. You know, you just, once somebody says this, it becomes true. And the fact that it is demonstratively false, you can talk your ear off. You know, I've had personal conversations with people about the actual funding model for this hotel, and which involves no city money, unless you count the value of the parking lot, which was not a revenue generating thing. And I don't know how, you know, this is a group that will not accept this, because we are not going to change our habits away from automobile driving. You know, it's the gen Xers and the millennials and etc. that are going to drive less. It's not going to be us. But personal car ownership is not a sustainable practice, and the city planners with a 50 year horizon are acknowledging that. And what that means is that, that ugly asphalt parking lots in particular are doomed anyway. It's been in the DDA plan, as long as I've been associated with them, to repurpose the flat, ugly style of parking, and incorporate it into buildings like the spoke, or the hotel, you know, which has hidden interior parking that can later be repurposed. But that is just what responsible city planners are doing. The other thing is, you know, the only money, only city money that would ever go into this is rebates on future taxes, and specifically the taxes that are generated by the hotel itself. So none of your money, none of your money unless you decide you like living in that hotel and spend a lot of time there and pay lodgers taxes, then it's your money going to fund it, otherwise not. And I can explain that painstakingly, and you know, the person I'm talking to will come back and say, we could be spending it on the library instead. Well, no, we couldn't because if the hotel doesn't generate that revenue, it won't exist. And so, you know, all of those things are on the side of, you know, what are we going to do? As is the fact that the downtown master plan is publicly available, you can download it from the DDA website and the city website. It's really easy to find, unlike almost everyone else on the city website. And it's been on the master plan, that hotel in that location for 20 years, and the concept of a hotel for almost 40 years. So this is the first time I've heard about it, means that the public is not taking any responsibility for the city until they see the headline. So that's why you need communications. Okay, so I can tell you right now that what's going on at my synagogue, they own five to six acres of land. There's toothy buildings on that land, okay? They're going to hopefully change that and move to the JCC campus. It'll take a year and they have hired a communications specialist, have held focus groups. So I really believe that the communication from the city is so poor that they rely on the newspaper and gossip, you know, to get their message across and one to one. Has there been focus groups? And people say, well, you know, it's been there for 20 years. Well, when I hear that, I mean, that's a no vote for me that took you 20 years. Okay, so that's that's kind of the other thing. But I think you must understand that people want to be communicated to by not a politician, but by to formulate to form your message. I think the messaging is just really poor. But there hasn't been a message yet about the library, because we've been developing information to present to Council. Once Council, we had the meeting on the 29th, then the next step is to go out and get to the focus groups, do the surveying, take input. You need, you can't do it. You need a focus. You need a communication specialist. And no one has those. That's the problem. I agree communication should be better. The thing is with the good people of Longmont here that the city has spent a quarter of a million dollars on hiring professional communicators. You don't have to pay. Now that just opens up another can of words. And can you imagine what next door would say to that, which is where most of the miscommunication comes. Oh, it's about 50 50 with Facebook. But yeah, maybe I should look at Facebook. And I suggest that if people think about this and have ideas to help Marsha present this, you can email Marsha directly and maybe, you know, edit on old business the next time we meet to talk about it. I think that's a good idea. I would appreciate that extremely. There is one more thing that I would like everybody to know as they think about it. And also as you talk to the people you associate with in everyday life. This is actually not a city action. So the way the hotel came about, it's a business development action by an agency charged with business development. And some of the steps in it had to come to the council for approval. Period. So, you know, the council did not get the option of engaging in advanced communication with this. And and that's it. I think here we have a communication problem that I I try to, you know, to have people don't know what the council does or the limits of its authority. And they don't know, you know, they think they think that we should be able to vote on everything. Well, you know, if this hotel is the scale that triggers a vote, for example, we'd be voting every week. And the cost of that would fund a homeless shelter. I just have a question. Sure. Somehow I my brain got a little bit confused because I see the hotel is being a whole different issue than a library and a civic center and a rec center. There are things that really are related to, you know, what the city might be asking to tax us, where the hotel is a whole, to me, it's apples and oranges. It is apples. If you want to provide feedback, I don't have feedback about hotels after what happened to my neighborhood in the last eight years. But I have a lot of ideas about how to approach people who are going to ask for tax money from in today's world to fund a new library or library extensions. So is that the feedback you're you're asking us to give you? Yes, I mean, because you're absolutely right, other than approving an action by the general improvement district, and a rebate of future taxes, the council had nothing to do with the hotel, right? But yes, what the main purpose is, is, is bringing something to the ballot that will pass. Because people don't know it, but they're cutting off their nose despite their face. You know, I think I have heard, and Provence this will sing to you, I have gotten so many calls and letters that say, our library's fine. We have one. When was the last time you were there? And how old are you? It is that demographic piece. Well, you know, I mean, that's that's true. What you know, once your kids are old enough that their library, their school library is their main library resource, until you are retired, how much do you go to the library? I read everything on my Kindle, and I'm happy to pay for it for the convenience. So, you know, there, there is a large decision making population that is not critical of the library. Yeah, so it's really, as, as Prudence says, it's, it's, it's a huge communication battle. And yes, we are talking, Janine, about the monster ask that is coming up. And first of all, it's not going to be a single ballot measure for a quarter of a billion dollars, because there are law-growing laws, and the things are not closely related enough to all be on a single ballot measure anyway. So, it's a terrible conundrum. What's the priority? Well, everybody has different priorities. And everyone will be glad to hear that the city is, is embarking on a program of outreach and asking everybody what their priorities are. That will last all summer, because we don't have to refer the ballot issues until this August, or maybe next August. Yes. So, it will be like one issue is the library, recreation, there'll be like four issues. We don't know how we'll stack it up. Okay. So, but it won't be one is one. Yeah, yeah, it can't be one. So, I have been advised legally that one could define a, a long month public information, you know, public experience complex that is essentially a library that happens to have a theater in it. Yeah, okay. You know, it's not unheard of. And so, you know, those two might be rolled up together, especially since, you know, the performing arts has only got 50 million dollars, that only 50 million dollars allocated to a library number is bigger than that. And I can't answer that question for another reason, which is that there's something that the city has no control over. We won't know until August, whether there will be a library district initiative on the ballot, because it takes a new school number of signatures and no money to get that to happen. 100 signatures? Yes. Great. I think the whole role of libraries has changed so much. I mean, it used to be, you go and get a book, but now they have so many programs. I just know someone who went to the Denver Gala, I don't know, all sorts of things through the library. 250,000 square feet as an advertisement. Yes. And, you know, they didn't put out what happens every month, but it was people we didn't know. You know, you teach your children, or do our children teach our children these days about libraries. And I was a kid, it was an intricate part of life. It was like if you go there. It really was, but unless parents or schools teach their children about all the magic in a library, that's another generation coming up. So, you know, perhaps that's why they spend more time on their computer and on their phone than they do in a library, but that's all a part of the discussion. That's right. And the distinction between the two is warring, you know, in first and second grade, we had actual lessons about how to use car catalog and what the 2D decimal system was, because you were helpless. You had no access to information. You couldn't do much. You had trips to the library from their school. I will tell you, I was taught all of that, you know, 55 and I was taught all of that. I think one of the issues with the library is that if you take the general chunk of the middle class, they're not interested in going to the library. They can get it on their whatever device it is that they can bless with because they're privileged, right? So, you've got this middle class, upper class, and then you're looking at seniors, right, that have a large living, people who are retired, let's put it that way, living on a fixed income. And then you have a community of people who are in, you know, at lower economic levels. Those are the people that are most interested in going to the library because those are the people, that's who they can get the information. They can get access to a computer so that they can get online all of those things. And it seems like the people who are in this middle class, you know, upper middle class area that don't have an interest in having their taxes going to that, right, don't understand that it is to lift up the other part of the community that doesn't have this privilege, right? But there's a lot of people that are in that income level just really don't feel like their money needs to go to those services, right? And so I think that's what gets, I think that's the battle, right? And yes, I think it is communication, but that's our biggest battle. Those people who feel like they don't need the library will always go against it unless they're civically minded and they are interested in lifting other communities. Yes, and civic mindedness is somehow languishing in our current era. So Susan, we were going to cut this debate off and put it on a future agenda and it kind of didn't happen because everybody has something to say, so I apologize. I would like to also put out if, because I'm sure the agenda is already crowded, another thing that I would be willing to do is engage Sandy or Marika and run a focus group soon, you know, but like before the next meeting even. So if there is interest in that, you can go to Susan, you can go to me. If there's interest, I believe that I can get it together and it would sort of be a proto focus group because you know how it would inform, you know, the more planned kind of work that will happen in the spring. So yeah, put that on the minutes if you would, and I told her they got their library, but they did and we could do for me. We could have some magic. Yeah, no, so too. Yup, one quick one. One quick one. I spent probably two, if not three hours, very recently in the Orlando Public Library and it's amazing. I thought to myself, this is sort of a combination of library, Tinker Mill, Long Rock Public Media, that you'd be sitting so, and it was so impressive. You had the chance of the inclination to look at the website that describes it. I think it will open up some ideas about what we as a small community can do with those sources services. It's amazing and everybody I talk to there loved working there. I'm so pleased to have some of the kind of interest in it. You know that's something that hasn't been discussed, but the way our civic center and our makerspaces are separate. Well, they're separate but they're also located such that we have a shared child care drop in for up to two hours or something and you have to have a cell phone so we can find the parents. But you can pay your bills. You can go to the adult version of the library. You can go to Long Rock Public Media. You can do all of those things downtown and it would encourage participation. You don't have to go as far as Orlando. All you have to do is go to the Loveland Library, okay, which is about 15, 20 minutes from here and you will see a library that is very similar and also the Denver Public Library. So if you just take your little car and go 15, 20 minutes from here to Loveland, you will see a spectacular library. Can we tie this back to the senior center just briefly? I believe the plan with this tax proposal is that we would build senior center space into the recreation center. Is that still the plan, Jeff? I want to make sure we at least note that. It would not be a full senior center, but it would have programming space at that location. And that would not eliminate this location. I would like to move on to a new business because this is my last meeting in this term here. I would like you guys to think about how we and what we're going to present for the 2022 annual report from our advisory board to the council, which is usually presented in the spring. Last year, I believe Sheila and Prudence pulled a report together in conjunction with Michelle. We as a staff have started talking about that and we'll have that on an agenda in January or February. There's a brief section that the board pulls together about what the board's work was and the rest of the report is really what the whole senior center's work was in the year. So it's not a big list, but we do need some information. Along with that, we have discussed the registration process. I wouldn't mind if you mentioned that in addition to the staff being overworked and the facilities being over-spressed. You're looking at me. So what we did is that we went through the minutes of 2022 and then we pulled out some things and then we met with Michelle. So I thought that what I personally thought was the best thing to do was to look at the minutes and see what was accomplished and what is still hanging out there, what the RF people could take to bring that out. I think that's coming off because that goes with the goals which have to be reviewed for 2023 and some of these goals have been hanging there forever. Right. So that's another thing on January. The goals should be updated. What are the goals? The upcoming agenda items. It's on the second page. The second page at the desk. Oh, the minutes. Okay. Yeah, it's not on the agenda. Just going to that, I could ask, seeing Susan and the other outgoing members, the reports on area agents and aging and the engaging care in communities. Susan will no longer be reporting on those. How do we get other forward members to replace you? Not that you want to replace me. Well, first off, before we jump into that, sorry, I will be attending the fairness meeting on December 27. Sheila cannot back me up. You'll have nobody reporting back to you unless somebody would like to attend with me. Can you can you write a report? I guess I can highlight it. Yeah, I can send a little bit. Will you be there? Or Brandy and I could make that report. Okay, well, that's fine. Then you can report back. I'll be there. Good. Okay. Take care of that. And in January, you have to elect the president, vice president and secretary. So you will also appoint people that will be attending the various meetings and able to report back. And I think it was last year, wasn't it people volunteered? Right. And then it wasn't a volunteer, then then we twisted twisted. Yeah. Will our new board member be on board at that meeting? For January. Yes. Yes. Yes. And then you'll have the odd number, but you still need to, you know, we have two vacancies, hopefully in mid-year, you can get somebody else to come on for nine. Okay. Yeah. So the process is the clerk's office will ask again, they usually do board applications in June and in the fall. And so we'll be back in that cycle again to get somebody, I believe it's for the July meeting. Yeah. Yeah, I think so. I think the other boards I've dealt with are all into the year. So this is kind of new for me, but I think it's July where we have the opportunity. We will, if council still wants this to continue to do the interviews, I'll tell you that my experience has been in Martin, Julie, if you think different, please chime in. But I think that's been a great experience to at least be able to give council some feedback. Can I ask who's leaving the board? You and me. Okay, that's my call. I didn't know whether anybody else was volunteering. No, you don't volunteer to leave, you only volunteer to join. Well, that's not an arguable term limited or are you choosing not to seek a second? We're choosing not to seek a second term. Well, that's all it is. Jeff, I need to clarify this. So you say in June, people can go ahead and apply again and again before saying, hopefully in July, will the appointments will be made? Yes. Yeah, okay. You can actually apply. So there's a window. It's clearly marked on the website and there's a little piece in the paper paper, although I've never encountered it on the website. When the window opens for applying, because obviously we have a recruiting period beforehand that is not as well publicized as it would be. Jeff, we got Chong interested in the minutes. Yep, I need her email. I have the email ready to go. I have the email ready to go. I typed it up this morning, but I couldn't find that hurrying up. Okay. It can go up second. Okay, perfect. And the goals of the board, listed in the back of the minutes, I assume the responsibility is proven to Susan had some of these goals, maybe up to discussion. Right, January. Absolutely. Supervisors report? I have no other report other than Ronnie starting and then we'll let everybody know that next week there will be some four of the furnaces in the building are going to be replaced. So there might be a little bit of noise and I'd be a little cooler in some area, but that all should be done within the week. And then we'll be back out of here. Does that mean it's easier to regulate temperature? No, no. That's too much. Okay. If I can report in, you know, Teresa Schulte has stayed on with us to help train Jamie Beckett, our new organization supervisor. Teresa will be retiring again soon. Sometimes you have one more after this, right? If any of you, you know, are fond of Teresa, you just may want to touch base with her before the end of the year. So the end of the year is going to be it for her? I don't know that we have an official date, but soon she is, she's there. She's really going to retire. She'll still be on the fringes. Yes. She'll be around. Young enough to go have fun. That's what I thought when I retired at 60. Anything else from the city council, Marsha? Are we pretty much covered? Well, you know, that's the big issue before us. Again, I should reiterate where we are. In fact, with the new LHA organization and new people in both planning and human services, really having a revolution in terms of the ability to provide affordable housing. And so I'd like to brag about that a little bit. We now have a seven person council again, having seen Sean McCoy last night. But you know, other than that, there was an interesting discussion on the contents of the retreat. And I'd like to ask you briefly what, if any of you have interest in attending or part of the council retreat, because it is a public meeting. It's a two-day-long thing. Sheila goes, oh, terrible. But it is a public meeting. And the venue has yet to be decided, so if a lot of people express interest in attending, that might affect what the venue is. It's not a thing that you can hold in an auditorium. It's a round table kind of event with, I hope, a lot of free discussion. But there will be some public invited to be heard on the agenda. We're planning a two-day event, so there might be two public invited to be heard segments. So if anybody is interested at that level, then we believe it is February 11th and 12th. And where did you go last year? There wasn't a retreat last year. It was the window of opportunity was almost closed by the time we realized we would not have a seventh council member last year. So the last retreat was at one of the affordable housing venues on Hover. I can't remember the name of it. And it was, I would say there were a total of 40 people there. There was the council, there were a lot of advisors from staff, and a number of attendees from the public who stuck it out for an amazingly long period of time, including Shakita Yarborough, who was not on the council at that point, but was preparing, which I found pretty admirable of her to do that. And it was entirely focused on the LHA, which is different from those council retreats. And we did, you can watch the discussion online if you're interested in the discussion about content. So Zoom will be available? I don't know. I believe that that's a minute's only discussion. Just, you know, so people don't think that they're performing and don't have to behave formally and can scratch their nose and stuff. It's like, yeah, starting like this, although we are recording this, aren't we? And I see that red eye looking straight at me. Next time I'm not going to get stuck for 20 minutes in the Starbucks line, which is why I was 20 minutes late. But anyway, I will, next time, know more about what the agenda is and what you'd be like. Is that something our manager attends? I don't know. It's only if there's an agenda topic. Okay. How we could attend at the public. Jeff or our new manager? Our new manager. And yeah, it's, well, we'll talk about the agenda next time. Let's move on to Janine and area agency on aging. Anything for us? We met last Friday and did a large review of area agency, area on agency issues and challenges in the mountain towns of Boulder County. And there are many, many, many in terms of getting services to people up in the mountains and how we can more effectively serve people in those communities, especially issues in an, we've got food covered. Food can be delivered to people in the mountains, but services like services that are offered here at the senior center, transportation, getting people up there down here, especially to services in our senior center, as well as things like shuttling, getting people's driveways shuttled, which is non-existent up there and becoming a major issue for the safety of older adults. So we really address those issues. We reviewed some of the legislative priorities that are coming up this next year. Some of the things that I think are good and interesting, if anyone's interested in participating, is they're planning on creating a board on affordable housing for Boulder County, wanting to expand ride-free transportation, wanting to expand behavioral health that would be available. Looking at a workforce of volunteers throughout the county and, of course, ongoing welfare mitigation, especially for older adults in high-risk communities. So that is quick update. Great. The Friends Board, they were able to see three new board members, so they've got what they need. They are also talking about transferring their moneys to the High Plains Bank without doing an RFP just because they've had a terrible experience dealing with their current banking, which is out of state. They don't know the people. That's all turned over. And then they are preparing for their big annual meeting in January. So fourth Tuesday of January 3 to 430 is their annual meeting. Anybody who's given a dollar of work can attend. Could I ask you one question? Why do you think it is that the Friends got three board members? They don't have to go through the city process. Thank you. If I can add, staff did outreach to and writing people for both boards and they want it. I don't see any logic to it. Honestly, there were more people who were interested in the Friends Board and making sure that the funding pieces are in place there. I personally talked to a number of people about the advisory board who were like, this just is not, I don't have time in my life for adding anything else. It wasn't because they didn't want to go through the city process. And they weren't interested in the advisory board, it just did not fit in their life. And one of the board members was tapped on the shoulder by Debbie Noel. She goes, how could I say no? So there she is. Well, I would also like to say whenever anybody talks about this board, we always say how engaged it is, how effective it is in terms of having its tentacles in every process around aging and over adults in the entire Boulder County. And some people really admire Yale, but they also don't know how much work it is to be on this board. If they know the same thing about trip escorts, I've heard that too. I'm like, come on people, I'm not doubted it. I'm sorry to bring you on. What date is their annual meeting? The fourth? January, the fourth Tuesday in January. It is January 24th. Right. Thank you. Can you say what time? It's very quiet. We usually get it all about it. If you've contributed, you're going to get a notification. So anything from the Latino Coalition or? No, I just have to say that I really brought this up several times at the board. And the same people that are on that board are the same ones that are involved in several other boards. And it's not easy finding people to do this, but no, other than that, there's not much. It's a great board. And if anybody ever wants to attend one of those meetings, one of the things we're trying to do all the time is bring somebody in to speak so that they can go out and talk to others about that. And maybe one of the things that on this tag you're talking about, that come and talk to the board at some point, that would be a great thing. I was just about to say the same thing and also to ask you, how diverse is the board? Is it all Latinos? Yeah, there's one or two. But yeah, the majority is Latino. And the ones that are not Latino are very active in the Hispanic community. We should have a side conversation. Nothing from Julie? Yeah, Pat David? Yeah, a couple of things. Just briefly, the last sustainability meeting for the coalition was last month. And there wasn't a whole lot new they did. They reviewed some of the stuff that's gone on over this last year. And quite frankly, I'm quite impressed. And I'm quite impressed with the whole cities as far as efforts and sustainability. But just a quick review has been a beneficial building electrification plan that was passed by the city. And they're coming back to you from our direction as I understand it, but it's in motion. There was a zero waste resolution. And they got some pretty ambitious goals there and that was passed. I don't remember when that was passed a couple months ago. In December, I think in the meeting after next, there's going to be the universal recycling ordinance that's going to be on the agenda that will have some impact. Commercial buildings for sure probably on multi structure or multi family structures. And I don't know the details. I don't know if anybody knows the details at this point. That's on the agenda. So you got those three major pieces that are going on in the community. I mean, how can you not be impressed? And I saw in the paper the other day, one month ago, an award for sustainability, I forget what it was called. But that's pretty impressive. One of the things just interestingly that was mentioned that one of the members, a Matthew Popkin, he's talking about right fields and landfill solar. That was an intriguing idea. I don't know if you've heard about this before, but the idea is that you take old landfills or you take landfills that are going to be phased out. And rather than try to make parking lots or shopping centers out of them, or just let them sit, but solar panels. And I guess this is fairly common in the East, in the West, like Massachusetts and I don't know, some of the other states back there. So that's going on. If I had a long conversation with Zach Lance and the sustainability program, and I asked him, are there any plans for around here? And according to him, they considered it for the landfill around here. But they thought it was too impractical. I guess there is an old one around here somewhere. I'm not really familiar with that. But that's the sort of thing that's going on. And then the last thing I wanted to mention was actually the main reason I called them was to see if they endorsed this document, it's called rewiring America, Gold America, a little electric. And it gives kind of an outline of the IRA that's coming down the pike, the Inflation Reduction Act, which doesn't do anything about that. But anyway, that's what they called it. So it outlines the kinds of programs and the kinds of incentives that are going to be available down the pike. And all I will say is that we just need to watch that. The feds don't, we don't know exactly what's happening with the feds. We don't know exactly what's happening with the states. We don't know what's going to happen at the local level. But I will say this, as far as the money that's going to be available, it sounds like for low income, I'll just put a quick estimate of low income people that would be below $66,000 household in this community, moderate would be $150,000 and less. Those are the people that would be eligible for upfront discounts on the kinds of things that are going to be funded through the IRA. Anybody above that might be most of the people in this room, you don't get any upfront discounts that you do get tax credits. And so up to around 30%. So I'm just saying no, that we just need to watch that. And when it comes down the pike, we want to make sure that the seniors, whether we do something or whether the city does it, to the state or whatever, we just need to watch it. I can add a little to that quickly. The reason that the Beneficial Electrification Committee has to come back is largely the IRA and some other unknowns. So having to do with whether some outside agencies, you know, the timelines and the code updates that will require, say, new buildings to be more electric, new upgrades to be electric, et cetera. And things are pretty much set at the federal level, I think, but the state has to do rulemaking about how they're going to administer their rebates and how they will apply for them. And that's the big unknown. But one thing that people can be fairly certain of is that any expenditures in 2023 will get the federal tax advantages that are in the IRA law. So, you know, there's some squishingness about when the rebates kick in and how to apply for them. And that's what we're going to have to publicize. And the other thing is you need to set goals. People need to understand that you don't just slap a heat pump instead of your old gas furnace. What you have to do is you make sure your house is tight, properly insulated, you know, do your windows need new stripping, any of that stuff, you do that first or else you'll missize your electric appliances. And that is actually the studies have rebate programs or subsidy programs for that for years, and there's just no uptake on it. And that's an outreach thing that, for example, this board could do because of many, many seniors that are in little old houses that live like civs. So a true service to get help everybody get involved in promoting that. And on to engaging caring communities, I actually was able to meet two of the people from Anschutz last week. And they told me they're waiting for ARPA funds to be released so that meetings can resume on that committee. But I guess their work has been noticed far and wide. They've actually gone to Alaska, England, etc. for similar types of programs. So hopefully, you know, we'll be tapped on the shoulder to participate in the future. And we lost a very valuable member. So that's where I'm at. So it's been my pleasure, honor to work with all of you. Thank you. Carry on the good work next year. Hey, motion to adjourn. I have a get acquainted roster from November, and I'm not sure who this goes to now, who makes calls to whoever wants to, to people who attend and get acquainted to see if they have follow up questions or needs. Thank you, Janina. And Susan and Prudence, thank you so much for your work you've done to help the senior center in the city. It hasn't gone unnoticed. Thank you very much. There's a flag out there in the park, right? Thank you. I just want to say that I will miss the book. Carry on, train on the newbies. Right, that's right. And while we're all saying thank you, I hope to stay with this board, but it's not entirely under my control. And when there's a new council member, we do re-swizzle stuff. So I just want to say how much I appreciate all of you, especially those of you who are leaving. But all of you, I mean, this is a truly wonderful board, and I hope that I didn't have a part in making people afraid to join it by telling them how effective you are. Small part of the city. You can't take all the credit. And I want to thank you for the messages you sent me regarding my brother. He has passed away, and he did go out with some. So we got this officially adjourned with... Motion to adjourn? Second. Okay, here we go.