I can there we go welcome everybody to our Council and agent meeting of February the 11th at 28 good afternoon good afternoon good afternoon good afternoon okay I'm sure we all had a chance to go anybody before
we do that [Music] just any person may make a video audio recording of any open session of any public meeting or may transmit the meeting through any medium subject to reasonable requirements of the chairs as to the number placement and operations
of equipment use so as to not interfere with the conduct of this meeting any person intending to make such recording shall notify the chair for with by the way I'm recording this all documents referenced or used during the meeting are to be submitted and duplicate to the chair pursuant to the opening meeting
and public records law all documents shall become part of the official record of the meeting before we get on with the meeting though I'd like to take a moment um and just uh acknowledge the fact that somebody who's been on our board for as long as she has and has served so
Faithfully as not only a board member president of golden age Club but a huge advocate for our senior community um I think we all share and acknowledging the Deep sorrow we have in the passing of our fellow board member Gloria tarpy so
if you would join me just for a minute um to reflect on Beautiful People Who Make Beautiful contributions to the community uh like certainly Gloria's Legacy is known for
thank [Music] you okay me call the order and we had the minutes I'm sure everybody to over room so do we have a motion
to AC minut okay first by sley second by Bara all right all in favor hi any opposed so voted okay very good our next thing on
our list today is the treasury report from Carri Helman [Music] oh oh all right you all have a copy of the report as of January 31
2025 uh page one is our general fund as always it's the expenses for the uh salaries and things to do with the office and energy and um you can see there's nothing uh a really outstanding there
and we're the budget there is in good shape is there any question on any item there at all this is on page one top of the page under general fund any question at all we'll try to answer it I want to
just make sure that you all know and are aware um that overtime specifically we're we're over with the first um two storms that came in in um you know February so our
overtime budget will probably asked for a transfer money to be on called standby to fill in some of that deficit but we still have from January to June to go expecting a storm this weekend um so that means that the staff can come in
and clean up on Sunday we'll have to be paid double time for that we also have coverage for our nighttime meetings that's an overtime expense so in years past we've been a little um less
I don't know we had far less expenses we've hit the 500 but never much beyond that we'll probably have all of the $1,000 by the end of the year just be mindful of uh because we didn't have anything last year on call standby um and we also know that you see
that there are some contracted balances so know the mail manager we haven't seen in expenses but you know that there's probably several thousand of expenses that are going to be dropped in there in the next um even next month's report or
March report so it's not because we haven't spent that money and then the last thing I just want to make you aware of it's the Outreach coordinator 2088 that is artificially low because we haven't transferred the expense from
the grant account into this account yet so 5050 is how that salary expenses split between the operating account and the grant account so we still have to take 50% of the expenses which I don't think
we've accumulated or or noted any of those expenses in the operating fund since probably August or September so again we'll be right up to that $9,000 Mark so if it looks artificially low it hasn't changed it's simply because we
haven't done the accounting transaction otherwise we're right on target I mean 56% of the expenses is where we should be um it's probably a little low so we should probably be close to like a 60% now um and because a
lot of those expenses are are fronted that are front cost that's it that's all I had nothing more so as of January 31 the balance in that general fund was 96,3 N4 and
63 again any any question or anything that might has just said that you need more clarification on no okay sorry sure on the
um the ones that that were kind of low on balances such as the Telecom and the uh encumbered repairs and we read That's but this has to last till June correct so so some of those are like onetime
payments so the Telecom is a reimbursement for cell pH expenses we bu that halfway through the year for the year so the 20 24 25 expenses have been um expensed for the whole year now so that covers us through
June um there is an there is an important note I want to just make sure you know that we're right now on on a freeze an expense freeze so we can't spend anyone that's not essential uh we don't have any line items that fall
within that category with the exception of office supplies uh professional development those are probably maybe repairs are non essential but the rest are considered essential and um but we may not see that repair I mean the
office expense go up much between now and June we have a freeze thank you okay with and know other questions we'll move down just below that to the gift fund we did receive a a donation of
$1,000 from an in from a a fund this in December so at the moment now our balance in that fund is $88 $24.74 and hopefully we'll be taking some money out of it in the near future for a paint job over at the Waterford
Street Hope hopefully but any pretty much that's that's the gift fund but if there is any question if not uh Turn the Page now and on page two we have the revolving fund
and the last column o over on the page is purchase order contracts that are still out standing and uh Mike has listed those for you just there's just two at the the moment and um everything
else is right there is anyone have any questions on the revolving fund ask now just so that you're all aware that our balance on the revolving fund is is listed as
45,000 um it's going to really be closer to Once once we encumber those other $1,200 it CL 423 somewhere around there 3 three um I think what's going to end up happening I I didn't really like but I want you to
know I'm probably going to to um eliminate those POs so that we don't have the incumbrance on there anymore because we're limited on the expenses we have the roling fund by the way does not come under that essential uh
expenditure mandate by the city council in the mayor what um the reason for that is this is a program generated Revenue an expense account so money comes in money comes out revolving funds are exempt from that uh cap which gives us a
little bit of flexibility because then we can use some of this fund to fund things for maybe non-essential but needed stuff um that might normally come under the operating bu any any other questions on the Revol
fund we all know that money comes in and money goes out for the programs okay okay I have a question Sor what a question on the trips and excursions where it says 5% yep so I would just say everything in the contract POS I just talked about
we're going to eliminate both of those that's just a formatting thing it's a $511 balance on the purchase order the reason you need to know that is that money is spoken for it's encumbered I can't spend it so let's say there was $1,200 over there and that's kind of why
I eliminated the only one that actually shows up is the 711 868 from hanford's is because um we can't overspend on this account so if I had $60,000 of purchase orders there they're not purchases
they're not expenses but they're commitments we would be in the re and this board should probably get pretty upset about that so I want to make sure you know what we have signed for contracts or purchase orders and committed from the different funds um
just so that uh uh you know you're clear about what our balance is those Contracting POS the problem going to disappear I think we're going to just make the case to eliminate them and then put in new POS for any new purchases that $78 balance from Hanford so it's really from
the holiday meals and we've expensed everything from that any other question down there any other going once twice okay and now we're over on to the FY 24 State Grant
and I'm going to interrupt her again she asked me to put in if you see a column header on that last column say contract po that goes through all of the different accounts that last column is going to be committed but not spent well that's what that that last
column is otherwise um everything seems to be up to date we have a balance there of 34,000 8 2758 and we owe 34695
25 I wasn't following I apologize so our our our balance so when you see that 29833 that's the total balance of funds um we have an interesting thing going on here
I don't why that did that so this is a formatting issue I apologize 29883 is what our balance is that is correct okay that's um I don't know why the 3427 show up there 29 29883 26 is correct and we have
we have expenditures of 29 69525 so I'm sorry po or contracts that we expect to expend so we are going to be pretty close to dead even on this account now we may be saying hey wait a
minute there's still $55,000 of Outreach coordinat but remember that 5,000 is going to be paid for from the city mine so that expense almost in its entirety will be changed over to the operating account so there'll be no expense or very little
expense showing up in the state grant for that so the 29883 and the 29 695 exactly right which gives us about a projected balance of about 200 bucks I say projected because you see the purchase orders are a little fluid from
week to week we may have budgeted a $200 cost per week for our yoga instructor because it was a holiday that week so it's $50 l or it's five weeks so it's $50 more um we did a 52e projection
based on the number of classes but even those contract encumbrances those are high we're going to have a little bit more money than I said in May in June we're going to be working to to spend down cuz our hope is to close out at y 24 in this fiscal year
that's what I was just going to add is our hope to get that this one closed out in our fisical year any questions on the FY 24 gr think I might really got it all
spelled out for us if not then turn the page to our FY 25 grant which we haven't started to spend yet so you can see that we are still in good shape we got a a
total of 83,5 65 even almost 84,000 in uh our FY 25 State Grant so we can have a big party big party B party so that you probably won't be too long
you'll start to see some charges there now the next page of just if you we're getting some feedback you want to just pull your your mic back just a little bit yep it's ringing can you hear oh
ring sorry about that uh just for a quick note on the state gr F525 we still balance f26 is about to be awarded so um yeah so the governor's budget and the Senate budget both include um the
Senator's the governor's budget included an increase in the form of the grant for senior sen and com of a dollar per capital which would be about $5,300 increase for us the Senate version did not include um an increase or the house version didn't include an
increase they'll go to compromise and flush that out it should be noted that in this fiscal year the com off Massachusetts is projecting a deficit I don't feel particularly um optimistic that we to see increases in this but we
certainly want to see decreases so at the very least it's going to be uh level fund and and now I'll turn the next report fully over to Mike because I don't get too involved with technology Grant Mike so theide of the technology
Grant was to enable us to buy some equipment to provide some online access we've really done pretty well all together we have our first couple of online uh courses this month um which is really good news the bad news is the
instructor who was coming on board just got another opportunity and isn't able to teach the courses anymore so at this meeting I'm making it official I'm looking for a Chromebook uh how do you use the Chromebook how the interet they access the internet um type of knowledge
and experience if anybody knows that we bring on um you'll see some weird things like some x's before numbers and the reason those X's are before numbers is they they will not be part of the calculation so that 1923 and 3906 are there for notes for me those
were expenses that were incurred in other accounts or that we expect to be incurred by a budget amendment the budget amendment hasn't been approved yet so I still have to submit that to Executive Office Elder Affairs and our
contractor to make sure they're okay why are we doing a budget amendment well several of our items have come in under budget also we found out in the last uh Tech round table that all of the expenses have to be incurred by March
31st even though we didn't get the grant until last September um that is particularly problematic when you look at for example the subscriptions in 19200 that subscription is is based on 20
Chromebooks at $40 each per month $9,600 a year for 2 years so we propose supporting the internet access on our Chromebooks for seniors that are borrowing these to have free internet we don't want to burden our seniors who are
using technology with an additional cost of having to get internet access so that was the whole premise of the landing library was to say oh guess what we're going to give you some free internet access so that you can try it and test it and play with it to determine whether or not you're comfortable we think we
found a viable and allowable way to to get that 192 paid um but it's part of the budget amendment so we have to wait for that in addition we're going to take out any of the long-term stuff like the
interns um the tech trainers things 14,000 bucks we're we going to roll that into the revolving fund and buy more equipment with that so that $144,000 of that another $4,000 is going to be used for Chrome additional 10
Chromebooks so each Cent will have 15 Chromebooks instead of 10 and the uh relative cost of the internet access for two years those so there's another $9,600 that's like 13,000 um in all of those areas the tech
trainer the interns which is that's 99 + 6 is 156 um we we wash on that so that's pretty good plus we have some available balances from some of the other accounts we have $457 left from the laptop
expense we have um right now $4,000 left from the Chromebook budget line item that we're going to use to buy the additional Chromebooks and we have about $1,700 left from the neat board line item SP so we'll just move some of that
stuff around but in order to do that officially and legitimately um we have to get approval so we're going to put that in the narrative hopefully slated by this Friday I was able to me with the Templeton group last week make sure they were in agreement we worked out some of
the ideas um they came up with some great uh suggestions including more Chromebooks which will incorporate that budget M that'll go in this Friday so you'll see like some wonky not wonky just like some some notes Tre T to Hardware tfer to
zoom that's part of the the idea of the proposed budget amendment but that's still not it's still not accurate because there's a lot more that's going to be added to this before this Friday our balance though is uh $49,000 so we
have $49,000 in cash um that's going to go up to door in probably total 45 days one of the things is for needs to know as part of that budget menu though I am committing to paying the tech instructor
out of the revolving or state Grant funds we have the money that's primarily what the money is used for as instructors this is one more instructor to add it to that list obviously it's incumbent upon us to watch um what those
contracts look like but we we have the money and ability to do it right now so and we'll make that commitment for 2 years and that for 2 years is 3,600 bucks so it's not hug money um before we finish the finance
report Madam if you would allow me to go over the the uh FY 26 budget and then we incorporate all of that in one report Mr on the just a couple s your
transfer don't don't don't consider the transfer the finance report is the stuff that's not thee when it says transfer to Hardware transfer under insurance and thech okay be about maybe $8
$9,000 right okay and it's going to go into buying more Chromebooks I'm trying I trying to make I'm trying to be clear about what you say did you say we're going to buy five we are buying a lot more equipment um other than Chromebooks from that
extra money so some of that um those purchases are the production card the grant folks were were pretty positive that the production C which we're funding entirely out of the revolving fund are expenses that can come out of the tech
Grant so we're going to reallocate those expenses that's going to draw down about $3,900 per C $3,800 per car $7,600 um the owls that's a expense that we didn't plan on in the grant um we're
able to do as part of the the initial neat board technology connection so I mean clearly you all know that in order to to make this work it has to balance at the end of the day right so it's not going to be um you know $40,000 new in
equipment and only having $188,000 my [Music] question I understand that I do understand true Point CU I'm looking at three figures and with balance under clone books the transfer to Hardware
under the tech trainer and the transfer the hardware under the interns you got about $133,000 there okay under the Chromebooks 4,000 is a is a lot of money we consider most Chrome
books were between $4 to $600 those are those are $420 each yeah yep so that's less really three grand no if they're $400 each and we're doing 10 that's $1,000 wait I thought we already bought 10 we bought 20 and we're buying an
additional 10 so we'll have 30 Chrome 15 a gardener 15 in templon okay all right that's so that wash that 4,000 is really a wash the additional if you want it if anybody else is interested we'll go through the numbers we're going to
transfer the 1,900 from the tech trainer we're going to transfer the 48 0798 and the 800 from insurance which still leaves us $2,300 that's going to be gone we're transferring all of that all into Hardware pretty much everything
is going into our production but understand the grant was predicated on us paying for instructors and providing access to instructors so because we have to spend the money now we'll make the commitment to find the
instructors uh from revolving fund we originally refunded the equipment from revolving fund will put that into the grant if you spent that it's a reasonable cost it's perceptable they'll take that we'll spend it um other just so you know if they decide to not accept
the amendment then some of this still we going to lose but right now we SP right thanks foring 35,000 yeah good it's fun um so uh fiscal year 26 I think I told you last month we're working on the
budget we did submit that on January 10th to the mayor um the the budget includes uh wages of 16075
$185,000 of a $220,000 budget so by far um you know most of our expenses are related to um are related to salaries operating costs
include those things like we told there's not a lot of move in the operating cost we're not really asking for additional although you should know it is going to change substantially when we move into waterer right now we have um you know our energy and
electricity budget line item is $14,500 the city gets the bill for that and goes through our account for this building probably do the same thing on Waterford so you'll see that 145 or at least a portion of that mg will be go up significantly you're getting a lot more
space right so just assume we have to have a um a reflection of the increased utilities that goes along with that space um but otherwise not a lot our information Tech we've asked for an increase in information Tech just to
meet the corresponding increase um bill from Comcast for our internet and television but it's Min it's not a lot our Telecom is exactly the same press government exactly the same office supplies we have a bu a 3% reduction in
offer supplies above the 3% reduction we had last year so that's lower um as well but by far in our city um operating account the vast majority of expenses are from um
salaries 79.5% to be exact of the department City budget is for staff um so the other 20% is for things like util and repairs are man in uh maintenance and the rest are kind of small dollar
stuff Mr L I have a question uh when we do move to was under the facilities manager how much of that building I we
responsible so so I understand and I haven't seeing the leases but I understand that the leases provide for to some extent each of the leses having a janitor kind of stuff and right now a lot of the work we do on a day-to-day basis is more the gorial
maintenance stuff the larger repairs falls on the city right it's a city building so I imagine whoever's on site is going to be responsible for coordinating the response to whatever that facility issue is um it's not
likely it's on the budget nobody's talking about adding additional people um so we'll really just be relying on the cooperation collaboration with our partners to make sure the daily stuff is done um and and see what goes from there
now also remember here everything is is manual we manually Mo manually sweep our hope is to be able to buy some equipment to get a big buffering machine so we can go through the whole facility on a little golf cart and you know that' be kind of neat to um you know do the floor
so that's hope um it may or may not come this year we we don't know but it's still an exciting opportunity and I think from our perspective we'll look at we have seven rooms we'll look at one or two rooms a day that we maintain so that might be a
deep clean in each of those rooms on any given day and then just continue to do the rotation no I just want because the size of that building I mean you got a building you got that cafeteria yeah that's in the building the uh the office
area down by the cafeteria then you have two floors on a way yeah I I'm absolutely certain that the back two floor um part of the building won't be something that we have to wor I I feel very confident about that the rest of the
building I I'll just tell you like our philosophy is we do what we can so if there's a need um we respond to it and you know we adjust and adapt I'm hopeful that we get there that's not going to be a Daily Grind but I don't really see it
causing a huge degree of disruption until it does and when it does then we can go and ask the mayor and city council for additional funds for additional facilities people if we need it I think right now we're just hoping to get in the see let's see what this looks like what's the impact um so that
in the year we can make an intelligent decision about Staffing and resources and that kind of stuff okay yeah it's a great question and and it's one that we've had as well but I feel pretty comfortable about um about where we're
at so I think that uh the weight Andy is good and we have the commitment of the mayor and the city council to you know respond if we need to some things you should know just off the top obviously there are increases buil in for salary salaries including you know i' asked for
a more than moderate increase in my salary um based on the recommendations from the Department I don't know if that'll happen um City's types of funds like everybody else is so um shoot for the sky and see what what happens overtime I'd ask for more overtime uh in
this year's budget we'll see what happens um but some of our wish list items the ble board originally a couple years ago I was talking about having to replace that electronic board and we actually did some poing around find out every want to guess I'll tell you $144,000 to replace the board that
doesn't includ the visual so um it's a it's a handsome amount of money but this board has demonstrated great stewardship um and responsibility we have some money to do that if we got hit with a $20,000 bill
because our Bingo board broke we would not be dead in the water we could absolutely afford to get a new Bingo board if we had to and then cut back on some other things right so I I think legitimately we have a little bit of flexibility I hope we don't get to that point where we have to
to bite on our own a $20,000 spense the pool table I think I told you the one of the pool tables down seers the exper said that's probably not going to make the move it's in you know stable shape where it is but once you try to move it off life support they may not make it so
um we're doing some exploration there might be a couple pool tables available in the community we're hoping that the group will extend an offer to us to pick up and purchase and put down there we'll see a big one you guys need to know about um I'm going to talk a little bit
more about in the uh update is our Lifeline program so I'm not going to talk about it now and then there are some other new um purchases that we're hoping to at least look at including the projection board for the theater the
sound system for the theater painting um you know some kind of minor stuff our our approach to this as a team is you know if we can work on one room a year and renovate that that then you know we'd be in really good shape and
that's our hope is to look at one or two rooms a year and and get them all done by the end of say 5 years um our performance updates also in there like here are some highlights about what we did I'm going to let you look at that on your own valtion it's some pretty interesting thing but I do want to share
some no I'm going to wait until we do the direct report so that's the end of the finance it you have a copy of the budget that's officially been submitted um for if you have any coms concerns please uh let us know have a cof that's the detailed um spreadsheet that went
into the mayor's office uh for consideration he's going to look at that he's going to make his recommendations and then goes through the city council for consideration in debate we'll have to appear before the welfare committee to talk about our proposed budget and then um the welfare committee will
report out to the full Council recommendation for the Council on Aging money that's kind of how the process go so Terry and Ron typically will go to that meeting you should the chair and the treasurer um to represent the board myself as the uh department head goes as
well I don't really see there being a lot of contention in the city budget they're not going to I don't think there is I think really the only point that may be debated is um the salary and I don't know that that's going to be debating because I don't think the mayor
is going to to submit that um based on the current financial situation I don't know on the left line uh some of the Medicare plans offer that for free so you might want to check with our shying people and that could reduce the
exposure expense yeah we're going to talk a little bit more about that the director's I just want to ask a question on the 4% decrease of mon salary that already budgeted in there yeah as I told you it's it's pretty yeah
it's budgeted in there it's a pretty it's a pretty limited non-salary budget if you look at like what we have on that spreadsheet everything from repair and maintening down is um is our non-salary
expenses and that only makes up 20% of our budget so that 20% of our budget we had to decrease it by 3% um so we reduced you know our repairs and maintenance to 13 250 it's not likely
that we're not going to go over that in FY 26 um information technology I actually had an increase and I increased that because our costs have gone up for Comcast internet and television minor equipment we saw a um we saw that right
off right off the top just kind of clean but that's probably going to be was eliminated last year probably be eliminated this year we won't really think that's going to make the budget energy and utilities we had a decrease from 145 to 135 that was our 4% increase decrease that we had to do
telecommunications is what it is there's no flexibility in that in fact like our um our information technology there's no wiggle bur in that it's the cost is the cost professional development we didn't go anywhere with that we spend all of
our professional development every year my feeling is that might be on The Chopping Block in its entirety and then we reduce the um office supplies by 4% so the really only 1 2 3 four five six seven seven line items that we have to
reduce by 3% and that will be a struggle it's it will be a struggle I it's but if that's what we have to do to make the ends meet then that's what we have to do Mr do we have any metric as to how much of an increase in services
or' done holy shly take a look at the FY 24 accomplishments um I'm going to go over some of those in the director the answer is yes so so we should be able to do that and decrease our
fund yes certainly you know I would imagine EMS calls if we know EMS calls forment police department gone up not down um they're being asked to do the same thing that we that's the financial report thank you madam Treasurer
[Music] thank can I have a entertain a motion to accept the treasur report I'll make a motion just just to clarify all your motion is to accept yes but you you can also make a motion to decline or reject
it just so you doesn't have to be accept so thank you sorry about that all in favor any opposed okay go voted thank you next now the
report all yours all mine all right so metrics um you know we've seen a 42% increase in our service call volume that's huge but here's something that I asked our our um Telephone person just
telephone across where we're at we were just under 10,000 incoming calls in 2024 so um that's a pretty significant number with the exception of the EMS in the schools I doubt anybody comes close
to 10,000 calls but if you look at the first that are outbound is is equ to or exceeds that 9700 9500 calls um we do regular calls
for all our programs cancellations confirmations reservations um reminder calls we do robo calls our Robo call output in 2024 was 15,000 15,000 Robo calls um by the way
you think oh that's not staff intensive it's wicked St because we have to create the list we have to create the message we have to schedule and confirm that and send it out and every time a robo call goes out so if we do an all call for example of roughly 2600 seniors who've
been active in the senior center for the last anywhere in the last two years if they had a touch with us in the last two years they get a call um we get about a 10 or 15% call back that's not included in our call volume so the call back is
just it's folks saying hi I just saw a call coming from the senior center I'm just calling to see what it was and of course the easy answer is check your voicemail but um and for the real convoluted long messages sometimes
that's we have to say because it's just there are 200 calls coming in in 15 minutes so we don't have any luxury of of repeating that message um so my message folks that are watching if you get a robo call from the senior center please listen to it it's not spam even if it spam if you listen you can hang up
please take the call and at least hear if you hear my growing voice this is my G director the ging center it's a Bonafide legitimate message um and it's about a program here it's not we're not going to sell you um a time share in Florida or bridge in
Brooklyn um so so we're looking at about 30,000 out B calls holy crap including a robo calls right so 5 is the number that um we kind of came up with finally calls include
appointments and services reservations for programs referrals and information for legal medical housing um in-house Services food programs transportation we get a million calls for the phone numbers for other senior
sits and there's a reason for that because we're number one on the Google search and there's a reason for that because our engagements have gone up and there's a reason for that we taking the time to make posts and send information out that's all super staff um super
staff intensive we provide assistance with Medicare Medicaid um DMV dispute resolution with like Comcast or law suers referrals and services with other agencies nutrition and services here's some Google analytic
information from September 24th to February 25th roughly a 5 month period we have, 1400 Google business business interactions that means Somebody went into Google and clicked on the website indicator to come to our website and get information we had almost 3,000 views or
I'm sorry so those are interactions that means somebody did something um proactively and involved we had 2700 clicks into our site from the Google business why is that important because Friday September we didn't have a a Google business
profile somebody else owned our our website so we were able to get that back capture back and create profile that include our business hours and our address and our our email information hours or
operation um from Google we had 320 calls from that business profile doesn't seem like much we had zero before 750 clicks from the business profile on Facebook you ready this is going to be a
ride we had 38,000 views in the last 90 days 38,000 views um we have a 6300 um person reach so that's like distribution of of Facebook content um
and they you know maybe clicked it once but that 6300 reaches individual reaches we had 960 content interactions where people click through an email that we sent and we're purposely saying if you haven't seen it please respond like
what's your favorite program at the G Senior Center brought to us very intelligently by somebody else who also doing this kind of stuff with Facebook to increase interactions and um get people to notice what we do so I'm very appreciative of all of the huge advice
and Direction they've given us um so 960 like shares uh saves comments replies a thousand for senior center that's that's high our top views an individual posts that we post
on Facebook top number of individual people who viewed this here are some of the numbers uh 3,516 3,739 3,466 on individual post
3,762 3,532 5,773 and top that was 7,093 individual views on the garden sen on our page where were we a year ago B
we have 662 likes and 94 people are following us P buit nothing I don't not um those are those are good those are good metrics right those are good numbers but you have to put them in uh
perspective so um last year for the end of 2024 we had over 10,000 volunteer hours at the Garden C Center 500 just under 550 individual separate volunteers so again huge numbers when
you look at it um in in a given year and sometimes that's like period specific uh I'll give you for an example the Lions Club and El's Club they give us 20 volunteers a week of Christmas and a week of Thanksgiving peeling prepping cooking cleaning
um we're able to capture all of those volunteers on our numbers but they're significant because without those volunteers we wouldn't have a holiday meal and that's a senior center activity but folks that are out in the parking lot for 8 hours um think about like that
one 8 Hour duration event when we have six people out there right that pulls in 50 hours right there that's a huge number I I would just I always just maybe put it in perspective and say I challenge the idea that there's any Department in
the city that manages 550 people $10,000 I'm going to manage each of them I'm kind of come in and do their own thing you manage them in that volunteer work um and that's staff in time intensive that's resource driven
I'll also say this cuz I love it I love this project that we had a small group of people 5 years ago very committed very dedicated did great work but because of those people and folks
like you and having more of a um an open and willingness to allow people to do their thing we've grown that from about just under 100 volunteers to five and a half times the number of volunteers that teames
are I think that's that that tells a pretty good story I hope think you're equally as excited when I saw these numbers I was like oh my God I'm going have an heart attack I need to take um it's cool um it really is cool so that's that's kind of my director
there's some pretty good stuff coming up um we're trying to get ahead of our newsletters people don't understand that there's a huge time element in the production of each of those newsletters like you have to create content and graphics and you have to confirm programs schedule it our scheduling
interesting in the recent salary study that was done by the city of gardener one of the metrics that they um evaluated Us by was uh scheduling and planning and strategic planning we do a year and two 14 months
in advance planning on all of our programs so if you look at our schedule we have our concert set we have our holiday program set for 2025 in January of that year we don't have the luxury of waiting until two weeks before the program to announce a program otherwise
our seem is going to know anything about it so that too is intensively getting the word out we do great un Communications um we have wonderful Partnerships with a lot of organizations that support us so now when we send out uh Facebook content because we're
getting so many interactions they're more willing to to share and add that content to their page folks like the CAC and the City Board of Health and Haywood Hospital are pushing a lot of content out that we develop and send um our
number of newsletters have increased we can 2,000 newsletters and more Outlets than we ever had before all color 12 page significant message boards every single month are updated throughout the building so that people no matter what room they're in can see the messages about upcoming programs maybe they
missed it in a newsletter or they forgot about it so it's a great reminder our Robo calls and reminder calls or other great communication pieces for us but certainly social media has helped us a lot and I got to say because I love to say it um because I love people like
this we have a just a wonderful partner in the alliance and science department who no matter what I ask or when I ask his answer is always yeah we'll get it done when do you needed bu um if he doesn't like how we sent it he'll redo
it and make it better uh those kind of people are just a blessing to be around and so I'm going to give a Doug out uh shout out to Doug and Pat and just thank you for your support as well as all the other folks that make our programs work with that any questions we have any
thoughts comments I have just one thing to reiterate first what Mike mentioned was about the cancellations and stuff when we have SN and I a notation only because next week is school vacation week and U
there probably won't be any messages on TV we we up the morning look it so juste pay attention you got a phone call from Michael here at the office uh say there uh no program because of bad weather so we'll take it from there but just make sure everybody just listen carefully and
like I said don't please don't think it's just a scam call when you're get List have to say and that's the that's the uh impetus if you see bad weather coming and you see a phone call from the senior center pick it up because 99% of the time that's a announcement about a
program either where delayed or closed or um something to that effect next week in particular but I can't I got to say it as well I had it under other uh open business but it is disappointing when our members come and they're frustrated
they show up at the senior center after we are either experiencing a delay or a closure and you can see their frustration and their you know disappointment in the programing and that's disappointing for us um you know when we're here here cleaning snow somebody's got get a building so all
hands are on Deck outside and we have a 2hour delay we can't open early um the other major consideration from a policy perspective you need to know is like I can't open early for one group and not open early for others so on you know on
a Tuesday we might be close to getting ready to open if I open early for that you know the wood counter or whoever come in on Tuesday but I don't open early on Thursday for that group after s um it is really unfair and it is
challenging to negotiate that conflict so we try to stay pretty even killed our Weather policy is we follow the schools during the school year if the school is canel does that mean by the way we get all that we off L upset people able to come
including me um if the school is closed for a weather um condition then we're close if they have a two 2hour delay we have a 2hour delay 1 hour we have 1 hour if they close early we close early because it's the only consistent way for
us to get the message out now I want you all to know as well that that I wasn't necessarily thrilled with this um I think the schools do a great job but I said well what if the senior center is open why and we have a different policy than the school so we contacted channels
4 or 57 honest to God we did and I said I would like to be one of the organizations that announced the closures and they we do school closings they don't include like the Tai Chi group of um you know wer mass or the
they won't do it so um we're Exempted from that unless we become a school which so yeah some Churches they do yeah yeah one of centers absolutely got shot down by
all three so um and the schools work for us so that's a good thing we will post it on our Facebook page as soon as we know we'll do a robo call to the folks that have registered and signed up this is really important for any event
happening that day over the course of the last 4 weeks now the reality is some people come to events and don't like to sign in there's no negative impact on signing into a program it lets us know utilization
numbers that I just shared with you so when we go to the mayor we have about 700 725 seniors a week coming to our Center um which is a lot that doesn't include the special like tax season we'll do 120 taxpayers we do about 1,500
Medicare appointments doesn't include those um those are those are big numbers if you don't sign in there's no way for us to know that you participate in the wood cage group for yoga to get a notice we go back four weeks anybody who's
participated in the last four weeks notice so just you all know if we had somebody who's a snowbir per say and the last time they came was in December and they want to come you know this this Thursday they we won't we won't be able
to call them cuz we don't know that they were here we can't we just simply can't go back 52 weeks and pick everybody up that was in the program and you know that's a really good I mean that's a really good thing for us to talk about so I appreciate that uh one last thing when we talk about that we're in the
throws of completing our operations manual and that is no small fee um we're we're looking over everything we do and how we do it how are purchases made how are people paid what is the process for
doing time sheets and warrants and things like that one of the systems we use so that somebody coming into the administrative assistant role or the facility's role or the director's role know what the systems are and expectations they are not City specific
they are Senior Center specific and addition to those we also have a procedures and guidelines manual that talk about specific programs how do we set up the tops program how do we do the The Dread raffle who's in charge of Bingo and how is that set up what do the
infrastructure look like what Logistics look like who picks up the food um you know 3 days a week or 5 days a week or how are items stored here all of that and we have a policy manual which are the very specific kind of rules and
regulations of the senior center of the three you know which one's the biggest that's policy man thank God that's a good thing it's small have a lot of rules now that's really all I have cuz he had to open the door to the
[Music] cancellation so we're up to open this open discussion um something that just happened this past week Mary I had a couple other people from one of the groups that we were in uh we're looking at what's been happening our SE the
center um yoga class on Fridays has we di diminished from around 14 or so down to like 5 to 6 the last couple of weeks and we were wondering about if we could switch the time of the walking group of the seniors at the city hall that a
workable thing I instructor can Swit all house we were think be 10:00 right now the lady that doesn't is here for our play the fitness group in the morning at 8:30 and that would be nice if she up here at 8:30 to 9:30 that check is involved yeah we can look at that that
probably isn't something that's going to be deliberated or decided here in this meeting but um you Ron and I can talk offline and look at that we'll talk to our instructor Mary Le her just so you all understand Mary Lee Harrington is the instructor for the walking group she
does Fun and Fitness Friday morning so she does fun finish from 8:30 to 9:30 kind of cleans up closes up 10:00 and by 10:30 she's at City Hall um that's why that happen that was also the the decision we made when um Amy was going
to do that by way can't mention um how much we send our love in a minute um so that was always plan we can look at at changing that we also have to be mindful of what the availability at City Hall is and it's not the actual footprint it's
about staff that can open up and lock up and do those kinds of things to let yeah we'll look at that nothing's off the table but at least for now Nancy I had something to say about that um as someone who goes to both of those
things like fun and fitness itself is an incredible workout and I need a little time in between before the walking group so personally I would not want to go from Fun and Fitness is over to the City Hall the walking group is wonderful it's
a workout too so that's my opinion and we had a lot of interest like a lot of people were poing us to do that and I'm very appreciative of the folks at City Hall that make that possible for us um again it just shows and demonstrates that we're all working in the same
direction trying to accomplish same goals um but let's not you know we can might even be able to look at it on a different day or something but um we'll look at we were just quick looking at the schedule ourselves what was it yesterday
Monday and we were look at the schedule just to find out was something that would not interfere with too many other people that would go to F Fitness we also like to go to yoga class also but just that I got a little yoga class went down quite a bit uh last I want to bring up on a
little bit past three um it is aiming so for those of you who don't know our fun fitness instructor l the week after we announced a new program suffer pretty significant Health um condition she's going to be out of commission for a little bit uh for sure maybe at the end
of the day she's going to decide that that she won't be able to come back but we were able to Pivot pretty quickly and get a temporary in um that's going to turn into a permanent long term until we know what am's uh decision is going to be for
Fridays and are still working on our our our permanent temporary placement for Mondays so it was kind of a big hit um not only did she have a great presence here for her classes she had a great presence here throughout the week so we
miss her terribly and on behalf of our board continue to wish her the very best and let her know that we miss her terribly um can't wait for have her back in the S okay thank you Michael you really missed people that asking about [Music]
it I know Julie Mr upstairs also yeah okay anything else for open discussion up Mary um I had a question about the uh State ethics training and the summary of the conflict of interest
law that we were taking online do you need the certificates turn in and do you have any dead those people that have not done it yesterday um yeah so so annually on your anniversary date of the last completion you need to do that it is
mandatory for all members of public boards um or agencies to do the conflict of interest um and ethics training you are required to do it now typically was on a 2-year cycle this year I understand that people got notices that might have
done it last year and when poking them and looking at it it looks like it's more of a refresher than it was the full int's course but it may not have been it may have been single person unique uh experience but please if you haven't done it please do so now let me also
offer this if you haven't done it because accessing it is tough come here we'll set you up on a computer we'll put you in the middle of the the office and we will assist you in going through the training this we going to give you the answers but we'll give you the help you need with technology and navigating it
and getting it done um in the most easy and noninvasive way possible but it's not it's not really tough but it is a legal requirement with do it thank you Mary for bringing that up um and I asked if um you could put the time that you
spent on those training activities if you can put it in the computer in a certain place yes volunteer yeah so all of you should now have a volunteer signing um there were a few members of the board that got missed in the last update so
when you sign in for this meeting you swipe in and then you have you know board meeting that's okay but in the upper left hand corner you're going to see your name and it says volunteer if you press on that you can just put in the number of hours that you're here
today or the number of hours you work this week as a volunteer um that was part of the reason of that 10,000 there were a lot of people that we weren't capturing so we kind of did an audit of it um I had an ncy sit with me and Karen and we went through and we found there
were a lot of volunteers that didn't have the volunteer icon because they weren't made active Vol they were listed as volunteers but they weren't made active the minute we make it active you will see that little tiny thing in the upper left hand corner if you didn't see that when you signed in today or when
you leave today if you'd like to test it and see if it works just swipe your card if you don't have your card you use your last name and phone number uh first name and phone number it's wicked easy you don't need a card and we can check and make sure you have it yeah because I forgot to do it this morning I said 10 in this morning did first group second
group and up here then after I got home and having lunch oh I forgot to volunteer so I don't care it when I came is it's very easy yep the other cool thing about it is if you forg get your hours today and you're signing tomorrow you can add your hours for today tomorrow you don't miss because you get
to you get to self report how many hours you did so we did two today and two tomorrow you can report four tomorrow so we can add time computer to yep absolutely anytime you spend relative to your work as member of the board so um
you know you figure you're here for an hour and a half for the meetings but if then we have conversations you know that total a half an hour you can add that in that's volun your time absolutely all right
okay anything else I'm going to make a motion to oh okay okay all made a motion to adourn a second second okay and all in favor and our next meeting will be on March the 3rd tentatively and it's going
to be at 2:00 in the afternoon see you all that [Music]