Senior Citizens Advisory Board – September 2023

Video Description:
Senior Citizens Advisory Board – September 2023

Read along below:

Unknown Speaker 0:00
All right, let’s get all the meeting to order. Does anybody know why he’s doing this one? And center hurry? Okay.

Unknown Speaker 0:09
She sent me a text asking if it was the first or the second Wednesday, and I sent on vaccines first.

Unknown Speaker 0:21
All right. I sent you one like that not too long ago. Did you?

Unknown Speaker 0:27
There she is.

Unknown Speaker 0:29
Okay, we just did the roll call. I guess everyone present

Unknown Speaker 0:34
approval of the agenda. Everybody had a chance to review the agenda.

Unknown Speaker 0:39
Are there any corrections or additions to the agenda? I would.

Unknown Speaker 0:47
I would like to hear what how the senior center visit went with that. You guys. You didn’t do that? Right. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I’m just like to hear.

Unknown Speaker 0:58
Okay.

Unknown Speaker 1:01
I guess I just have to like, no longer one of the I got put into my manager’s report.

Unknown Speaker 1:08
Yeah, we put her under the business. We want to shrink it make it part of the you.

Unknown Speaker 1:16
It is part of

Unknown Speaker 1:23
Sure. You have a good start there. That’s okay. All right. So we’ll just add that to

Unknown Speaker 1:30
any other additions?

Unknown Speaker 1:34
Okay.

Unknown Speaker 1:37
Is there a motion to approve the agenda? I move that we approve the agenda, as amended.

Unknown Speaker 1:44
Is there a second to the agenda? All right. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Aye.

Unknown Speaker 1:50
Aye. Opposed? All right.

Unknown Speaker 1:54
Approval of the previous month’s

Unknown Speaker 2:00
corrections or additions to the minutes. There was only one thing that the Phils gave a presentation to us. We were going to get a copy of his presentation. And I didn’t get

Unknown Speaker 2:17
I did.

Unknown Speaker 2:18
Yes. Yeah. Yeah, I could resend that out.

Unknown Speaker 2:29
Are any corrections? Other comments? Corrections?

Unknown Speaker 2:35
All right. I just like to say Robin does such an excellent job.

Unknown Speaker 2:41
All right.

Unknown Speaker 2:43
minutes.

Unknown Speaker 2:48
Okay, is there a second?

Unknown Speaker 2:52
Okay. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay. This must have been public to be heard. Is there anybody coming today? For

Unknown Speaker 3:05
any kind of public comment? Okay, seeing hearing or seeing none? All right, the first item of business, we reversed the business, new business with old business was out of respect for

Unknown Speaker 3:17
Randy’s time.

Unknown Speaker 3:19
And there’s a couple of reasons we asked you to come.

Unknown Speaker 3:25
The first one is probably some of the

Unknown Speaker 3:29
maybe most of the group has not heard your magic.

Unknown Speaker 3:33
So that is one reason. The second reason is we’ve had three speakers.

Unknown Speaker 3:41
That actually we’ve had Harold here, too. I think you were at the meeting.

Unknown Speaker 3:46
And I don’t remember if you were at the meetings or not, but we had the outreach person I forgot her name.

Unknown Speaker 3:52
What was her name? Carmen is yes, Harmon from the city, and then we had filled.

Unknown Speaker 4:01
Anyway, regarding transportation, and then we had a person for housing.

Unknown Speaker 4:06
And I think everybody is wondering, you know, those are big deals. Other priorities.

Unknown Speaker 4:14
We were just talking about Arlene and I were talking about that. That’s everybody’s priority right now. housing and transportation. And so I think everybody is in. I certainly on this. You have a variety of services. I know that.

Unknown Speaker 4:30
And we want to hear about those that are particularly interested as it relates to transportation.

Unknown Speaker 4:39
And the three big priorities that we’ve talked about so far. We need we need to establish how much of a priority these are, I think a little later in our discussion, but that’s what we’ve kind of talked about so far this year. So we say outreach, like think about HOA talking, I’m talking about oh

Unknown Speaker 5:00
coverage. I guess that has to be kind of defined yet. But what I mean by outrageous Kenny, increasing representation of underrepresented folks, and you’re

Unknown Speaker 5:11
among the people that you serve, particularly Hispanics, that will be the biggest. So I think we’ll start there. Okay. We’ve talked about this before and board meetings. Yeah, I don’t think I don’t think you’ve mentioned this with the newer folks now. underrepresented populations tend to be over represented in supportive services here because our counseling services are free. We don’t bill insurance or do anything like that there are no copay, it’s because our resource specialists are helping folks meet their basic needs, housing, food,

Unknown Speaker 5:48
home care, transportation, financial assistance, we actually tend to get underrepresented groups and larger than normal quantities, you know, compared to the normal population here. So for instance, we have two Spanish speaking resource specialists, half or more of their case loads our Spanish speaking clients.

Unknown Speaker 6:11
So what about a quarter to a third of the population of Longmont is Spanish speaking but of our resource specialist clients there more than half usually.

Unknown Speaker 6:23
You actually track those demographics that we could see, we don’t require people to give us like racial information. But just what we know from our resource specialists is that at any given time, about half of their caseload of their Spanish speaking, half or more of their caseload are Spanish speakers.

Unknown Speaker 6:44
The only resource specialist for him that wasn’t true was our LH, a llama Housing Authority resource specialists, which is a vacant position right now.

Unknown Speaker 6:53
But there are a lower volume of Spanish speakers at the properties they served.

Unknown Speaker 6:58
That’s why that person doesn’t have as many Spanish speaking clients, as are other folks. Let’s repeat that one more time. So housing, the housing authority, resource specialists served three properties, Hearthstone lodge in the suites, positions vacant right now, but when someone wasn’t there, that positions bilingual, and they did not have half of their caseload Spanish speakers, because there’s a lower volume of standard speakers that those three properties. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 7:32
Sorry.

Unknown Speaker 7:33
So I don’t think we’d have an outreach, fishing within supportive services for the resource specialists for counseling. We don’t have any Spanish speaking counselors. So there’s certainly a gap there. But we can’t do outreach for service will provide.

Unknown Speaker 7:51
When we did hire a second counselor last year, we have that position posted as bilingual preferred, it was open for five months.

Unknown Speaker 8:02
And we could not find anyone at all.

Unknown Speaker 8:06
It was a great hire. Do you think? No, it was five month period? Because it was binding requirements. It wasn’t required, it was no first preferred.

Unknown Speaker 8:19
That made it more difficult. I don’t know, I know, children, youth and families have had the same difficulty hiring bilingual therapists there. And I’ve had positions open for Do you know how long since I started? So all year? Yeah. Yeah. And I remember at one point, maybe two months ago, asking earlier, what, what their applicant pool was I received one or two applications.

Unknown Speaker 8:44
So what do you require? Besides the options of status speaking, do you require degrees do you require, they have to be licensed, which means they do have to have at least a master’s degree. And it could be a licensed clinical social worker or licensed professional counselors, psychologists, probably psychologists that are going to be interested in this kind of position, but you’re never sure. Do you think that salary is a problem?

Unknown Speaker 9:11
Are we meeting so that’s a really tough question. It is really difficult to compare salaries for our positions, because for instance, when I looked at other counseling positions, like at mental health partners, no one’s job descriptions actually aligned very well with our job description.

Unknown Speaker 9:32
So I can’t say what I can say is that if you work in private practice, of course, you would make a lot more money. But that’s true of every kind of physician in the city. Right? If you worked in the private sector, you’d probably be making more money.

Unknown Speaker 9:44
The unfortunate thing a few situations like that is that

Unknown Speaker 9:49
everybody else is in the same boat. A lot of people are looking for by lever, folks.

Unknown Speaker 9:57
They’re either working or go on work. I don’t know which one is

Unknown Speaker 10:00
You don’t. And

Unknown Speaker 10:02
so

Unknown Speaker 10:05
all we can do is continue to see.

Unknown Speaker 10:09
I will say, you know, housing is one of the major issues that folks come in seeking assistance on. So that’s three if I remember right off the top of my head, primary reasons, folks, all resource specialists last year, were housing, financial assistance and caregivers who needed support and resources. For housing, we have actually seen improvement in the last couple of years of folks getting through waitlist. So there was a period during COVID. And before COVID, for the waitlist for subsidized senior housing were years long. And people were waiting to three years.

Unknown Speaker 10:47
We have seen people this year get through some waitlist within six months. Summer Yeah, some waitlist are still longer, it varies by property. Some people want a newer property, and so those may have longer weightless, right?

Unknown Speaker 11:03
wanting to do more during those six months, like people’s cars, they sell yeah, sometimes they’re staying with friends, family, sometimes they leave the area to find someone to be able to say, well, I spoke to a neighbor of mine who’s lived right across the street from me once a privilege.

Unknown Speaker 11:23
But he was quite reasonable. He told me he was homeless for six months, we’re

Unknown Speaker 11:28
just so thrilled to be where it’s at now.

Unknown Speaker 11:31
There, there’s gonna be some of that there’s coordinated entry through Boulder County. So anyone who is homeless anywhere in Boulder County has one point of entry through the county to try to get access to emergency sheltering, short term housing solutions. So we refer everyone who is experiencing homelessness today, to Coordinated Entry while we work with them to get on weightless for these various things.

Unknown Speaker 12:00
It’s through Boulder County Department of Housing and Human Services. So they do have an office here in town, and they’ve got another boulder. So what are they going to say they work directly with the shelter they work directly with in the winter churches that are doing emergency sheltering. I mean, they, they are the entry point so that

Unknown Speaker 12:22
we don’t have people going in trying to get housing from six different organizations in the county, right that for emergency housing, you’ve got one point of entry. But for those longer term waiting lists, we help people sort of make the long term plan we also help people look at their budget and see do you qualify for food assistance? Are there are other financial pieces of the puzzle that our resource specialists can help them connect with it might make housing more affordable for them? If they qualify, so does anybody that wants housing? Can they find a spot?

Unknown Speaker 12:57
That cultural placements are places that are underserved?

Unknown Speaker 13:02
Not necessarily living with their cousin or whatever? Can they find a place to stay? Not necessarily temporarily? So we have worked with folks who have been banned from staying at the shelter? Usually because of very difficult or violent behaviors? So no, not everyone will end up with an option here for data entry.

Unknown Speaker 13:24
So

Unknown Speaker 13:28
how long does it usually take for people to see resource? People here? Three to four weeks right now, it’s a long time.

Unknown Speaker 13:37
That pretty consistent. Yeah, we don’t provide emergency services. If somebody has utility shut off, and they need help today, they’re going to go to the Art Center and the art center processes emergencies.

Unknown Speaker 13:49
We’re really, again, that bigger picture, look at your budget and seeing what kinds of programs meant to qualify for what kinds of services are there. And if you’re on a one time, it’s often medical emergency kind of thing where you just got a huge hospital bill, and you can’t pay your rent this month. Do we have the ability to help with one time assistance to get people through the crisis and back on track financially? Is that wait time? I’m sorry, consistent through the years? Or is it getting longer?

Unknown Speaker 14:21
I’m just curious. Yeah. Robin, can I ask you that?

Unknown Speaker 14:26
It’s been this way for years. And I don’t know if it wasn’t better before. So we hired another resource specialist and 2021 Melissa, and then we hired her le che resource specialist. So I think there may have been periods where it was temporarily a little bit better, but the population of older adults keeps growing and so yeah.

Unknown Speaker 14:49
Remember that I thought forgotten all the 7/3 resource.

Unknown Speaker 14:56
Shorter

Unknown Speaker 14:59
I think

Unknown Speaker 15:00
answer some of that in terms of the number of places and how things are managed.

Unknown Speaker 15:06
The shelters run by hope in Longmont

Unknown Speaker 15:13
Mart, are never full.

Unknown Speaker 15:16
But they’re really inappropriate for an older person who’s lost their housing, because you’d have to sleep on the map on the floor. I don’t know about you, all of you, maybe you’re better shape than me, but I have trouble getting up off the floor.

Unknown Speaker 15:35
Just flying there.

Unknown Speaker 15:38
Also works with a shelter in Boulder shelter in Boulder, although being sent down to the shelter, there, you have a permanent bed and is the bed, it’s up off the ground. But it also takes up half your life getting there and back. So and they enforce this hope just not frankly. And I think that’s a better plan. But they enforce all of these, this whole round of things that you’d have to do checking in with a bunch of served social services, that because that’s the way Coordinated Entry works. But again, it’s it’s a really burdensome thing. It’s fine for our, you know, more middle aged person to be, let’s not actually find it’s really terrible for them to but but would be expected, especially burdensome for an older person. So

Unknown Speaker 16:28
the first answer to the question is that, that our shelters really are not appropriate for people over about 70, I would say

Unknown Speaker 16:39
maybe under 80.

Unknown Speaker 16:41
So they have to look at other options, well usually,

Unknown Speaker 16:46
usually hits, friends and family.

Unknown Speaker 16:50
I can also say, though, that

Unknown Speaker 16:53
the waiting was for public subsidized housing,

Unknown Speaker 16:59
our way down since the city took over the housing authority. So that’s, that’s a big help.

Unknown Speaker 17:09
Unfortunately, for seniors, fortunately, I think for the rest of the community.

Unknown Speaker 17:14
The next two big projects, the next three big projects for the lhsaa are not for seniors. Because right now senior housing is all we have.

Unknown Speaker 17:28
So there is one more permanent, more permanently supportive housing, more family housing, coming up real soon.

Unknown Speaker 17:37
So an older person

Unknown Speaker 17:40
70

Unknown Speaker 17:42
has no family

Unknown Speaker 17:44
or friends. They’re just like they have to go to one of these lessons are will places themselves likely find a place somewhere. But it’s going to be not appropriate? Maybe a church Church? The I mean, the only two churches in town that have been persuaded to households people are administered by hope.

Unknown Speaker 18:09
That’s That’s what homeless shelter is. It’s its journey, and I can’t remember changed recently. And it’s only during the winter, right? No, it’s all year round.

Unknown Speaker 18:22
There’s still the parking lot that people that. Yes. If you know, I think we recently had to look into this for someone and it’s no longer it was no longer just parts where cars are not for sale. They’ve just continued to say flat program. That’s news to me. Me too. Like you’re just a church up for me that had that all the time on 50. But I haven’t listened to now that you say that. I don’t remember people being there all summer long as we have a customer who was parking in our parking lot, who was looking for other options and

Unknown Speaker 19:02
and I find any fault because Walmart says Modesto love Yeah. But it’s not an official thing.

Unknown Speaker 19:11
Which means that the police don’t go by and you don’t have a nice little restaurant.

Unknown Speaker 19:17
I volunteer

Unknown Speaker 19:19
rescue church, if you need someone to talk to you.

Unknown Speaker 19:24
And they have a safe law program. They’re not. Not in the summer. I’m not sure why.

Unknown Speaker 19:31
You it’s very popular. Appreciate and it was safe.

Unknown Speaker 19:39
So you think it’ll be starting up again? I assume so. But I don’t know for sure. I should probably make a point to find out that if you do that would be a good information

Unknown Speaker 19:51
to have. Yeah, absolutely.

Unknown Speaker 19:54
The word we got was just to know it’s not being offered. Or I have a question in reference to it.

Unknown Speaker 20:01
People that come in and apply to see the resource specialist. They fill out an

Unknown Speaker 20:06
application or not an application but a referral form and so that we find out immediately if it’s received or not, or how does that work, they can we do have a form they can fill out. But usually, I think they just tell the folks at the front desk kind of what their basic needs are. And they get that into their appointment slot. And if they say that there’s an emergency, the front desk is immediately going to refer them to our center. And what is this our center help with? It actually has monies to assist with utilities and things of that nature. And they have a worker there who works on trying to find longer term housing solutions as well as emergencies to and do they provide some lodging, temporary lodging money.

Unknown Speaker 20:47
So they can they do the same thing that our resource specialists do, which is sitting down and looking at people’s budgets, and really determining what the need is because sometimes there are people who actually have enough money to get some housing for themselves, and they don’t want that they want someone else to pay for it.

Unknown Speaker 21:08
So it’s not a guarantee, every situation has to be really looked at.

Unknown Speaker 21:14
So somebody’s not going to be out on the street. In other words, they make the I mean, no one, no one can guarantee that someone will get out so

Unknown Speaker 21:23
I go work on it the planet fitness, and there’s people in their cars overnight right there in that parking lot. But one more question is that no one time a welder welder as for example, volunteer here.

Unknown Speaker 21:40
Now, is that something that we look at as a possibility of getting an additional bilingual person that would be willing to volunteer to help the resource specialist? Because to me, it sounds like they’re,

Unknown Speaker 21:54
they’re pretty busy. We have someone actually, are you doing? Sorry, I don’t remember her name. Okay. But she’s been training in with Veronica for about a month. Okay, good. Because that’s, that’s another way of getting some help.

Unknown Speaker 22:07
You send them, there’s just a three week waiting period from the time three to four, which is down from six to four weeks. And it’s been that way for a while. Would anything change that, like, if you had more staff, or more resources in the community for more resources within the Senior Center, would any of that change or would still be three weeks just because that’s how long it takes to move things.

Unknown Speaker 22:34
If we have more staff, it would change. But like Robin was saying, after we hired Melissa very quickly went back to the normal wait because the population keeps growing. So there’s, there’s some trying to figure out how to keep up with the population that I don’t think we’ve nailed down, I will tell you one of the things that the Housing Authority is looking at is covering more of their properties than just the three we used to cover with a resource specialist. And if they are able to fund that and do that, which they’re looking at in next year’s budget, that would relieve pressure off of the resource specialists here who are serving as an authority residents. So that might create some more space. But I again, can’t guarantee that won’t go back two or three, four week week, because the population keeps growing.

Unknown Speaker 23:21
Do you want to mention a little hot even like,

Unknown Speaker 23:25
like just because they meet with someone doesn’t mean they solve issue that day. So there’s the more client to add on, the more work that person was doing. Like it’s hard to serve 50 clients at once versus like that there’s that piece as well. Like, even if they’re open for appointments, if we just keep telling them, they’re never going to actually finish the job. So the weights three to four weeks, but to get results can be much longer. Yes, is what you said because they’re looking for grants that were providing financial assistance filling out sometimes pretty lengthy applications, you’d be surprised at how deep some of the grant applications go into people’s personal lives. Because they are trying to make sure this person needs financial assistance. There’s not some other route that hasn’t been pursued.

Unknown Speaker 24:10
So there is quite a bit of follow up work. And we have actually worked pretty hard in the last year to change the resource specialists workloads, because they were seeing five, six appointments a day.

Unknown Speaker 24:23
And then when you add meetings, you know staff meetings, trainings, anything on top of that there was no time literally no time for them to do all of the follow up work that Robin was referring to, to do those next steps to help people get the assistance that they’re looking for get connected with resources. So we have really tightened that up where we want them having no more than four appointments a day. And some days it really needs to be less, not a lot of meetings so that they have time to follow through on what they just met with. So that person is not waiting two more months to get the assistance they came in for what for which they had already waited three to four weeks.

Unknown Speaker 25:03
You all have asked about transportation as well, I wanted to highlight in the middle of our bow, we always have a resource guide. These are kind of the most commonly requested resources that people are looking for in the community. So if they can self help around connecting with resources, this is a great way to do it, we put it in the middle of the demo, so we can rip it out and hand it to a neighbor or a friend, you don’t make connections to resources yourself. And there is a whole column here about transportation. And sounds like you’re already well aware that transportation is difficult. We went through a period this year where vehicle wasn’t taking any new writers. We have folks who use flaps ride, which can come pick them up at their door and take them somewhere. But sometimes, you can’t get them home.

Unknown Speaker 25:53
And sometimes that happens with B as well, but they’ve got the ability to do one leg of your trip, but not the whole trip.

Unknown Speaker 26:00
It’s time

Unknown Speaker 26:02
I think the volume of transportation need is greater than the volume of transportation assistance we have, even though we’ve got a lot of different programs that we’ll see here

Unknown Speaker 26:15
is just a growing economy, particularly around folks who have mobility issues and cannot walk to a bus stop. I’m sure you know, the limits are the routes in Longmont are just limited. We don’t have as many routes as in Denver.

Unknown Speaker 26:31
So some people have to walk pretty far to get to a bus stop. But we’ve got folks who can’t. Or they have a walker or wheelchair and it’s not accessible. So they’ve got to use some of those alternative systems to get transportation. So is accessorized part of that your transportation? The I think accessorize changed its name.

Unknown Speaker 26:51
changed its name? Sorry. Call it right. Change to flex, right? Yes. So as part of that system, it’s just it’s just resource

Unknown Speaker 26:59
you have to apply for

Unknown Speaker 27:01
more in depth process, rather than need to have drivers.

Unknown Speaker 27:06
Drivers.

Unknown Speaker 27:10
We got a question. Yes. Excessive right. Where they have to get down late

Unknown Speaker 27:16
to get approved?

Unknown Speaker 27:19
I don’t know off the top of my head. It’s right, right.

Unknown Speaker 27:26
Whatever is on TV, but they’re willing to drive them right? Yes, they will come and pick you up, they will bring you down to the to the building.

Unknown Speaker 27:36
It’s usually about a two three hour process. And then they drive you back. So you’re you’re given up a day.

Unknown Speaker 27:46
And for some people, it’s hard because they can’t be in a vehicle that long.

Unknown Speaker 27:51
They’re fragile, and they can’t really feel comfortable being in the vehicle. You know, a real barriers if you use a respirator because we Medicaid only pays for one battery.

Unknown Speaker 28:05
So

Unknown Speaker 28:07
if you’re if you’re gone longer than your battery last year, have you read

Unknown Speaker 28:15
we have bought extra equipment for people over the years that Medicaid recover. And I will tell you grantors don’t love that. Because why Medicaid paid for this. But as long as we can get a doctor to confirm that Medicaid won’t pay for it, and that it isn’t accessible

Unknown Speaker 28:32
a couple of times to get people on that medicine. This is the thing that we should be lobbying for organizationally, both the city and this board.

Unknown Speaker 28:42
Because obvious holds in the Medicaid benefits.

Unknown Speaker 28:48
That roads that the battery life is definitely one of them, in my opinion, an obvious fall, some more folks are on Medicare and Medicaid that we work with. And the obvious holes in Medicare are that they don’t pay very well for vision, dental and hearing for essential things on your face. So we have gotten other grant funds over the years to help people pay for dentures,

Unknown Speaker 29:14
classes, eye exams, hearing exams and kind of a whole thing. And it has become very expensive. So the resource specialists will sometimes pull $1,000 from this grant $1,000 from this grant $1,500 from that grant, to just help pay for one person to get dentures or one person to get hearing aid even if they have insurance. Yes, that’s what I’m saying Medicare just covers very poorly because with United Health Care, all those things are covered, if you can afford to know.

Unknown Speaker 29:50
And that includes all that just to let you know, health care, Medicare covers $1 amount and on all those things. If

Unknown Speaker 30:00
is an advantage plan advantage? So that’s what that’s what I’m saying if you can afford to pay for an advantage plan, because that’s not what basic Medicare and D covers.

Unknown Speaker 30:11
You don’t pay anything extra. It comes right out of your social security. We don’t everybody has to pay something don’t know about necessarily. Yeah, their insurance, Medicare, no Medicare, there’s a there is a Medicare deduction from there. So yes, but there are programs, there’s a Medicare savings program, it’s a city or not city, sorry, state benefit, where depending on your income, they will cover that for you. So no, not everyone does me.

Unknown Speaker 30:39
I thought everyone did.

Unknown Speaker 30:43
But you have to qualify to be pretty low income to qualify, but we have a lot of clients, you know, cover him. If you’re low income enough, then Medicaid provides backup to Medicare. So the very poorest are on both programs. And still, absolutely. The person who’s the reason that I knew about the battery life issue

Unknown Speaker 31:07
is on that she’s on both Medicare and Medicaid and can’t be more than 90 minutes from home ever.

Unknown Speaker 31:15
So here’s the amazing thing about our resource specialists. They know all of these details, they hold a pretty tremendous amount of information in their brains about everything in these yellow pages, and a lot more. They work really closely with a lot of community partners to stay on top of those resources. We work closely with Boulder County every year we get updated guidelines from the county about what the state qualifications are for things like the Medicare Savings Program, long term care, Medicaid that pays for home care, assisted living or skilled nursing.

Unknown Speaker 31:53
They are impressive professionals, and the tremendous learning curve for a new one. Oh, my Yeah, tell me a lot. Well, if you look at the people we’ve hired over the years, they all tend to have experience because somebody’s green, walking out the door really isn’t a learning curve. New people are pretty experienced. Yeah. Amy

Unknown Speaker 32:18
was an intern here before she was hired as a resource specialist. So even though she was right out of college, she had that boots on the ground training already in a lot of this.

Unknown Speaker 32:30
It truly, I wouldn’t just avoid, if at all humanly possible, hiring someone with no experience for this network.

Unknown Speaker 32:39
Because it’s very demanding.

Unknown Speaker 32:42
And then it’s very demanding emotionally.

Unknown Speaker 32:45
Tell me if I’m way off. Or if I’m on target here, it seems to me you have two populations walking in the door. On the one hand, you have the people coming for recreational programs.

Unknown Speaker 32:59
You’ve got all kinds of

Unknown Speaker 33:02
what I’ve seen so far, they seem to be pretty much a cross section of

Unknown Speaker 33:07
singers,

Unknown Speaker 33:10
some low income, some high income district, whatever, just across

Unknown Speaker 33:14
rows of people that you deal with the counseling staff and resource specialists by its nature, most of most of them will be low income. So we got two very different populations. Mostly,

Unknown Speaker 33:28
I’m sorry, I would say mostly, but not entirely. We do, surprisingly, get people sometimes who have wealth to come in for counseling, because they’re comfortable with us, because they’ve seen us here in the building, and they trust us. We have had folks who come to grief support groups here because there’s not another one offered in long, long churches. So you know, so you’ve got professional counselors here so that you would be a great source.

Unknown Speaker 33:57
To follow up on jumps question.

Unknown Speaker 33:59
You don’t really have a tracking system to know

Unknown Speaker 34:04
what that is, you know, how much what is there. And so we do everyone who gets financial assistance, we do have their income. And that is built into our case managers. Specifically, we don’t track ethnicity and race unless they are required to tell us that for an application, we don’t require people to give us information that we need in order to assist them. Okay, we’ve had this conversation before I

Unknown Speaker 34:35
could go back we got to get ethnicity.

Unknown Speaker 34:40
We used to talk about it, would it it can be done. And again, we’re dealing with people in really vulnerable situations. And there’s a reason why we don’t ask them more information about their personal life than we already have to. It’s it’s pretty vulnerable to tell somebody you can’t afford to pay your own bills. You

Unknown Speaker 35:00
That’s pretty vulnerable to tell somebody’s been depressed for three years. We’re trying to be respectful and not dig into people’s lives more than we have to, although many applications have ethnicity on them, they’re probably used to that already. On the other hand, just to be the devil’s advocate, then you aren’t able to collect information for us to help that very population or with grant writing with grant money. Well, but again, I don’t see a problem with that. We can tell you, like I said, right now about race and ethnicity, which seems to be the question that keeps coming up. But we know, we know the volume of folks that Lawson, Veronica that are seeing that are Spanish speaking. And we actually have a button in our system where we do track language specifically, we can track that.

Unknown Speaker 35:52
So I don’t think we’re missing data there. We’ve got it.

Unknown Speaker 35:57
But Jeff just mentioned grant for grants purposes, Grant purposes. What is that? Yeah, I’m guessing that might be an issue. But I also think that even within the city’s own budget process, that if you start sharing, we start sharing ethnicity, and how we can reach you have success in reaching a part of our community that we struggle reaching. I think counsel is going to want to hear that and may be supportive of providing more resources because of the success you’re adding. But we have that data, like I’m saying. So I think you’re sending us a mixed message that you said you didn’t track it, but you have it. I hover you get it. I think we want to add that to your annual report, or whatever, to help sell your story to Council and the leadership team that I think that’s that’s what we’re trying to do. I don’t think you could tell me.

Unknown Speaker 37:02
How many?

Unknown Speaker 37:04
How many have a specified number of books 65. White comes up?

Unknown Speaker 37:09
I don’t think you can do by race? No, sir. No, we don’t. So what do you exactly mean, what do you say we have that data? So we have talked repeatedly about Latino outreach? And I have said repeatedly that between half and three quarters of Melissa is on Veronica’s caseload at any moment are Spanish speakers in the chat, we have that data, you could put a number on that like 45 people out there are so so there’s something like that. If they are checking the Spanish speaking

Unknown Speaker 37:42
of the ones that check it, you could put a number on it and say, This percentage is what we track? Yeah. Is there a reason for not doing that?

Unknown Speaker 37:52
There’s a reason that I’ve explained about just not asking people for it.

Unknown Speaker 37:57
We don’t have to have because we’re already asking them a great deal of personal information.

Unknown Speaker 38:04
True, but when they give you the data, at least this percentage are Hispanic or this percentage are African American. And that would be interesting. I think that’s kind of what we’re wondering is, and we can talk about that.

Unknown Speaker 38:21
Because you’re not saying oh, so and so you know, we dealt with so and so we’re just it’s this mini, this percentage, that’d be a hassle to do. Is that what

Unknown Speaker 38:32
it? Would that be a hassle to do to put on forums to pay? I think the issue is the invasiveness of asking people for more personal information than we need in order to provide them a service that we’re looking at. From my perspective.

Unknown Speaker 38:50
I understand that but there’s like I do. I also looking from point of view, you’re trying to get more resources for it.

Unknown Speaker 38:59
Well, let me ask,

Unknown Speaker 39:02
could you

Unknown Speaker 39:05
can I ask the question, before we move on? Are we just talking about for supportive services are you talking about for all services here at the Senior Center? I’ve gotten one over time. But anyway, they fill out a form for

Unknown Speaker 39:20
so here’s the thing, they don’t fill out forms? Well, then,

Unknown Speaker 39:25
then you can’t do it right? Unless they’re filling out an application for financial assistance that that asked certain questions there. Every person who walks in for resources systems is not filling out forms for counseling. The only form they’re filling out is the informed consent that explains the rules for counseling so so there’s no form to get resources. There’s nothing that has their name and information. They don’t have to know that you have a cyst. They have a database for the track that clients well, it’s just that the client is not filling out a piece of paper every time. That’s right. But but you have you here

Unknown Speaker 40:00
Have No, they have an appointment, which means you have their name and their contact information. And you could in fact, store other information about them two or three questions probably does not feel invasive to me that just go with their appointment.

Unknown Speaker 40:17
And there’s perfectly good reasons for it, like scheduling them, you know, scheduling someone who is more in touch with their community of background if they need counseling, for example.

Unknown Speaker 40:30
So I mean, I feel like you, you, you look like you’re being put on the spot for me, but I’m sorry. I just I will say I’m a little frustrated, because I feel like I’ve, I’ve explained this several times, several times. And

Unknown Speaker 40:46
I feel like we don’t really ever go anywhere with it. And we keep talking about it with words, and have staff talk about that. And maybe we can report back at at a later different meeting.

Unknown Speaker 41:01
To wait. So I will make sure I have it on my list. And we’ll make sure that we talk about that. And I’m not making a commitment that we can make that happen. But let us talk outside the meeting.

Unknown Speaker 41:17
Let me just say one thing,

Unknown Speaker 41:21
if you did capitulate, and everybody’s ethnicity, tried to? What would we do

Unknown Speaker 41:32
with that information? Well, are we asking everyone at our front desk or registers or something? Are we only asking everybody who has supportive services? And and if we only ask everyone who’s getting supportive services? Why. And so from what I’m hearing from the advisory board is that collection collectively as a whole facility, whether it’s for programs or counseling, support, or resources, or raids, to be able to identify in our community and our facility, specifically, who we’re serving, at what capacity? Is that what you’re saying is true? Being able to collect that information to

Unknown Speaker 42:09
me to see what resources,

Unknown Speaker 42:14
resources supports that exist that can support us in that work? That was our here? Well,

Unknown Speaker 42:23
I mean, I think the reason that it’s been that everybody’s talking about it, Randy is because because we’re focused on, there isn’t enough money. And there are grants, the there there are state and federal grants that are focused on promoting social equity. And if you realize that you have a social equity problem and can document it, then you have a better shot at landing some of that money. At the end. That’s that’s the seed of the conversation. I walked in late. So I could be wrong. But I think you’re right. But one of the things we as a Board have talked about is the outreach and we’re not serving the Latino community enough? Well, maybe we are, maybe we’re doing better than we think. But we don’t have the information.

Unknown Speaker 43:19
When we have applied for grants, like we have an ongoing grant with the county, and they asked about this information, they have always accepted the data we have provided about the percentage of Spanish speakers that we’re serving. They’ve never ever asked for more data.

Unknown Speaker 43:36
That’s the person company that percentage is what I think what we’re asking for is whatever you’re providing, we’re not saying you need to ask everybody what they are just what percentage it goes kind of census, how do we deal with it? Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 43:51
That’s, that is what I’m sorry.

Unknown Speaker 43:56
Try understand how invasive that can be.

Unknown Speaker 43:59
On the other hand, it seems to me you should be able to put at least some general specifies some general statistics statistics regarding you’ve got

Unknown Speaker 44:10
40 to 50% of x, y, z, something like that over a range, for example, that you’re very, that you’re very confident about, you know, that nobody’s gonna come back and say, That’s a bunch of baloney. You know, that kind of thing. You’re saying, I know that. We did that. And I’m saying, Okay, if you know that, find a way to translate that into something a little more specific. So people like the city council can understand it.

Unknown Speaker 44:40
You know, in terms of maybe big categories, and last year, we’re here this year, we’re here. We need this to go this direction, you know, stuff like that. And I don’t have anything specific in mind. I’m not talking only Hispanics. I’m talking any sort of researchers and want to improve experiment.

Unknown Speaker 44:58
So that would be my guidance. It doesn’t matter.

Unknown Speaker 45:00
right down to the last individual, you can, if you get really pretty good estimates, I think that will work for me.

Unknown Speaker 45:08
City council.

Unknown Speaker 45:11
Right. I mean, right now today we can get pretty good estimates.

Unknown Speaker 45:16
on that level is what I was trying to drill down is, are you estimating or do we know because you have counted? And it seems like the former Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 45:26
And we’re not trying to put you on the spot. It’s really about how can we support?

Unknown Speaker 45:31
I know, it’s not feeling that way. So I apologize for that. But really, it’s with good intentions.

Unknown Speaker 45:42
This is an advisory board. Make you?

Unknown Speaker 45:46
I think she’s talking about me, mostly.

Unknown Speaker 45:50
Really, it’s been a repeated discussion here. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 45:54
Well,

Unknown Speaker 45:56
I have a couple of other questions.

Unknown Speaker 46:00
To what extent do you

Unknown Speaker 46:05
how do I phrase this?

Unknown Speaker 46:07
Do you have much to do with the recreation side the program side? I personally do not, not most of my team, the supportive services team.

Unknown Speaker 46:19
So I program emotional wellness, dementia, education, caregiver education right now, I’m still doing Spanish programs, and resource education programs. Okay.

Unknown Speaker 46:33
All right.

Unknown Speaker 46:35
But your resource deaf are pretty much pretty much standalone. They they’re doing resource work. So every once in a while they’ll do programs, if it’s something that’s close to their heart, where they’ve got expertise. So Veronica does rebel with a cause, which is a program that has advanced directives in Spanish for Spanish speakers.

Unknown Speaker 46:56
She’ll do calm cafe and workday. And Melissa has helped with that a few times. But in general programming is not part of their job duties like it is for me.

Unknown Speaker 47:07
Anybody else have any other questions?

Unknown Speaker 47:11
Thank you for coming abroad, our rec card that explains all of the kind of supportive services if folks are interested in that I’ll catch that around. And I also brought our peer support program brochures that this all of our peer support.

Unknown Speaker 47:26
Yeah, we got to the summer

Unknown Speaker 47:34
just concluded and saying that,

Unknown Speaker 47:36
you know, I know you’ve worked really hard here. I mean, it’s obvious. You’re extremely busy.

Unknown Speaker 47:43
I just

Unknown Speaker 47:44
I don’t think we’re any I don’t think I don’t know that we’re in any different situation than any other municipality or county or emails, which he says we’re dealing with the NEC correct on that or no, that that’s a really good transition of the talking I think about the senior center visits.

Unknown Speaker 48:03
I visited with Summit County Senior Center. So they had come and toured with us in the spring, I think Summit County and had invited us if we were ever in the area to tour them and I went up to Keystone to present at a conference in Stockton visited them on my way in and

Unknown Speaker 48:23
it’s amazing what they do. They are a combination Senior Center, Community Center and day program.

Unknown Speaker 48:31
They have a small building, they have a small staff, they managed to pull off a lot. But what made me feel really grateful and actually texted I think Ronnie while I was up there and said,

Unknown Speaker 48:42
Oh, the city of Longmont provides us a lot of support that we don’t see other seniors getting resource staff counseling staff, you don’t see counseling staff anywhere. resource staff. You’re lucky if you see that and other senior centers.

Unknown Speaker 48:58
Really the financial support we get from the city, the acknowledgement that older adults matter and deserve specialized services is just not happening everywhere. And I really think we are we are more resource rich than we think it’s easy for us and I include myself to forget because the need in the community always always outpaces our abilities.

Unknown Speaker 49:23
The volume of resources we have here is tremendous. Tremendous. That information could be really helpful to share with people that don’t believe that hear. Yeah, actually, that’s

Unknown Speaker 49:41
because there’s a lot that I’m hearing so much rumbling from when I did the survey from people that filled out the survey. I mean, there’s so much rumbling and so many rumors in such a gossip mill going on. It’s incredible.

Unknown Speaker 49:56
Yeah, and it has to start from somewhere. I don’t know where

Unknown Speaker 50:00
But we know.

Unknown Speaker 50:03
But

Unknown Speaker 50:05
yeah, I just want to share that.

Unknown Speaker 50:08
It like I said, it’s easy to forget, when we have homeless people in our community who are 18 years old, it’s easy to forget that actually, we are very resource rich here in the city of Longmont provide support that’s pretty above and beyond what anyone else expects. When I was talking with the folks at Summit County, they just kept asking who pays for that? How do you get that? You know, I talked about the friends and what they pay for what the city pays for what we get grants for. And it all started probably with one person. Yeah. Michelle, Michelle, wait was a very strong advocate. But the city bought in right. It wasn’t just Michelle, right, this has been going on for many, many years of preaching the story.

Unknown Speaker 50:54
And that’s what I tell them that they need an advocate strong.

Unknown Speaker 51:00
We have a strong advocate.

Unknown Speaker 51:03
What I mean is, I’m not mentioning anything about Ronnie’s position right now. I’m talking about somebody that was been in that position for years, has a head up on all of the people in Summit County and you know,

Unknown Speaker 51:20
somebody that’s been doing it consistently with the council and with the staff, and

Unknown Speaker 51:27
it was just a real gift for the city.

Unknown Speaker 51:30
And Ronnie is carrying the torch.

Unknown Speaker 51:34
You hit your jobs easier, right? Oh, no. Oh, yeah.

Unknown Speaker 51:42
A lot of bases, she did a wonderful job of setting a solid foundation for us to

Unknown Speaker 51:50
continuous continuously improved as long as we’re evaluating and being proactive and being forward thinking right then that allows us to be in a position to meet the needs of our growing community and population. You know, Brandi hit right on the head or visited all three of our locations our field trip, we went to Erie door in and Northglenn. And not one of them had counseling, on site counseling, resource supports, I haven’t seen anything advertised anywhere through any of those facilities either. And that goes back to leave that solid foundation, we’re wrapping up, we’re well ahead of the game. But even seeing these other facilities, one of them was a standalone tool, one more inserted inside of a rec center.

Unknown Speaker 52:37
And piggybacked off of their their space. So yes, they had rec programs, but they use the recreation facility for that. Yes, they had

Unknown Speaker 52:48
classes available that they used, they scheduled around, rentals basically does, you know, we have our own facility that we reserve our own spaces. And there was only one location that mirrored what we had available for are here, which was bright and

Unknown Speaker 53:08
just as a standalone in space and availability, but they do not offer the same things we do go back to the council resource supports, as well as even our D programs and classes, there’s, I would say they’re probably

Unknown Speaker 53:27
not come in, but begin from the resources that we have here in Lamar, staff resources, right. So the programming at a 30, if not 40% capacity that we are just, we have a lot more

Unknown Speaker 53:46
people

Unknown Speaker 53:47
engaged community to it was noticeable. We didn’t see any older adults, one of the places we visited, we saw two, one of them stand alone. And I think we saw like three, the other one of them, they were all talking about how great we are.

Unknown Speaker 54:10
And I want to I want to say is that,

Unknown Speaker 54:13
you know, doing a fantastic job here, commanding the staff is very important. But let’s not get to the point where we’re going to expect more than what they can do this because that’s what’s going to get people out of here, quitting and things like this. So and so we thank you for what you are doing. And let’s not expect more than what they can do. Especially our thank you for that. That’s all we’ve been doing is evaluating what is sustainable, what is manageable. And pulling that back and making that the expectation not not trying to go above that and that is what’s what has caused a lot of our staff turnover. And so being able to adjust that evaluated is identifying what that national workload is. This is the next

Unknown Speaker 55:00
permutation.

Unknown Speaker 55:02
So next year when we go to city council and ask for help, well, you know, the kalam people have to wait six weeks for to get there. See, that’s kind of the the information that we’re going to use to try to stick with this

Unknown Speaker 55:16
nice concrete metric that doesn’t require invading their space. Their wait time they know it, you know it, it’s computable from data. And that is my plan. For next budget requests. You’ve identified that need for programming. Right, which I think it’s I don’t know, we’ve all seen the city council

Unknown Speaker 55:40
meeting last week, Harold presented our budget requests for FTE and we, at this time, however, before, he’s moving forward with a request for one FTE for us, for us at the senior center for programming specific, but also also additional part time hours as well. So did I hear that right, that is a request. I can’t remember, though. Another programmer? Well, so he’s satisfying the request that was made. That is correct.

Unknown Speaker 56:15
Yes, one of the two you actually requested to earn? Well, that’s, that’s what I’m asking. That’s what I’m asking. You always have to ask for more than

Unknown Speaker 56:24
one additional part time hours. Because walking in, and that’s what the need was, right? We’re programming at a rate that is not sustainable for two people addressing that need. Now looking at our next step, you know, that’s the first thing that comes to mind is that wait time. So that’s my next goal is starting to start to unpack that what was forced, and we get to address that need to alleviate the pressure and stressors from from our from our resource staff. So awesome. That’s the next goal.

Unknown Speaker 56:55
And we’ll see if Lhh

Unknown Speaker 56:58
resource specialists, we’ll see if ally J gets their resource specialists request and that that could shift the focus here.

Unknown Speaker 57:07
That’s great.

Unknown Speaker 57:10
But they have a different budget cycle. So there’s, there’s the still the council’s approving it acting as the Board of Commissioners for the lhhs. So but it happens in different parallel goes to the end of August to get this stuff together. This? Yeah, well, the statute is the end of August as they have to present an overall budget. And then they spend up catching up the whole month of September is catching up all the detail that they couldn’t present by the law.

Unknown Speaker 57:41
We just sort of they sit they skimmed in by this team.

Unknown Speaker 57:48
All right, last night was budget.

Unknown Speaker 57:57
This is

Unknown Speaker 57:59
brand new, you’ve hit it on the head, the magic that Randy and her team. Oh, I hope I just like you’re doing a wonderful job, we’re always

Unknown Speaker 58:10
we’re just trying to help you figure out ways that we can get more funds, you know, with more information, took the city into listening to us more, with more information. How about with grant writing? You know, that’s I think the whole point of what we were getting at is just what can we do to help you

Unknown Speaker 58:33
get our funds, clear information? You know, would that be a help? What what do we need to do that sort of thing. You know, the politicians tend to be

Unknown Speaker 58:46
programs, golfers and stuff.

Unknown Speaker 58:51
And visuals, you they need solid stuff that they can relate to?

Unknown Speaker 58:56
It’s really the staff that does the quantitative stuff. And there’s one what you said about the work it will give them to listen.

Unknown Speaker 59:08
You know, the thing is that most people start with the presumption that there’s all this money floating around and you know, and and again, and in fact, what’s really true is if the senior senator gets more some of the program gets less, that’s how tight it is. And, you know, people talk about waste in the government and stuff and it just is not there is we used our every drop of blood out of this turnip. And, you know, that’s something I’ve learned in the last five years. So,

Unknown Speaker 59:42
you know, you almost need to be looking at ways to make resources go farther. And I would speculate that that’s why Dave and the board are, are are hammering on Well, is there a way to get more grants? Is there a way to you know, this and that, you know,

Unknown Speaker 1:00:00
One thing could be looked at is, is, can

Unknown Speaker 1:00:05
this board

Unknown Speaker 1:00:07
extend the purview of their volunteering scope and, and

Unknown Speaker 1:00:12
certainly help service the grants once we’ve landed them. Because of the horrible thing in my mind, the thing that just wakes me up in the middle of the night, is that there are so much money grant money out there now. And we’re leaving it on the table, because we don’t have the staff to do the reporting that comes with the grants. It’s just, it makes me sick. I will say, from our perspective, you know, we’d have about $100,000 in grants legally for resource work. And we have built a case management system to our specifications, we’ve had it since 2017, we’ve updated as needed, we have not had problems with grants at all, like I said, we’ve had no follow up questions asking for more information and to get those particular grants. And the reporting, our system is actually pretty good, as long as the system works. So brandy, let me clarify, you’re you’re talking about one specific kind of grant, which is like, when some senior comes in with this specific need, they get an individual grant and you help them apply for it. Is that correct? That’s, that’s actually different. Okay, what kind of were you talking about? So that is one kind of pot of grants that are resource specialists access are for very specific grants for very specific things like seniors, miles just,

Unknown Speaker 1:01:32
I was talking about our grants from the county, from the friends that are that are very large dollar amounts, where we are entrusted to provide whatever need we see fit as a last resort or as a basic need. And as long as we complete our reporting for them about what we did with that money and give them all the kinds of data we’re talking about here, they’re very happy when you’ve done that, well. Could you access more high dollar grants, if you have, if you had

Unknown Speaker 1:02:04
more grant

Unknown Speaker 1:02:07
more people to actually do the work and do the background and to help you to apply for things other dentists that you aren’t able to do just because it’s just beyond what you have the time to do? It’s a good question.

Unknown Speaker 1:02:23
I will say we have not fully utilized our grants, year to year basis. So I don’t know that it’s about needing more money. I think it’s about needing more staff to quickly attend to people’s needs. But But I don’t know that we at this moment need more of the financial assistance grants, because we don’t use really use them all. And you can’t use the grants for staff, no.

Unknown Speaker 1:02:55
Individual grants.

Unknown Speaker 1:02:57
Do we actually have grant writer?

Unknown Speaker 1:03:00
In the center here? I wrote the AAA grant.

Unknown Speaker 1:03:04
The one that does that.

Unknown Speaker 1:03:06
But But I would say, I think this is where one is going as well. There are there are whole classes of grants that you haven’t even mentioned their State community block grants, which are federal money, you know, they’re all those and they’re totally different. They’re for a specific purpose, like expanding the senator or or, you know, painting the walls and less depressing color, or, you know, all

Unknown Speaker 1:03:33
that they’re specific. And you and and they have a definition of Done.

Unknown Speaker 1:03:39
And they requires, you know, reporting that is individualized to the grants. And what I’m hearing below the line is that those are completely off the radar in this organization. No, so we have not applied in my understanding, we have not applied for those for staff because there’s not a done

Unknown Speaker 1:03:57
because those grants will be like we’ll give you stuff for two years.

Unknown Speaker 1:04:02
And then we don’t have funding for a staff position anymore, because we have actually chosen not to apply for grants and my understanding about staffing, because they’re not permanent and the need is not done. No I would I wouldn’t be worth thinking if there’s a whole set of services that you that need to be done. If you wanted to take some of the Parkland and do an outdoor gardening program, you get a grant for that. And you probably couldn’t get a staff person for the first two years and then you need to get it on the budget radar so that the city could keep the you know, the person or, or collaborate with parks because parks also needs people that don’t fit into the standard. So I’m just throwing out that there are ways to be creative about expanding one’s services. You know, I happen to be on the back burner and I shouldn’t take your time but

Unknown Speaker 1:05:00
But the

Unknown Speaker 1:05:02
the memorial rose garden right over there can’t be maintained. Because the it’s it’s not what the regular park staff do. And there are volunteers that do it. But the volunteers are people like us. And you know, so you can deadhead the roses and stuff like that, but you cannot get up on the on the top of the arbors and clip the dead stuff and you can’t pull forefoot thistles out of the ground. Because we’re old, you know. And the see one what people doing like there’s no liability alone would be horrendous. So, you know, you need employees for that.

Unknown Speaker 1:05:44
So that restaurant volunteer base for a much stronger volunteer base, that kid that is younger and cares, you know, and even then the liability is a concern. So and that’s just an example of that. There are ways to to get bigger money grants, creatively, and maybe collaboratively among

Unknown Speaker 1:06:09
organizations and having Jeff for example above, you know, making the bridge between this organization and recreation is Deputy a big deal.

Unknown Speaker 1:06:22
talks more about that.

Unknown Speaker 1:06:26
And isn’t there a position now there will have these brands board funds that is going to see us at the end of this year?

Unknown Speaker 1:06:36
Yes. Which Which position was that?

Unknown Speaker 1:06:40
Two positions, it’s a percentage of Melissa was on this position, the resource specialist, and

Unknown Speaker 1:06:47
it was worth

Unknown Speaker 1:06:49
it, please communicate.

Unknown Speaker 1:06:55
So if we don’t get funding for

Unknown Speaker 1:06:58
resource specialists, we’re going to be in trouble. Not in trouble, but it’s going to be long, we’re going to have to extend

Unknown Speaker 1:07:06
includes funding those in the general fund, and not requiring the friends to do that anymore. Okay, so hopefully, so we’ll get the fun as long as City Council approves the budget as presented, senior services should be hit to keep

Unknown Speaker 1:07:25
plus one

Unknown Speaker 1:07:28
not encountered in the budget is presented as always fundable and in council can, you know, has the power to say we’re not going to pay for that, you know, move it into something else, but it’s pretty rare for us to do that.

Unknown Speaker 1:07:49
Okay, anything else for Bradley?

Unknown Speaker 1:07:52
Thank you, Randy.

Unknown Speaker 1:07:56
We do appreciate everything you do.

Unknown Speaker 1:08:04
All right.

Unknown Speaker 1:08:08
Okay.

Unknown Speaker 1:08:17
Make sure she understands. That’s what were their kids saying? This was not personal. I think she’s wonderful.

Unknown Speaker 1:08:25
And I understand their counseling point of view, you know, protecting confidentiality and all that stuff.

Unknown Speaker 1:08:33
We have to ask these questions.

Unknown Speaker 1:08:40
All right. We’ll go to the old business.

Unknown Speaker 1:08:44
Further discussion on board priorities outreach, transportation, housing.

Unknown Speaker 1:08:51
I guess the question is,

Unknown Speaker 1:08:55
you, we have three items, right? Or

Unknown Speaker 1:08:59
are these our priorities?

Unknown Speaker 1:09:02
And what I’ve done a lot of talking here, does everybody agree that these are in fact, the priorities that we want to spend our time on

Unknown Speaker 1:09:14
for the next two or three months?

Unknown Speaker 1:09:18
Well, these are priorities that I believe the state and the county and, and even the feds are looking at as priorities. So I think it’s important for us

Unknown Speaker 1:09:28
with the fact that you are

Unknown Speaker 1:09:31
down several people on the advisory board. I’m not sure you can add to this.

Unknown Speaker 1:09:40
Three people.

Unknown Speaker 1:09:42
So that’s

Unknown Speaker 1:09:45
something to bring up under old business and priorities. I think it was down three people on this board.

Unknown Speaker 1:09:53
And it’s going to be time right the registration window opens next month. I should know this and I don’t know

Unknown Speaker 1:10:00
But I think it’s October, and people are going to be distracted because it’s an election year. So that means Start Talking Heads up, folks, because it’s

Unknown Speaker 1:10:11
time to

Unknown Speaker 1:10:14
time to get people in the pipeline and want to serve on this board.

Unknown Speaker 1:10:23
People have goals.

Unknown Speaker 1:10:28
That’s okay. It’s not my disqualifier.

Unknown Speaker 1:10:35
I’ll do what I

Unknown Speaker 1:10:37
can I ask everybody to do what you can.

Unknown Speaker 1:10:41
Honestly, I was just second yesterday, I was looking over this stuff yesterday, got only got six people.

Unknown Speaker 1:10:49
Because we got so much to do. And there’s only six people. And that’s all I decided we were talking about that earlier. I asked people to do more.

Unknown Speaker 1:10:59
A bigger board.

Unknown Speaker 1:11:02
In the past, it’s been the most, the best way to recruit new members. Is it just word of mouth independent soccer.

Unknown Speaker 1:11:12
And we’ve tried martial law.

Unknown Speaker 1:11:16
And it’s difficult. I do have one guy in my back pocket, kind of, because he was going to apply this last time that he messed up the

Unknown Speaker 1:11:26
the application and thought he had submitted it and he happened. So they wouldn’t let him in. So he swore in blood. Why? Why don’t they make it easier? Because they have remote? Because at the time restraint, Joe? Or Marsha?

Unknown Speaker 1:11:45
You know, it’s yeah, it’s it’s like Don Cantana did this with Google Forms or something, you know. And so it’s it’s

Unknown Speaker 1:11:56
quality assurance of software, even if it’s ultra simple software, like Google Forms is hard. So she, you know, could go through it and fill out the forms and all the data landed in the right place. But if there was an error, she didn’t test all the possible error path, because she wasn’t trained to do that I calculate this one, it might be some better. But I’m just saying My question is, is, we can take applications all the time, because it

Unknown Speaker 1:12:28
impacts the number of

Unknown Speaker 1:12:32
how long you serve. So each one of you can have you know, you started in June, you started in April, and you started in January, that it all has to have some consistency, to be able to keep the three or four years of

Unknown Speaker 1:12:50
your terms

Unknown Speaker 1:12:53
tweaked?

Unknown Speaker 1:12:55
Well, I think the challenge is that when the clerk’s office does this process, is very time consuming is very difficult, because remember, it’s just it’s just not this board. It’s you know, half of all the boards get done in December, and the other half get pointed in June, unless you have vacancies. So if you have vacancies, you might hit either one of those. But again, I’m trying to defend something that I know sales

Unknown Speaker 1:13:29
qualify that. But I do think it is all tied to the timing of it, when when term start. And really how difficult and how time consuming. It is to to go through applications. That sort of there’s no emergency provisions for boards that are down a lot of people not that I’m aware of, because I have I’m involved with other boards that have had vacancies in NAFTA. With that. So we’re not No Oh, no, no goodness. I mean, I didn’t know that. And, and the other. The other thing about it is that these boards have their roots in the charter, the city charter, and the city charter can’t be changed without a popular vote.

Unknown Speaker 1:14:15
So

Unknown Speaker 1:14:16
and I don’t know exactly where the it really is roots, you know, certain things grow out of the charter and certain things we have more latitude on, but our existence is in the charter. And so you know, and I doubt that recruiting cycle just I think I think you bring up something that at some point we should probably have a conversation about is, you know, what your thoughts as board members are in, you know, are these conversations productive? Do you feel like you’re making a difference? Or do you feel like, you know, we’re wasting your time and we want to make sure that we’re providing you agenda items that you feel

Unknown Speaker 1:15:00
Like you can make a difference in than just rubber stamping everything that Ronnie and I bring to you. Well, that’s kind of hopefully what I’m doing. And I, I say that only because I know other boards that I’m involved with, don’t have the opportunity to be as impactful as what the senior board is partial report, I think is another example of that. They do some really good things. But there are other boards that you know, it just sometimes I wonder if people feel like

Unknown Speaker 1:15:39
they’re wasting, we’re wasting their time.

Unknown Speaker 1:15:43
A year from now.

Unknown Speaker 1:15:49
I would ask,

Unknown Speaker 1:15:51
I think, Ronnie, when he sent the agenda out just a couple, three days ago, they asked if you had any additional agenda items.

Unknown Speaker 1:15:59
Maybe let’s see, I think you probably did it as late as you did. Because it’s supposed to I’d like a week with the reports. Because you didn’t have the reports.

Unknown Speaker 1:16:11
So I would encourage everybody, if you have a report to submit, these come in and just a week before hand in agenda items, let us know. So you’re included and how we structure this agenda.

Unknown Speaker 1:16:28
Okay.

Unknown Speaker 1:16:31
So just tonight had some charges. So you know how it works right now is Ronnie and I meet with Dave, a week or two before the meeting to talk about the agenda. So anything you can feed into us prior we can work into that process.

Unknown Speaker 1:16:52
I do try to meet in my other boards with all the chairs so that

Unknown Speaker 1:16:57
they’re aware of why something is on the agenda so that they’re not blindsided as we get into.

Unknown Speaker 1:17:06
We met a couple of weeks ago, so grounding on your time to

Unknown Speaker 1:17:11
prepare for this.

Unknown Speaker 1:17:15
Other priorities?

Unknown Speaker 1:17:19
I’ve got an idea. That’s only my idea. So

Unknown Speaker 1:17:25
if you don’t agree with it, that’s okay. I’ve kind of referred to this before. How do we proceed? I guess, question. We’ve heard all kinds of stuff from a lot of people have good information. How do we, how do we put it together?

Unknown Speaker 1:17:40
And so that’s what I’m asking. But here’s an idea.

Unknown Speaker 1:17:44
We still don’t really have anybody who has taken responsibility for outreach.

Unknown Speaker 1:17:52
Okay,

Unknown Speaker 1:17:54
so

Unknown Speaker 1:17:55
let me ask first, does anybody want to assist art with the whole area? Child, we might do that? What would that look like?

Unknown Speaker 1:18:06
One of the things we need is to sit down and discuss is that?

Unknown Speaker 1:18:15
Well, let it go on. We’ll come back to

Unknown Speaker 1:18:19
I’m thinking earlier, and I talked about this a little bit before.

Unknown Speaker 1:18:24
I think our lien is prepared to bring back to the board. I don’t know if next meeting is too early,

Unknown Speaker 1:18:33
maybe next major of the meeting following to talk about

Unknown Speaker 1:18:38
her take on the transportation issues and what we as a board like recommended.

Unknown Speaker 1:18:44
And I don’t know what that will include, but it could include things like budget staff, programs, facilities, I don’t know. So that would be up to Arlington to bring to the board. And if we endorse it could be one of the recommendations to the city council. And I think that should be a specific

Unknown Speaker 1:19:06
should be probably reduced to numbers as much as possible. Benchmarks dollars, like kind of, I’m sure you know what I’m talking about.

Unknown Speaker 1:19:17
And, and then we we can bring this back more than once. You know, we don’t have to have everything done in one single meeting that can talk about transportation more than more than one we

Unknown Speaker 1:19:31
only do the same thing with housing, the same thing.

Unknown Speaker 1:19:36
So the kind of an iterative process, make Google want to bring back some of the folks that have been here and talk about some other questions.

Unknown Speaker 1:19:46
So that’s what I did with the objective of being by by April’s we have we want to help we talk these things through and we know what we’re going to recommend to the council. And again, I

Unknown Speaker 1:20:00
I think that’s I think the charter just says, in general operations. So that kind of opens up everything. So I think we’re free to make recommendations, almost any area. But I think the key thing is that gotta be reasonable. And they got to be specific. I think they got to be measurable in some version, instead of just having a

Unknown Speaker 1:20:23
being passed or recommended or passed on to the staff to implement.

Unknown Speaker 1:20:28
Yes, or no suggestion about transportation specifically.

Unknown Speaker 1:20:33
It’s in No, because it’s not just staff and budget.

Unknown Speaker 1:20:39
A good thing that happened, though, last, when Council

Unknown Speaker 1:20:44
accepted the staffs statement of what the council’s priorities were from the last retreat, we got them to change the recommendations on how Vision Zero was supposed to be implemented.

Unknown Speaker 1:20:59
From there, spend almost a year and a half planning and then start work on it. And now it’s changed to a more agile thing where they’re going to work, they’re gonna spend a quarter talking about

Unknown Speaker 1:21:14
how they do, you know, residential streets, because those are the easiest to muck with, you know. And then when you get into into arterioles, and highways, then there are other agencies that you have to work with in order to make any changes, but we can do whatever you want to our residential streets. Well, we are boots on the ground, that can identify scary places for seniors. And one of the essentials of Vision Zero, is making small modifications in your street plans to see how they work.

Unknown Speaker 1:21:51
And maybe they’re reversible. Maybe they’re, you know, you put in jersey barriers or those things that look like bike racks, but they’re really street barrier tools and stuff like that. So one of the things that we do is like, the first quarter come up with some recommendations for problematic areas in the city. You know, if you talk to a lot of people who say, you know, in fact, we already have our first accomplishment, Doc’s done that because we’re the board that consistently complained about the crosswalk timing, and they went out and upgraded their software, and that’s going to be fixed.

Unknown Speaker 1:22:30
And so we’re in, we should feel empowered by that. And go ahead and make sure that we’re providing input that says visions and makes Vision Zero effective. Right away, not not starting in a year and a half. Just a thought.

Unknown Speaker 1:22:49
So, to go back to your point, are we having meaning or meaningful impact through this process, make some recommendations and have something come out on the other end?

Unknown Speaker 1:23:03
Well, that’s pretty cool to hear about the crosswalk thing, because when we talked about it, it sounds like they couldn’t really do anything to have the success is great. Yeah. I mean, it’s

Unknown Speaker 1:23:18
because we kept the hammering out, and they looked into the software and found out why it was happening, because they would think they fixed it. And then a couple weeks later, he would go back. Yeah. And that was because that was how the software works. And it was optimizing for traffic flow. And Vision Zero isn’t optimizing for traffic flow is optimizing for not killing people.

Unknown Speaker 1:23:40
So that’s a huge accomplishment.

Unknown Speaker 1:23:45
And we should see the reading will in fact, we should have 70 of the main I think is has the new software now.

Unknown Speaker 1:23:53
So we should we should see improvement. I wouldn’t expect it tomorrow because they do have to learn

Unknown Speaker 1:24:00
stuff. But

Unknown Speaker 1:24:03
But yeah, that’s that’s that’s a place where we can have real impact and our special stamp of specialists is not big enough to go over this whole city looking for problems. So the whole idea again, is is engaged activist residents that are going to say here’s a place we can make a difference.

Unknown Speaker 1:24:28
Specifically like this intersection this building

Unknown Speaker 1:24:34
Well, what are you learning? I hit actually contacted service works about the crossing, because it was really affecting people crossing over near the pump house from village place. And we really realized that nobody with a walker could make it any amount of time that they did it. Yes, I contacted service works and they came back and said this has been

Unknown Speaker 1:25:00
is ongoing. And we are now at the point where it’s going to start the new processes being put in place. And they said it will start in the fall. And it will be complete by summer of 2024. So I don’t know where they’re starting. And I was like, Well, you could start at Sixth Avenue, because that’s outside of senior living home, you know, a senior apartments, and that would be probably the most needed. But um, I didn’t know where they were going to start with things. But they did say that this plan is definitely moving ahead and everything else and the guy seemed pretty well to be able to report that to.

Unknown Speaker 1:25:39
Yeah. Oh, good. I’m sure they’re tired of hearing it.

Unknown Speaker 1:25:43
All people with offers of moms with carriages, you know, those are the scary literally, somebody walking with somebody with the walker to stop the cars, when the light turns green, make it obvious that they need to wait. Yeah, no. And there are people that break your legal open to pumphouse or go downtown. And, you know, we’ll be within a three block area, walking and shopping or doing whatever. So I was glad to hear that was that skirt had gone that stretch?

Unknown Speaker 1:26:18
And I tried it myself. And I have limited mobility, but I’m still okay. And I had to like, really kind of pay attention and get across the street at the time. It really gave me

Unknown Speaker 1:26:32
my natural pace doesn’t get me across the site, I have to pick up my steps. Right.

Unknown Speaker 1:26:39
Well, what do you think about that process? I outlined? You have an alternative? That’s fine.

Unknown Speaker 1:26:46
We mean by April talk about what we want to recommend a council. And you said must be reasonable specific. And I’ve missed your last point.

Unknown Speaker 1:26:55
Remember?

Unknown Speaker 1:26:57
Drastic,

Unknown Speaker 1:26:59
measurable Thank you.

Unknown Speaker 1:27:05
Marcia,

Unknown Speaker 1:27:07
press presentations

Unknown Speaker 1:27:10
by various boards to the council about what they have done in the past year.

Unknown Speaker 1:27:17
How did they do? I’ve never attended a council meeting with somebody’s present.

Unknown Speaker 1:27:26
Usually effective,

Unknown Speaker 1:27:29
informative.

Unknown Speaker 1:27:31
I like them.

Unknown Speaker 1:27:34
You know, the sub council members hate long meetings more than anything else.

Unknown Speaker 1:27:42
So I would say short and sweet. And to the point with a call to action. You know, so 1234 is the call to action. This is what we are this word advisory board. This is our advice. I get less than 20 minutes, make it nice

Unknown Speaker 1:28:00
and clear, you know, the old no more than three bullets on a page kind of PowerPoint. And and the other quite effective. And I don’t know whether is it you run into that has a process for requesting

Unknown Speaker 1:28:17
the

Unknown Speaker 1:28:19
usual usually it’s the staff liaison?

Unknown Speaker 1:28:23
Yes. And yes, it is saying it out loud. Yes. I had to do that for Alzheimer’s awareness.

Unknown Speaker 1:28:32
So it seems to me and I’m just I don’t know. But it seems to me that there you got three areas housing transportation average.

Unknown Speaker 1:28:43
If we have till April, is that when it’s presented? That’s when we realized what was what is your budget to the Herald?

Unknown Speaker 1:28:56
That sounds great.

Unknown Speaker 1:28:58
But if you do it in March or April, council hears it, as well as Harold and the administrative staff so that when we submit budgets, he, he or they need to know to be looking for those things. So that is best. So that is so my question is

Unknown Speaker 1:29:22
you don’t want to have too much that you’re going to be asking for presenting. So we’ve got three different areas. And I think you mentioned this a little bit about whoever is on these three committees needs to routinely present throughout the year. What they’re coming up with in order to be able to see where the most significant needs are, I would think or, or areas where we could find results the best. I mean

Unknown Speaker 1:29:59
that

Unknown Speaker 1:30:00
make sense? Yes.

Unknown Speaker 1:30:02
So that’s

Unknown Speaker 1:30:06
what we need to do. We can’t wait like we did last year. Yes. It has to be

Unknown Speaker 1:30:15
ongoing and chopped as we go

Unknown Speaker 1:30:19
edit anything since like,

Unknown Speaker 1:30:23
last year was like,

Unknown Speaker 1:30:25
but I’m saying don’t we can come back? Why can’t our link come back a couple of times?

Unknown Speaker 1:30:36
This is complicated stuff.

Unknown Speaker 1:30:39
We can include that then on the agenda, all three of those areas. And of course, if there’s nothing to report, we say that move to the next level, I would want someone to take responsibility for being on the agenda for the next meeting.

Unknown Speaker 1:30:55
So you’ve already done that. I think why wouldn’t everybody be on the agenda? Yeah, you can’t just like just the outreach taskforce

Unknown Speaker 1:31:07
report. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 1:31:09
I’m just like somebody else to make sure that they’re going to be ready to present at the next meeting if they have something. Yeah. And you could just say, we’re going to have the housing transportation and outreach committees report. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 1:31:25
Yeah. And it can be limited. I mean, it doesn’t need to be half hour, he can be

Unknown Speaker 1:31:31
five minutes or so. Yeah, update. Yeah. You know, just won’t take the agenda. Okay.

Unknown Speaker 1:31:39
I think I think that that as an ongoing thing, or is going to be keep us on our toes. Well, right. And people will remember things. Okay. But I’m still looking to fix the responsibility for someone to delete it. That’s why I keep looking at you. While see what I

Unknown Speaker 1:31:58
know.

Unknown Speaker 1:32:00
Okay. Well,

Unknown Speaker 1:32:03
so I guess that’s our process, then. Within with an objective, whatever, really having everything together by next. April.

Unknown Speaker 1:32:14
That was a couple of other areas that I’d like to add or March. I’m sorry. Yeah, actually monitoring March. So March. Really? Yeah, we’d have to have

Unknown Speaker 1:32:23
an April of what Jeff just said, Those that present in March and April.

Unknown Speaker 1:32:29
What did you say?

Unknown Speaker 1:32:32
Then Harold is looking for those things when the budget is present. Because in some ways, the things we may be presenting have nothing to do with the senior budget.

Unknown Speaker 1:32:44
It could impact impact other areas, transportation, staff, streets and others.

Unknown Speaker 1:32:52
Okay, so when those Herald have to have one, do we have to have it in the hands of Harold, for example?

Unknown Speaker 1:32:59
I think March or April, he needs to hear what your priority. I thought April would be plenty of time. That’s why so because the challenge, though, is it isn’t Ronnie that’s going to need to know about what to put in the budget. It might be the other areas that really streets that can make a difference based on what we all recommend. So the earlier the better. Yeah, that makes sense. And And as we’re coming up with each thing, that maybe there’s something with hot housing, we really should probably bring Molly into another meeting. So she’s hearing that Are you okay, Marsha? Absolutely. All right. Okay. There’s one other area, like almost anybody’s government objective, and I would like to take responsibility for its budget and staffing.

Unknown Speaker 1:33:53
If nobody wants to work with me, or if you got an objection to him, let me know. But I’m thinking, I’m not talking about preparing on his budget, or the budget for senior center, what I’m talking about as what we see as a board may be necessary for budget and staffing. And that wouldn’t be that would go along with the recommendations that we’re looking at.

Unknown Speaker 1:34:19
Understand what I mean, do we need to be involved in that? Or would that be Ronnie,

Unknown Speaker 1:34:24
Ronnie will be doing his own, but

Unknown Speaker 1:34:27
I’m just,

Unknown Speaker 1:34:29
you know, I’d be working I’d be working and talking with these guys. I just think we shouldn’t take an independent look of the budget and staffing from the point of view of the board

Unknown Speaker 1:34:41
for outreach, transportation, or anything else, but particularly those three, yes.

Unknown Speaker 1:34:49
Board has enough visibility into this

Unknown Speaker 1:34:53
organization of other departments to be effective with that. Being devil’s advocate

Unknown Speaker 1:35:00
Go, Ronnie, were you gonna say something?

Unknown Speaker 1:35:05
Hi, hi, hi.

Unknown Speaker 1:35:15
Okay, so people out there

Unknown Speaker 1:35:19
somewhere somewhat of a duplication of effort,

Unknown Speaker 1:35:22
or extra effort that we don’t have on the board. So it’s more about what should they have? How about if we think of it this way, as we move along with sharpening up housing, outreach, and transportation, we then see if it’s necessary, if there are obvious needs to for recommendations to staffing and budget that come from the information we gather. Okay, that’s good. That will leave it open. But it doesn’t necessarily have to start out with when there’s no information. Well, that’s actually what I’m

Unknown Speaker 1:36:07
gonna check credit.

Unknown Speaker 1:36:10
Right ahead. That’s really what I meant.

Unknown Speaker 1:36:15
I don’t want to do your work. That’s not the point.

Unknown Speaker 1:36:19
But I do think it needs to be watched.

Unknown Speaker 1:36:22
And recommendations, as well. And the other thing is the other thing is that if you start with these particular priorities, even though their priorities procedures, they’re not in Ronnie’s budget, right, right. So the thing is, if you have

Unknown Speaker 1:36:39
a need case, and there’s apps, that’s documented for something specific, like fixing, you know, putting a roundabout here, because the cars go too fast, okay? We don’t need to figure out how much it costs. And that’s way outside our wheelhouse to do it. But if you can get the staff and the public behind it, then that puts a burden on the traffic staff in the capital capital budget for the following year. And they have to figure it out. Because because we made our case. So you said have a neat case and an ass task.

Unknown Speaker 1:37:25
You got one other.

Unknown Speaker 1:37:28
And we haven’t talked about this much. I’ll just get your reaction. Eat negation.

Unknown Speaker 1:37:36
Negation page, he did temperature

Unknown Speaker 1:37:42
over people are suffering from the heat and it’s gonna get worse. So there’s nothing going on right now.

Unknown Speaker 1:37:49
Well, there’s there’s a little there’s a survey. There’s a survey being done by the city, zack, zack, Lance has put together a survey. He didn’t do it. He did have all kinds of people involved. I think he said he’s got something like 50,000 data points on temperature, humidity and somebody from around the city. And,

Unknown Speaker 1:38:12
you know, I think that’s going to be a bigger and bigger problem, as far as people try to deal with the discretion of older folks. And so I don’t know how we’re subdividing. It’s not to the level, I don’t think, you know, the priorities that we’ve been talking about. But I do think it’s something we need to take a look at. What do you think?

Unknown Speaker 1:38:35
What do we consider it to be temperature mitigation, because it would be a winter problem.

Unknown Speaker 1:38:41
I guess it could be

Unknown Speaker 1:38:45
measuring in the summer

Unknown Speaker 1:38:50
for that program, and drove around the city, and oh, did you know, pre approved route

Unknown Speaker 1:38:58
at six o’clock in the morning on a Sunday. And it was for heat rather than cold? Because we had to make sure that the the temperature was correct. On that particular day. In fact, it was the driver, I think how many least 20 people were involved, plus their CO drivers

Unknown Speaker 1:39:25
was adjusted because the temperature and other

Unknown Speaker 1:39:30
climates was not good. So we know that’s going to be reported on I don’t know, do you know

Unknown Speaker 1:39:41
when they’re going to report it? No, there were some this is kind of the second iteration of that project because the first one had some data architecture problems. But you know, and and to answer Ronnie’s question, the reason is because the planet is warming, and so

Unknown Speaker 1:40:00
winters are probably getting more extreme, but the average is at least is milder. And also we come from a place of severe winters. So we have a bunch of cold weather mitigations already in place like we opened up in the memorial building as a warming center, when because that’s the only time when hope ever gets oversubscribed, with their shelters. But this is happening in Europe, already the European cities have chief heat officers.

Unknown Speaker 1:40:36
And you know, it’s a whole department just figuring out it has its places that you wouldn’t necessarily think of immediately like putting more drinking fountains or taps in the parks, so that people’s dogs and children don’t get dehydrated or old people. And yeah, it’s a big deal. It really affects the whole architecture of the city. Would you be interested in having Zack come in and talk to the group about the

Unknown Speaker 1:41:05
impact singers could

Unknown Speaker 1:41:11
isn’t an immediate issue hearing on?

Unknown Speaker 1:41:14
I think it’s important. I think it’s important to I think maybe with the other issues that we’re dealing with, right now that we can table that?

Unknown Speaker 1:41:24
I don’t know.

Unknown Speaker 1:41:27
I just throw it out.

Unknown Speaker 1:41:29
During the survey, right? It might be

Unknown Speaker 1:41:32
that I was gonna ask you to,

Unknown Speaker 1:41:35
like,

Unknown Speaker 1:41:38
what would have that data?

Unknown Speaker 1:41:42
That would be nice. I’m on the senior advisory board I’ve seen. This is the Senior Advisor

Unknown Speaker 1:41:48
on the sustainability advisory board, and so we can probably get a prognostication out of Lisa, Lisa Knobloch or something when I check in with her next, and

Unknown Speaker 1:42:06
to answer the question of urgency, having a plan that’s pretty urgent, because our budget constraints mean that we refreshed the parks every seven years. You know, how what the predictions of the extremity of weather that we’re, we’re looking at in seven years, you know, it’s pretty rough, we better have our new taps installed in our parks.

Unknown Speaker 1:42:31
Because, you know, if you’re a runner is it’s on you like to carry enough water with you and to not go too far. But if you are a person on a walker, or a person with only LTE dog, or

Unknown Speaker 1:42:50
twins, yeah, twins and toddler or something or your range limited, would better have a friendlier city in case you overheat when you didn’t realize it was gonna happen. Well, how about how about this? When there is a circuit when the results are available? And they want to release some? I’ll bring it up again.

Unknown Speaker 1:43:12
I don’t think it’s something I think we do need to go directly.

Unknown Speaker 1:43:18
Also, there’s, there’s a project that the city is doing to as far as building, I think it was 10 homes will be mitigated. And I guess I could talk about that.

Unknown Speaker 1:43:31
Okay, anything else under old business? I just want to clarify

Unknown Speaker 1:43:37
the game deadline for the applications for the board. I will email that I just have done the exact question. And I’ll email that to everybody.

Unknown Speaker 1:43:49
Okay, so the other thing is, folks,

Unknown Speaker 1:43:53
we really need to get out and talk to folks in Oregon

Unknown Speaker 1:44:01
trying to find a Spanish person to get on board with why we will person I should say and I haven’t had a lot of success. And I know that when I applied for the board and see that the office was full of people interviewing for those five minute spots. And I guess today it’s really difficult on most boards.

Unknown Speaker 1:44:26
Yeah, it is.

Unknown Speaker 1:44:29
So it takes all of us try to find somebody

Unknown Speaker 1:44:33
and of course, where are we at with water? We are

Unknown Speaker 1:44:39
the new meters that are electric meter.

Unknown Speaker 1:44:43
Yes, they’ve got they’re doing it in phases, which is kind of like standing

Unknown Speaker 1:44:56
Yeah, and

Unknown Speaker 1:45:00
I think the heavy rollout does not start until spring. So there’s they’re doing more now. But it’s it’s still sectional or not scheduled.

Unknown Speaker 1:45:12
I don’t think we’re scheduled till next schools. And then I get a clarification, is there going to be an additional cost? No.

Unknown Speaker 1:45:23
The only time that there’s there’s going to be an additional cost is if you opt out, because you don’t want one of these things. And then there’s a monthly charge for

Unknown Speaker 1:45:35
having somebody come and read your meter. Because it’s an expensive the city expects to, to not have. So

Unknown Speaker 1:45:44
the costs long term are, there’s going to be in a couple of years not right away, there’s going to be savings programs that you won’t be able to take advantage of if you’ve opted out. So in addition to paying $15 a month, we don’t get to, you know, some savings opportunities and stuff like that.

Unknown Speaker 1:46:05
The thing is,

Unknown Speaker 1:46:08
people are people are are flyering neighborhoods with disinformation about smart meters. So all kinds of freaking juicy line. All right, groaning.

Unknown Speaker 1:46:21
Maybe you can just roll up the update in your managers report. Yep. And I got put this report together. So just want to introduce a couple people.

Unknown Speaker 1:46:31
So we again, as mentioned, we are now officially 100% staffs face to these awesome individuals who, who will fill our vacancies for our recreation program positions. So Amy Hodge, this is our recreation program supervisor. And Valerie Rodriguez, our recreation program coordinator, and Valerie started August 21. And Amy started at 28.

Unknown Speaker 1:46:57
Local,

Unknown Speaker 1:46:59
they hit the ground running, we have a go, we’re working on a group production right now. going on here at the end of a month. So

Unknown Speaker 1:47:09
we’re lucky to have them, not just one of them, but both of them at the same time. But just already seeing them, how they’re collaborating together working together. It’s been fantastic and awesome. I just wanted them to meet you and you to meet them

Unknown Speaker 1:47:22
look like sisters.

Unknown Speaker 1:47:25
actually carry is the exact opposite. She actually has the green pants

Unknown Speaker 1:47:39
yourselves. Um, this is not my first rodeo working with seniors, I actually worked for the City of Commerce City and our senior Department. I have multiple years in city government, I won’t tell you how many years because that will teach me I recently left the city of Brighton program that really did my paycheck did not and it was not fun anymore. So I can have fun with you all. Although it hasn’t felt large by me because you guys are so busy. And if I did all the stuff in your graces magazine, I would never wash my do any laundry or do any cleaning of my house because you guys are very busy.

Unknown Speaker 1:48:14
Because we’re very fortunate to brochure that you have our magazine is full of water comes down to you for you all. And I’m looking forward to being a part of that and seeing how we can just do more, I guess. And yeah, so I’m back their program away, I already had to cancel the casino trip twice. So that wasn’t a really good start for me. But we’ve essentially put it back in the running and going on the 20th. So it’s back, hit the ground running, I do a lot of programming bypass. So this is not something I haven’t done before. So I enjoy doing it. And I also happen to know art, who’s on your board actually saw his name. We go way back. My mom. So when I saw his name, I was like I called his daughter and I went to school with his daughter since elementary school. So yeah, you know, my back. So

Unknown Speaker 1:49:08
Right.

Unknown Speaker 1:49:09
actually worked in our high school for a little bit of time as well. So we’re at the high school and you worked in high school.

Unknown Speaker 1:49:17
There too. So yeah, so I’m glad you guys are participating. It sounds good, because a lot of the same stuff in here. So

Unknown Speaker 1:49:28
glad you’re here. Yeah, thank you.

Unknown Speaker 1:49:31
Definitely echo what Val said, very excited to be here. I’ve been in Colorado about six years originally from Missouri. So I grew up in a pretty small town and works both in metropolitan areas as well as smaller areas and cities of this size too. So most recently, I was working in Eaton, the old town just north of Greeley as taking care of their athletics program, their aging program, their wellness program, and their special interest program so very excited to be here.

Unknown Speaker 1:50:00
To get on something that I love, and that is working with the aging population worked in REC since I was 16. My that was a part of our director. So I’ve been around the industry for a very long time.

Unknown Speaker 1:50:11
And just being able to focus in on a population that is thriving here, as well. So there’s a lot going on. And that’s exciting to see, I think already, we’re starting to see some spaces where we can help grow things even more, and just the involvement that the community has. And the support that the community has for this facility is amazing. And exciting to be a part of that. My mom did not go to school with art.

Unknown Speaker 1:50:37
Why kudos to Terry and Ariana for taking on tasks, just helping us to survive. And definitely front desk staff. I mean, Robin and her staff have definitely been there for us to just kind of listen and help us get through this all. So you know, thank you all for being patient with us. And we’re hoping to show you what we do here shortly. We promise to do a good feedback when we were talking about how you’d never do laundry. Yeah,

Unknown Speaker 1:51:06
I think we can all use information about how long stuff really takes. So that we can regularize this. All we do is review it. But I’m sure Ronnie wants to really regularize it. Right? And so that’s just something to keep in the back of your head when you’re actually doing your job. Yeah, for sure. And the only other piece I’d like to say, I don’t know, if you’ve reached out you were talking about Spanish speakers. And have you reached out to product or any people here to see if there’s anybody that would be interested.

Unknown Speaker 1:51:40
All right, that was my two cents. All right.

Unknown Speaker 1:51:44
That’s good. If you hear from Veronica don’t hesitate to Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 1:51:52
For sure she after she leaves with a lot of people. Yeah, sort of some of the others. You know, we’ve got a little phone tree and email going on for them to start participating in more programs and events. And she’s starting, that starting to go up to more people and some gamblers get about seven or eight people who wanted to go on a trip.

Unknown Speaker 1:52:10
So we’re back in action. So we’ll get them back on board. Slow, but they’re there together, we’ll get them Yes.

Unknown Speaker 1:52:19
To in a way, it was a negative to have departures from the staff, the city, etc. Once No, I think it’s a positive such a positive thing to have all these new people coming in with good ideas. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 1:52:36
And tration what we’ve always done. I think that’s really exciting for them and for us. So I felt about energy here today. Yeah, it’s a real benefit.

Unknown Speaker 1:52:52
Do we have a third person to introduce and I want to introduce Catherine, because you’re looking up front. She’s stepping up in the front desk area to help support in a part time capacity. And she’s been a great, also a great contributor to our team, and just wanted you all to meet her and heard me you as well. And if

Unknown Speaker 1:53:15
I put you on the spot, there’s no warning.

Unknown Speaker 1:53:18
So I’m Cat, it’s nice to meet you.

Unknown Speaker 1:53:22
i So i started about six weeks ago.

Unknown Speaker 1:53:27
So my background was education. I was an elementary school teacher before I came here for approximately 20 years in some capacity.

Unknown Speaker 1:53:37
I started out teaching in Japan, I lived in Japan for three years.

Unknown Speaker 1:53:43
And I’ve taught elementary school. And I also was a freelance author. So I’ve written some textbooks and some fiction. And I have also worked for a nonprofit called nest wings, which helps get people into college. So I’ve done fundraising and social media for them.

Unknown Speaker 1:54:04
And I have backgrounds in that. So I hope that I can bring that here and get, you know, social media running again. And I like I’ve been writing newsletters and things like that here, which I really enjoy. So anything that you want promoted here, I’d love to know about because it’s really important to me get the word out about the senior center.

Unknown Speaker 1:54:28
You do so many great things here that I had no idea that you did when I came. And I’m finding a lot of people in the community when I start talking about the incredible things that we do say, I had no idea that we had this resource. And I’m finding immediately that my passion is getting the word out. Because

Unknown Speaker 1:54:52
I love communication. That’s my passion is writing and speech and telling the world about things. So anything you want the world

Unknown Speaker 1:55:00
To know, tell me because I want to tell you a lot of

Unknown Speaker 1:55:03
laughs

Unknown Speaker 1:55:05
Do you live here in LA? I do. I’ve lived here for about 11 years. I’m originally from Colorado Springs. So you may want to consider coming to live on public media.

Unknown Speaker 1:55:18
Members meeting tonight at 7am, the old Carnegie Library, which is on forest street around the corner from the real library. It’s all about communicators and media, media ministries, you probably enjoy it sounds like

Unknown Speaker 1:55:35
you do

Unknown Speaker 1:55:37
you still you still?

Unknown Speaker 1:55:44
issue I think you hit it right on the head. This is such an exciting time right now. We have between

Unknown Speaker 1:55:53
Valerie Bianca, Tommy, our new evening custodian, you know, there’s not normally as the energy you’re talking about everybody has

Unknown Speaker 1:56:03
the energy but different views perspectives, recognizing again, that solid foundation that Beth you talked about is in place, and how can we build that up? How can we be innovative? How can we bring new ideas to to the Senior Center, and just hear these ideas and these conversations has been very exciting. So again, a very, I want to share that just it’s a very exciting time right now.

Unknown Speaker 1:56:30
took us three hours, we had to shut it down. We met for three hours. And we could not we didn’t have enough time. And that was just with Terry and Ariana. And the three of us know.

Unknown Speaker 1:56:44
Absolutely right. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 1:56:50
Right to show you what we got, so

Unknown Speaker 1:56:54
you’re more than welcome to stay or you can head out it’s your call.

Unknown Speaker 1:57:15
Again, it’s a very exciting time right now.

Unknown Speaker 1:57:22
So

Unknown Speaker 1:57:24
with that kind of come upon back a little bit, just a couple of dates.

Unknown Speaker 1:57:30
Well, I guess I’ll go back to business. So just an update on our the rapido Alder exchange. So we are, as I last mentioned, to our logic board group, invited us to seniors, to go to the go to Casper, where they’re hosting a horse, I’m sorry, hosting the horse race really events for all Native American tribes in the US and southern Canada participate. So something that they host and they’re very proud of is that they want you to come see this be a part of it, they part of their culture, something that they’re really proud of. And so I coordinated with our friends board, and,

Unknown Speaker 1:58:13
and asked them to fund funds for me to take a leadership group of their collection of our friends, board leaders, advisory board leaders, and some of our staff to have our leadership, connect with their leadership. And most importantly, accept their invitation, showing them that we’re interested in want to continue the friendship developing this relationship. And so it’s not directly centered around the other exchange, it’s just begin building that building that relationship. There will be informal discussions about it, right. But again, focusing on that connection piece. So have a have a handful of us going up.

Unknown Speaker 1:58:56
She was going to be representing the advisory board and in this in this trip. So we’re going to head up the September, Friday, September 22. And come back September 24. So we have their two nights, and we’ll come back, come back Sunday. So I’m really excited for this opportunity for our leaders to leadership, and again, just build better relationships. As we continue to work towards another exchange. I received an email from Rob, which would be considered their senior senior senior center manager operates a little differently over there, but she is at a point where she needed to get through August and said okay, now September is here. Let’s start this discussion and start working on this. So

Unknown Speaker 1:59:46
we have not had that opportunity to connect via but it’s still in the works and she has

Unknown Speaker 1:59:51
enough for us to start to start really planning some details. So I’ll be able to, in October be able to share sure

Unknown Speaker 2:00:00
Those crypto

Unknown Speaker 2:00:02
shield will be able to make sure that

Unknown Speaker 2:00:07
we have a couple updates. Sorry, outside of that is we weren’t also speaking of friends or friends to get that Wi Fi enhancement or SCTC group whose groups just continue to grow. They don’t put a cap on participation. There we go policy support Come, come see. Yes. So as a result, these games keep the participation keeps growing and growing. So it’s jamming up the Wi Fi a little bit. So we worked with the friends to provide some funds to to, to improve our Wi Fi. I guess it’s all Wi Fi enhancement. And so that was set up as of last week. So excited to share that as well. That’s going to help our programming, specifically for SCTC as well. It allowed them to meet the needs of the gaming when he walks through the door and I have internet issues.

Unknown Speaker 2:01:06
We had our fall trip registration, August 18. But we had over 160 participants and exact number organisms like 172, something like that. So that’s the general I know, we were still looking at numbers, and it was over 160. But I believe it was 172 total participants.

Unknown Speaker 2:01:28
Really great turnout. Participants are people that got spaces in the program. Participants who showed up for for the lottery. Oh, okay. Yeah. And how many guys? So I have to look at look at the official piece. I mean, there’s there’s going to be weightless. A lot of our big, big, all of our samples.

Unknown Speaker 2:01:52
I just wondered how many people were serving with those

Unknown Speaker 2:01:56
trips? How many, how many individuals we serve for in those trips that are registered?

Unknown Speaker 2:02:05
Hurco per quarter, right. So that one’s under 72? So 107 needs to register for at least Oh register. Okay. Okay. People that got in? Yes. Okay. Thank you. Yeah, so that’s looking for Yeah. So just how many didn’t get in? Oh,

Unknown Speaker 2:02:24
I don’t know if you’re talking about the lottery. So every

Unknown Speaker 2:02:28
year you don’t get it, it’s just a hold your place. And so 172 people came through the line. So some of them got without waitlist.

Unknown Speaker 2:02:38
Everyone got something they just might be like? Yeah, I’m just wondering how many.

Unknown Speaker 2:02:46
It’s not really a way to see that number, because there might be people.

Unknown Speaker 2:02:53
It just seems like so many. So few people are being served as the senior population for

Unknown Speaker 2:03:01
that

Unknown Speaker 2:03:03
under served. I think that with all the work that goes into it. And I’m just looking at the bottom line of how many people are actually how many senior citizens here are actually being served? And how many are not being served?

Unknown Speaker 2:03:21
So the question, I think, is the best use of our budget. Yes. Right. Because because it’s always been a concern of mine. I know, it’s always been a big part of the senior center. But I just wonder about that. And I always have

Unknown Speaker 2:03:36
had, I’ve been on one of those trips, I don’t think I do it again, their work, but

Unknown Speaker 2:03:44
but they’re also expensive. So we’re not necessarily serving the neediest populations. So depends on the trip. You know, there are some that are pricey if you’re going to Denver Center performing arts

Unknown Speaker 2:03:59
includes dinner or even candlelight dinner in theaters. So you’re getting your show you’re getting a dinner, getting transportation, it’s a three, four hour event, those costs more than the other ones, right? versus say a lunch lunch where you’re traveling, just to have lunch and come back. So there’s there’s there’s different price points, there’s lower level price points, and there are some bigger ticket item. Price points.

Unknown Speaker 2:04:25
You know, historically, you know, evaluating, you know, is this the best use of, of staff time, energy resources budget, it’s something that’s been the highlight of our community. That’s why we saw what we saw. When I first got here with the staffing issues that you know, more we need more lean staff. This this area is going to be

Unknown Speaker 2:04:46
underserved. We’re not going to spend time or energy for programming. That’s what some of the concerns came about. That was solved the past 567 months.

Unknown Speaker 2:04:56
So it’s is it is it

Unknown Speaker 2:05:00
To me that it falls into our vision of creating opportunities to enhance quality of life. And so these trips, these programs, support support that enhancements so

Unknown Speaker 2:05:15
that I think it is something to continue to offer, you know, getting evaluating network capacity from, we were talking about the capacity, which can cause some of that turnover in the past, to what sustain may look different, though. But is it worth keeping in maintaining? Absolutely.

Unknown Speaker 2:05:35
And it could be all for scholarship scholarships for people who do help. So there’s so there’s typically, so depending on on income, there are scholarships that that are provided. And that allows that individual to say, you know, what, I’m going to do multiple to make two or three depending on the lower level price point trips, that that scholarship and cover two or three of those are, you know, what? Go all in this may cover just one big ticket item, but it allows them that flexibility to choose how they want to use that scholarship, but we do offer scholarships based on

Unknown Speaker 2:06:16
and that support provided from from our friends as well.

Unknown Speaker 2:06:22
I just have those quick updates.

Unknown Speaker 2:06:27
Does anyone have any additional questions?

Unknown Speaker 2:06:31
To your house, so they might steal, steal, steal?

Unknown Speaker 2:06:36
So I can’t remember the exact date. But they were waiting until this week or next week to start pulling it all together. Okay, because because they have to go through the paper copies, which I think we had, I would say close to 400. I didn’t count them. It was pretty good sized.

Unknown Speaker 2:06:56
And that was just our in house. So thank you all for being a part of that and helping with that. volunteering your time.

Unknown Speaker 2:07:03
So we got good turnout for that. I know, there’s been great turnout to the online survey. And I think early on that would be the week that we were doing our paper surveys, like by Tuesday and they had around 300. And so between those two and the mail, a lot of metal and steel coming in, I think over two

Unknown Speaker 2:07:24
to our marketing team so they can start going through their commission. People still do online.

Unknown Speaker 2:07:31
I don’t know. I believe it was a two week survey, they saw the deadline which was

Unknown Speaker 2:07:40
last Friday, that allowed two weeks for it to go out. And that’s kind of the timeframe that they wanted to and so that way they can start pulling that information together.

Unknown Speaker 2:07:50
Any other questions? The wrong questions?

Unknown Speaker 2:07:54
All right. I’ll have a motion to adjourn.

Unknown Speaker 2:08:01
Tomorrow, okay, all in favor say hi. Hi. Thank you all

Transcribed by https://otter.ai