make you feel that and uh they uh you can take them to more places oh sure but uh it's really um good afternoon everyone to
our our monthly meeting of the board uh Council aging at 2:00 in the afternoon before we begin I have an announcement to make any person may make a video or audio recording of the Open session of the meeting or they may transmit the meeting through any medium subject to
reasonable requirements of a chair in the member placement number placement and operation equipment news who has not interfered with the conduct of the meeting any person intending to make such recording shall
notify the chair forth with all documents referred to or used during the meeting are to be submitted in duplicate to the chair pursuant to the open meeting public pre la all documents shall become part of the official recording of the meeting anybody
recording the meeting today could I guess all say okay uh we're going to have anybody read the minutes that we that might pass out any questions on the
[Music] minutes turn was this uh no it was not okay so you you have it now you have the chance to review it now can it take a few minutes to review it you sure can make a motion
to do that no you don't need a motion okay just one correction on those present we have to take off our dear Gloria tarpy's name she was unfortunately she was not here was the day I took her
home that was wednes and then Satur she was yes sorry about that no dear glor was with us that day is's going to be a celebration of her life this Saturday the 8th of March and
not the PAC from 1 to 4 and U would be nice if you know people would try to attend bac4 Saturday April 8th uh just a couple quick comments uh actually Terry is
correct pull that away we're getting some feedback there you go yep um in on the February meeting glor was not here she was heing for the January meeting not February meeting so she needs to be taken off that you are correct on that she was not here meeting and then a few
days lat no that was January it was January and your microphone is giving feedback so just don't bring it so close to your to your face yep I don't think it's working but for for all of you just a reminder on the
stem on the little nub there's a little gray button Trace stem right over the [Music] side all right just push it
up top light like oh wow it's tiny okay sobody I also was not at the meeting the meeting I think I got that I don't know I went through about six times so I apologize for
that like that happens it may have just been a carry over from the January meeting y we [Music] you did yes that's how I remember that was here
motion made to accept the minutes n moment if there's a motion Paul um then the motion is made we can we can decline but if there's a motion so the chair has asked for motion is
there Cor cor you say chy was here was here [Music] was Paul hold on you can't make motion when there's a motion on the table and we're waiting for a second so is Mr
chair yes is there a second motion I I would I would make a recommendation that we hold off excepting the minutes until the corrections are made and a corrected copy be provided in April okay okay so
the Motions been made second so procedurally what that would mean is you would just um vote on the motion and vote no or to table the person who made the motion would amend the motion to just table an acceptance of the minutes
until I make the motion to am my motion to accept the minutes and to table meeting to make a few minor corre okay anybody second on that I'll second okay any
oppose all right so voted V we're go do the update for next month corre yeah we'll bring both back next one yeah motion motion favor
everything yes okay next list is the treasure report that's me okay you should all have a copy of
the report as on February 28 2025 the first item on that report is is the general fund and there aren't too many U you aren't very many changes most of them involve salary uh there were a
few repairs made uh which is noral information Tech and of course energy and utilities uh always a monthly bill and a little bit of office supplies so the total expenditures for the month were
2,113 18 18 and uh we presently have a balance in the general fund of 75,200 [Music] reminding members of the board and the community that we now have week day
nights so we we're open at night twice a week and we work on some Saturday so um anytime there's snow we're working on a Saturday or Sunday a holiday in fact all our come holiday so it's costing us a bo bo um hopefully we'll be we'll be able
to make with a thousand otherwise proba any any other question on the general f just on the general fund any question at all okay moving on to the gift fund we did have some gifts in February mounting
to 24527 two of those gifts were from people that wish to remain anonymous and um one gift it wasn't a gift but one was a collection for the clothing that we collect out there that we're able to
sell and three of the guests were in memory of deceased members which is always nice people donate and I'm sure that the like that your office sends out thank you it to them we also publish it
in our newsletter and yeah we the answer is yes and we do publish in newsl yeah so anyway uh otherwise no changes on the GI fund and at the moment 9, 64601 and 25,000 is uh set aside for
painting when the time comes but at the moment he balance is 90 6461 any questions on the Paul I see you ex you said painting painting the walls or painting well whatever needs to be
painted we set aside 25,000 as a contribution or as a gift to help with the pain it won't cover it all but we voted that quite a long I I just keep mentioning it so you won't think you got 90,000 to spend we've got 90 minus 25 so
that everyone knows um this board voted to set aside 25,000 as a match to whatever the city can match um so if the painting cost only 30,000 our investment would be 15 so it's a 50/50 match and it's for painting
walls and ceilings not for the um portrait of the dver oh I'll have to cancel my appointment for my city so any other question the gift fund pretty much just as it is nothing that's
been spend out we got some gifts in and then total and 25,000 in escro okay moving on to the revolving fund and uh that was uh pretty regular there weren't too many expenditures in
February from the revolving fund uh a little money went to do something in the pool room and U some money to Amazon that would be for items and um and that's about it the total expenses were
14 3233 and the balance at the moment is 47,0 54405 and we do have one um outand ending purchase order you can see it the
top towards the top in the right hand col 70868 and that's the hand of hers and so naturally it would be for food yeah and I think that's going to we talked about it last month I stayed it for a little bit because I thought we'd have a major
me uh food purchased but we don't need to purchase it now so that's coming out our transportation will go up there a couple other just normal things that happen that we contract with the 475 45505 475 4405 is the number we should
all be looking at in the balance right now oh is there any question on any of the [Music] items in the revolving fund oh what did they purchase for the
pool downstairs fix a table or buy some balls or so fixing the tips they're actually called uh just curious yep they have a a certain you put the the little blue tip on but those white extensions
had to be replaced on eight uh sticks so people think that's cheap that was eight sticks cost us $175 to that's pretty expensive the pool table felt when we move those tables just to refelt the tables with a decent high level not the
best expert quality green is going to cost us $800 a table and it cost us about $100 each to move the T so we're talking with some folks about the possibility of purchasing a Ed table that's in good shape um because we
really expect when of the tables won't make them move so we'll see whether or not that happens I'll probably Comm roling fund or GI fund depends oh yeah that could be that could be something because everyone is eligible
to use even if you don't but I could go if I wanted to that would be an eligible expense yes is are there any questions on the revolving fund at all from anybody any questions no okay let us
move on to the uh FY 24 State Grant and again that looks pretty much in order there weren't too many uh expenditures in February quite a bit of it was for the of instructors which naturally had to be paid out and
for the and there was an expense for the um well I guess it wasn't for the elevator why is the it is yeah the 15 7271 is for the elevator maintenance so um and the Outreach
coordinator and uh so the balance the expenditures for February were $ 47329 and the balance in the grant fund is 30, 9468 and uh we have some contract purchase
orders we've got there but at the moment everything seems in order does anybody have any questions about the FY 24 State grant for the first time in a long time our regular expenses exceeded the contractor Personnel instructor expenses
usually it's about at least 6040 um gears towards contractors for this month we have more expenses especially with the elevator maintenance cost that was for the inspection and reinspection process of B load to have the company come back and do the re
inspection um so that's what that is uh why that expense is so high and we have about we project so when you say contracts we look at buing the year estimate how many classes people have at their hourly rate and do a projection on
the purchase order sometimes we're under our Act our actual expenses sometimes we're over on the actual expenses but right now we anticipate about 25,500 in additional expenses for those contractors between now and June 30th so
uh that'll leave us with a balance a projected balance of about $4,600 in the state Grant as we approach June 30th we'll look at that a little bit more aggressively and see how we just do some uh journal entries to um
reclassify some expenses into the grant or vice versa reclassify some expenses into revolving from from the grant our hope is always to to close out the Grant in the next following year so we're hoping to close out 24 Grant by June but
it's not a promise um there are so many fluid things in this year's budget that I'm going to talk a little bit more about uh after the full reports done and the next one up is the FY 25
Grand and I can't and so far we haven't begun to spend anything but that will pick up in the near future at the moment we have 83,5 65 in that
account and uh now I'm going to really turn the whole thing over to Mike because uh I don't understand all the transfers and expenses and everything for the anyway I did go to the first he did have
his first class already and it was believe it or not it's our fifth class that we've had on the tech grm we did a bunch in the summer oh through September and then we took a little hius as we were trying to um get our production
card going so that we could truly put those out on zoom and now we're starting the next round of sessions but you did attend we had a pretty good attendance I was uh pleasantly surprised um most of what you see on the tech Grant budget is our journal entries
and accounting functions the grant originally allowed us to buy some Hardware including a NE board owls uh some laptops for the production and integration of online uh opportunities for seniors we
bought Chromebooks that's hardware um we brought some software to support that Hardware including some office subscriptions for the laptops Chrome manager to allow us to manage the Chromebooks outside of the Four Walls of the senior center to ensure that they
are not scoundrel access points the waps that we have also require a switch which was not accounted for in the original Grant request um and then a lot of person time so we had about
$114,000 in this grant that we set aside to pay instructors and interns it was unusually difficult to get the interns on board um when we first started this program last May um and have not seen a
lot of luck until very recently and now we have a couple interns that are interested will throw them stiens however we are obligated to spend all of this money by March 31st so in order to do that there's no way I would hire $114,000
worth of instructors in the next 28 days instead what we did is we asked the managers of the grant for a funding request and made some commitments uh in that in that change order so we've now moved a lot of money
into equipment which is an easy purchase we can buy the equipment certainly get that done the next 28 days and fulfill the requirements of the Grant pay for our subscriptions ahead of time that's a piece of cake um so we moved the really the $114,000 into some of the additional
switching equipment and for another production cart like the one we have here at the Garden senior center for Templeton so that'll give us two high depth cameras a switch some remote control um very simple to use remote control equipment for somebody who's
monitoring the class to be able to give us better high def output for our speaker presenter and the class activities imagine if you will a speaker it's not hard to stay static in Fr front of a camera don't need a lot of high-tech equipment for that but if you
have a speaker with an involved audience a presenter or an instructor so maybe doing yoga or funing Fitness now it becomes a little bit more complicated you can't do a single camera with that so this is a kind of cool technique that's also being replicated by the two
organizations that that are giving us all of the free um advice and that's another very positive thing is we had built in some money for instructors for our our tech for our staff they're doing it Grace so we saved
all that money um that we would normally put into it similarly with our instructor we have a Chromebook instructor that has agreed to do the class for free for now um but that allows us to expand expand the program
to maybe include some additional classes with paid instructors so that's not a bad thing so almost all of the money with the exception of $300 is going out of personnel and into equipment um we received the approval last Thursday that the
grant uh amendment was was accepted and approved so put in the purchase orders this morning and hopefully the equipment will be here forth with with that uh that's the tech grant let me just tell tell you very quickly um that's been our experience all year
so not only in the tech Grant but for other instructors we're getting to the point where folks are doing things when we might have built in a bottom line cost um for those programs and they're doing it for free which we're very grateful for it allows us to use and
utilize the experience and skills and passions of our seniors rather than having an Outsource it so um I'm very grateful first for the influx of volunteers and the numbers of people that are willing to do the programs it
causes a little bit of an accounting issue for us but but not significant and we'll be moving some of those concerns to the city auditor um to make sure that you know we have these funds for future years as well so I'm I feel like we've
never been in better Financial footing than we are today um and not that you know business looking to make the profit or have huge cash reserves but the beautiful thing about this is it gives us a little bit of flexibility to add more programming and buying more um
things to support our classes for example we started a ukulele class here at the gar Senior Center it was filled we lent out all of the ukuleles that we bought for the purpose of lending them out so they're all out on the street and
people using them we had a ukulele strum and instructors had indicated some people had attended that don't play ukulele so could we support that group with some percussion instruments it's a lowcost easy expense that in the past we
wouldn't have been able to do we have the cage and drum class we're able to buy the drums for the classes and not have to use 5 gallon buckets you know have some nice lap drums um why is that important because the bucket idea meant that seniors would have to be bent over
probably wouldn't have length s as conveniently than the lap uh Cajun drums some really cool stuff and a lot of those types of things um we've been able to do in support now in a bigger and broader way behind you you'll see a cart
with equipment we bought more weights for different size weights not just numbers but different size weights for our fing fitness group and our yoga group and stretch bands and all of those things that we never were able to do before because of the generosity of our
community just wanted to let you know that we'll be watching kind of probably making a request to the city to uh increase the amount of funds you can carry over in the revolving fund um I'm hopeful that they say yes and uh because there are some additional expenses that
will be going into the city budget from that account that'll free up more cash in the revolving account again a great problem to have um I want to just thank Terry and John Richard for their help in kind of reviewing our financials every
month just for purposes of disclosure the financial report you have goes to our city auditor as an official recording of the financial report presented so sometimes when it's maybe not entirely correct they still get it you don't give them a documented or
doctored up version of those financial reports I just wanted to ask is there any report on the our budget request do we have a meeting set up yet today not not yet I imagine so the way the budget process works in the late in the late
part of the calendar year which is Midway through the fiscal year we're required to put together a proposed budget that proposed budget goes to the mayor by mid January I think January the third week of January was our deadline the mayor reviews those makes a
recommendation and sends them to the city council the city council then refers each of those sections to their um the the Departments that they have oversight for so in the past it was the welfare committee we're now called the
Community Development um it's has a new name so it's along with other Community Development and ser human service sector departments in the city um we'll meet with them discuss our budget they'll make a a recommendation to the council
as a whole and the city council as a whole will vote on their recommendations so it's a little bit of a process we're right on target where we were last year we're not any further ahead any further behind we're right exactly where we were last year so I imagine in the next couple weeks we're going to hear about
the budget meetings with our um our city council um on the um thing with the Chrome books that whole thing we have to all use up all that money by you explain that
clearly I appreciate that has there been any mention or discussion about the program after funds are gone like as far as any budgeting things as far as estimate what's going to cost to maintain the program the beautiful thing
about the grant is it's given us two years of funding so we have two years of funding for the internet access two years of funding for loal manager two years of funding for the zoom licenses um the the office licenses are single licenses they're not 365 we don't have
to renew those those are in perpetuity uh the Chromebooks will replace over time each of cor books was about $500 including the uh embedded internet card so you know I imagine in a couple years we're going to have to start replacing but it's low cost low impact
because all the other infrastructure was built around it so all of the big ticket items um were paid for out of the grant the long-term continuous of the internet classes technology classes um are built
into a revolving fund and those other other funds the grant fund so we have money to pay for instructors and things like that well the good news is is the Chromebooks are if you go to about Chrome on Chromebooks if tellal on Google is going to support it and it's
usually about 7even years until if they will no longer put Security cches on it or software updates on it which is great the only issue is is how long will they last from a mechanical point of view yep you know um not so much a software but a
mechanical point of view or abuse of the computers someone used and now it's now functional that yeah you we've kind of built that in each Center has 10 so we'll be responsible for maintaining
10 any other thoughts questions comments I submit the treas report and agendas for a motion to approve I a motion to approve the addend for the minutes and the um treasurers report okay we have a
second second very good now we're going to have all in favor any opposed okay now we're going to have the motion to accept our treas report that was
was I guess we did did next thing is on our list is both for business updates new business from prior meeting we have anything Micha old business no okay very good now we have new business director's report I love
sharing this because I think you know people want to quantify growth um and this really helps us quantify growth we've been very aggressive in the last year and a half building a social media presence um and certainly in the last three months have elevated that
significantly what kind of impact does that have our page now has over 37,000 views um tremendous for a small senior center right so the vast majority of people in the community aren't really excited about getting updates on yoga
but 37 000 views is pretty significant in the last 30 days we have a reach of about 6,300 uh people we had 960 content interactions people clicking on moving forward going into opening the newsletter that kind of stuff in the
last 28 days we've had 10 new followers which brings us well over 900 followers on our Facebook page 664 likes um again pretty significant considering the population is a very specific and specified um group of people
we had um the number of views per post for example our largest view per post exceed 7,300 7,300 people looked at one post and had some interaction um we had
5,539 views on our dance recent post about dance on Monday nights others other numbers include like 5,773 and several of our posts reach views of over 4,000 from an email perspective we have
18849 contacts in our email list of which 460 480 are from um my senior center so those are registered log seniors that have given us their email address what does that say it says there are about 300 people that have subscribed to the
newsletter that aren't part of the senior center from the community that's a pretty good number we have about a 50% open rate which is statistic about where it should be I'd love to see that open rate get up and we're working on some strategies to get people to to open up
the newsletter a little bit more um yeah the email newsletter um for email we have 22 new subscribers in the last 30 days about 500 have hit the most engaged but about 300 have hit the least engaged which means that they don't really open
it they just leave the email sit in their inbox number of calls in 20 24 thank you to our friends at uh voter call who put this report together for me we had outbound calls that exceeded 9,000 I'm sorry inbound calls that
exceeded 9,500 inbound calls our outbound calls were equal that much and just to throw some estimates because some of our outbound calls don't go through my vooc call they go through my senior center
each Robo call we do is uh over 2500 calls in 6.3 seconds which is kind of cool we've done at least six Robo calls this year um we're doing the analysis now we can actually look at the list I just didn't have time to do it tonight
it's probably close to eight and N but based on six that was uh a reach of about 20,000 calls that we put out just on my senior center that doesn't include by the way any of the individual calls for classes reminders cancellations
notices and things like that we did a ton of calls for reminders appointments believe or not that's me I never ever have my phone on um for that reason um our appointing calls and
our just our Outreach calls were probably another 8,000 calls so you put that together total it's about 30,000 outb calls from the garden senior center in 2024 it's a big number um for Google
we had 1,400 Google Business interactions 2,670 views and clicks so somebody pulled it up and then clicked on it to go to our website 320 calls were generated from Google uh business 750
clicks just from our profile our average number of people that come into the senior center on an average week between 700 and 725 per week and when we looked at that we thought well that doesn't really make sense does it like that seems like a lot
but on a Monday we get 174 people regularly with our lowest attendance that doesn't include Walkins or special appointments um people that are coming in and getting referrals or that information that's just our
classes4 people on T Tuesdays it's 142 Wednesdays is our lowest census day just under 40 Thursdays is 112 and Fridays 125 now why is Wednesday so low cuz Wednesdays our special program day every single Wednesday we have a big program
we have Golden Age club we have AARP we have our digital classroom so every Wednesday is a standalone single monthly event that doesn't count on the daily attendance um huge board meetings don't count on the daily attendance for example um Quilter's Guild on a Tuesday
night not part of the daily attendance snap hope uh Medicare Integrity shine our cap not included our tax uh appointments we do we'll do 120 to 130 tax um appointments a year number of
people many of those are are a two Family household but still 120 Golden Age Club has about 30 to 40 on a bad on a bad uh month and uh arp
so all of those things the St Pats do the next week we have 120 people coming to that lunch not including in our daily attendance um and then the other dinners and programs Cricket classes tech classes art classes um all of those
don't count in those numbers I just provided to you so our numbers are fairly good and I think we're doing um I think we're doing really well for those of you who don't know and all of you do but for the viewers who don't know the senior center a year and ahead we're 12 months now planning next march next
April's events we're not planning October November anymore most of those have already been filled um the beautiful thing about it is we have people asking us one they can come in we also schedule uh senior moments TV show our senior moments TV show guest
appearance which is a monthly show is booked now through October of this year um a ARP and golden M club we help book those speakers those a book through October of this year um which is really good it shows you know we're 8 n months
out on those special programs in March a whole bunch of things are coming out our Tech Grant allows us to do the digital classroom and the cricet classes so if you want to learn how to to use crickets no they're not little insects they are these neat machines that allow you to do all kinds of craft stuff and they're really cool
they're very um they're kind of very Hightech and allow folks to do a lot of different things including cutting fabric cutting wood cutting plastic on these uh devices our St Pat's event I talked about next week we'll have 120
people there I want to just give out a shout even though um they they say we don't have to do it we have great Partners in the community that are helping us with this dinner um certainly I've mentioned a number of time about the collaboration we do on a daily basis
but certainly for big programs The Garden of CAC is a heavy lifter in this Cher City Church is helping now with it we have a whole bunch of community volunteers that work as chefs that are coming in that day to help cook and prepare the food um a wonderful a beautiful woman uh
Denise heard that we were looking for a special dessert and said um I'll make I'll make desserts for 120 people a Guinness cake um so those are the kinds of things that is that are happening because of the gracious ambassadorial
ship of each and every one of you and the members in our Center to talk about the good things to do and the the connectedness that they make are you CLE glasses doing great we have our Cajun drum uh group coming up this month for the first time we're offering um the class starts in March of 2025 you can't
beat it um we have concerts in March and March April and May now that are booked uh our vet uh our travel program if you didn't notice coming in today we made a little change in the hallway we had to change our bulletin board and our travel
board because our travel um our trips that are scheduled for 2025 and now 2026 the room it takes for those brochures uh exceeded the room that was available so we had to break into new space and create a whole new display for them to allow for all of the different
pamphlets and information brochures for our trips coming up at the Gardner Senior Center thanks to of course Diane pellet who does the cruxs of that work uh Allison shalopad for the Vets trips um a P for the trips that they're doing
specifically for their group and particularly I want to let you know that we have uh vets trips planned with three big vets trips planned in 2025 including uh the USS Constitution Fall River Battleship Cove
and the woo um American Heritage Museum so four big trips planned for the Vets um we also have a woo game planned for the seniors so lots of good stuff going on and Hartman's Hartman's Herb Farm it's a
kind of a new and unique trip that's dedicated first for the um ARP members and depending on the reach and the participation levels would be open up to the guarden senior center um today
officially at 7:30 a.m. we started with our first um case for the lifeline program we are now administering Lifeline of north central Massachusetts that used to be AOL Hospital the way Lifeline used to work is you'd have a receiver based in a community
organization and people would subscribe and their calls for service would go in through that receiver and through the people monitoring that they would call out for EMS or those kind of experiences well that Tech is long gone but having a local organization respond to the needs
of people who have the lifeline service has gone kind of um by the wayside AOL Hospital hospital was the last one in north central Massachusetts to do it there were a little over right around 100 subscribers to Lifeline um but they
haven't been marketing it they haven't been promoting it and they haven't accepted any new customers because of capacity issues as they were going through you know their own kind of uh you know series of difficulties in this economy so AAL Rotary Club has
graciously agreed to continue to do the support side of Lifeline for us any body who is an AOL orange uh in those communities out there so um wear Warren um Salem they'll do the troubleshooting
for those they'll call today in fact we had a battery low battery call and um after allu was right on in Garder they're going to train our team and we're hoping they solicit a group of volunteers that'll be our our responders
to the same kind of things nothing really heavy nothing major they'll go out maybe change a unit change a battery that's 99% of the time plug a unit back in So when there's a a service call that the it's not receiving um the messages 99% of the time it's it's unplugged so
I'm just going in and visiting and that really gives us another major people say why are you doing the lifeline there's no money coming in for us right now there's nothing it's not because we're going to make a million dollars um but it's because of connection and the need for connection and there was probably no
better organization Suited to do this service for our seniors and to provide this service it's probably the number one thing we get asked about in The Garden area a Lifeline program we have a young lady who's on board with us that's going to be taking up most of the
administrative stuff about Lifeline including signing up new people when we're ready to do that and kind of monitoring the trouble calls along with me um so that's our plan of work as it Rel relates to Lifeline Paul Crowley make sure you're on you do
yeah uh and I'm not sure this is the the right program for us but we're being reactive is there a way to be proactive for example we have a lot of seniors that might be home today having some distress or out of the service and we
wouldn't know because they can't get here um is there a way and is it our role to dial up our members say how you doing what do you need that's my next talking point Paul and the answer is yes so for those of you
who don't remember it's part of our annual report we're really proud to talk about our Outreach efforts we try to reach out to as many seniors as we can that don't have that haven't been connected with us in a little while so if they've come into the center in the last two years that's generally our our
uh litness test we make a call for them see what's going on see why they're not coming is it just because they founded something new is it a Mobility or Transportation issue and um to provide that connection right so it's just really a wellness check on them that's done by the senior center Lifeline also
gives us that so you know I want you to imagine for a minute a service call coming in for a low battery uh and you being the responder to that and you're going into a Senior's home who may be Mobility impaired either because of a medical condition a mental health
condition or Transportation probably hasn't seen anybody in a while um you could probably plan on fixing that problem in about 5 or 10 minutes but we tell people plan an hour because it's going to take a minute
to eat the snacks and drink the tea um with our seniors and we kind of Chu about it but it gives us a great opportunity to get into people's homes and re-engage them and maybe start to look at what some of the issues are that are homebound seniors are facing that
maybe they're not reported similarly for the Third semester in a row we have a social worker a human services student that on boarded with us this week so her first day was this morning um so sue Bennett is building that role Sue is
helping me do the case management that step so along with our volunteers that making a a ton of calls we talk about the number of calls we made a year those were a lot of them were Wellness checks probably 1,500 to 2,000 of those were Wellness checks just calling people for
no apparently good reason other than say Hey you were here two years ago we haven't seen a bit what's going on um yeah we think that's that's pretty important and then the last thing about connectivity goes back to the tech Grant the whole purpose of the tech Grant is to is that we recognize that there
seniors who aren't coming to the senior center that might want to participate in the programs and they're not coming for a lot of reasons they may not be coming because of a uh primary physical health issue they just you know don't have the ability to to walk that Farve that far
they may be come because of a mental health or anxiety um you know concern about measels or or Co or some other reason like that just or just general anxiety they don't want to get out social anxiety exist folks um especially
among seniors and you know we think that that people have figured out coping mechanisms but sometimes it gets worse as a senior and then they may not be coming for transportation issues but still want to participate in yoga so how do we do that well we tried using a single camera it
didn't work too well but hopefully all of our programs by the end of this year will have the availability to sign on online using Zoom so that people can interactively participate not look at a recording um if they have a question
they can ask the question if they you know are are concerned about a particular pose they can ask the question to the um to the instructor and similarly they're getting all the same feedback from the class that they would get as if they were in person so super
important thing for um for Paul to bring up and I hope you know that that we agree like we have always generally been reactive but in the last 12 months have changed that work plan because of part of the work that we did at the board
orientation and strategy sessions last uh summer to set kind of a new course additional course um for the for the staff here at the G sen that was really all that I have I will take any
questions thoughts comments anything I just want to ask a question go ahead M I had a question about legal liability are we under an umbrella for the city for anything for the lifeline nope nope no liability no all we're doing is
providing a support call um so there's there's no liability we had that that it with um what hey would actually what exposure did they have and their risk people are a little bit more sophisticated than the risk people here at disease so that was the first
conversation we had but great pring and we're not providing services in the in the regard to you know somebody's primary care it's lifeline and Lifeline is asking us uh to just go out and respond and here's another interesting thing in many cases if the the clients
of one of those Services called they wouldn't get an immediate response in 8 or 12 hours and um and when they do get a call there's a charge for so we provide kind of that immediate service
and we do it at no cost to volunteers rases generosity people giving their time there's no particular expertise by the way if you're a volunteer out there thinking he this would be a great job for me you don't have to be a tech person all you need to know is how to
battery out and put it back in or plug a unit back in and test it that kind of training will give to you um how to set up the unit it's really pretty easy when we set it up we test it John on the spot so we don't leave there knowing that it doesn't
work what about you had light L and your fell how do you get any help then you not my battery I'm flying on the yeah so so we know way ahead of the battery dying that
there's it's getting low so we're changing it before it shuts off but the way it works is you push a button now and it's it's no longer um it's no longer a unit in the hospital it goes to Lifeline directly so when Lifeline who
has 247 365 monit when you press that button Lifeline gets an alert and they call you a mess so they're calling police fire ambulance and they're saying go to 294 Pleasant Street we have a call for service um and they're they're John on a
spot our response is from a technical side our response is to make sure that those batteries are changed before they die um our response is to go and check and see why the unit isn't sending a signal um before somebody's in distress soone knock on the door and say Hey you
know your unit isn't working oh yeah I was back to me plet true that like that's that's kind of what happens so they moved it and if you get point back in just a sidebar two months ago you mass or mass Advantage Medicare plant
called me to offer me a lifeline and never came they called me two weeks ago and said how do you like it I said well it never came well we'll get right on that and it hasn't cor right so uh there's at least one
Medicare Plan is trying to do something however effective they are we know Lifeline is super important so we had the opportunity to really start to delve into this about two years ago for the first major healthare where folks were
asking us in abundance for referrals to those kind of services not only for themselves but for their parents for their siblings um and we really didn't have a good feel for available in Lifeline um we already had a relationship with them through Haywood
hospital and appal hospital so we were sending people to afol in Haywood and the satisfaction rate is through the roof so um we fig this was a probably a really good opportunity for us and um
and very little risk so so they press the button and the Call Comes to here nope they press the button and the call goes to Lifeline to Lifeline National so a mon just like ADT or Tao they have a call Response Center you push the button
it goes to Lifeline so any of the crisis calls help I falling like and I can't get up I've trip down my stairs I'm having a a medical condition we don't see any of those so no liability no risk we're not responding to those we're not responsible we're sending the MS
Lifeline does that our calls are all about the equipment so so somebody calls and wants Lifeline we're going to go and set up the new equipment we're going to do the billing we do the administrative s we'll do the billing form we're going to go and change batteries or check
units or replace units say we get there and the unit's plugged in it's just not working we'll replace the unit and when you say how do we do that we actually have a stock problem we have a a supply of units a vast supply of units at our disposal that are now currently being
stored at appal hospital will be stored at the Garden senior center we get to our new location right now appol is generously said we'll keep them here no problem so if we need a unit for somebody in Garden we just go to appol pick up the unit bring it back or an appal they go to appal hospital get the new unit um there are a couple different
types of of equipment that they use so uh either the base or the cellular one this the base um you're restricted to the to the service being provided within a couple hundred ft of that base so if you out the G probably work if on your
driving it probably work if you're upstairs in your bedro it probably work but if you go to Stop and Shop it won't work the second device we offers a uh cellular device that'll work anywhere you go you go you know shopping you go with the kids you press that button it's
going to respond to your location so much better type of service I [Music] just do you know everything goes so how we know is everything goes through Lifeline if there's a support
call Lifeline is telling us yeah if it's a crisis call they're calling the UN us and they're only calling us for our customers they're not calling us for somebody in wer or Tennessee we think we try um you know if
if we hadn't picked it up the lifeline support in north central would have been dis it was that was the um yeah the only kind to that uh well look at it if it's something that we're not good at or we can't fulfill in a few
months we're going to reevaluate we'll determine whether it's not some people we going to continue from the support side Lifeline is going to continue forever so somebody who's on life right now whether we administer the building or do the technical support stuff they'll still get that in a different in
a different I'm just wondering why would Hospital restruction yeah so you know as yeah I mean it was a it was a fiscal management decision as their staff that supported the program retired and resigned and they were in a position to replace those
people so other people took the task on and those people have been taking on a lot of additional pass and just found from a capacity perspective they pass um and I'm thankful that they thought of us you know before they discontinu this you guys are doing some
pretty good things we think that just work for you we met we've been meeting since the first of January with their folks to see what the impact on our staff would be and we're comfortable enough to say yeah we're able to try this we have some additional staff
support that's going to support the um the call service side so I think we're I think we're in good sh right now but we'll we reevaluate all right that's my director Point any other questions I was going to ask my question when you did your report you mentioned the people who call here
check in Facebook what does it tell how many people check a specific location or specific thing my question is uh like when there has no school and here got doesn't show many people check your Facebook page or your Senor Center page
on their phones or whatever yep I can see the number of interactions on Facebook for every post we make I can see that's why I knew that there were 5,539 views for dance class and
7,260 views for um Gloria you have M your information for your trips from one wall to the other yep we talked about that that right at the beginning yeah and I want to just say a couple people have already spoken to me they like the idea that on the other side CU when they come in they
never think of looking at the wall because when you walked in was on your right hand side you were looking for your monitor to sign in now they got wait in L to sign in this the to see what's there other passing it has a couple advantages I mean the the count
to that is the not the general information go to the bo but we needed the space like this was the right thing to do in order to accommodate all of the um you know new trips and programs that are coming up for you know for that area so yeah it looks good it's um it's
pretty inviting and so we hope people take advantage of it by the way our trips have been crazy good we we're seeing the the preco um participation and we have senior centers from all over the area that are calling to be part of
of our trip program so lemon St Fitchburg AOL as all engaged in our put thanks yeah okay any other discussion of course Micha open discussion open
discussion anybody M Mike mentioned that all the speakers that lined up for a and golden age I just want to let everyone know how appreciative we Golden Ages are have a program director M handles it all
for us and we've been very pleased with all the speakers that he has lined up for so we and I'm sure apprciate Golden Age especially because we were small he takes care thank you he does a great job I bring up the list of what I
think should be speakers for the next six seven months we do it because a couple us we don't have any speakers for specific activi so he has my L we looking at it we're we just to finish it up so well good
stuff any other questions discussions all right our next scheduled meeting will be on April the 7th at 2 p.m usually at 2:00 so no problem there
and we have a motion to aour I'll make a motion bar seconds okay thank you everyone all in favor any oppos okay we're all set see you all again on Monday the 7th of
[Music] April so I don't know if