Council on Aging Board of Directors - Regular Meeting

I'm gonna start the meeting. I'll ask to stand if you're able and join me in the pledge of allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of

The United States Of America. And to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Thank you, everybody. Next order of business is approval of minutes for March 11. I have a motion to accept. So moved. Do I hear a second?

Second.

Any discussion? Any updates? All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? That's unanimous. Russ will move to the finance report and I know we're gonna talk about it a little later at the '26 budget and under new business too, but

Sure. So again, is this year. Truthfully, if you look at most, according to this, we have 76.9% on each one of these, including pay, we won't spend 69.9% of the budget. Now some of these numbers are a little skewed, it'll say like 92%, some people use, that's because they've got their contractors, increases in pay, and things that happen in year. So those are things that are, you know, you're not able to understand at the beginning of the year when you're doing the budget.

Yeah. The financial standing is the same. Purchase of services, 76% of the year, we've only spent 57.3%. Consumable products around 70%. There is nothing glaring here. There's one $506.01 where we actually only spent $400 out of, you know, dollars 100, so those numbers are a little skewed. But if look I through them, I don't see anything that's glaring or that looks like we have to go investigate.

Thank you very much, Russ. Does anyone have any questions for Russ? Like I said, we're gonna discuss it a little later and update. Thank you, Russ. And with that, I'll turn it over to the Director.

Okay, I'm going to, as Russ mentioned, we're 68 expended at 76.9% through the fiscal year, and what is unspent will of course be returned to the general fund. I will circle back to that in a little bit in our next agenda item. I'm going to skip over a couple of these toward that that purpose. So I'm just going to jump to the personnel section. We have just completed annual reviews for all of our AFSCME staff, that's most of our staff, it's about 20 people, so those will be submitted to the Human Resources Department tomorrow.

And and Holly, this is like the first year of that, correct? Yes. For the most part under the new is

first the first annual review that we've completed. We did a midpoint at the six month mark into the into the year and then we've just completed the annual for 20, the calendar year 2025.

Thank you. And

so otherwise otherwise with personnel, we we do have some unfilled filled positions. That's part of the reason you see the slight discrepancies that Russ mentioned in the finance report. There have been some vacant positions, and then where those those have been vacant, you will see other people in the department looking like they're going over budget, but it's because they're putting in extra hours to compensate for the vacant, positions. So meanwhile, we're working a little bit to try to allay staff concerns about layoffs and everybody's okay so far just trying to stay on top of the news and it changes a little bit almost every day. There's an article in tonight's New Mascot week.

So maintenance and physical plant, the day program ceiling that was damaged by ice dams has now been dried out and was fully repaired. The game room ceiling was damaged by wind gusts and that's all straightened out, thanks to Joe, our maintenance man. We've begun the spring grounds cleanup and we're expecting more scout trooper sixty four to come and do a lot of work on the grounds, I think next Tuesday afternoon or evening. So that'll be great to have their help. And then the exterior sign that was damaged by fallen branches in one of the windstorms is back in place, and that's been repaired as well.

So those are some of the smaller items. In previous reports, I had mentioned that we were looking at repaving a section of the driveway out here in front of the loading dock because it's crumbling. And that was estimated by DPW at about 32,000. So given

32,000 or a 132,000.

Given the economic climate right now, that's just on hold till we have a better understanding of what how things are gonna

be looking for us in a

few months. So that's just gonna sit for a little bit. Under activities and volunteers, we have a wonderful program tomorrow, a ring in spring concert. And Oasis Senior Living has sponsored the entertainment for that. I should mention our activities coordinator, Kathy, has been working hard to get sponsors for virtually all of our entertainment events, and she's had great success.

So that's not coming out of budget. It's not coming out of grant funded funding. Funding. For the most part, it is being provided by private entities who are given an opportunity to bring their materials and speak very briefly about what they have to offer. On the sixteenth, we have a cultural council funded lecture with fashion historian, Ren Antowitz.

And then we have a home schoolers play with the Middleborough in collaboration with the public library on the twenty first and an intergenerational program, weather forecasting with a fellow named Richard Tingblad. And those two homeschoolers play and the weather forecasting are both in school vacation week. So we're hoping grandparents will bring their grandkids in and enjoy the programming. We have a new watercolor painting class starting up at the April. And later this month, will be honoring our COA volunteers who've given up thirty hours or more of service within the past year, they will be attending an appreciation dinner.

And thanks for their services to the Council on Aging. The Meals on Wheels, I've got a couple of statistics

for

you. It's interesting to, if we look at the last, this fiscal year and the previous fiscal year, we are actually down slightly by, looks like almost 2,000 meals overall. We served almost 34,000 in the twenty four-twenty five. And for this year, at the same point, we served only about 32,000 meals, provided 32,000 meals. So it's a decrease of 1,700 meals.

So it's an interesting trend to see that. Our demographic predictions had been a little bit different than what we anticipated was that those numbers would continue trending up probably until about 2030, just because of the aging population and the baby boomers and all that kind of thing. But I think since we've moved beyond the pandemic, the demand for that service has decreased a little bit. And that's actually, it's a blessing for both our budget and for our kitchen staff, as well as our volunteer Meals on Wheels drivers. But we do have an ongoing need for volunteers for the Meals on Wheels program.

It's a commitment of about one morning a week, and mileage is reimbursed for folks who are doing the volunteer driving to deliver the meals. Under outreach, coming up in just a few days, we have a workshop called Aging in Place, How to Make Your Home Safe. On May 19, we have another workshop about why your joints hurt and how to reduce inflammation. And meanwhile, Maureen is continuing to work on fuel assistance applications through the end of this month and SNAP applications are ongoing throughout the year. In the supportive day program, they are having a round table discussion and sharing of concerns that's taking place this evening.

We still have openings for both half day and full day clients in that program. And I just want to reiterate, as we have for the past couple of months, scheduling is very flexible. We can really tailor it to meet most families' needs. And we also have grant funding available for people of low income so that they can come and take part and take advantage of the services that we offer in the supportive day program. Meanwhile, the daily census for the program is increasing a little bit, and we're very happy to see that.

And we are looking for volunteer aids in that program as well. On May 13, the day program will host an estate planning overview with elder law specialists, Supernaut Maneski and Nunes, and that will be here free and open to the public. And they will probably be in this space for that month, we'll switch with them and go into the day program room. Under Schein Medicare counseling, Medicare Advantage thing should have been updated, so I'm going to skip over that. They're still offering Medicare one on one information sessions for people who are approaching.

Those are Zoom sessions that's posted in our newsletter. They're available for people who are approaching retirement age or eligibility for Social Security, excuse me, for Medicare. So it gives them a good overview of how that program works. And then finally, in the SHINE program, their counselors have to be recertified every year. This year, they are starting in the spring and the training is going to be online, which will make it a little easier to deliver and hopefully available to more of their volunteers.

And under transportation, we are now, after many months of talking about it, live with the cloud based scheduling, ride scheduling program called SPAIR. We're

still

very much working out the kinks and our clientele is still very much adjusting to the change. I actually took a test ride the other morning. I had to leave my car at the shop and have it worked on. So I took the bus into work, and you get a notification on your phone when your ride is scheduled. You get another notification about twenty four hours in advance.

You get another notification an hour before the ride. So your phone is digging away and then you actually get a call when the bus arrives at your home to pick you up. So it's very different for a lot of people. And Are your clients enjoying that? We're getting mixed reactions.

I did take a complaint today. So as we receive expressions of concern from people, we're working with the folks at GATRA who've been tremendously supportive through this process to work out the kinks in the system and try to make it work optimally for both our staff and clients. But we're very happy to have that one finally up and working to a degree after months of planning. And then just some transportation totals for the month of March. March picked up quite a bit over January and February, as you might imagine, with those nasty storms that we had.

So we had six eighty eight rides given on the downtown shuttle, six sixty seven for dial a ride, that's the curb to curb service where they will pick you up at your home or another place and take you to your desired location. We had 33 rides to Taunton, and we had seven volunteer out of town medical rides. So that concludes my report.

Excellent. You. Holly, just going back to the Spring Grounds cleanup by troop sixty six. Mhmm. We invite troop sixty six to either our board

or June meeting for '64.

64. Excuse me. Because they've always been good to us and just to say thank you.

We could. In fact, today, Joe and I were talking about should we try to buy them pizza when they do the grounds cleaning. But maybe it would be nicer if we just had a little pizza party in prior to the meeting.

That's perfect.

I think

that's or

something like that.

Because but but those who are new to the board, in addition to their usual spring cleanups and pieces, a lot of their Eagle Scout projects have been about our the gardens gardens that that were were built built out out back. There was a repair of the gazebo. I also believe the Outback over here was redone by Eagle Scout projects. So there's been several Eagle Scout projects by that group, and that group has been fantastic.

And they also help the MSE when we have meals here. They come in and volunteer and they do a wonderful job.

Good.

They they serve. Serve meals and they help us with cleanup and setup.

They're great. I'd be happy to cover the cost of the meal.

Oh, thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I think

I should you know, a great thing with the scouts. So I'm an old Eagle Scout myself. That's yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I'm gonna look for

it in that. Yeah.

That would be great.

Thank you. Any questions of the director? Do have a motion to accept your report? Motion to accept. Do I have a second? Sorry. Second. Discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor, aye. Aye. Opposed? She knows. Now we'll go to new business. We have the FY '26 and FY '27 budget update. Anything to add on the twenty sixth? A

few a few little updates. Again, a lot of it's kind of centered around the budget deficit and how we'll be working to assist the town with reducing the deficit. So the first thing is that interim town manager, Joe Perkins, has asked all departments to try to minimize their expenses, of course, for the remainder of this year, this fiscal year ending June 30, to try to return more free cash to the general fund for the town. So to try to help them in creating, rebuilding the available cash fund. So we have taken some steps toward that already.

Already. We We have have a a reception reception position that's been unfilled for several months. And then we have, we've left that position vacant. There is a hiring freeze in place. We have a resignation, someone's taking another job effective May 1, and that may or may not be filled.

I would have to get special permission from the town manager to fill that. It's our afternoon dispatch position. And the challenge there is it's the afternoon reception position that is already vacant. So we got to somehow have a body at the front desk in the afternoon. So we'll have to find a workaround for that if we're not able to make a hire for that position at this time.

But we are looking at least temporarily to consolidate the reception and dispatch positions for the afternoon when our volume of visits and phone calls generally is lower than it is in the morning. So that is one step that we have taken. We're really watching our expenditures. Know, a lot of times, at this time of year, we're like, okay, it looks like we're going to have, you know, several thousand dollars available. Do we need does someone need a new desk or new chairs?

Or do we place the chairs here in the dining room or something like that. We aren't looking at any major spend out items this year. Quite the contrary, we're looking to to return as much cash as possible to the town. So,

Does any of it affect our current program?

Not in this fiscal year, apart from the pinch at the reception desk. We do have also a retirement coming up on June 30. That position currently, that's in our supportive day program and it is the person who has functioned as second in command and is in charge when the day program manager is out on vacation or ill. So, I'm very concerned about leaving that vacant. We're looking at options for increasing volunteer coverage in the program, just trying to schedule the remaining staff more carefully to see if we can cover for that position, at least in an interim manner.

Certainly don't want to see that stay vacant for the long term. We've had a little bit of help too for fiscal twenty twenty six from the SHINE program. I had mentioned at a previous meeting, they received an earmark grant, which is a one time only kind of use it or lose it grant. And they are helping us defray some staffing costs for the morning receptionist and 25% of my assistant director position for the last quarter of the year. So that's going to save the town over $9,000.

So again, another return of funds back into the general fund. So those are those are the things we're working on for '26.

Any questions about '26 before we move on?

Okay. And then for 2027, I'm sure most folks know from all the things on social media and online newspapers and even the print remask it week. Right now, all departmental budgets that were submitted for 2027 are being reviewed by the finance committee and the select board together. I don't have a specific directive at this point for any cuts nor do I have a specific directive for an exact percentage reduction that they want to see. So I'm working with the town manager as things evolve here with our staffing situation to just keep working to identify savings without layoffs for this department.

We'll see if we're able to make that work. We'll see if we can cover enough other things, perhaps by using more of our grant funding to prevent that from happening for the Council on Aging. So the unions, most

of

our staff is in one unit, it's the AFSCME COA union, about 20 of our 30 staff are in it. And all the unions working with the town have been notified possibility of layoffs. That's part of a legal process. They may have to do that if they're anticipating that may be the way to balance the budget. So they will discuss possible layoffs and they'll also explore concessions that might be made to the union contracts that again net some savings for the town.

And in all that process, having watched the select board meeting from Monday night, it was decided that the town meeting has been postponed from, I think it was April 28 was the original date. Yep. To June 1. So, we'll have this interim period to resolve all the 2020 budget discussions and changes. Changes. So that is that is what I have on the the budget status. Any question?

It is what it is. Yeah. Stubbleflex.

Anything else under your business, anybody? Then I will move to whole business middle of our candidates' forum.

Mister chairman Yes. Do you mind if I make some comments about that?

Please go ahead.

I did attend it. And I I've lived in Middleborough since, 2000, and, we we feel very close on a part of the town. We love Middleborough. We are concerned with a lot of the negative news that we've heard recently. We also attend a lot of the different town meetings.

We go to town hall. We go to those. So we came to the the forum, and I thought, one, I thought it was a great opportunity for the community. When I came in here, and I and I have a mother that we're dealing with with some physical ail ailments at the moment, and she's 91, this room was packed. And I think that's a great testament that people care about the town.

I there were a lot of great things that happened that night. I came with the expectation to hear and listen to different people that I didn't know. I didn't know the moderator, Bob, which I think did a fabulous job trying to moderate the meeting. Obviously, he's well known in the town with a lot of folks and does a lot with the community. And I think that when people try to go off topic or not stay to the the rules of the forum, he was able to bring them back in, yet give people a chance to voice their concerns.

But I thought it was in general, it was a great meeting. I loved it. I loved hearing the different viewpoints. I think that as an opportunity, the location here was great. The facility was was perfect for it.

And I said as I say, we were able to fill this this room up with a lot of people that do care about the town, and that's important that we listen to the community. With that said, there were also a couple of, you a few negative things that I personally thought. One was, you know, there obviously were some issues with the the recording recording and stuff, which it's something's always gonna happen, and I'm sure they they work that out for another time. And we hope that we're able to do this again. I was a bit put off that and this is my feeling that there were a couple of people from the finance committee in the town that came in with a negative agenda, which I think is the wrong place for it.

It's an open forum where people are here to ask questions and and get to know candidates and their view points. And to commend and attack Tom and Mark was was the right place for that. But that's you know you know, it's a public forum, and people have a right to say what they think but do it in a positive way that's positive or will bring up about positive change, not bring negativity to the table. I think, in general, it was a good great opportunity for this community, and I would hope that we can do that again. I think it's a it was a a good thing.

So I just wanna say thank you to the council for allowing that to happen, and and I'm looking forward to see how the Namaskar Week works this coming weekend. Mhmm. Because that's another event that we'd be busy with this. Yeah. But the the event at the Oh, very much. Well

and thank you for that, Peter. I would say one of the things that I appreciate about sort of the open house or debate, whatever you wanna call it, is it gets people into this building. Right. The same way the pancake wraps gets people into the building. The your events from the What

do you see?

Massar get people into the building. Mhmm. I think that's important. I think, you know, this was we've probably done the event here in conjunction with the rotary and the mascot and then previously, the gazette for probably well, since I've been on the committee, which has been probably ten, thirteen years. And, honestly, there was concerns about the size.

But I gotta be honest with everybody. Having been to several others as Tom has and Wally has, they are never that packed as they were at this time. Okay. Generally, there's only about 25 to 30 people. Most people tend to watch it on M ten, be it live or afterwards. Afterwards. And so I don't necessarily think the size is the problem and hope. I you know, my hope

is I was encouraged when I

saw I think that's great. I think my hope is at some point, we can overgrow here because that would mean people are really showing up and being engaged.

I I started attending a while ago the when I can. It was a Wednesday morning's men's group. I call it a men's bitch session, really, because they

complain about it.

They're a bunch of old guys. I'm an old guy. And actually, I'm I think I'm the youngest one. I'll be I'll be 69 shortly, and I'm probably the youngest one there. And I asked them this morning. I said, how many of you attended candidate's forum. This is a great way to to to meet people, and not one of them. And there were about 15 this morning. And I thought that was kind of sad, but many of these guys were in their eighties, a few in their nineties, so maybe it wasn't convenient at the time. But I just I hope you're at least you're outvoting because otherwise, I don't wanna hear your complaints.

Mhmm. You sure You vote, you can complain. But I we had we had a lively discussion about some things of the services here, and I said, really, it's one way another way for you guys to come in and find out all of the services that this facility does for the community. I says, you know, it costs money to do it. There's a lot of people donating time in many, many different ways. And be a part of it. I said, not just come in here on Wednesday mornings. Be a part of it, you know, and appreciate it, and show your appreciation by helping another fellow person in the middle of. So Thank you. So I just wanna share that.

No. Appreciate that. Any other questions about that? Then I'll move on to capital budget request for review.

Okay. So so being retired, I have the advantage of watching every single meeting in

this town.

So You watch how you fall on the trail? I watch yep. So the meeting by the capital planning committee on March 26, they reviewed a lot of the wants from other groups. And one of ours was $42,000 for an SUV because the vehicle that we're we have out there, I started using in 2012. And it's on its last legs, but they voted voted not to support.

And it wasn't just that. It was several other things because of what's going on. And I just want to let you know that they only make recommendations. They don't have anything to do with the actual spending. They review everything and then make their recommendations.

So we'll have to try

again next year or like Holly said earlier, we'll we'll take anything. So when the other people get their new SUVs like you Oh, could that We'll take their leftovers.

At some point, can that be brought up at the town meeting?

Well, so generally generally speaking, we have the annual special town meeting in October. Right. And so at any point along the way, you can bring up for capital improvement. The annual town now June, has a subsection in it for capital improvements. In, the October, meeting, it it would would either either need a separate warrant article or it would be a separate capital improvement warrant article usually by the selectmen Yep. If they have multiple capital improvement pieces that they're going forward. So it could be brought up at any town meeting.

Okay. So that And we may need to explore multiple opportunities And to

any board can can request to put a a article on the town meeting as long as it comply or special town meeting as long as it complies with the time frame. Okay. It's just a question of you know, I think the bigger question is, for capital equipment, there's no money for pretty much anything except what they have to fund because it's a continue there's certain things that are continual fund that have been pre purchased beforehand with the idea that certain amounts of money were gonna go out at different times. And so that's just the nature of

Understood. But in the end, it's the voters that make the decision. Yep. So if we if it can't make it through that committee, we bring it we may have to go in front of the voters and say, is this important enough to you?

Yeah. This Yeah. And it's not just used for Meals on Wheels. It's used for medical appointments too. Know? It's very may it may not be important to everybody else outside of this group, but it's very important to this this place. We'll see how it goes. Yeah. Yeah.

And I would say too that there is I think there's other things we can look at too. For example, just off the top of my head, I know the food pantry in town has in the past had cars donated to them for the use in the food pantry, had vans donated. They have. So so we can look at that route too and reach out to some of the car dealerships in the area and see if there was any opportunity for that. So I I think for us, it behooves us to look at other opportunities Mhmm. In addition to

This is probably gonna be a way of life for us now.

Right. Right. Exactly. Exactly. And so I think that's that's good. So we'll go from there. Any and then next up is Hiring Festival twenty twenty six update. Is that me?

That's

me. We sent out the letter to Lalami. Did you get that all that all signed back and everything?

Yes. We have a signed letter of agreement with with the the tourism committee with just a couple of adjustments to what we had for the last previous couple of years. So, they will be providing volunteer monitors for the parking lot throughout the hours of the festival and we've got all our drivers booked for the vans. We've got the routes, so everything is in place. And it looks like we have a nice forecast for the event too. So I'm hoping it will be very successful.

And then like we said, at the next meeting, we'll come back and let everyone know how it went. Okay. Any other whole business? Moving on to other business, MSC.

MSC updates. We're always looking for people interested in helping seniors. We meet once a month. First Wednesday of the month. And do fundraisers to have money available to meet meet some of the needs. We had a really fun super sandwich fundraiser in March. It wasn't as heavily attended as we hoped, but we still enjoyed it. We had great food. We made a little bit of money, but not as much as we wanted to. We did did sponsor the entertainment for that particular luncheon here at the COA.

Earlier, Holly had had said about the volunteer coordinator or activities coordinator getting sponsors for the entertainment that they bring in here once a month. And MSE decided for the first time this year to be one of the sponsors for that.

So we did that for

the March event. We met several outreach requests for money towards heating. Propane, one was oil. The Yield shop is running a bag sale, $5, and everything you can put in that bag, they're trying to weed out winter clothes and shoes. And we will be making providing token gifts for the luncheon events that are closest to Mother's Day and Father's Day coming up. And that's it. Thank you. Any questions about MSE?

That's great.

The one thing I wanna say to especially to people watching Mhmm. Is MSE does a lot of good and contributes to individual people who are seeking services. Mhmm. So as you mentioned, the heating, you bought oil and and gas and and wide variety of things for people to pass. I bought a refrigerator for somebody who conditioner, all kinds of things.

So it's all different types of things. But what I wanna point out is how much things have changed. We are at oil at over $5 a gallon right now. It is about $200 more for a 100 gallons of oil than it was the other day. When we talk about people signing up for fuel, they get a limited amount a month. That's a dollar figure. It's not a gallon figure. Mhmm. It's a dollar figure. And so as you can imagine, the dollar figure is set sometime September for the most part, and it usually runs out before the end of the year.

If we get lucky and it's not a bad winter, it can last a little longer. This has not been a good winter, so lots of people are running out of money, and people are having to make decisions between heat and food and a wide variety of other things. So if you can give, please give. Like I said, that money goes directly to people seeking help. It's things that the COA can't do or it would be difficult for us to do. Obviously, we'll try we sort of work through the MS need to get help.

So I think that's important. Also and just tagging on to what you've just said, reinforcing that we are a nonprofit organization. We are not the COA. We're the friends of the COA. So we're not governed by the the town's budget rules.

Thank you. And on a related front fundraiser, the pancake breakfast.

A pancake breakfast. Pancake. Saturday, Saturday, May second, 8AM to 11AM, right here in this room. This is part of Middleborough Friends, which I've been a member of since their inception about eighteen years ago, maybe nineteen now. I'm not sure.

But anyways, the they'll be serving pancakes, scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage, and ham with juice, coffee, and tea. The tickets are $9 for adults, $5 for children 12, $25 for a family of two adults and three children, plus $4 for each additional chip child that that comes with you. And this fundraiser benefits the Consulate Agent, and this services to the Middleborough community. So it's always a pleasant experience. I'll be scraping and washing dishes as usual.

Place is usually packed and it usually comes in waves. There's usually a first wave, and then soccer kids, when they're done with practice or games, and, you know, little league or whatever, they that second wave comes in, and it's fun. And we see each know, we see people that we haven't seen for a year, and we b s each other about our year, and we have a good time. So please come.

Thank you all. Appreciate it, man.

May 2. May

May 2. Second. Second. 8AM

to 11AM. And you won't get a cheaper breakfast. No. No. With that, any other other business? But, John, just a reminder, our next meeting is Wednesday, May 13, and I need to put it out there for this committee that June is our last meeting. But in June, we change officers. And the three of us have reached our two year our two term year term limit, so the officers need to change. So I can no longer be chair. Waller can't be vice, and Chris can't be treasurer, and we go from there.

So if people are interested, please reach out. Have a conversation with Holly or me or any of us. It it it has been a fun two years working with these two people and working together with you guys, and I really appreciate it. But I did wanna mention that because people need to start thinking. And with that, I'll accept the motion to adjourn.

I'll accept the

motion Alright. Second. All those in favor, aye. Aye. Opposed? It's unanimous. Thank you very much. And