Senior Citizens Advisory Board Meeting – June 2023

Video Description:
Senior Citizens Advisory Board Meeting – June 2023

Read along below:

Unknown Speaker 0:00
Welcome. Thank you. For recreation. Yes. So we’re borrowing we’re sharing we still no. We’re still we still seems

Unknown Speaker 0:13
to be a trend, recreation.

Speaker 1 0:19
Evening. It’s supporting the older

Unknown Speaker 0:23
you are. But it’s Rania Mori.

Unknown Speaker 0:27
He’s young. He’s smart.

Unknown Speaker 0:33
And he remembers things.

Unknown Speaker 0:37
Better I do.

Unknown Speaker 0:39
sixth anniversary, six months.

Unknown Speaker 0:40
Yes. Oh, my gosh, already. Already. Very quick. December. Yeah.

Speaker 1 0:48
Did you do a before and after like we took your photo, and then

Unknown Speaker 0:52
I was just counting the gray hairs. There’s a lot more. Jeff knows how that feels.

Speaker 2 1:07
All right, I guess we can get started. We do have a quorum. That’s good for the clarification. Thank you. approval of the agenda. Are there any additions to the agenda? Everybody should have gotten a notice from Ronnie about the addition

Unknown Speaker 1:26
of mercury. Yeah,

Speaker 3 1:27
I’d like to add the Add under new business, maybe the July meeting?

Speaker 2 1:32
July meeting? Yeah. Okay. Anything in particular,

Unknown Speaker 1:37
just that I won’t be here. I

Speaker 3 1:38
don’t know if anybody else gonna be here this the day before, before, or the day after the forum?

Speaker 4 1:43
We haven’t met in July because we’ve been close. I don’t know. I’ll probably be August when we don’t need

Unknown Speaker 1:54
everybody else skips a meeting.

Unknown Speaker 1:57
We talked about that. Now in case we get your

Unknown Speaker 2:03
library available. We’re not going anywhere. But what about the restroom?

Unknown Speaker 2:07
I will potentially be

Speaker 4 2:08
done as well. The issue I just want to bring up is that our closure date, sorry, I can our closure dates have changed. So normally, the Senior Center was closed end of June, early July. So we’d always skip the July advisory. But now we’re closed end of July, 1 week of August. So our building will be closed and we’ll be having a department retreat on August 2, which is the day we would meet August. So if you don’t meet in July, you’re also missing in August.

Unknown Speaker 2:33
Well, we can. Yeah, we can do it another day. That’s okay. Jimmy

Speaker 1 2:43
Thanks, Robert. Yeah, um, um, okay. In the same thing happened with AAC. They’re not meeting this month or next month. So a lot of the board, same thing. And the way it folds, like the fourth is to on on Tuesday, and we’ll be meeting on Wednesday. I mean, I’m gonna be around, but I don’t think we’ll make quorum.

Speaker 3 3:12
My question is we have 20 people. Correct. There will be code that will be

Unknown Speaker 3:18
coming. Yes. So but I don’t know what your schedule is.

Unknown Speaker 3:22
The Fourth of July?

Unknown Speaker 3:23
See, God, can we just move it to August 9. Can we just move our meeting to August 9 of July?

Unknown Speaker 3:35
And the center will

Unknown Speaker 3:36
be open on the ninth? Yeah. To make sure.

Unknown Speaker 3:41
But yeah, it’d be

Unknown Speaker 3:42
your first week in August or?

Speaker 5 3:44
Or Or? Or conversely, we could do the second week in July.

Speaker 1 3:54
Yeah, I just I can move. trips around. I just need to have a date.

Speaker 2 4:01
Well, on August 16, at eight o’clock, I have changed the cat box.

Unknown Speaker 4:08
So do we want to do the 12th of July?

Speaker 2 4:12
The top Saturday, July, July networks for

Speaker 3 4:16
me or second week of August either ones fine.

Unknown Speaker 4:19
Oh, actually.

Unknown Speaker 4:23
Well, yeah.

Unknown Speaker 4:29
Yeah, if we don’t have a room, could they need a Lashley?

Speaker 6 4:32
So they might be passing because of some programs to find a location. So. So yes.

Speaker 5 4:39
So we’re talking to 12 at 10am.

Speaker 3 4:42
And then

Speaker 6 4:47
I’ll look at location we’ll see. Obviously here first, if not, then we can explore options.

Unknown Speaker 4:53
And you also want to do August 9.

Speaker 2 4:58
That’s right. We’ve got to work around over stir start on August 9, that worked for a

Unknown Speaker 5:04
second. We’ll begin this July

Unknown Speaker 5:11
and then August

Unknown Speaker 5:14
August 9 going on.

Speaker 5 5:18
Sorry, I’m so slow. I want to get it in here. I cannot, but, you know, I’ve rescheduled that appointment in Lafayette three times. Okay. But we could do it a different day maybe.

Unknown Speaker 5:38
So problem historically.

Unknown Speaker 5:41
So August 2 Does your office right?

Speaker 4 5:46
Yeah, the Senior Center is closed and the senior center is having a

Unknown Speaker 5:49
department retreat on

Speaker 5 5:51
August 16. Is that too close to that’s three weeks away from? Yeah, that’s the thing. The sixth of September. August.

Speaker 4 6:03
We have skipped in the past. We have skipped in the past, you should always get one or two.

Speaker 2 6:09
Don’t worry about August. Or July meeting? Yeah, I would kind of plan on skipping August, but we can talk about July as opposed to skip August.

Speaker 5 6:23
Okay, I’m gonna leave it on my calendar. Yes. meeting in July and we can talk about it again. The

Unknown Speaker 6:28
problem is change dates.

Speaker 1 6:32
Anything major major comes up. Yeah, we always Yeah. Okay. All right. All right.

Unknown Speaker 6:39
Now is Lashley opened on

Speaker 6 6:42
August 2? I’d have to take a look.

Speaker 5 6:45
Because that’s an option too. Are you regular day? Just

Unknown Speaker 6:48
what I’m hearing is that Ronnie and Robin are not?

Speaker 2 6:51
Oh, yeah, I see. So we got to work in room, you guys. So. Okay, so then the light calls at 10 o’clock. And then at this point, we’ll cancel August 7.

Unknown Speaker 7:06
Can you remind us

Speaker 2 7:08
that we’ll talk about our July meeting? On the

Unknown Speaker 7:17
troublemaker? Running because you said some old rocking sons? Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Okay. All right.

Unknown Speaker 7:31
She’s asking, Does this need to be emotion?

Speaker 2 7:37
approval of the agenda. Anything else on the agenda? To change? Okay, all in favor of the agenda as presented. Okay. Motion? Second. Okay. All in favor say aye. Aye. All right. Is there any public to be heard? Public to be heard? All business? So most of these items, I think. Right? Yep. We can skip most of these old business items in reference to our speaker today. And he met everybody so

Unknown Speaker 8:16
far, I think. Yeah. Exactly what I was gonna say,

Unknown Speaker 8:22
to approve the minutes. That’s on my agenda. So Janine. First, right, was first I got the agenda that was for the agenda.

Speaker 5 8:33
I move we approve the minutes. Thank you, Jim.

Speaker 2 8:41
Okay, any further discussion? All in favor, say aye. Aye. All right. All right. We’ll skip all business. And we’ll go directly to our speaker today. Carmen plaisirs, Ramirez. Okay. And you have met everybody. And anybody do jump, or Ronnie to do want to make an introduction at all, we don’t want to.

Speaker 6 9:12
So thank you for being here, Carmen. So our board has had discussions around while we backtrack. So we did make a budget request to add a Spanish programmer for our facility. It’s an equity in that way that we recognize that as has been overlooked for an extended period of time, as our programming has, has expanded tremendously 100% our Spanish programs will increase by eight programs in that same amount of time. So we’re identifying that the need that we want to address we budget request for, for for a Spanish program, who would be put intentionally planned Spanish programs for our seniors in that process. Looking ahead down the road, we We want to identify how to if this position is approved, how do we best program for our seniors? What are the needs of senior needs in our Latino community? And start looking ahead and have those conversations of what are the needs? How do we, how do we, how do we, I guess, communicate out to, to these new programs, speak to these new programs and get the word out, and, and just start being intentional in this work of what we would want this person to accomplish if this position was approved. And so that’s what we asked you to come in today. And thank you for being here to share your experiences of conversations, you may have had things you’ve heard over the years and given us kind of a starting point of where to look, when we’re able to start position.

Speaker 2 10:55
If I could add something, even if we don’t get the position approved, we don’t know if it would be approved or not. But hopefully, we would want to move in the direction of additional Spanish programming anyway, and additional outreach, not quite sure how we do

Unknown Speaker 11:15
the additional stuff. But anyway,

Unknown Speaker 11:17
that’s the direction of it.

Speaker 6 11:20
And then that work in our last board meeting room, kind of generate some ideas and questions who want and those are the questions like that in advance to kind of kind of, they’re a little vague and a little general, but it allows us to start thinking about this.

Speaker 1 11:38
So I’m gonna start with a little bit of my background and involvement specifically, not just with the Latino community, but also other communities of color. So that might be helpful to Mr. King Tana is one of our gems, community gems. So I want to call that out. But the other piece that I want to call out is that rocky went up to the Wind River Reservation this past weekend with us. And as we start looking at how to be more inclusive, and the things that we’re doing, the city of Longmont, I don’t know if you all know, is the first community to become a sister cities with a sovereign tribal nation. So the recognition of our communities of color as assets, is really what his building on on some of this obsess. And I went through the questions and everything. And part of where you see pockets of success is based on that commitment, and investment. Right saying, Well, we know we want to do this, we may not get it positioned, but we’re going to continue to ask, and we’re going to figure out how do we allocate resources to do that outreach. So I just want to share. I’ve been here since 1991. Mr. detener beats me by a little bit. He’s been here a little bit longer. I came in 1991. I’ve worked, worked for older healthy partners, and then I worked for Boulder Valley schools as a family liaison. But I’ve also was part of the founding members of the Latino Taskforce. And in 2001, we did the first ever assessment of the Latino community at a county level. Because at that time, we you would go to frontline folks and ask for recommendations, but then those recommendations wouldn’t follow. And I’m giving that timeline because a lot of things have have started that have placed us in an understanding of the value to be more inclusive, and invest in programming that is more multicultural. I think Ron, you sent everybody a link to the resiliency for all report, if you all saw that. So that resiliency for all focus on our Latino community. But again, keep in mind, the Latino community is not monolithic. So we have Chicanos, we have folks that have been here, maybe one generation two, maybe new immigrants, and within that the language varies, right? We have folks, one of the things that I really appreciate about the Senior Center is your resource folks will ask the question of what language do you prefer? And, and that happens a lot. I will tell you that. Many years ago, I was at the emergency room. And I was talking to my husband in Spanish and the nurse came in and said, do we need to get an interpreter and I’m like, No, I speaks English, but when I’m in pain, I speak in Spanish because I was cussing. But it’s understanding comfort. It’s understanding welcome when we talk about creating new programs, how do we welcome people? What we found out with the resiliency for all is we focused on monolingual Spanish speakers, bilingual youth and cultural brokers. Everybody know why cultural brokers are what that means. So cultural broker, Mr Kinsella is one of those, they understand two worlds in a way. So we understand our Latino community, some of the norms, the language, the culture, we also understand how to navigate systems. When I worked with Mr. Kingdon in the schools, he was my go to help me with kids that were having problems in their families that were not understanding the system. How do I navigate that system? How do I talk to people who maybe don’t look like me don’t speak my language. What is it that I need to do? Right? So those are cultural brokers that understand how to navigate our bilingual youth are key to that, within our Latino community into being intergenerational is really important. So programming, it would be important to have intergenerational programming the library several years ago created. Before I share this, sometimes we create programs and we have successes, but we don’t sustain them. So it’s important to sustain the library several years ago created Lobelia. So it’s Mexican bingo. And that brought in not just Spanish speakers, but their families, and then started bringing in English speakers. Day of the Dead is the largest celebration in the state of Colorado. Most people don’t know what was the initial conversation, initial conversation, Martha Clevenger said, Why don’t let the girls come to the museum. And we gathered a group of community leaders. And the first thing we said was, we didn’t know we were invited. We didn’t know we were welcomed. And what do you have that would be of interest? If you go by a store, for me, if I look at a dress or blouse, right in the window, that I’m like, Oh, I like that color, think I’ll go with how I’m treated and how I’m welcome is going to say five good estate, right. And so what we created was day of the day, and Day of the Dead grew and grew and grew, right. So I think you have to think of programming in that way. You might start small, and then you grew up. But important is going to be your outreach and your bridges for outreach. So the resiliency for all our bilingual youth are key, because they help not only interpret, but they help to provide some sort of security, right? If and for seniors, while we’ve got the the adult children say, Mom, it’s okay for you to go to the Senior Center, they’re gonna treat you well. They’re gonna welcome you, and you can stay there, you’ll be okay. But know that many times a lot of our family are Latino seniors who are more homebound in the sense of transportation. So transportation is an issue, right? If I gotta wait for my son to come, so I can go to something but he’s working all day. Or maybe I’m caring for grandchildren. So the intergenerational pieces, some teacher think as you move through this, on the program, that here’s the barriers that were identified and they hold. What’s interesting about the resiliency for all is that I presented to the Nepalese community, I presented to the mountain community, and they identified with the same barriers, and the same had similar recommendations. So the barriers were access to resource information. While we did this study, and we talked to folks through Boulder County, they said, Oh, yeah, yeah, we have brochures in Spanish. And I said, where are they? They said, they’re in a closet, because we have no one to give them out. We have no one to sit there and say, Hey, Jeff, have you seen this? Let me explain what it says here. And that I’m a trusted person. And Jeff says, Carmen said, I could go live Be nice to me. Right? Those things that are on top of just having materials, right, is it you need to get it out there? The other thing was discrimination and fear. Mr. Keaton has been in this community a long time he understands discrimination and why some of that fear is there. And how do you get over? Right, and the way that we get through that is by making sure that our two rd entrances are welcoming, that there’s something that says Hi, when we were dealing with COVID and setting up COVID clinics, we went to the community so we went to the title six schools or tribal one I forget what we went to the schools and instead of registered here You’re we have welcome in several languages, that was the first thing because getting to business is something that is very common within our systems. There’s no Hello, there’s like, here’s what you need to fill out. Here’s what you need to register. Get that to me. And now we’ll talk. Right? And that is not how most communities of color relate, right? They want a smile they want Hello, is it? Can I ask you some questions? Before I fill out forms, you have to have steps that are not only bilingual, but by cultural and understand, understand why someone might have discrimination or fear, language and communications was the other barrier. Cultural sensitivity? And then the last barrier was outreach engagement and education. I don’t

Speaker 7 20:52
know. So that’s a very interesting comment about the welcoming, can we talk first? Because I think one of the other things we experience at our front desk, I want to be in and out of here as quickly as possible. I don’t need you to be talking. And I’m just I’m talking about white people in this case? And how do I get out here as fast as possible? How do we balance those two things?

Speaker 1 21:21
Well, see, I think in the outreach, when you’re doing the initial, it’s about teaching systems, right. And so you need to have kind of a separate person that can take that person that needs a little bit more time, whether it’s language or something to one side, and then the other person that I’m used to processing, I know what I need to do to register I’m in and out so that you can kind of serve both sectors of the community. And then I think the other piece is outreach, engagement and education. And the reason we put those all together, because it goes back to what Jeff just said, some folks, if we’re talking to Chicanos, who have been here, seven generations don’t really speak Spanish, they might likely be like, oh, yeah, I can leave this. Yeah, I got it. Let me sign up. If we’re talking to someone who’s been here maybe a short time, or is not as fluid in their English, right, then that might take a little bit more time. And so that’s why we put outreach engagement. So it’s engaging them. It’s not just like, hey, go go to the Senior Center. It’s like, let me tell you what’s happening at the Senior Center. What do I know about you specifically? I know, you’ve got adult kids that are working a lot. You run into other people you feel at home, right? And then that education, okay, in order to sign up for the programs? Here’s what we need to do. Ronnie a question, Jeff Ulation vote. Ronnie, do we have any bilingual

Unknown Speaker 22:59
volunteers? That was exactly what I was gonna

Speaker 1 23:01
ask? Well, great, I understand. We have because, you know, as I’m listening, I’m also processing solution, that perhaps a person that’s bilingual could be available to come out and serve, that we can’t have somebody stationed in the lobby, you know, all day, but we might be able to access a bilingual person that could come out and do that welcome and answer those questions before they even get to the front desk, check in and have a really, really a good base, because your resource folks are very well connected. But again, you’re talking about resources, right? They’re already overwhelmed. So it’s not good to bring them out, creating the volunteers to do that. And maybe within them, I have a little note here about Grow Your Own. Have you checked in with folks that come regularly and that know that community would be willing to be those volunteers who maybe at some point, will be the person who hired

Speaker 5 24:17
maybe those several generation, Latinos know, a lot of people that speak English and Spanish, and that would be an excellent resource. And my neighbor was raised in Chile, right? So she speaks fluent, fluent Spanish. She worked for the library for years and she was their number one resource. And she would be excellent in I you know, she just retired too. I mean, there are these people in our community, but they’re not invited him,

Speaker 1 24:50
I guess, or, you know, they’re not invited in and I will tell you that Mr. King Diana, when we’ve done work in the community, part of that is like any Jehovah’s Quick internet, can you help me connect with families? Can you do this? Understanding the big picture of lead and opportunity to like, you know, Mr. King done and doing the little video around, you know, being on the board. But I think that one of the things that happens is like, we created a program and two people showed up, we expected 20. Right? We need to know that things slowly develop because of what I said earlier, not only the language, but the fear, past experiences of discrimination, those things. And Mr. Company, we’re gonna say something, well, I’ve

Speaker 3 25:37
got to say, obviously, volunteer should be the first thing we really want to look at it to have somebody out there. But the other thing and I know it’s difficult on it with, because I’ve been with Harold the other day, we have said people have for years here are essential number of staff, people. But if the Spanish speaker in the front, goes to lunch, if there’s anything we can do to bring somebody up, that’s going to be great. Now, when I worked in the schools, when I started their schools, every time there was a Spanish speaker called a custodian. So I’m not saying that we use a custodian for that, but even if we have to use the custodian, they would steer students mostly like tacos, what happens in transfer? So Stephen, oh, gotta say you wouldn’t use it him for a few minutes to give him, you know, because he interaction he used to interact with everybody. But I was gonna say, but if we get some kind of staff member, even or volunteer, volunteer number one, but if there’s any way that we can have a Spanish speaker up there all the time, though, that’d be great during lunch or something like that.

Speaker 6 26:53
So we don’t have one in the lobby where we have those. Yeah. So

Speaker 3 26:57
when she goes to lunch, that as a dominant Spanish speaker, right.

Speaker 2 27:02
So think about that helped me again, how many Spanish speaking staff you was a three?

Unknown Speaker 27:07
We have three? Yes.

Unknown Speaker 27:10
And two resource specialists.

Speaker 1 27:14
So I know that when we were we went up with Jenny, the Sol and, and her mom is the color Bina will certify as her. But I think she went on some sort of outing Yes, with a senior senator. And she was like, This is great. I didn’t know about it. And she was lived in this community for a long time. And she was like, and then the thought was like, do you find kind of senior ambassadors within our Latino community that can go and say, Hey, next time, there’s this outing? How about you come with me, right? Or we create a programming, you have a lot of programs like crafting and quilting. But if there was an opportunity to create something with a Spanish speaking group first and have some bilingual folks, that is another way to slowly kind of incrementally begin to grow, we’re going to do crocheting, this group is in Spanish. What we have found over the years is that sometimes it’s okay to have separate groups, because it provides that comfort in that fluency of being able to speak in your own language. Right? How comfortable are you going to be to engage and participate if they’re speaking a different language, and you’re the only English speaker, right? And so those are little ways that we can begin to build and grow on that.

Speaker 5 28:39
I’m thinking the most important thing is to identify those people who are bilingual in our community. And I’m thinking that there could be and I’m framing this as I speak, there could be someone on the city staff that could reach out to the community to find those people and I’m thinking, we have the newsletter, and they’re not there’s more room on that now because they’re not doing the mayor’s deal every month. That newsletter, the city, the one that comes in the city Island,

Unknown Speaker 29:30
thank you that there is a call for Mama, community members that are bilingual to come to a meeting to discuss the needs of our Hispanic or Latino community.

Speaker 5 29:55
And to have those bilingual people at the meeting To see where the needs are. And you know, there’s a lot of young professionals that I mean, what’s the name of the guy that owns Marcos? What’s the last name?

Unknown Speaker 30:09
I don’t know, what is name? Well,

Speaker 5 30:11
his daughters are very intelligent, and they’re business leaders. And in the I mean, I don’t know if the one that used to work at elevations is still in the community, I believe she is the actual letters. I mean, there’s so many people that could be called upon, and some are retiring, some of those bilingual people are retiring. Now, I think of Claudia Archuleta who was at the Y. gathering those names, because I don’t think we really have done that in the community. I mean, city wide. And those people could serve to grow the programming, I mean, the outreach for Latino people, not just seniors.

Speaker 2 31:02
Is there anyone in the city right now that does that sort of thing? doesn’t just Justin, have they done that in the past? Is there a,

Speaker 1 31:11
there is no, none of that has been built out in our office, community and neighborhood resources as served as kind of the bridge, the primary bridge, but what you’re asking is a great idea how you build it up, is maybe where you need to really have some thought of, do you invite those individuals to a cafecito, to have a conversation that says this is our starting point? We feel that you’re a part of this bridge, because of language because of connections, leadership, and leadership and cultural understanding. That’s really important, right? And so you invite the Philadelphia as the my last, all these other folks that could come outside of Oman. Some of the Southern one, just saying, Yeah, whose insurance and have become

Speaker 5 32:04
a very, I mean, are the passes? The I mean, there’s so many people? Well, but and I think

Speaker 1 32:09
the other issue to that is asking them what works for them at the time, I think we sometimes when we say volunteers, if you’re working to survive, if you’re supporting your family, whether it’s caring for grandkids, or caring for adult kids, you may not have the same kind of equal time available. But is that a great starting point. And that’s why we looked at bilingual youth. And we looked at cultural brokers.

Speaker 5 32:40
And it’s important not to the tip of somebody like Ark that’s just put into everything. And it’s just a broad base. Yeah, where there can be a monthly meeting of these people, maybe? I mean, I can envision that. And I think maybe a part time staff, could you said bring people in very part time could get that gone?

Speaker 2 33:03
Do you mean, bring people into this group? Or are you talking about other groups or

Speaker 1 33:07
No, bring it create? So we’ve done focus groups, or we’ve started committees where it’s like, there’s a need. So when we did the Latino Task Force assessment, and we did the llama tip, strategic plan, we bring people in to talk about what are the needs? Where are the opportunities? And how can you help? Because that’s the beginning of that group, and then says, Well, yeah, you know what, I know this other person that I think they’d be interested. And when you grow it outside of this, you don’t

Speaker 5 33:40
want them to come together, thinking that they’re going to be volunteers, and they’re going to have to do everything. You want them to be the leaders and the idea starters, and the networking people. And they also

Speaker 1 33:51
can advise you as to the infrastructure that you’ll need to leave the infrastructure, you need the support and resources that you need, right? I can’t tell you the number of times that I get invited to come and talk to people. And what they want is give me the formula, or better yet, what they’ll say is bring me the box of chocolates with a boat, and unlike It doesn’t work that way. One, we are not a monolithic community. Right. So you have we have to really hone in on who and why within this large community. Right. And that there hasn’t been a relationship

Unknown Speaker 34:29
or a process I’m sorry.

Speaker 2 34:31
So you’re suggesting maybe we do several things. I don’t know. We’re kind of bouncing around. But that’s okay. You know, we could bring people in here. As matter of fact, we talked about contracting people just like you described, like you were talking about churches, for example. We’ve had some other suggestions we could also have I guess that would be probably Probably a main starting point, but we could also help us a staff member or members of this group contact, various people like, again, using you as an example, contact local church organizations.

Speaker 5 35:13
I think it needs to come from the the Latino community, not you?

Speaker 1 35:19
Well, you know, I, I was thinking, we have classes, have we ever gone into one of those classes and, and ask them, you know, how did they get there? What made them feel safe about coming together? So survey it not even so much a survey because, honestly, Ronnie and think of somebody walked into the quilting class by lingual and said, you know, we we are so happy that you are all here. Is there anything we can do to bring more of you in to bring more? What can we do? It they could potentially if they want to be a resource or reach out to their neighbors?

Speaker 2 36:10
It’s also like you’re suggesting an incremental approach? Because it’s not going to happen overnight. Over time, right. So to me, then the question is, where do we start?

Speaker 1 36:21
So I think there’s a couple of opportunities, you mentioned something that we haven’t tapped into yet. So when we look at all the different programming, and you look at the diversity of that, right? So if you walked into a quilting class, and you asked, Are you guys, have you ever thought of why we are very monolithic, and should we be more inclusive? Or what would that look like? Because you want to create allies on the other end, right? You want to create folks that are going to say, you know, why don’t we we could really reach out and it’s okay, I speak a little bit of Spanish, how welcoming are those different programs? Because that’s very key, right? No one’s gonna want to participate. If they don’t feel like anybody’s gonna offer them a seat. Try and speak to them. So that’s one piece, right. The other piece is what you talked about, which Mr. Kenan has tried to do is how do we have an effect three, three really, really good questions here. How do we create a compensator with just the initial conversation? What is it a prophecy though, I’ve got visitors where you invite Pete coffee, klatch, coffee klatch, but you have to find out who said sweet bread, or what he does, you can emulate those. But it’s really too because surveys don’t work very well, especially in the Spanish speaking community. Conversations. That’s why we’ve done focus groups. So

Speaker 6 37:51
whenever whenever survey and more of the survey, make group, ask the questions. Because you’re giving that that specific feedback, right? It’s not the general yes knows it’s not. You sort of looking for quality quantity? Qualitative.

Unknown Speaker 38:12
Qualitative? Yeah.

Speaker 5 38:14
Is there an organized, organized group? In the time, the only? The only thing I ever hear about is El Camino de right. Is there an organized group that could be a Latino Coalition for a unity coalition community unity coalition.

Speaker 1 38:32
So we used to have those groups, but unfortunately, because we are not sustained. Currently, there’s a big void in the Latino community in regards to leadership, we have the Latino Task Force, we have some folks retired, I will tell you, I was part of the initial group where we did in 2001, that community assessment took us 13 years, to get people to institutions to give us funding to do a second assessment. So again, that’s why I’m talking incremental, but I’m also talking is in your planning, you have to think about sustaining, right? How are you gonna sustain it over the long term,

Speaker 5 39:14
that very part time person that I mentioned, that might be a city employee could be in charge of? Do we, where do I hear the term unity in community new unity of community unity and

Speaker 1 39:29
chamber so the chamber the chamber has? Well, we also used to have an event called inclusive communities that got so popular, it outgrew the senior center in the museum, and we have not been able to bring it back because it got so big.

Speaker 5 39:45
Well, if we had a very part time person, just to take the ideas and help and let them grow with goals in mind, yeah. You and that could all be ironed out before it’s even put into a request. I think a lot of young people would be interested in jumping on board with something like that, because they care about their elders, and they care about their families. And I just think of Latino unit Coalition for Community unity.

Speaker 2 40:31
Let me switch focus just a little bit here. Timeline are we thinking here, you just mentioned 13 years ago. But one of the questions was, what does the Spanish community Hispanic community think of us? And so I’m thinking, I have no idea. I think if they have a high opinion, that kind of dictates one thing, but they don’t think much of us. That’s something else. What’s your judgment on us? So

Speaker 1 41:04
what I get from the community is that overall, this is a good place. You have staff that have strong connections, you’ve got Veronika, you’ve got Melissa, you’ve got volunteers like Ivanka Morales, and Mr. King Diana, and other folks, you’ve got a good perception because the one gem right it’s only one gentleman, we should have multiple gyms is the senior dancers, right. And they’re all over the place. So that gives the appearance of it must be a welcoming place. Now. How do we expand and create more gems? The other thing is community partners and cultural brokers we all know, like, Oh, I’m dealing with a senior I need to send them to the senior center. Now capacity is the other the issue, right? So I have to tell people, okay, you need to call that Arnica. But please keep in mind that it could be three to four weeks before two weeks before she can get to you. So they know the resource and have it because you have cultural brokers that are helping people navigate connect to housing, health food, right, the programming side is not very well known in regards to our Latino community, how and even look at your demographics in your in your programming. If I don’t know if we do that, do we do like a demographic baseline on our programming?

Speaker 6 42:33
No. Anything built into our system that can generate that

Unknown Speaker 42:38
gives us an idea? And

Unknown Speaker 42:42
no, we don’t have anything like that.

Speaker 5 42:44
Right. You can’t put into the registration process

Speaker 6 42:48
we’ve talked about, we’ve had some discussions about it, but it’s not built into it right now.

Speaker 1 42:52
Yeah, it would take this is where those infrastructure pieces, there has to be some brainstorming, some strategy development to identify the resources and infrastructure that you need. So that,

Speaker 2 43:05
you know, I felt for a long time that we need more of a baseline, we don’t have really baseline information, like we just suggested, was like critical.

Speaker 1 43:16
I think it helps in identifying strategies, and then understanding when you meet your goal, right? Because what is your goal? So I brought some basic demographics, our Latino community, this was in 2001 was 24.4. But again, that’s lumping everybody that’s going from one illegal English speakers to monolingual Spanish speakers, right? And so if we don’t know those things, and they can be pointed point in time contexts, where you like, do something right now and assess what are the demographics, what are the language spoken, I know that you have individuals that are Chinese, and so Nepalese that come very few, but we should begin to collect that information. These efforts that you’re doing now, should be focused with the Latino community as a starting point, but the it really should be about becoming multicultural, right? And communities of color food and welcome at this place. Dave brought up something how do they receive the green ghosts?

Speaker 5 44:23
And the reason I’m bringing it up again, is because I witnessed something here. We had a an event here at the Senior Center. It might have been the holiday thing. It might have been the volunteer. I mean, it might have been the open house where we had Spanish dancers, and they were in a room back here. And I witnessed a lot of hissed off people. Yeah, I did and it was before I was involved in the board. But I there was a lot of commotion among that group. And, you know, they, I just felt a lot of tension from that group.

Unknown Speaker 45:09
I felt there. Nobody went to

Speaker 5 45:13
Well, I don’t know if that was it. I it was it was something in getting them started or whatever. And I thought II that’s just not right. So I think those kinds of things need to be looked at carefully. You know, I don’t know how to explain it

Speaker 1 45:32
other than that I walked in to the quilting class one day, I was walking down the hall. They were doing their quilting, and I just walked in. And I’m embarrassed that I’m not bilingual. But I walked in the door. And I just smiled, and looked at what they were

Unknown Speaker 45:54
doing.

Speaker 1 45:56
And I said, beautiful, and I walked around, and each person showed me what they were working on. So sometimes, it’s just a matter of the first step. And I think with that open house, part of the problem was, they were placed in a back room and out of the way of traffic, where if their presentation had been front and center, perhaps it would have been more available to people. But we don’t

Speaker 5 46:33
think about those. So you know what I’m talking about?

Speaker 1 46:36
Well, I think it goes both ways. I think there is a level of distrust, that’s for sure. But I think that sometimes that discomfort on one side and distrust on the other can actually come in very simplistic ways. And meet at the center. Yes, we’re

Unknown Speaker 47:03
getting ready.

Speaker 1 47:04
Yeah. They were. Their performance was in the

Unknown Speaker 47:08
bad. They were in the quilting room, weren’t they? Yeah.

Speaker 4 47:10
Yeah. But other groups were there, too. It wasn’t just groups. And there was a personal conflict that day that I’m aware of? Oh,

Unknown Speaker 47:19
it was I just happened to

Speaker 6 47:22
me do not even know what any of that. Like I before I even started, I popped in the fortunate open house, I think there was technology issues, as well. So there, they were unable to start on time, the music wasn’t playing. And I think in a collection who All right, so I think the

Speaker 1 47:39
other thing is that we need to be very honest, right? That it doesn’t matter whether it’s senior programming, or youth programming or community program, there are microaggressions, there are biases. And there is folks that, you know, I worked in housing for a while, and we had senior housing. And then we were told by HUD, we had to allow younger disabled individuals, different communities who have not had interactions and relationships, sometimes don’t play very nice with one another. And so how do you kind of also combat that? Has anybody really announced to everybody that comes to the senior center, that this is a welcoming place for all people? And what does that mean? That means we provide service in one to two or three other languages, that means that you may see people that are different than you right? And that we will not tolerate, when there are micro aggressions, right. And, and having been a person that, because I’m light skinned, sometimes it happens. And sometimes it doesn’t happen as often or as severely as someone who has darker skin than those realities. Jeff and I have had multiple conversations that exist in recreation, it exists across the board. But if you are aware and conscious and you are building towards this is a community space that is welcoming and inclusive of all, and what does that mean? And what whatever our values, right?

Speaker 5 49:15
You think that those yard signs that some people have? Yeah, everybody’s seen them that have all languages? I mean, I don’t know how many there are, but many, and diversity is welcome here. People put them in their yards.

Speaker 1 49:31
And then how do you live that? So the city of Laquan has a land acknowledgement. Right. And I agree with that statement. And I provide training and I say, and here’s the action behind it right behind those statements, or those slides should be action.

Unknown Speaker 49:46
It sounds like everything reduces to a personal contact.

Unknown Speaker 49:52
One on one. Yeah.

Speaker 2 49:53
You can’t just put up signs. I mean, you can’t I mean, that helped me.

Speaker 5 49:59
Center You know, the library that welcomes everyone? Just, I mean, just that, oh my god, there’s my language.

Speaker 1 50:06
Wow, the welcoming piece is important, and how do we improve? So those are the things that you need to sustain. But then how do you go from the sign to the cafecito, to the join me on this exercise class to the join me on this outing? Like that is why I say it’s incremental, and you have to build up. Because that’s what’s really important. I wanted to show you this picture here. So the senior center often has been a place where information needs to mind and they will work with, you got to pull together a focus group. Right. So what happened to all these people in the photo? I know there’s some of them are still around and older. So how do we make sure that we’ve engaged them beyond what you think of the senior center? What are the needs, right? So that’s the first step like you said, What

Speaker 5 51:08
is the additional steps, it needs to be bigger than it needs to come from the city. It can’t be senior center, it needs

Speaker 1 51:16
to come from all of us and spend the city on a whole is doing that we are very focused internally on doing equity training. And we are if you look at the multiple efforts with first that I just called out those first happened because we had support and staff to do that. Now sustaining it. It’s a whole different thing. And I think I’m close to time. So you are sure.

Speaker 2 51:41
On the issue of equity. Yeah, no, I know. That’s a goal of the city. Yes. Well, I can have an average income median median income of 8000, or seven year, whatever it was, yeah, around $1,000. I’m suspecting that the median income of Hispanics families is probably something less than yes. And the rate of poverty is somewhat higher. And that we are probably out of sync. As far as white poverty people, white people in poverty, we’re having services versus planning services for low income, that I imagine there’s quite a bit there’s a discrepancy. Yes. Is that something that the city cares about? Because that’s something that the city wants to reduce, it’s up to those that a goal of the city,

Speaker 1 52:37
carrying them being able to afford is are two different things. And I’m closer to the exit door in regards to retirement. So. But the reality is, yes, carry. But if you look at our city, and just our numbers, we do not have a staffing to population ratio. We have asked for that. I’ve had conversations with Jeff for years about providing either reduced cost and recreation for a lot of our low income families. I know the school district at one point, it was one in four Latino students were receiving free and reduced lunch as that number has only grown. So yes, that poverty is there. Is there an awareness and a commitment? Yes. But the resource is where and again, because we’re not growing incrementally, right? Sometimes we want to do this band aid approach, I’m gonna hire two people, or I’m gonna hire one person, but in reality, we need four people. Right? So and then that person gets overwhelmed. Right, I can tell you or Jeff can tell you, the number of issues that I’ve been involved in over the year have been great on the resume, because they’re very diverse, of all the issues that have been involved from seniors to birth, right, from housing, to health, to violence to because there hasn’t been more than one. This is the first time in years that I actually have more bilingual people in my division. So what does that mean when things happen in the community? We’re calling on the Mr. King Diana’s or Martha Montana, we’re calling on all these other folks to help fill in because that resource is not there. But at the same time, that resource is not there overall. And I

Speaker 7 54:37
can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen that where we’ve had a really strong staff person and that person leaves and things just crumble because people were so connected to that person.

Speaker 3 54:51
I hope karma is going to be cared for by another 20 year old.

Unknown Speaker 54:59
Just as long cuz you and I last?

Speaker 5 55:03
Well, that’s why I think it’s important just to include, we’re trying to get more programming for Latinos, right. And so I think the Latino community, those young people that have parents that are not speaking English, need to get more involved, if that is what is wanting to be created, it has to come from that community.

Speaker 1 55:26
So this starting point of getting information and brainstorming, and then the next thing is developing strategies. So that then managers and directors can say, in order for me to provide the service, and this is the infrastructure or resources that I need. And then when Jeff can go to Harold, but it looks like Harold came to this group. And so I’m sure he kind of gave you a preview of the challenges. I mean, nobody. But But I can tell you that the things that I have been involved in the over the last 22 years have really become first in our community, not only the Day of the Dead, inclusive communities that I’m the person that that in a city council meeting, Veronica was sitting with me and she was working at the Art Center, I didn’t tell not only her I told her mother, I told her aunt and her uncle, she needs to apply. She needs to apply for this position. And those that’s where even in hiring, we’re recruiting people, I’m constantly getting job announcements that say, I need someone bilingual bicultural, right? There’s a high competition for folks that have those skills. So I think you also need to think about that. But you’re after a really good start. Is this brainstorming, build strategy plans, and then incrementally go after increasing that. And when and celebrate the successes? We often don’t do that we often don’t say, you know, even if it’s just based on, you know, some informal data collection we have now 20%. What is the number? Do we have 20% We have 30% of participation? Right? And as you increase it celebrated.

Speaker 3 57:29
Pizza cents up modern on a regular basis on different positions that are available. And you know, what, if you could, I mean, I couldn’t get it together with you. But be nice if you either met with with bitten, talk to him and have him even put something out on the announcements that volunteers are needed and programs, are there something to that effect, that that would help I bring it up at the Latino Coalition on a monthly basis. But again, those people are so involved in so many things. Yes, it’s hard for him to do it. But if you get a hold of me, I’ll give you Pete’s number for those Pizza, pizza. And use your jar from the county and then he beats the Latino, the Board of County Latino coalition. Okay,

Speaker 1 58:15
that Boulder County Latino coalition is a group that has been around for a very long time, we used to be the same brain Valley migrant coalition. And that group is primarily providers that work for different organizations, again, to cultural brokers that are in the frontline. But there hasn’t been an I don’t know if this is an area of question around. We usually think of our Latino community as having needs. And so that the first thing is we got to connect them to resources. But we don’t think of our Latino community in regards to quality of life. What contributes to quality of life, exercising, social, right, well being. So that conversation might be a place that with area, the county area, a area aging agency. I always great lakes like, yeah. And even with AARP, right, we used to have a party etha was part of AARP then fill in on this, right? So how do we get those folks to also be supportive of the conversation strategy building, possibly they have resources, I would

Speaker 4 59:29
just encourage you all to check out what we’re already doing. Because a lot of what you’re brainstorming we are still doing with the tiny team we have. And we do have a lot of wonderful volunteers and they are telling their friends come sign up for this trip. I mean, we have scholarships, like they are great ambassadors, so we’re already doing it. We just hope to do more.

Speaker 2 59:48
Well, it’s comments. Thank you so much. Just epsilon, will you come back?

Speaker 1 59:53
Sure. You know how to get a hold of me. So whatever. They know how to get them In

Speaker 2 1:00:02
the feasibility conversation Yeah, otherwise, what the hell you’re doing?

Speaker 1 1:00:07
My trip away, Brett. Oh, cool. Would you be interested? We’re not getting July and August scope. Would you be interested in coming in and doing a presentation? Yeah. Bring that up in water. So

Unknown Speaker 1:00:26
we got a lot to think about. Thank you so much.

Speaker 1 1:00:29
When you need me, okay. Okay. Okay.

Speaker 7 1:00:35
These folks are finally we dealt with the free coffee. So as we’ve talked, the city is considering the potential of building a new rec center. So we have been, we have contracted with Perkins will, to do a study and to develop what what could possibly be included in a rec center, as well as what it would cost to build in and operate and maintain it. So we have identified focus groups, who we want to talk and talk to you. So Ben Wagner is the recreation of golf superintendent, he is with the city staff. I’ll introduce Chris, who is with Perkins will and I’ll let you take it from there,

Speaker 8 1:01:31
Chris. Sounds great. Actually, is it possible for me to present on the on the screen there? Is it easier just to chat? It’s up to you guys? Yeah, I want to make it difficult, but I’ll go ahead and

Speaker 8 1:01:49
do I plug in over sodium, okay, you don’t I might be able to see I might be able to

Unknown Speaker 1:01:58
change the core to yours. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 1:02:08
This position because it really comes down to as fast as

Unknown Speaker 1:02:22
you want the legs up.

Speaker 8 1:02:26
We’ve been conditioned to

Unknown Speaker 1:02:31
the direction you struggle

Unknown Speaker 1:02:34
to build and not be.

Speaker 8 1:02:55
All right. So I’m Chris Kastelic, with earnings of all architects. And as Jeff mentioned, we’ve been contracted by the city to do a feasibility evaluation of a potential community rec center. And today with me also is Kevin Chu, and Kaylee Hickman, they are with sports facility companies, they’re experts in the analysis and planning of recreational facilities. So I’m just an architect. I draw things. These guys are the people that do the analytics. So I’m just gonna give a very brief kind of introduction to the process. But really, our goal today is to have a discussion, answer some questions, you might have sort of discussed the comments around what a community rec center might be for long lawns. So we’re gonna do a little bit of that some of the feedback that we’ve done thus far like to kind of give you an overview of that. And then like I said, when we spend your time actually discussing this and not having a death. So our process involves quite a bit of work. And there’s a little bit of background that I think is probably important to frame. We’ve gone through a process similar to this in the past, where we studied the potential for a large aquatic facility and ice rink and went to vote back in 2009. Prior to this, there have been other discussions. So this isn’t the first time that long lines looked into expanding recreation services. But here we are now sort of talking about the potential for a pretty significant potential facility, possibly going to election at some point to the future. And then learn some lessons from that time period just about how we think need to get out the child. We need to understand the community, make sure we’re taking something to the voters that makes sense and could have viable support. There’s also a proposal out there with the YMCA, they’re looking at the potential for a large aquatic facility and ice rink may be working in concert with the city to provide those services so that those don’t have to fall on it. For the burden of the citizens alone, and the YMCA can kind of share those, those those opportunities. And then there was some council direction recently back in the end of April to really kind of take this process to the next step. So that’s why we’re here. That’s why we’re talking to you all, because you have a broad usership that you represent, that will potentially have a lot of opportunities for use in those type of building books. So that’s sort of the goal of the study, identify the community needs and expectations. We’re doing market and demographic analysis. That’s part of SFCs. All we’re doing community outreach, we actually have a public meeting this evening, right here at 630. All Welcome to joining. And we’re also going to be taking that and using that to develop a sort of menu of what this building should include some cost estimates, putting together an operation and revenue analysis. So we always say can you afford to own what you can afford to build, and be sure that this isn’t going to burden the city unnecessarily? I think long line is great. Their recreation, I’ll give Jeff and Ben some props for their recreation programs killing, they do compare to other communities in Colorado, they’re high revenue recovery, they’re very efficient, well run well manage. So the good news is you don’t have a bat recreation department that’s trying to build a new center, a long established recreation department that’s providing valuable services. And I think this is sort of the next evolution of that. So the schedule, we started back in April, this is pretty quick for this type of work. We’re trying to get this wrapped up by the end of the month. So this is really kind of the immediate middle of this process. We’ve done some demographic research, we did a community open house back at the end of April and took some good feedback from the folks that attended that was both in person and virtual. We’re starting now to develop some of the things on on the project that we need to understand, like, what does this thing include where we’re located. And then we have that open house tonight, and then through the rest of the month, basically wrap up concepts that we then present back out to the community and to St. Council, we were presenting to the park and rec advisory board on Monday night. So you were a big part of this sort of community outreach effort to understand sort of how how active aging adults play a role in this type of facility at this.

Speaker 3 1:07:25
Point is the council have to make a decision if you’re going to put on the ballot or not

Speaker 7 1:07:30
in in August, they have to do that they have to approve it in to two readings. So that so we’re hopefully going to go to council with this proposal July 11 is our goal right now, which means that target but then the August Council will decide we’ll move forward with on the ballot in November.

Speaker 8 1:07:57
Thanks, Thanks for stepping into specifics. Either questions about the process or the timeline. Pretty straightforward. Like I said, it’s very quick. So there’s not a lot, not a lot of time to dilly dally. The site for the project has also been identified. And and this one is probably a discussion topic that has come up in quite fewer meetings is this an appropriate location for a large public facility. It has been on the park rec open space master plan for the better part of 15 years. So this isn’t a new idea that this has been identified as a potential location for larger recreation services. It is the current site of Dry Creek Park, which is outdoor fields, playground, other other uses sort of near several high schools including Silver Creek, Oakland middle school, elementary, so it is kind of in a school district. So again, certainly the side of that being congested, but the other side made use of your active participants are using user groups. So I think this is really something we need to understand, study and make sure that if you do indeed design something to Dry Creek Park, that it’s integrated, sensitive, fits that fits the context, and is respectful of both the neighbors building space, and all the different things like traffic patterns within that within that area. I’ll click to this and then I’ll let you guys jump in and ask any questions you might have. So this is just a quick test fit to say does this type of facility even fit well within the available property at that site. And so what we’re showing is the potential for this roughly 80 to 90,000 square foot recreation facility which is right in line with sort of typical benchmark facilities across both this community and others, along with a potential we call it a future civic use, but one of the things that’s been identified as a library to sort of share service As with with recreation, but as you can see with probably some additional parking, all of the different recreational functions, some of the outdoor functions, it definitely fits the site well and has plenty of room to sort of breathe on that property. But that’s really our next step is to better understand how this facility integrated into that location.

Speaker 5 1:10:21
Do you have a map that shows this? And all of the facilities that the city recreation isolates you? I don’t have allergies, so helpful for me to say yes.

Speaker 8 1:10:31
Okay. You know what? I probably have time to add that to our public meeting.

Speaker 5 1:10:37
I’m I can’t related, but that would be I think

Speaker 8 1:10:41
you’re exactly right. Because then you see, well, the service provided Centennial failed.

Speaker 2 1:10:47
Yeah. Part of my question is related to what you just brought up. If somebody is concerned about equity, that seems to be a fairly high income area. Mistake, and I can place that correctly, we have some very nice residential areas around that area seems to be that of lower income people that are Hispanic or white or whatever the lower they are on scalable, the greater the transportation problem we’ll get there. So the question is, is that equitable in terms of access to all the folks?

Speaker 8 1:11:25
It gets back to the core question of equitability versus gap analysis to say, okay, you’ve got well, road, you’ve got centennial, they’re serving other various portions of the city, this portion of the city doesn’t necessarily have as many of those services. But your point is that, that this portion is deserving of those services. Here. I’ll leave I’ll let Jeff kind of respond to that question is I think

Speaker 5 1:11:51
that’s always been my approach to this project. Is, is this

Speaker 8 1:11:55
the best place for this facility? Exactly. It’s a fundamental question.

Speaker 7 1:11:58
So in in the proposal, from the YMCA is to tear down Centennial pool and build a new recreation facility, which would have Paice a gym, swimming pool, and childcare, along with affordable housing. We feel like what we had proposed in the initial survey was we were going to spend $7 million to convert Centennial pool into a community center with courts. Very, very soundly, it was very clear people didn’t want the pool to go away in the results. For a $12 million investment, the city would provide all of those other amenities to that area of town. So we believe that each one of the locations short of Northwest Longmont would be very well served. The challenge of Northwest Longmont is the city doesn’t own any land that will be large enough to build a facility this this size. So based on what we have available, this, this is the best possible cite based on the other locations that we had.

Unknown Speaker 1:13:23
So it was primarily a financial issue.

Speaker 7 1:13:25
Well, if we’re going to buy land, that number, that’s already $64 million, which is probably going to be higher than that, because we develop those costs a year ago. And it could be a year and a half before we built. So that number could easily be 72 to 78 million, without having to invest another five to 10 million to buy a piece of property that’d be large enough to do this. The $64 million number is scary enough, not alone at getting up close to $100 million.

Speaker 1 1:14:05
And, you know, our other Red Center is in the east side of pink. It’s within a couple of miles. And we don’t have anything on the west side of town. You know that and space is the biggest issue.

Speaker 8 1:14:23
And that’s really where that’s just growth is moving as West right? So you sort of plan 10 years into the future and say, Is this really where growth has happened? That’s a question. Interestingly enough, when you bring up Centennial pool and we actually did a study for Jeff to convert that facility and one of the things we found is even though the pool is probably one of the most well used lap pools that I can think of that ever seen. Most of those swim team in high school users are from across the city. But the users in that actual neighborhood actually requested thing more like gymnasiums for wrestling, boxing and other uses. So you got the swim function in that neighborhood. And but the swimmers are coming there from see why the actual neighborhoods looking for a lot of other than you. So I feel like maybe kind of recalibrating the services that are offered across the seas network, through this study, I think will help, it’ll help figure out where things should go to best serve the user groups in that area.

Speaker 7 1:15:18
And the other thing that we’ve kind of talked about is the need for seniors specific programming space. And what we’ve talked about is adding more rooms like this one, where where Ronnie and his staff could be able to do more programming. Because we all know that this building’s pretty tapped out unless we open up later or go on the weekends. So there is a senior component, as well as there is based on I think, Janine, one of the things you’ve always mentioned, is the need of the therapeutic pool. And we, we had some pretty good feedback at that first meeting about that, and, and are really looking at and including that as, as well as the dedicated senior program space,

Unknown Speaker 1:16:09
what about adding on to the Senior Center?

Speaker 7 1:16:13
The that could be a potential, but that is not in what is being discussed right now.

Unknown Speaker 1:16:20
I think that would make more sense and centrally located.

Speaker 7 1:16:24
So anyway, so here, here would be my response. This is just Jeff talking, nobody else’s heard this, or I look at Ben as he might be set pretty close to me. But if my thought is that if recreation will get a new facility at this location, one of the things that could possibly happen is the use at the memorial building could become more based on senior senior type of uses, that meets that needs that central location. It’s easy to move staff back and forth. But it’s one of those things that that couldn’t be considered.

Speaker 5 1:17:08
But there is expansion capability on this entire site, isn’t that?

Speaker 7 1:17:14
Not necessarily, that’s not what was in the master plan for the park. And master plans can certainly change. But the the, there’s limited space really for they’ll

Unknown Speaker 1:17:28
up as well.

Speaker 7 1:17:30
You could but I would guess you’d have to scrape the building to be able to do a facility that would have the foundation that can support.

Speaker 8 1:17:41
Up to that point all depends on what you’re talking about adding if you’re talking about adding, say a gymnasium for pickleball, I think it probably makes sense to think about the memorial. But if you’re talking about more at Richmond space classrooms, then it might make more sense to add. But I think to Jeff’s point, it kind of depends on what we’re talking about, and whether that plays into the master planning for the site. One of the

Speaker 7 1:18:02
one of the things that Bonnie and I have talked about is the back patio that certainly could be closed in to add some some more space. I believe he’s working with ours going to be working with a design person to just give us a ballpark of what that would cost. But I don’t know that we can go much broader than

Speaker 2 1:18:26
that would have been conversations of regarding what aging related services programs could go in there, or is that something that needs to be

Unknown Speaker 1:18:35
told? Go in here? Yeah. Not that specific.

Unknown Speaker 1:18:39
So that’s something that has to be developed. I think it’d

Speaker 5 1:18:43
be difficult logistically through running staff to be able to

Unknown Speaker 1:18:47
say, I don’t agree with our director.

Speaker 9 1:18:50
Yeah, cuz we’re creations all over the city, folks that program work at one facility program and another. It’s, it’s that’s very consistent with with what I’m doing and other

Unknown Speaker 1:19:01
professionals, that’s something that has to be worked on. Yeah,

Speaker 7 1:19:04
there are no specific. And the other experience that recreation has is all of our outdoor facilities. I mean, we go from three facilities year round, to in the summer months, we add four more facilities. When you include we have a big part of the operation of union reservoir, they’re there would be no reason why Senior Services couldn’t have multiple locations as well. Is it different? Is it as convenient? No, but it certainly would probably make people at this area of town, happy that they don’t have to travel all the way to senior center. And one of the things that we’ve always talked about in in the over the Here’s Michelle weighed in being a part of that, as the former senior manager is really trying to develop programming and facilities much like we do city parks within the community you don’t want everybody that always have to travel across town you build specific locations throughout to make it as convenient as possible for people to be able to access now

Unknown Speaker 1:20:27
like folder yes to Yes,

Speaker 8 1:20:29
exactly. Have you ever entertained the idea that some type of shuttle program or shuttle service to do that? We do some living you don’t have a reason to now

Speaker 7 1:20:37
Yeah, well, did you actually quite a few trips are where they provide transportation for for hiking trips, gotcha day, maybe station to different events, and they actually contract I believe, buses to go live down to the Buell theatre for up to the casinos. So they have some really great experience that they provide in that, as well as historically, they have. The Senior Center has a great travel program where they’ve traveled and, and taking groups all over the world in a different setting. So and I believe they’re working to get back into that.

Speaker 2 1:21:24
So it’s kind of booked up to senior center to make sure that we get Bolden.

Unknown Speaker 1:21:29
Absolutely.

Unknown Speaker 1:21:31
This is the police sit back and not doing

Speaker 5 1:21:34
well, yes. And then programs, the shuttling and all that is certainly very few people. It’s costly. It’s very few people based on the senior population in this town. I mean, it’s just, it’s very limited. It’s a lottery problem.

Speaker 8 1:21:56
Well, to that point. One of the criticisms of our first open house of the 75 or so attendees was there was very little representation that was in this facility. I think the median age was probably well over 60. So to your point of having representation and sort of the needs of that particular user group, I think I think we heard loud and clear a lot of those use patterns. I think it’s tricky. And I don’t want to get too far off track here. But excuse me, one of the things we always consider when we’re looking at the potential for a second facility, is how you complement without replacing it. How do you build on what this center is doing? Without saying we’re going to build a second center. So I think what we’re really considering at least from a lot of feedback, we’ve had Israeli satellite, where it’s a anymore touched touchdowns, five mountains, maybe a Senior Services Coordinator, but really just having a satellite location to be able to access now all the other recreational uses within that building, because there will be enrichment classes, there will be fitness and wellness programs, there will be space for things like Superbowl and other athletic uses. So the whole point is not to say we’ve got the Senior Center, let’s build a second facility and sort of compete. It’s how do we expand those services in life without taking away what this center does now might mean, to that point, that this requires some investment in some of those amenities as well. I mean, the point is, is you have to look at it holistically, and recognize that it’s providing services not just providing location, that’s where

Speaker 5 1:23:27
when senior services fit in there, well, anytime. Good question, Unity space.

Speaker 8 1:23:33
So we did all the public input session, and a lot of the feedback that came out of that session, identified some of the uses that we think are important in there. And granted, we just sort of circled the top sort of 10 or 12 uses a lot of them are you know, therapy, pool, fitness and exercise. You know, some of the other uses that may play that walking and running track. But then you get pretty close here and you start seeing things like SilverSneakers and cooking and, and enrichment programs. So the whole point is, I think there’s a lot of programming that came out of our outreach. And here’s a second tabulation of activities. There really started keying in on some of those functions, enrichment programs, instructional programs, low impact fitness and wellness and health programs. And so when we took from that, and I won’t go too deep into the other feedback, what we took from that was, we have to understand the priorities. And so the same thing, we’re bringing some programming priorities to this public input session. One of them in particular focuses very heavily on aquatics. That’s been a very high request. And what that probably means is it sort of pushes some of those other community functions to a lower priority. We do have sort of a senior activity area. We do have sort of fitness areas gymnasium space, but this program is showing people what it looks like if you invest the vast majority of your budget We’re going to be expensive aquatic programs. If you look at a second program and say, well, let’s, let’s lean a little less heavily into the Aquatics. And that frees up a lot of money for more of that enrichment space with classrooms and meeting spaces and teaching and catering kitchen, and maybe that senior activity area, still accessing the recreation and fitness and wellness and gymnasium spaces in the therapy pool. So frankly, we feel like this is probably better serving other uses. But what it shows is, if you want a lot of pool, you don’t get a lot else. Right. And that’s the problem.

Speaker 1 1:25:34
Has, do we have any idea about the age group that the city that we’re serving with, say, west of hoper have have we’ve been looking at how many people over the age of 60 live in that area versus how many single family homes with kids. It has

Speaker 8 1:26:00
very simply with the and not don’t art. One of the things in this process, because it’s sort of quick, most of our survey has been pretty. It’s pretty anecdotal surveys, Survey Monkey, it’s going out to concentrate on tech, if we had conducted a long exhaustive month long, many months, statistically valid survey, we probably could have parsed out those various datasets and said, For this section of this this area code, or this portion of the zip code, we could have teased out all that data, what we do find and having done this for 28 years and probably done hundreds of these types of studies, even though that analysis can kind of hone in on some specific data generally aligns pretty carefully, pretty, pretty closely with award. See why to set assessment? Because I think, I guess what I’m saying is, that would be helpful data to have, but I don’t know that it was Vir is more than a few percentage points away from kind of a city wide services type of approach. Does that make sense? So wouldn’t

Speaker 1 1:27:02
dictate necessarily utilization of the facility.

Speaker 8 1:27:07
If you click could, it could end up and here’s the thing with these facilities, we don’t, we don’t like to build too much of these things there. So similarly serving, let’s say climbing walls, right? Everything on here, that you see is multipurpose space, and can change and convert and adapt over time. So if we say, Look, we want way more of these types of programs, we have the ability to change and manipulate our programming. So I guess what I’m getting at is I think we’re building enough flexibility into the thinking that we can adapt. And if someone says, Boy, I really want this new type of programming. The hope is that we’ve designed something that can adapt to that, not that we’ve excluded that I think a gentleman came up to me at the public meeting and said, You know, I, I do Alzheimer’s, boxing is the best thing for me. Can we do that at this facility? Well, of course we can. We have studios, we have gymnasium space, but I don’t have to put a space here that says Alzheimer’s boxing studio. Right. So the point is, I think the adaptability is the key piece. And that’s how you adjust to demographics and change. To answer the question, is there demographics that say, it should or shouldn’t be on the northwest side of the city? We don’t really have that data set, we have some gap analysis that shows where the general facilities are located and what their service area is. And I think that will help answer the question if there’s this big void in that part of the city. But it won’t help you answer the question, does that demographic and that income level, warrant that type of investment just because the services aren’t there?

Speaker 9 1:28:37
Let me add in, you know what’s going to happen. If this gets built, then in recreation, we’ll be doing a complete evaluation from what’s happening with the why to what’s happening in the mortar building, to if we don’t have Centennial going on, we have to make our own adjustments just for some very simple example. But the whole package will be looked at, you know, we know we’re going to I have given my personnel and we certainly have our our department commitment to Lonnie and Senior Services, we work so closely together as it is, that’s just going to continue. So we have one facility one room here that we show, but adaptability is what we’re all about. And we’re all about change this building 15 years ago when I started as far as activities looks very different, some of the same, but a lot of new different things, a lot of new different fitness classes, for example. So it’ll be a complete evaluation of what we’ve got where and we’re going to try things and then if it doesn’t work here we try and another location so so just know that that’s what’s going to happen if we are blessed with having a new facility

Speaker 2 1:29:47
like this. So there’s a lot of options available for kind of secret programming, right one you can it can be adapted

Speaker 8 1:30:00
I think I think that’s really what we were hoping to have the conversation around what what, what are the real opportunities that you see or that you would like to see that we study or bring forward in our planning? What are your concerns about the process? Are they related to the site? Are they related to this facility? Are they related to level of services across the community? So I think we were just hoping to make sure that you understood the the breadth of the process, that you understood where the opportunities were, and help guide us in those, and maybe help highlight a few of the concerns that we need to pay attention to as we kind of wrap up some of the study. You certainly don’t want to have red flags that bass people who ask portions of the city are unhappy or uncomfortable with. So I think that was this is exactly what we were hoping to do is really get out some of these ideas on the table. So

Speaker 2 1:30:54
I thought this was really excellent. It’s a good design as meeting your need. My biggest issue is I think you’ll agree is accessibility. Northwest? I don’t know quite what to do about that. Because I understand the issue you’re talking about. I do. But that is an issue.

Speaker 8 1:31:17
And the point that shuttle programs are other things that historically be identified just don’t seem to be. Yeah, I would say that’s probably

Speaker 3 1:31:29
what you’re talking about hair still that you’re still primarily talking about? The went up by silvercreek? Yes. Now, we’ll Centennial pool and some of the other places that renovation is gonna be vehicle, whatever, are going to be able to have a lot of the same facility, right?

Speaker 7 1:31:47
Yes. And so Centennial pool will go away. Right, if if the why proposal would be approved. But it would have pool that have ice, gymnasium, and childcare meeting rooms,

Unknown Speaker 1:32:01
but it’s a private facility.

Speaker 7 1:32:04
And we are working on. In fact, we had a meeting just this morning with the YMCA about how we address if city tax dollars are going into it? How do we provide access to our taxpayers and that information would be made available that in July when when we have it is

Unknown Speaker 1:32:32
not alive?

Speaker 7 1:32:33
When when when we talked about going to city council in July, we make that proposal for access memberships, both for why

Unknown Speaker 1:32:44
and the community would be made aware of all that you’re struggling to sell or speaker for too, right? Do I have to be associated associated with the seniors? No. Well, we went on an extension. But we certainly would offer SilverSneakers at this location

Speaker 6 1:33:16
and would not have access to the programming and delegation

Speaker 7 1:33:20
at the line. I mean, there is a potential you could develop working relationships where if you wanted to have deep water or something that they could do that as well, that we just haven’t had those compensation.

Speaker 8 1:33:40
Right now. And I’m not within I’m not part of those numbers. But it seems like you’re at this level, just dealing with the sort of long basic relationship of how does the city provide services under the umbrella? Why, with the very few structures and programming system is it’s not just any governmental type of conversation. But presumably, before it was fine, like you’d have a pretty, I was specific program description what

Speaker 7 1:34:11
we will, people are going to want that information if they’re going to vote for yes, right, that project.

Speaker 5 1:34:18
Will Chris and his board be able to commit to anything by?

Unknown Speaker 1:34:24
Yes, they’re ready to commit right now.

Speaker 5 1:34:29
And the community would know exactly what that commitment would be. By the time the vote would.

Unknown Speaker 1:34:35
Absolutely.

Unknown Speaker 1:34:37
I mean, there’s so independent

Speaker 7 1:34:41
because there’s a whole the whole housing piece of it. I have no knowledge of how that works. That’s just not my world. So there there would be I can’t remember the number 100 housing units that would go along With this that helps pay for this development. Did I not? You mentioned we’ve shared the drawings too, right. I’ll resend those again, just so you have have those. But so there’s a component of this to move forward also is based on being able to get assistance from the federal government to help pay for that. Housing. Yes. So

Speaker 8 1:35:31
that’s been a very common model for the YMCA, it’s kind of how they bridge the gap between funding their facilities and getting that federal funding. As an example, all the way down to Colorado, Colorado Springs have that model, the YMCA, oh, springs, housing, I think it’s, you’re gonna see that a lot more often than places. It’s how they Wednesdays for a long time struggled to make ends meet when they were just building recreational facilities. So they’ve kind of gone back to their core model where they started, which is housing and recreation. So you get to make some sense, whether it happens or not. That’s that’s the question, this commitment that they’re about to make. So guys, you can see it’s a bit of a complicated, complex study that there’s a couple of moving parts, but we want to stay focused on serving the citizens along model before we propose what we suggest, obviously, the wide playing into that, but we don’t want to be too distracted. So the hope is that we gain enough feedback through the outreach, some of the surveying that we’re doing, that we understand what’s what citizens need, first and foremost, so that we can best provide for that.

Speaker 5 1:36:36
Will the Zoom portion be available after tonight? Go to what? Well,

Speaker 7 1:36:43
so tonight, there is not a virtual part of it, it’s

Speaker 8 1:36:47
online that invites it, it’s an open house, we just felt like the virtual part of it was tricky. So what we’re gonna do is we’re going to present information in four stations, and then all the information we present will be made available online. If it be this information right here, information on the site, some of the Aquatics information, and there will be information on some various activities. So that will be made available on the website. One website, the city’s website, the labeling of fact is right there. This is where we’ve been directing people to go for regular project updates and includes anything that we’ve presented thus far in public. It’s just a good resource center for getting information on our process that we’ve been going. So the

Speaker 5 1:37:33
information about tonight will be on that. Yes. And if you want to put in input if community wants to get into it, they know where to do they know about.

Speaker 7 1:37:46
Advertising that all the way through the process.

Speaker 8 1:37:51
We found that last time, as much as the virtual when it’s a presentation, it’s easy for us to present in public and then present virtually, but when it’s a discussion, it becomes a little more difficult. So we just felt like let’s do the service to the people that have taken their time to show up in the room to have that conversation. And then we’ll come up with an entirely different way to have that conversation virtually. We just felt like there’s too many where the where people online weren’t getting what we were doing in person and people in person when seamless online, were in vain. So we thought that was a better way of doing.

Unknown Speaker 1:38:27
So how much further ado, how much more you

Speaker 8 1:38:29
know, we’re done. We’re done. Yeah, this is the conversation that it has. And I just want to point out one more thing. This is the QR code and the survey link for the survey that’s online right now. Just doing some general polling questions about recreation preferences, use patterns support, there’s about 130 responses that have already been logged as far as in like, less than a week, we’ll be presenting this tonight, we’ll leave it open for another week or two, we’d be happy to get you this information to provide your usership if they haven’t already received it through constant contact. We want as many people in the city as possible

Unknown Speaker 1:39:04
it was so much not having a newspaper anymore.

Speaker 8 1:39:07
It’s it’s tough. We’ve tried to get information out and we’ve I think, done a pretty good job in a short time you’ve tried, but I think this is something we want to make sure and if if it’s possible to send this to you all, the NRDC will make sure that you get this content for your membership and we’ll keep this live basically through the end.

Unknown Speaker 1:39:26
Okay, very good. Any final questions?

Unknown Speaker 1:39:31
No, thank you. Thank you all this has been very, very good.

Unknown Speaker 1:39:35
Thanks again. Thanks Chris.

Unknown Speaker 1:39:44
Reposition.

Unknown Speaker 1:39:57
You Question

Unknown Speaker 1:40:05
I think it’s an ongoing stations itself.

Unknown Speaker 1:40:24
Right Thank you

Speaker 2 1:40:40
Well, those are a couple. agenda. I figured, that’s okay. We’re gonna have a lot of items. Can we get through these? Late? I think maybe we can. Let’s say we’re going back to new business, we’ll finish the issue of the July meeting that you brought up. So I think we’re going back to old business debrief meeting with the city manager, Carol. Anybody have any comments about that? Or are you think Atlanta? Even got the same kind of follow up?

Speaker 1 1:41:18
For me, I thought, you know, I think he was very straightforward and compete with saunas. He didn’t present anything to me that I was surprised at, and I wish we had more money. Yeah, that’s the

Unknown Speaker 1:41:34
bottom line. And

Speaker 1 1:41:35
you can’t, you can’t create it. So. So

Speaker 2 1:41:40
one thing that I got out of it more than anything, is that it didn’t turn out a whole lot different than I expected. Really, you know, we didn’t expect to get a whole bunch of staff. But Harold did say, and I mentioned this to you, right, you know, he said, you’ve been hurt. And to me, that was important that he actually said it. You know, he acknowledged that we were trying to we were taking a point of view. And so we’re kind of on his radar. Not that we weren’t before. I think we were but I think it’s just important to make a point with the people that our decision. So when I think we did so like All in all, I guess all satisfied was, even though we didn’t we maybe got a half a position that we went to share. That’s what he said, Oh, I don’t know what

Speaker 6 1:42:31
he made a suggestion of teaming up with Le J for a halftime position for us have time for them. Because I’m certainly J long. Why

Unknown Speaker 1:42:39
don’t we already

Speaker 6 1:42:43
counselors, well, yeah, outside support, but not not for programming. So this would be an opportunity for them to program on site and trying to get some of the residents outside of their facility, and get them to the senior center to help new people focus on that mental emotional wellness piece, I made those connections. So still made that request. But still moving forward, my number one request became the full time bench program here. And so that was, again, still still present in there because it feels fun, both of them. And that’s

Speaker 3 1:43:19
one of the things that I did like is that we you know, they are posting some of these positions not only in the center, but in the state of Spanish out are finding are required. Because that I mean, everybody’s doing I mean, it just seems like I don’t know that they’re saying require them

Speaker 1 1:43:36
pretty firstly, I look at my emails and look at those new positions. And they all require,

Speaker 3 1:43:45
I mean, for for here in the city, because I know what the schools are definitely looking at. And a lot of the other places are too so that’s, that’s a real good food. And I hope we continue with that. Man half day where your money is that we’ll pick one source, the same number of staff members that went there was how many years over

Unknown Speaker 1:44:03
the years, basically. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 1:44:08
Well, but there’s nothing you can do about that

Unknown Speaker 1:44:11
while there is we can keep

Speaker 3 1:44:13
nagging Well, yeah, we can but what I’m saying there’s only so much money That’s right.

Speaker 1 1:44:20
In reality, and people are looking at increased cost of living increase taxes, which is homeowners as well as renters because rents gonna go up so we can push the reality of

Speaker 3 1:44:39
hiring I mean, posting positions until field rather than having a deadline on it, I think is a good thing because as we’ve said in the past, you you post a position and you wait two weeks by the time the two weeks is up, the person that applied immediately, already has another job in muscle Oh,

Speaker 2 1:45:03
one thing that I got, and I mentioned this to both Ronnie and just the other day, you know, getting a whole lot more resources just isn’t going to happen for a while. Even if we get something word a year or two, you know, it’s, it’s a ways down the road. So that leaves us what can we really? What can we really do. And it seems to me that we got two big things that we got to do. And the Spanish program is one of one of several. And it is to find out what kind of what the priorities are. And then all of the staff and resources allocated to the resources. And that may or may not match up with everything that’s been done right now. The stuff that Carmen talked about, like I thought she was wonderful the way she presented. But that’s gonna require some resources and staff time, money. No, here we can get these big plans. But how are we who’s going to actually go do this stuff? So you rob Paul, and Peter, I think, is part of what we might see what as far as staffing and services in

Speaker 6 1:46:17
the future. So I think we, as Robin mentioned, we have a good foundation. Right now, some of this work is being done, right? We just want to be more intentional and grown into larger goals with that. I think she liked laid out good, a good foundation of if this position is funded, of where to go for us and to have taken things we’re doing right now currently going well, but how do we get to

Speaker 2 1:46:46
so many times I think, what senior centers doing this wonderful work. However, if you shift priorities, you might have to call something for anyone I already am pushing him or

Speaker 1 1:46:57
running into? Am I correct in memory? Why is that a couple of meetings to go, I got the feeling with the report from the friends that we’ve kind of tapped out with them in terms of getting them to support positions or positions. So they’re no longer a resource. And they and to some degree, they weren’t in the past. But I understand that their feeling is the city should do more and the city saying they don’t have it. So I just wanted to be clear that that was the story about that.

Speaker 6 1:47:40
That’s correct. They made it very clear that that they don’t want to fund this because of these positions anymore. That as you just mentioned, that it’s the city’s responsibility is not there, there’s, and they pretty much made it clear that as of 2024, they’re no longer going to they’re not going to fund those positions as can come affordable. What that does is if if the city doesn’t pick that up with me, their requests, my budget request, you say you pick up those positions, then you still have to fund it, but it’s even impact our recreation budget. Sure. So even though they’re not funding yet, that that puts it on us to figure out how to transitions, Spot planning, I got to go to those friends board meetings and talk to him about that.

Speaker 1 1:48:29
I need to to I’m not defending them, but to say that they continue to do a fair amount of financial support to the senior senator in other ways in terms

Unknown Speaker 1:48:45
of branches and

Speaker 1 1:48:46
helping people not just scholarships, but giving emergency funding for housing for people that are on the street, helping people with medical issues, I mean, resource managers applied to them on a regular basis for grants to help, you know, our population, but they’re just not willing to fund positions that they do a lot. They really do. Okay,

Speaker 2 1:49:25
I don’t know what else to say about that. That’s just kind of the way it is, right? The

Unknown Speaker 1:49:28
moment is,

Unknown Speaker 1:49:30
we can work on it. But that’s,

Speaker 6 1:49:32
they want me to go to the city for a lot of these things and say, Hey, pick these up. But I explained to them this last week in the process, it’s not just a wave a magic wand. It’s the process. These requests have to go through a certain time period and channel. Then there’s the waiting period, the evaluation period, and then the yes or no period, that it’s an example would be internet. We just work with them to the From our Wi Fi, and I want to go to settings. So you pay for this. I told him, We can do that. But that even if they agree to, they’ll not be approved till January like the Wi Fi is right now, we can’t wait an additional six months. So sometimes there’s a sense of urgency on some of these requests. And I don’t know if they fully understand those processes, how long everything takes and the process to make these requests. So we do

Unknown Speaker 1:50:29
need to start having fun reasons.

Speaker 2 1:50:37
Creek. Great. I’m just wondering how we might navigate this is is primarily coming from Linda or as a whole board? I don’t know. I don’t know. Because I know. I know how she feels right.

Speaker 6 1:50:55
Communication I receive is from Linda. I don’t know if that’s communication from the border for my birthday. I can’t say yes or no, but

Speaker 2 1:51:05
okay. Well, I thought maybe it might have been I’ve been threatening to have a conversation with Michael. Or do. Yeah, right. Okay. We’re

Unknown Speaker 1:51:17
rapidly running out of time here.

Speaker 2 1:51:20
Probably the most important, like nexus of board candidate interviews where we have anything interview

Unknown Speaker 1:51:30
processes.

Unknown Speaker 1:51:30
So you interviewed two people,

Speaker 7 1:51:32
we interviewed two people. It was Ronnie and I and Sheila, and are we oh, we were unanimous in that the two individuals were very good would be a good fit, and made the recommendation to the clerk’s office that both of them be selected. I believe the last meeting in June Council will make their appointments to become effective in July

Unknown Speaker 1:52:03
could then be at the July meeting. Yes. Yes.

Speaker 7 1:52:08
So with that being moved back a week, because I was worried that people might be leaving for the longer holiday. The fourth in there. Know the timeline and everything. Yeah, we explained that they would hear from the clerk’s office after that last constantly.

Speaker 2 1:52:30
Like, like we talked about briefly, I really think these people had an orientation. And maybe we need to do some of that too. All right, good. So I might have a cup. They’re both women. Is that right? Yes. Yes.

Speaker 7 1:52:47
The lawn and are we this? Okay, I’m sorry, learning. Elon, Elon Dooley, and our lien. I cannot remember

Speaker 1 1:53:05
the RV from Longmont housing. Yes. Oh my god. She is wonderful. You’re gonna love her. I worked with her on Boulder County area and aging. What an asset. She’s

Unknown Speaker 1:53:19
great. Thanks.

Speaker 2 1:53:21
They were very good. All right. The customer service data report. I think that’s been handed out. That’s this one, right? Yeah. Right. Yeah. A chance to review that list. We can put that summarized.

Speaker 6 1:53:41
Yeah. So we had a total of 551 participants 380 online and 233 person. And then our three questions are broken down here. I have I like visuals as well. Just a piece. So question one. Were you provided information on where to access our classes and resources? 95% said yes. And two are your needs are uniquely met here at the Senior Center? 94% said yes, that’s 520 participants in question three, does our staff help answer your questions or provide you the information you’re seeking? 95% said yes. And that’s 24%. But I know what that’s going to discuss. Yes.

Speaker 2 1:54:28
So together with our survey that we did earlier about six months ago, that people overwhelmingly approve highly of the services that we currently provide among the chart people that come to the center. So I don’t think there’s any question about that. They have a few negatives here and there, but the vast majority

Speaker 5 1:54:54
Ronnie did you and your staff, I’m just looking at the rest of this. Did you garner some New information from all the answers.

Speaker 6 1:55:03
This was an advisory board survey. And I wanted to present the advisory board before that to the staff as so now we’ll be able to

Speaker 5 1:55:13
wait, what’s your personal opinion with based on six months here

Unknown Speaker 1:55:18
are what the results of this

Speaker 5 1:55:21
are all these suggestions. And there are a lot of suggestions here that I’m looking at. Yeah, yeah.

Unknown Speaker 1:55:30
So what do I think

Unknown Speaker 1:55:34
it’s too much to address right now, I’m sure.

Speaker 6 1:55:36
I think it’s just good information, because as a starting point, or to take a look at any adjustments and things we need to tweak. Because you got a lot of response back to these questions and 95% success rate in responses.

Speaker 2 1:55:54
But this point, I’d leave it up to you if it’s okay with everybody. If you think there’s something further we need to talk about, get back to the board. Otherwise, we’ll just trust your judgment. Okay. We might go a couple of minutes over here. I wanted to talk about board goals. Just trying to make this quick here. I’m thinking we all submitted goals. And Beth. Remember, you had some fairly specific funds. And Jeanette, you yours kind of very similar to mine, I think in terms of generals role, I guess what I want to pose and since we’re all kind of saying the same thing, I don’t want to vote on it or anything. I just want to mention it, and we’ll talk about it more next time. Is the state, not the County, the City when we get the right jurisdiction, as a statement of powers, on what our duties and responsibilities are? And I think everybody’s looked at that. I would say we just adopt that as a general goal statement. And those are the things that we tried to do. And maybe we could we’ll share that next time with the new members. And if everybody’s okay with them. We’ll just vote on it or not. But we’ll be are generalized scope, we got some more specific goals. Can you share it with the whole board again? I mean, probably next time, can I can’t I as far as the documents just it’s just? Yeah, I can. Sure. I certainly can do that next time. We can talk about that, along with some of the more specific samples. Now the next thing, where do we go from here? I guess there’s my big question. I think we’re done with budget staffing. We’ve spent a lot of time on that we’ve come up with. So what do we do next? I thought Parliament’s presentation was really excellent. Do we want to proceed with this as kind of the main focus of this board. There’s lots of other things we could talk about, we could focus on. I mean, there’s transportation or mental health or housing,

Unknown Speaker 1:58:21
I think Ryan could give us the best direction on that.

Speaker 6 1:58:25
I think this is good information right now allows us to sit on it and we can come back to visit at any point. Especially once we get closer to finding out of this position is something we were we will be able to have in 24. Because already my my brain is going to know direct different questions with information privately provided, which is great information. And how does that piggyback off of the stuff we’re doing now? without increasing work capacity? Right for her current team slow

Speaker 5 1:58:58
but your Dave’s talking about? board goals. And they have to intertwine with you and your staffs goals in my opinion.

Speaker 2 1:59:11
Yeah, I right. That’s exactly right.

Speaker 1 1:59:18
So the senior community, seniors have long run not just the senior center and a real passion of mine right now because I have to deal with people in and around housing, and keeping seniors off the streets. I would like to see us be continued voice and support. Reminding, not reminding the city they do as much as they can but really looking at alternatives for healthy people’s They off the street, especially seniors, with the limited numbers of senior housing availability. I mean, the wait was for senior houses on average in this community is if we’re lucky to six months, and when we have somebody ended up on the street, or they’re, they’re being evicted. We don’t have an emergency backup system. So there are certain city problems on the spirit of that older adults that I’d like to see this board be an ongoing active voice and constant pain in the butt. Really?

Speaker 5 2:00:46
Sorry to do it. But would that be a board goal? I mean, is that I mean, priority for the board to focus on I

Speaker 1 2:00:57
priority. I think that part of you know, my view of this board, is that we represent seniors in unity. We don’t just make up, you know, recommendations to the senior center. Right. So those are the kind of things I don’t want to go by the wayside.

Speaker 2 2:01:21
We really are supposed to be making recommendations to council but you know what, I’m coming to the conclusion that’s kind of difficult to do because Harold is gatekeeper. And nothing much gets passed hurled unless he wants it to get past him. And so it’s, in a way, it’s kind of difficult to make recommendation, gatekeeper like that. Even even though he was very receptive, I got a lot of respect for the guy. But the way the thing is set up is kind of difficult.

Speaker 7 2:01:54
Yeah, and I don’t know that I would call Harold, the gatekeeper. I think it was important for him to come to talk to you all that was to understand the broad impact of how many things he’s really addressing. And that I think he wanted you to hear from him directly, that as much as he would like to fund everything. There’s no way he can do that. And that, I don’t know that if, if you had a recommendation, like, like you said, about housing for all seniors or for everybody, that you could send the informational items to council, he, I don’t think that’s the things that he’s talking about. I think he wanted you to have a baseline of what his thoughts were and how he makes what’s possible.

Speaker 2 2:02:52
Yeah, but good. But I stand corrected. I think you’re absolutely right.

Speaker 1 2:02:59
And we have Marsha, here, as the IRS representing City Council burden can constantly, you know, remind her about, you know, how big of a problem is it? What have we seen, I think unless you’re constantly informed about the number of people that are going to end up on the street, that are older adults, that it does perpetuated, it’s a more realistic problem to them, when they’re actually facing the day to day encounters, that people have

Speaker 2 2:03:40
therapists. And I think you’re absolutely right. To me the top issue. It affects almost every time. I mean, there’s other important issues, but coming you gotta have people off the street. So I’m thinking, if everybody does everybody agree with, I don’t know, we could have another presentation. I don’t know if one of your staff would want to do it, or maybe somebody else regarding the whole housing issue, maybe fallen from area? I don’t know.

Speaker 5 2:04:09
I would like to hear from someone about what those line items would be besides housing, because I’m new on the board. And I don’t have enough information, to be able to say that’s the number one thing

Speaker 2 2:04:25
well, I guess I’m thinking that we need more information to be briefed on I’m not an expert.

Speaker 1 2:04:31
You know, we could actually even have somebody from resort one of our resource managers come and really inform you about what people they’re seeing in the community, what our housing availability is. How many people that transfer deals with an honestly I think that’s a good start, but staying engaged with what are the problems that seniors are experiencing in our community, and having people bring that up to you as a reality?

Speaker 2 2:05:16
You know, I think to have an impact, we’re going to have to grab hold of issues like housing, transportation, like stuff, like transportation, we’re going to have to stay with him. And which means we’re going to have probably multiple discussions about this multiple, all that’s gonna take some time, it’s going to be incremental, like like conferences, these are complicated problems. So we have to educate ourselves in a meaningful kind of recommendations.

Speaker 7 2:05:44
And I don’t think it’s always about the senior center or senior services, addressing it’s about all of us advocating for seniors across our community.

Speaker 5 2:05:58
And what, what I don’t really know, percentage wise, people that are affected wise are what these issues are, and where can we find that information?

Speaker 7 2:06:09
I think we can invite the resource staff, I think we could invite somebody from LH a AAA to know LHL housing authority to come and talk because that they should know more than anyone, right? Yeah, that’s one. And then transportation May when we start with Phil Greenwald, who is in charge of transportation issues within the city, maybe he comes in talks to you, as well or the rest of this year. The one thing I would suggest, and I know we’ve had this on the agenda for say the for a long time, the challenge is we’ll get two to two new board members that are going to be coming in that will bring a point of view. And maybe this conversation is better had when they’re here when I agree with everybody.

Speaker 2 2:07:01
I totally agree. So I would suggest we’re running past time, I would suggest that a few folks will trust us. Know, Ronnie, and Jeff and I, we will put together an agenda for next time, which gets us a start on some of these issues. Like, you know, you mentioned a couple three people, we could invite maybe some resource staff or whatever. But let us structure information, and who would provide it to the board starting with our next meeting.

Unknown Speaker 2:07:38
And we have a new board member that’s on

Unknown Speaker 2:07:42
board with us from the beginning.

Speaker 5 2:07:43
Yes. I’m back to what agency would have an overview of what affects our aging population here in Longmont, would area agency or the Area Agency on Aging, have a pretty good handle on what the issues are? I would think so. Well, I don’t know enough about them. But

Speaker 1 2:08:08
the county Yes, but not specifically but pretty similar. I agree. In your opinion,

Unknown Speaker 2:08:17
and services.

Speaker 1 2:08:19
Well, there let’s just say their waitlist. And and I don’t know what their homeless potential homeless population is, but I know their waitlist for Boulder County Housing, the same as long on outs.

Speaker 5 2:08:38
What I need to know is what besides the homeless population, what besides housing are impacting the senior population in our city.

Speaker 7 2:08:50
And I think the folks we mentioned would be a great start. Because they’re specific to Longmont, which is like your your goal? Like we certainly could bring somebody from Boulder County in later but I think the local expertise, experts for these areas

Speaker 2 2:09:11
will start incrementally saying we build on this stuff because it’s gonna take a while. I’ll find it everybody’s okay with that approach that I mentioned. No, I don’t think we need a motion or anything. But if you’re okay with that. Okay.

Speaker 3 2:09:25
Let me ask one quick question. Does the city have a volunteer coordinator, if you will, that just really works on trying to do volunteers in different places?

Speaker 7 2:09:41
There’s not there’s not a volunteer coordinator that represents the entire city. There are volunteer coordinators in certain areas of the city, for example, parks and natural resources, has a volunteer coordinator. But but they don’t have Help out recreation or Senior Services is really about how do they help the park system. Ronnie and his staff are required to do volunteers as a part of that job and everything else that that they have to do. Sure. Yeah, shark. That’s one of chars things. But shark can’t do well with that. So if brandy wanted to do something, you’d have to add that to her schedule to make that happen.

Speaker 3 2:10:31
I guess the reality is, we’re going to have to do something about volunteers. We’re not going to get a whole lot more staff, right. I didn’t I don’t have national

Unknown Speaker 2:10:44
that’s a very good point. Because it’s not going to change.

Unknown Speaker 2:10:51
I think we could talk all right, Motion. Second, all those in favor say aye or something? Yes.

Unknown Speaker 2:11:07
Thank you for your vote.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai