Veterans Affairs Commission - Regular Meeting

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for The next order of business is roll call and request in our tradition to introduce ourselves. So we hear voices active. And let's start with a minute.

I am exactly as of this week. What are you as of next week? I'm retiring. I'm retiring.

I don't know. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Linda Grimaldi, District 2.

Lynette Edelhardt Scott, Deputy Director, HSA. Denise Frontenus, Program Coordinator.

Hi, everyone. I'm Timelyn Jaynes, Assistant Director of Human Services.

Thank you.

And I'm Debbie Johnston with the Ombudsman Program.

Good morning, everyone.

This is Kelly.

I am part of the El Dorado Community Action Council meeting.

Kelly, it's nice of you to pop up with us.

Thank you. And that's all that's on there?

Yes.

I apologize. That's an issue every morning. All right. The next order of business is the approval of the agenda. If you all have one, we can download them and and follow up until at any time. Second.

Second. Second. Second. Second.

Second. Second. And I assume that you all can read it and you did receive a couple minutes ago. I'm not sure if I'm getting a relationship with you. I'm not sure if I'm getting a relationship with you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Finish that real fast. We're going to go with our spotlight next. And this is an issue that we decided to add so that at least the staff can learn about us and we can learn about the staff. And today it is our pleasure to have Debbie Johnston, I'm going to pronounce your job better than I pronounce your last name.

Good morning. Can you hear me fine? Yes. Okay, good, good. Yasmin said I've got the floor for an hour, so thank you. Just kidding. Anyone who knows me knows I could talk about this program all day, but I've timed myself to about four minutes here, so bear with me. I have been with the Area Agency on Aging, the AAA, for 26 years now. And no, not the Roadside Assistance AAA, although I am very handy with a flat tire. Over the past 17 years, I've had the privilege of advocating for long-term care residents through the Ombudsman Program. This program has shaped and humbled me. It has challenged me severely. It's truly been an honor for me to serve. Each day I have the opportunity to stand up for people who deserve to have their voices heard. And that's a responsibility that I never take lightly. So now let's talk about the word ombudsman. It's Swedish. It's a bit of a mouthful, but it simply means advocate. And so when you hear ombudsman, I just want you to think of somebody who is there to stand up for residents. So we listen, we support. And we help navigate to help residents navigate whatever is going on in their facility. You'll find Ombudsman in all kinds of systems. So there's there in the military and Medi-Cal and mobile home communities. But in long term care, our role is incredibly focused. We're here for the resident. That's our entire job. Here in El Dorado County, we cover all 36 assisted living facilities and all four skilled nursing facilities. If a resident lives in one of those buildings, then we're available to them. And when we walk in, our questions are simple. How can I help? What are your care needs? Is there something that's unmet? Do you have any concerns or questions? And it's all about the resident's voice. So even though our program is hosted within the county, we're part of a statewide system that ultimately reports to governor appointed state ombudsman. And what really makes our program special is that we're federally mandated to operate with volunteers. So in El Dorado County, I am the only full time paid staff member. I have a fantastic program assistant for eight hours a week. Eight. Everyone else who's advocating for residents in a facility is a state certified volunteer. So that's rare these days. It really does say a lot about how community driven this work truly is. Our mandate is to visit facilities at least quarterly, but we go well beyond that. We visit nearly every assisted living facilities every month. And most of our skilled nursing facilities, ideally every week. I really think I could have an office in each one of them and stay very busy because the issues there tend to be more complex than the skilled nursing facilities. Most of our facilities get multiple visits throughout the month. However, whenever concerns arise about quality of care, quality of life, or abuse or neglect. And our visits are always unannounced. We don't tell facilities why we're there or who we're there to see. We just show up. I always encourage people, if you find yourself entering a facility, Whether visiting someone, touring, or being admitted for admission, ask for your ombudsman. Simply knowing that the program exists puts you in a stronger position from the very start. It tells the staff I know who to talk to if I have a concern. And it matters. So here's the truth. None of us want to talk about long-term care until we have to. But any of us could find ourselves in a facility even just for short-term rehab after a hospital stay. And if that happens, you want to know who your advocate is. Who can you talk to? Who can give you your information? Who can help you understand the environment that you're suddenly thrust into? It's not about expecting to be in a facility. I hope none of us are, unless you need to. It's about being prepared just in case. Because the moment you need it, you don't want to be saying, oh my gosh, I'm in a facility. Now what? Who do I talk to? I'd be happy to continue this conversation at another meeting. I love to talk about the ombudsman program. I love to talk about who we serve, what the complexities of the long-term care system is in El Dorado County and, um, what keeps us so busy from day to day. So thank you.

Well, we'd like to know a little bit more, but I don't know. Yeah. Um, Tell us a little bit about you.

I am a boy mom. That should tell you about everything. I have two boys, one in college, one graduated, one back at home. That was unexpected. Aging services is all I've specialized in through graduate school as well. I didn't quite expect to find myself here at the Senior Center for so long. I really was for the convenience of being in a place that brought meaning to my career and a place where my boys practically grew up. But it is home. And now I've just pretty much aged out myself. So it has been a blessing to be here for as long as I have. to navigate through the long-term care system can be somewhat terrifying on a daily basis. And it does keep it real for our team. For me, I often see residents younger than me in these facilities. That's a thought I don't like to sleep with. So we do have over 1,100 beds in the community. Most of them are right here in Placerville, more than 400 of them between simply five assisted living and three skilled nursing facilities. Most of the number of facilities are in El Dorado Hills because most of our assisted living facilities are six beds facilities. They're very small. You might not even know you've got one right next door to you if you're in El Dorado Hills. And we also go up to the skilled nursing facility in Barton. I'm going up there tomorrow to train a class of their CNAs. So we're very active in the program. But like I said, we're also volunteer based. So We do the best that we can. We're not fully staffed like our counterparts in the community of adult protective services, but we have an intense purpose and meaning in what we do. And I remind our team, no matter how complex the system of care is, the regulations that are typically changing on a regular basis, and the healthcare needs of the residents we're serving, It starts with hello. And the fact that we're showing up is more important than the fact that we're not going to be able to stop a discharge as soon as we'd like to, or we may not be able to get that call light response time answered more quickly. Some of those things are just part of a system that's That's complicated. But we show up. And I think that's what we have to remind ourselves. That's a small win. A lot of our residents are not visited by anybody. So at least 60% of those individuals who are institutionalized across the state of California may even have family, but no one's checking in on them. So very often they see us.

Fine from your perspective. your clients, the people you visit, what other entities do you deal with?

Well, the long-term care system, our jurisdiction are in nursing homes and assisted living facilities. We also respond to adult residential facilities for those 18 to 59 who may be developmentally delayed, have other issues. We're working with the medical system, hospitals, emergency rooms, hospitals, The system is quite complex. Family members, friends, gatekeepers who notice something, and home care providers who may be entering facilities temporarily and they see something they don't like. We get calls from anyone and everybody who may have an idea of how to fix a problem. But we remind them we're resident driven, we're resident focused. So no matter who brings us an issue and no matter what the possible resolution may be from their perspective, we have to bring that to the resident and work at their direction, no matter what that means. So it's truly unique. Our conversations are confidential. Our services are free. And our goal is to ensure that each resident knows that we're available to them when and if they should like to discuss a concern.

Any other questions?

Lots of them. I just, I always have a hard time remembering the difference between assisted living and skilled nursing. Could you tell briefly what the level, I know we never leveled that thing, but.

Yeah, they are. Most of our facilities, 36 out of the 40 are the assisted living facilities. So they're non-medical model facilities. It's a social congregate setting for individuals who typically need assistance with two or more of their activities of daily living. That could be showering, feeding, dressing. and transferring anything like that. So needing some assistance, not quite safe or capable of managing their needs at home independently. So it's a really great place to be to avoid the skilled nursing facility. Our skilled nursing facilities are the medical model. This is the bridge between the hospital and independent community living. So we've got the skilled, assisted, and the independent. That skilled facility is a 24-hour care. Individuals are typically entering for a short period of time covered by Medicare because Medicare only covers short-term stays in the skilled nursing facilities. And so we're seeing a lot of the last few years, we've seen quite a bit of movement from our hospitals to the skilled nursing facilities, and then trying to get them out as quickly as possible. I call it the three-week itch. That's the first 20 days when Medicare pays for 100% of their stay, and then the facilities get that little itch that it's time to end the skilled nursing and to discharge a resident out to a lower level of care or back at home. Our job is really to try to intervene and see whether or not that's an appropriate and safe timing of that discharge.

Thank you.

So what are the most common issues that you see?

illegal and appropriate discharges from skilled nursing facilities, um, care issues related to the quality of care response from the staff, um, are, are, you know, like several of our programs, especially those that are volunteer based, the facilities in and of themselves are very short staffed. So we're all running like hamsters on this wheel trying to do the best we can. And I would, uh, like to say that most of our facilities are stacked with staff members who are also trying to do the best they can. But they have dozens of residents per staff member on a shift. And it's just, they're just getting by. I would say I'm just getting by in this program. Doing the best that we can to maneuver through the complications of discharges, lack of care, neglect of care, illegal evictions from our assisted living facilities. We have one assisted living facility who's right now under an action of licensing to possibly revoke their license. And we have a new facility in El Dorado Hills that's coming in, Quantum Care. Looks like maybe October 1st. That's an 80-bed facility that has everything but an airport in it. So it looks like it might have a rapid care and a daycare. And yeah, it's planning to be massive. And of course, our ombudsman, some of you have heard John Rosler say, talk to your group is going to be taking that one by the leash and figuring out how we're going to communicate and interact with them. So we're excited about this new facility coming in. I think most of our business is in the skilled nursing facilities. There's a higher acuity level or care need for residents. residents in our community are living longer, but that does not mean that they're living with a higher quality of life. So when they're coming into the nursing homes, it may not be one problem. It may be eight to 10 problems. And then we have to help narrow it down and figure out how to just take one step at a time.

So you mentioned that you're understaffed. So understaffed in paid positions or understaffed in volunteer? And how many people would you need to be fully staffed?

I think there is a formula with the state, and we are fully staffed with the one full-time staff member. We're looking for more active volunteers that can handle the complex investigations for the complaints that we're running into. This is an issue not here in El Dorado County, but across the state. We are coming across complaints and a need for assistance with discharge appeal hearings and things like that that go beyond the scope of what some of our volunteers can do. They're all state certified and trained with a curriculum that helps prepare them to go say hello and manage some of the complexities of long-term care. But for the most part, unfortunately, I've been taking the bulk of most of our case investigations. And it's, like I said, I think we're no different than the facilities that we're serving. We're all trying to help residents stay focused on ensuring that they're receiving quality care and quality of life. But we do resemble the hamsters on this wheel, just trying to go as fast as we can, as thoroughly as we can. We meet a lot of residents that would like us to provide long-term social work support, case management, like an MSSP program that would stay with you during your stay. And that's not how this program is set up. We're a short-term assistance to manage complaints and assist somebody to find a resolution to their satisfaction. It might not be to the family members or to somebody who brought us the concern, but the residents got the steering wheel at the front of the car and telling us where to go, whether or not we agree with that. They tell us who to talk to, what to do, and how to manage their complaint to their satisfaction.

Well, thank you, Debbie. You're welcome. This is something that we know very little about, and I think we all learned a lot today. Thank you.

Oh, you're welcome. I enjoy talking about the program, and anytime you want to learn more or meet some of my team, we'd be happy to join a Commission on Aging meeting.

Great.

Okay. We have a guest speaker you might want to hang and listen to.

Thank you. I'm going to be heading out to the nursing homes, and I hope you have a good meeting. Thank you.

Bye.

Bye.

Continuing pursuit into helping seniors with issues that have been really devastating to them. We have... A speaker today, and I'm going to ask Linda to introduce him. And I'm not sure if it's broad or what.

It's on broad. It's on broad. Everywhere, actually. This is Lieutenant Simon Brown from the DA's office. And he does, this is what he does. And Officer Douglas Barnsham is in court. So he's the deputy district attorney, and he's busy today. So Simon is our speaker, and he's going to just speak from here.

I'll go wherever you want. I know you want to keep me on a short leash.

I do. Choke chain.

I have some topics I want to talk about. Please, if something comes to mind, you want to ask a question, interrupt me. I don't care. I want you guys to get what you want out of this. So I am a lieutenant at the district attorney's office. Me and one other lieutenant run our investigations division. We have about 15 sworn investigators that do follow-up cases and do some sort of fraud work from the beginning, including like real estate fraud, welfare fraud, workman's comp insurance fraud, auto theft fraud, different things like that. So I worked for the Elrond County Sheriff's Office. I'd known Jim a very, very long time. I worked there for 18 years. I had a few different assignments there. One of them was detective doing elder abuse and financial crime investigations work. When I came to the district attorney's office, I continued doing some of that fraud work. And it's something I've just always been interested in. And it's something that doesn't get enough attention and definitely goes underreported. The amount of money that we lose to fraud, our victims lose in fraud and scams, walking out of the office and one of our prosecutors i told him i was coming here to do this meeting he goes oh yeah about last week my neighbor told me uh that he's 82 years old lost over five hundred thousand dollars in a romance scam all of his savings um and still hadn't been reported yet so he's working on getting that reported um So the numbers that are out there, the federal government does keep track of losses for these types of fraud and scam cases. It's so underreported that people are either embarrassed, don't think anything can be done. Sometimes they don't even feel like they're actually a victim because they willingly gave the money away, which is not true at all. And that's one of the things I want to really reinforce is the crime is taking money by some sort of false pretense or a lie. If they had told the truth, the person never would have gave the money away. In my prosecutor's neighbor's case, he thought he was going to get married to this person he met online. If he knew that it was someone faking it on some computer in a totally different what they do so one of the ones that's got a lot of attention lately is like a gold fraud or gold scam I don't know if you guys have heard anything any headlines about that they usually can be tied into something else but what the fraudsters ultimately do is convince someone to take the money they have saved turn it into gold and transfer it to actual people that then take it off and give it to the fraud like the main perpetrators of this scam Um, it usually comes from someone impersonating law enforcement, pretending to be maybe the IRS. I've heard secret service, different federal agencies saying that your account has been compromised. And then in order to secure your money, you need to take your money up and turn it into gold and we'll hold it in a secure facility. It sounds so ridiculous and crazy having me say it, but they are very, very convincing. Um, And obviously, the government will never take someone's cash, never take the money from their account to secure it and move it to another account. But they do have very, very believable ways to try and convince someone of this. So that's something we've had this happen in Elrond County. We've had gold bars actually picked up locally. The people that pick up the gold bars, in the cases that I've looked at, aren't actual masterminds of the crime itself. There are people that are also victims of a different scam. Maybe it's some, one time it was just an Uber, an Uber person that like showed up to do this. And there, or they're victims of a, Hey, work from home. You can work from home. You just have to, you know, do a few pickups for me and be like a courier and someone will fall for that scam. Not knowing that they're a money mule now or, you know, these, international criminal organizations. Um, the one I do want to talk about a little bit is real estate fraud. That is the grant that I did work on for four years. Um, and I still have a couple of cases in the following up on real estate fraud when it comes to our elder community can be a couple of different things. I get a lot of calls and talks to a lot of people that own property that they no longer live in. Um, and that does make the property at risk for a couple of different things. Uh, It could be a squatter, somebody moving into the property to try and claim ownership of it. The ones that we see the most of are people pretending to be the property owner that convince a local agent to list the property, actually sell it, have it go through escrow, and the check goes to the scammers who pretend to be the property owner, not the actual property owner. Those scammers that run that particular scam buy data that's available for anyone to buy that says, I want a list of all the properties in California or in El Dorado County where the property tax bill is mailed somewhere other than the actual address where the property is. That tells them that the person that owns the property has lived there. And then they can try and convince someone to go to that property. And the agents are getting better at it, but some are the scammers they have. a building to make fake IDs that they can send pictures of to the agents to list the property. We're trying to catch an escrow, normally we do. One did get actually sold in Tahoe recently. The investigator that's doing real estate fraud now flew to Florida, arrested the person that actually did the transaction. Of course, he's not the mastermind, but it's really easy to say with all these scams and from law enforcement generally, The person perpetrating the scam isn't an Eldorado County citizen. It makes it harder for us to have that reach to go out and get them. But there are enough connections within the United States on some of these cases that we can at least follow up.

I have a question. If it's a vacant, can't they go to the county and see who owns it and see their signature and maybe take a picture or something of it and then they have the signature of the original owner and they can

It could, but, um, and so that's another way that you can, you could change ownership on a property. You report what's called a quick flame deed. And that's something that doesn't go to your escrow. It's just a document that gets reported to the reporter clerk's office. Um, if I was to, you know, give my property to Jim, that's how I would do it. You know, cause I care about it a lot and I want her to have it. I would just sign it. I would just sign this, this quick deed as the owner, it gets reported. It's done. Um, Our recorder clerk's office automatically notifies property owners if that happens. So if someone records a deed on my property, I'll get a letter in the mail that says, hey, this happened. And there is a mechanism to undo that. It takes four documents, and it's not super quick and easy. So that is something that's automatically protected. The other thing that people – there used to be a bunch of – and I'm sure our – elder community who listens to the radio and hears some of these commercials might ask you about it, but there's a couple of products that want to try and protect your house. And what they do is they charge a fee and they actually record a lien on your property, which means that if your property was to go through escrow, the sale would be stopped because this lien would have to be cleared up and they would contact their company and the company would contact you and you could like stop the whole thing. That is one way to do it. The biggest risk is owning vacant land somewhere. If you live in the property, oh, this is what I tell the community that asked me, if you live in the property and you own the property, if someone tries to list it, the agent's going to come to the door, knock on the door to take photos. And it's really easy to interrupt that process because you're like, no, I'm not selling my property. And then they stop it right there. If it's a rental property that's vacant, a vacation home, or just vacant land, When they knock on the door, the listing agent would have some story saying, you know, I'm out of the country on business and I just need to get this process started. The best thing I can say is make sure that the property owner talks to their neighbors and that their neighbors call them if someone shows up on their property. And I suggest people that are concerned about this put up a sign that says this property is not for sale. contact me, the owner, and have like a phone number on there. Because then the agent shows up, they see the sign, they're going to call it because they're like, oh, this is weird. This is a different number than the person I've been talking to. And that can interrupt it too. So those are kind of some safe ways to protect against that.

You should put trespassing and private property signs up on the property.

That's always a good idea because then it'll keep people off of it and keep people from doing anything bad on it.

Yeah. I definitely recommend ring doorbells. Yeah. That saved me a lot of problems. How so? They ring the bell and they get me and if it was a scam or something, the jig would be up.

I really highly suggest that too if you have some way. There's some free options out there other than the purchase of a doorbell.

They're not expensive. $10 a year.

I think that's a really good thing to have. It protects you if you're because you get stolen off the front porch. The cases I worked with elder abuse, with real estate fraud, that were the hardest were usually a family member taking advantage of someone and then getting their name put on a title. And those are always really tricky, especially when we have diminished capacity. We don't have to try and figure out what the intent of that property owner really was. So those are a little bit tricky. But those are ones that we work really seriously. And those are usually ones that are local in nature, too. So how do the, I want to talk just about like the, how most scams come to be these days that are really dangerous. Yeah.

Can I bounce back to the rule of force? Because isn't like when it goes through escrow and you have title insurance and there's title work done, isn't that designed to protect the owners?

So title insurance, yeah, it's supposed to. And we pay title insurance when we do these processes to make sure that no one else has title on the property. But I don't think title insurance would cover this kind of fraudulent sale because there's nothing wrong with the title. There's just someone else pretending to be the owner of the property who's doing the transaction. Like we have this one in Tahoe, someone who bought this property, this legitimate buyer, they pay something that the person didn't have the right to sell to them so you actually have two victims now you have someone who bought it who's a victim and then the actual the previous owner of it now lost their property it's a really sticky situation for sure and it that process is designed to protect us and that's why we pay them the fees that they charge is to make sure that things are done correctly and we're buying something that is truly um available to purchase from a legal owner so people

How often do we see a quick claim deed used to not sell a property, but to get a loan on the property to take the money?

That's a good question. That's the other way. Right. So after I give you my property from a quick claim deed, you can then go to a bank and pull out a home equity loan and get several hundred thousand dollars off of that. So that would be like kind of the end goal of someone who didn't obtain a property, not only could they get the money from the sale, but now they own the property and they could get a loan against it, that they could also get that money and wouldn't disappear and that Now we have a debt on the property that should have been in the first place. Yes, absolutely. So if you're talking to someone in the community that has some information about some sort of loan doc or something from the recorder's office, if you see something like that, ask them about it. Ask them if they are getting a loan or if they're interested in a loan or where this came from. And if they don't know, then we have to follow up with that bank and institution that brought that. So good question. Most of the scams that are big losses are like the romance scams or the cryptocurrency scams. I was talking to a local business owner that lost a couple hundred thousand dollars to, and this is not a business, he's just barely making ends meet, lost a couple hundred thousand dollars to a cryptocurrency scam. The way this happens, most of them happen is like the wrong number of text messages. Do you ever get those where it says, hey, are you coming to the party on Friday? Or, hey, when's the, do you have Amy's number and you don't know who this is? And so you respond, you're like, oh, sorry, wrong number. And then if they respond back like, oh, that's okay, no problem. And they try and start a conversation. That's the whole point of those wrong number texts. Are you coming to Little League practice today? And whatever those are. And if you respond, and I messed with one for a little while just to kind of see. And pretty soon they will say, oh, you sound really nice. I'm so-and-so. Oh, I'm so-and-so. And if you're someone who has the time to talk to them, what they'll do very quickly is try and either get into some sort of romantic relationship with you, or they'll try and talk to you about some of their investments. And a lot of them are cryptocurrency.

I had a thing on Facebook. You're invited to a party. It's dancing and food and this and that. Not that one. And then, but that one's coming up. And so there was a link in a window, but it was coming from Jeff Lykoff's stepmother.

Okay.

So I called Becky and I said, what is this party you're putting on? She goes, it's a scam.

Yeah.

I said, well, I erased it already.

So that scam could have been for the only purpose of having you click that link.

Well, I wouldn't know.

Oh, you clicked the link.

Yeah. No problem. I had a little note from Becky and everything. And then I trashed it.

Right. And that was, I'll get back to the crypto thing in a second. But that was something else I did want to talk to you. And I have it written here is don't click. I know.

Well, I thought it was from Becky. I didn't know.

Right. And that's why, and that's how they're pretty tricky. One of the ways they try and get you is by sending a link in a text message. Track your UPS package here. You confirm that you ordered this new Apple computer. Click the link for tracking. The link itself is actually the only thing that they care about. And that's to install malware on your computer, on your phone that can then hack all your passwords, do all kinds of other bad and nefarious things. So just not clicking a link ever. And there was, there was, I'm so, I'm a little paranoid, but there was, there was one that my father-in-law had on about a bank. And I'm like, don't click that link. And they actually did finally confirm it wasn't. But, but nine times out of 10, it's just a way to, to get you to click it. And that's, and if nothing opens, it doesn't mean that it didn't actually do what it wanted to do, which is install things. They're really crazy, sneaky, um, like hacking stuff all comes through just clicking the link and it doesn't show anything open. It doesn't take you anywhere new, but it's, you've already let it out of the bag. So, but one of the, one of the big things that happened from these, these wrong number texts, I don't know if you guys have seen any of the, I think 60 minutes did a episode on pig butchery. It's a very terrible sounding term, but it comes, it comes from the idea that you fatten up a pig. And before you, you know, you go trade and that's what they do to their victims. And it is violent sounding, but it is, it's very fitting in the way that they treat their victims. And so it starts from a wrong number of texts, a little bit of back and forth goes, they start talking to you about cryptocurrency or whatever the investment is. Pretty soon they show you, Hey, I don't usually talk, tell people this, but I've been making a bunch of money doing crypto. I'll share it to you if you want to check it out and it'll be a link to download an app that looks like a normal app that you would see that would show like stock prices and different things like that. It's all fake. The app, even though it comes from the app store and it's all, it's all fake. So then you can put in, you know, $500 and it'll show your $500 turned into a thousand dollars. This person, the local business owner that was a victim of this, put in a couple hundred thousand of his own money, but the app showed him that he had $2 million. And so because it keeps showing these crazy increases, it causes people to keep putting in more and more money. Well, you can't pull the money out because it doesn't exist. It's already been stolen. So if you hear someone talk to you about investments or cryptocurrency, and it sounds like something different, ask them questions. And if they say they're doing crypto, ask them how they came into this information. Bless you. If it came from a text message, maybe they went to one of the messaging services like Telegram or one of those that are out there. Those are the most common ways that people who perpetrate this will get in touch with their victims. I have only a couple minutes, but I want to touch on a couple really quick things. The other thing that I always like to talk to people about is donating money. If someone calls them and asks to donate money, if they get a knock on the door to donate money, if they get something in the mail to donate money, I always tell them, if you feel really strongly about that cause, like whatever that might be, animals, helping people, whatever it is, I have no way to know where that money's actually going. If you want to help that cause that you feel so strongly about, go find a local charity that does that work that you know is real and actually exists and then donate to that person. So I always tell people if they get a call, get a text, just hang up on them. And if you feel like you do want to help that cause, find some local way to do it that you know your money's actually going somewhere. We review a lot of cases about solar, and I don't know if you guys got any complaints from elderly community about solar, but we have so many referrals, and I know we only get a small amount of them. We get them from APS. We get them directly from family members of someone maybe in their 80s that lives in a mobile home that has a $40,000, $50,000 solar installed on there on a 30-year lease with a lien against their property. If, and this is, it's really hard because the salesmen are really good. And that's who knocks on your door. It's just a salesman. And they don't really care. They don't care if it's the right call or not. And it makes it a big, big problem when someone needs to sell their house, if they need to move into assisted living or they need to downsize. And now they've owned their house free and clear for four years. And now they have a $40,000 lien on it. They can't sell it. it's a real issue. If anyone talks about solar, make sure that they understand because they'll be promised that they won't have a PG&E bill and all this. Make sure they understand if you're lucky enough to talk to them before something goes through that most of these programs, they're going to have a lien on their property. They're going to owe money for 30 years and they're probably still going to have a PG&E on top of it all.

I have a neighbor that that happened to and I told him you shouldn't have done that.

Right, but it's really hard to undo it.

yeah they can't get out of it yeah yeah for sure the people next door to me were going to do it and i said don't do that yeah and it might be right for some people but it but um there's a lot of people it's not right for it and that's too bad it does cause some problems what's the thing with verizon that michelle talked about uh i don't know oh because she was saying that Seniors will go in and get a Verizon and they get their bill. They sign up for two people at this price. And then eventually it keeps going up, up, up. So they went in to check and people were being added to their program and causing it to go up.

So there were other numbers being added?

And so Michelle did take him to court and she did win.

So the only thing I could think of, because Verizon in itself, other than maybe selling people extra add-ons that they don't need, the thing that would really cause other numbers to be added to it is usually going to be some sort of identity theft. So I didn't plan on talking about it, but I really should. The best way to protect against identity theft, because all of our social security numbers, names, date of births are out there. And actually a lot of them can be purchased online now. All our data can be bought. And the first time we all got notification there was some data breach and all our information out there, we were probably all freaked out. But I've probably got 20 of those now. I really don't even pay attention to it anymore because it's out there. So many people have it. It's just a matter of what they want to do with it. So the best thing you can do, there are ways that will give you alerts if anything touches your credit file, and that's good. But the best thing you can do is just freeze your credit. And you can do it directly with... experienced transunion directly with the credit reporting bureaus. And once it's frozen, it's free. You don't have to pay a monthly fee or anything. It's just frozen. Nobody can do any type of new loans, new credit cards, can't buy a car using your credit. What is it called? It's called a credit freeze. And it's done directly through the credit reporting bureaus.

Do you have to do it with all the bureaus?

You should, yeah. Generally, when someone runs your credit, they're going to check at least two. So you could probably get away with just doing two. If it's frozen, no one can open credit. So unless you're planning on buying a car in the next month or two, refinancing your house, there's no reason not to do it. It's not going to affect your existing accounts. If you have a credit card, it might prevent them from rerunning your credit to change your limit or something like that, but that's not that big a deal.

How hard is it to undo when you're ready, you guys?

This is where you have to write a couple things down. You do have to remember to contact the same people. You're going to have a number you're going to have to read back to them, and it's going to be unique to you. So that But like my parents just did it and they, you know, they have no intentions of opening any new credit anytime soon. And it's totally blocks anything from coming to your account. And that's the best way to protect that. The only thing that could happen if you have a credit freeze is someone could go into your existing accounts pretending to be you like Verizon and say, hey, I'm so-and-so, here's my name, social, give all the information to confirm the identity. I need you to add two numbers and I want two new iPhones. and they could pretend to be you. And that could be something that could happen even if your credit's frozen, but it would prevent a new account. But the best way to protect yourself is just to not answer calls that you don't know, not respond to emails you're unsure of, and not click any links. Thank you.

We practiced this bit.

But it is really important because that just stops before it even And then the best way we can protect our community is just to try and ask questions. And it's really, really hard because if someone is being scammed, whether it's a, especially a romance scam, it's really, really hard to intervene because they believe in what they're doing or they're embarrassed about where it's been and worked with cases with people that have been scammed out of all their money and they're still giving their social security check every month to the same person because they've given away so much that they actually need to believe that they're going to win this lottery because if they don't, then all the money they've given away is for nothing. And so it's almost like a mental survival thing that they have to do to keep on it. And it's really hard. The romance scams, you know, those of us that have kids, my oldest is 14, so I'm about to experience this. All of a sudden, someone has more influence than you do in their life. And that's that romantic interest, right? And it's the same with our parents. All of a sudden, if they fall hard for one of these romance scams, it's going to be really hard to be more influential in them than that person who's scammed. Because they all of a sudden have, they've been lonely or whatever, and they have these feelings, cares about them, loves them, all this. And it's really, really tough. So it's hard, and it's really important. And if you're not a relative, sometimes it's easier, and you guys interact with enough people because... As a relative, you can come off as sort of critical and that makes it hard for them to hear the message that you're trying to portray. So if you do talk to someone and they've talked to someone they've met that's new, ask them questions. You ever meet them in person? Where are they? And they're like, oh, they're working in the UK and they travel through Europe a bunch and we're going to meet soon. One of the questions that's so important that we have to ask is, have they asked you for any money? And if they have, bang, huge red flag. We have to like do everything we can to stop this. Because there's pretty much almost never, no reason why you'd ever meet someone online who's traveling across third world or different countries that's going to all of a sudden ask for money and not be a scam. And they don't want to believe it because they might be the first person that's actually, you know, cared about them and listened to them. So ask them, you know, if they've ever asked for any money. The answer is yes. Get everyone you can involved, Adult Protective Services, their banks, their family, their friends, and try and do everything you can to stop that.

Does anybody have any questions? Yeah. My neighbor, a week ago, got a call from the fraud department at her bank saying there was someone out there trying to defraud her.

Okay.

And that was fraud. Oh, okay. The key, we were walking and she was telling me about this. They told her that they were going to cancel her credit card and send her a new one. And it all sounded so legit until the one thing that cued me into it. And I advised her to look further into it was this was a Saturday, a Saturday, like dinnertime. And they said, well, we'll call you back on Monday. Not you can call us. Right. We will call you. No, you should be able to call the fraud department that's on the back of your credit card or something like that and verify this. So I told her, don't do anything. Check it out. Physically go to your bank and talk to your people. And that's Monday. She came back to me and said it was a fraud.

Was it a number that showed up that she recognized or did it look like it was from the bank?

It came up from U.S. Bank.

I got one of those ones. And I also got a letter. And I thought, this is weird. So I looked up the real bank number that I always called and called them and they go, we didn't send that.

She went to her bank physically, the U.S. Bank here in Placeville, and they got her a new credit card within minutes. 24 hours, and she had to get all of her new accounts off. And she had every bill going through her credit cards.

Yeah, what a pain. I mean, it's worth it to say, but what a pain. But she got it taken care of. I'm glad you brought that up, too, because we used to be able to trust the number that calls us is actually that number, and there's such a thing called... number spoofing where it makes a fake caller ID show up and it's not actually the number it's calling. Great. I don't know who asked for this in technology, but we have it. It's here. They use it. So if you see a number and it looks like it's from your bank and they're asking you for a bunch of stuff, it is best to just hang up and call the number that you know belongs to your bank. That will go back through to that actual number. Even if it looks like the same number that called you, if you call that number fresh back again, it's going to directly to the actual uh place it's supposed to go so yes like you did have them go into the bank is the safest and our local banks are really good here i've worked with tons of them el grano savings is great the credit unions are great we even had a false fargo come in sit on a lot of our meetings they've been pretty proactive so if you see someone who is being scammed and you can see that they're being scammed and they don't believe it is adult protective services the next best step because you And I have had helped on a lot of those cases because no one, they wouldn't believe the family, they wouldn't believe anyone. And so I went and I looked into whatever I had to look into, laid it all out for them and explained exactly why this is a fraud. And most of them believed me, or at least they said they did, but not all of them. But some of them got into a place where they could at least family member watching your accounts, getting alerts from the bank. Most banks now, you can set up an alert and you can have it text a certain number. If you have a transaction over a hundred, over a thousand, you pick whatever the amount is. And that's something that if a family member can get, they don't even have to be on an account, but if they can get that alert, then they can have that discussion. They can say, hey mom, what is this $2,500 check that just came through? She's like, oh, it's because I'm helping this guy with his son who is in jail in Tunisia or whatever. Well, probably not. But the more involved you can get with a family member. A lot of the problems we have are from family members getting on accounts that shouldn't be. But having a trusted one on the account to see the statements, get a copy of the statements, or get alerts when transactions happen is a great way. If That account holder is is willing to do it because they have to be willing to put them on the account, unless they unless we're in a place where we're going to do like conservatorship or something like that. And it gets to a certain point where their judgment is bad enough, and that is something. To open it like walk down the council project.

Steve, talk to me. We are what 20 I didn't count, but we're 20 here and We may touch a few people each. But what, who else do you, where else do you go? And I'm thinking partly one of, I'm a senior peer counselor, I think would be really good for the counselors to refer to. But also, how in the, we're in the community. Because work has to get out.

It does. And it's really hard because most of the people that are victims of the scams um aren't going to hear from any of us because they're they are kind of isolated or lonely um i've talked to i've talked at eschaton um dr marshall i've talked um at uh rotary club things like that but peer counseling is great because you guys have a big touch the other thing i was thinking about too is anyone that has that that Interaction. I know meals on wheels will sometimes, you know, they have the opportunity to like at least say hi to someone, you know, once a once a day and and that would be a good one too. And I'd be happy to do to speak of your account to your counseling and and that or whatever else you can think of.

Meals on wheels is true. Okay.

so i don't know how that our senior nutrition program we call it home delivered meal very good very good but it's a county run program yeah if you think that's something that would be useful to them that they could use um i'll have a few cards and you can set up directly i can do that so yeah that's great yeah any other ideas you guys have too i like those ideas because those are those are the folks that that are contacting people like if when they're in And like I've talked to them in eschaton and sometimes it's almost at that point. I want to catch them earlier when they're still at home when they don't have any eyes and ears. And so anyone who would be those eyes and ears. Yeah, definitely. I love that idea. You guys are still on Main Street, the mall, the old mall?

As long as, yeah, until the county, until the city moves in.

Yep, yep. Okay. Okay. I just saw recently where the DA's office prosecutor to case for embezzling. And I recognized the date briefly. Contact back when I was working. My question is, she was found guilty and she got six months.

She was I think an executor and there were other family members who were beneficiaries. She took $341,000 from the trust.

She got six months and was ordered to pay restitution. The amount of $341,000. My question is, You know, I think punishment should be something of a deterrent. And six months in jail to make $341,000, and what are the odds that you're ever going to pay that back at all?

Well, I'm not going to speak specifically on that case too much.

However, I do know the case really well.

in general, like that is something that does happen quite a bit is, and I've seen, I've looked at so many cases where their siblings that one of them was the executor makes all the decisions and they are to benefit them and not the, the estate that they're supposed to be doing. That's what happened in that case. The money was just taken by one of the siblings and the other siblings had no idea what was going on. And it is really tough. And I, The cases that we prosecute, the victims need the money because it was what they depended on and it was stolen and the person that steals it, if they go to jail for six months and come out, that's not a huge deterrent, like you said, but what are the chances of getting their money back? Well, not that amount. It's really difficult. I had an investment fraud case that Doug, who was the prosecutor, was going to come to me trial in another case that we did. This person lied and said, told people, this is a local person said, told people that were in the community that trusted him that, you know, I have this business that I own part of. And if you invest in it, you're going to make all this money. Well, he just took the money and spent it all. he got seven years in prison, real prison, which I was very happy about. He was ordered to pay restitution. Well, he's not going to pay restitution until he gets out of prison. So there's seven years right there. And at that point, now you're, you know, a felon who just spent seven years in prison. Like what sort of, money are you going to be making to then be able to do the restitution? It is really hard to see it that way. If we move fast enough on cases, we try and seize assets like if there's an account where there's a bunch of money in it, we've frozen accounts. In this case, there was like $152 in the account, so that wasn't it. We'll try and do that. There are ways to do seize other property depending on, and in my particular It was worth $800,000, but 780,000 were owed on it. And he had liens from EID and his homeowners association and tax liens and everything else. So there was no reason to even bother going after it because all those folks would have to get paid off before we could get any money out of it. So, but there are, we do have options like that, like taking a house. If we can prove that the person paid for it with the money they stole from their victims, it is doable. But it is the idea that they're going to get made whole financially. Realistically, you can't get blood out of a turnip. So I don't know why that would be a saying.

But yeah, you just can't.

You can't get the money to stop there. It is really sad. Anybody have any other questions or anything? I don't want to take up too much of your time.

This makes you feel like you don't have a chance against, I mean, my brother, who's really intelligent as an attorney. He had a long-term scam on him in his business where there was another attorney. It was like hundreds of thousands of dollars that they were scamming. And it was, I mean, it was convoluted, but it was very long-term. It was like over nine months, like you were talking about. They really will take their time to do this. And it's scary.

The best we can do is make sure that they're reported. Make sure that if we interrupt it, once we figure it out, They should be reported to the sheriff's office or the police department, depending on where this person lives. If there are certain things we can help out with directly, if it's real estate fraud, they come directly to our office. And then we do help the sheriff's office with some of their cases if they need it. And then in addition, it should be reported to the federal government. And the FBI does, they are super focused on helping with all that. And they are working a lot of these gold scams. They're working a lot of these crypto scams. And even if it's just one case we have here, it's connected to 30 or other ones, and they will actually help put those pieces together. So the easiest way to report that is to the ic3.gov. I'm not going to write it up there, but it's called ic3.gov. And it's the Internet Crime Center website. And it takes in all types of hacking, frauds, and scams, and it organizes them, gets it in a way that FBI can connect it to their other cases. And they do work the big ones, and there's more than they can handle. So I just really want to make sure that the person at least reports it to local and reports it to the feds. And if you forget how to report to the feds, the deputy that they talk to should have a way to do that. And also on the ic3.gov, there's a bunch of really good material, too, about fraud and schemes. Postal Service has a bunch of good stuff, too. They have investigators that get into this stuff, too. They have some good stuff. Thank you. You're welcome. I'll leave the cards.

Okay.

I know you want one for sure, right? We're going to talk about... Yep.

Thank you so much. I have one.

I know.

I have a frame.

Good. I'll leave the rest here. Yes. feel free to take one, reach out if you have any questions. And if you ever stumble upon a case where you're just not sure, you don't feel like the sheriff's office understands it, or you're not sure if it's the right thing or not, I'm happy just to talk you through the facts of the case and kind of help it land where it should.

Yes, can you make sure that that ICT.gov is on our minute scene?

on the thing that Jenna did that I know that's one of the legitimate support and reporting resources I see if we got that.

That's great. Awesome. Thank you. Well, thank you guys. If you think of any ways that we can help talk to people that would have an impact, let me know. Thank you.

Thank you. Nice. Thank you.

You bet. You bet. Public comments? Oh.

on this.

Sorry, public has three minutes to comment. Please raise your hand if you'd like to make a comment. We have one member of the public. Okay.

Thank you very much.

Thank you guys for the work you do. Appreciate it.

Welcome back. It's now time for a hearing from our commissioners who are talking to their supervisors. I'm just going to go around the table. Commissioner Powell. Hello. Have you had any discussions with supervisors?

Unfortunately, I have not. I've been out of town, as they say. All right. I tried to get to see her on Friday, but we will get together next week.

Perfect.

Okay.

Commissioner Nunn? Yes. I've been in contact with my supervisor by email.

Do you have anything to report to us? No. Okay. I guess that's it.

I'm not a commissioner, though, really, am I?

How are things going up in Salt Lake Tahoe with the city council?

Still going around in circles, basically, I think. One problem I have is it's continuing, it's been going on from the beginning, is myself, nor the Dave Kuntz, Senior Inc are included in any of the discussion discussions going on. It's always like Brooklyn and a city council member Dave Kuntz, But they're not getting input from us, which I don't think is good. I think that's one of the reason they had the initial problem with the new facility at the rec center is they weren't getting enough input. Dave Kuntz, But I had something else to say about that later. Right now, the senior center did get a nice write-up in the paper about the work they're doing. Mountain News had a whole page spread on them. They're doing good work and making progress. And something else. They've completed their... 501c3 nonprofit forms was one hang up. Apparently some forms weren't filed during COVID and they filed those, but it'll take about a month for that to clear probably. And the South Lake Tahoe Senior Center group that will be running, hopefully be running the center Soon. Anyway, that's about it on the progress.

I just want to know, this is your opportunity to talk about any discussions you would have.

I just wanted to add, you mentioned it in the beginning of that project, they were not getting input. That's not true. They were getting a lot of input from it. They just didn't listen.

From the senior center?

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. We were in touch with them.

No, no. The commission on aging was. But the senior center, people operating the center were not included in any of those discussions. Oh, right, right. That's what I was saying. That was part of the problem.

They weren't talking to the people. We tried to find someone to see Drake, and there wasn't anybody to talk to.

That was during COVID again, yeah. It was before COVID. HAB-Masyn Moyer- Before. Yeah, just right in that period we lost everybody. HAB-Masyn Moyer- No. And so that's why it's like starting from scratch. And that's why, like, some of the filings weren't done. And so we got to go back and correct all of that to HAB-Masyn Moyer- You guys. Yeah, we would like to be in those sessions. Yeah. And I have something else I want to bring up in open for so HAB-Masyn Moyer- Okay, thanks.

HAB-Masyn Moyer- Really We revisit you know I don't have anything. Okay. Other than my email. Do you talk, you have anything coming from.

Where are supervisors, I don't around much. But the only thing that I have done is work. Okay, we'll get to that.

Yeah, we are kind of all waking up from marginalized stupor, I think, since it was dark. We took a vacation. I have a few things, and that was the first comment I was going to make. In general, we've been dark. We haven't really had meaning, but that doesn't mean we necessarily stop doing business. And I've been to a couple of different meetings of different committees from the board. So we will talk about those when we get to them. The other thing I did want to really emphasize strongly is that we are, I'm talking about the inclusive, we are doing our presentation of board of supervisors on September 15, and it would be just wonderful if as many of you can be there as possible to not only maybe answer questions if they come up but to support your leadership here what time is it time specific or the agenda is not out yet i'll send it to everyone when it does come out what would the walk be perhaps that we could put on our calendar just to kind of

It would probably be in the morning. Same time would be my guess. It's one of those days when they're just accepting reports.

Presentation is all day and we don't know where we're going to fall. So it's committees, commissions, councils that will be presenting to the Board of Supervisors that day.

September 15th. It's a Tuesday.

Okay. That being said, And the only other comment I want to make is to remind you that we are an apolitical, nonpolitical body. And not only that, but if you have any kind of an encounter with the public, We advise that you speak as an individual, not on behalf of the commission. We need to be pretty careful about that. Bob, do you want to add anything to that?

No, I didn't. Could I go back to the previous point, though, on the presentation with the voice supervisor? Sure. Okay. Based on my experience two years ago, I think it was... The success of the presentation really was a question and answer period that followed the presentation or some of it came up during it. And having a key member of the commission there who are aware of the work going on, such as in housing, and Jim spoke to that because that was a specific question for one of the members, one of the supervisors who is interested in that. was questions around uh the uh senior legal which the staff could answer which the information uh none of the supervisor or none of the commission had so i guess my point is really what julie said about having uh members of the commission there i think is important to speak to areas So I think that's really important.

That's one thing I was going to kind of emphasize. In the last couple of years, we have really made an effort. Not an effort. It hasn't been an effort. But we have been consciously engaging the staff and working as a team. And I really appreciate all of you.

I need to speak to that in the history of the commission is that we have always been in concert with the staff at the senior center and supported them on unreservedly for the history of this commission. It's our mandate and it's our goal. When we presented to the board of supervisors, the annual report, we could be creative and did trifle brochures and, and, fancy stuff about what the commission did. Unfortunately, the new format for the reports now that they've required because they've got so many people reporting to them, it leaves out that creativity. So it's even more important that we have a physical presence and a supportive presence. because so many of the commissions are only five people. But we're much larger. We're much more proactive than many of the commissions out there. We need them to remember that and to be aware of that. And thank you to you for all your years of support.

Thank you, Liz. I do have an update, too, I wanted to share. Rebecca said that the board clerk's office sent an email out this morning about September 15th presentations and The Commission on Aging is slated to present at 9 a.m. Oh, good. Thank you.

Good job. I just love working with you. All right. That's my report. And at this point, we will open for public comment.

No taking public comment from participants on Zoom. Callers will have three minutes to speak. Please raise your hand if you're interested in making a comment. No public comment. Very good. Thank you.

I'm not on Zoom.

But you're on Michigan.

Yeah, but this is public comment, right?

On what Joan was saying. Yeah, that's it. Okay, I get confused as to which one. Okay, there's one. I'll do it. I can do it on your report. Yeah. Yeah.

Okay. I want my voice.

All right. So we can buy one for the last time. May we have a report on the triples?

Happily, we'll have a report on the triple A. My name is Yvette Winkie. I am the program manager. for our Area Agency on Aging until tomorrow. Tomorrow's my last day. Are we having donuts or anything? Oh, I mean, I believe Lynette is bringing me cupcakes tomorrow. Oh, cupcakes tomorrow. So I think a lot of the work that I'm doing right now, we're moving especially, I'm moving a lot of projects to Lynette. So Lynette's gonna have her eyes on them until my position is filled. We do currently have an open recruitment for program manager. The recruitment closes on August 23rd. So hopefully they'll be able to move forward with filling my position pretty quickly. So I wanna keep that on your radar. And try not to get emotional. I want to share the good news we have for South Lake Tahoe for our senior nutrition site regarding staffing only. Our new South Lake Tahoe meal site coordinator started last week. Her name is Julie Classville and she's off to a great start. She's a real go-getter, really jumping into things. We've been able to move our Placerville meal site coordinator who's been driving up there every day. He's back down in Placerville so we do have better support on Placerville as well. So at this time we have, um, all but one of our positions in Tahoe field, which is an incredible place to be. We are still, we still have an open continuous recruitment for the program coordinator up there. Um, we don't have a lot of activity on that recruitment. So if you know people in the community with, um, interest in senior nutrition and, um, please send them our way. They can submit an application anytime. And because it's a continuous recruitment, it allows us to schedule the interviews quickly and we can move into hiring pretty quickly once we have a candidate that we've identified and want to move forward in that. Let's see. After our last meeting, we did have staff pull together a volunteer recruitment flyer. So I do have a flyer that's exclusive to The positions we're trying to recruit for in South Lake Tahoe, we should have flyers at that site. But if you're in the community up there, any additional marketing and support you can get to help steer volunteers our way will be very much appreciated. In addition to the South Lake Tahoe program coordinator, we also have two continuous recruitments underway for a program aid in the club adult day services program. And we also have a meal site coordinator recruitment for Placerville for several positions that we currently have available in the kitchen. So we still are doing some recruiting here. The good news is we have a new Well, we have a Placerville Meal Site Coordinator in background. So we have somebody that we're hoping to be able to bring on board in the next couple of months. And we also have good news in the club is we have a new program aid starting on Monday. So we've had some success with that continuous recruitment. And I think the most, one of the more interesting things we've done over the last month is we were able to bring our database provider, WellSky, we were able to bring a programmer on site to do some training For our team on site to ensure everybody knows how to use the system, all the shortcuts, the best ways to get things done, how to pull data out of the system. So we had two days of training that Yasmin and Miguel helped coordinate on site for us, but it was very valuable. I think everybody got something out of it. It's been one of my priorities to ensure that everybody knows how to use the system to the best of its capacity. So I think we're on our way. We still have some priorities underway on cleaning up the data for active clients and really getting in so we can specialize some of the reports that come out of that system. Because there's some areas where we're tracking information separately because we don't know how to pull it out of that database yet. So it was a very useful training. We were all very excited to have the opportunity to talk with the programmer who's been part of WellSky. I think for over 20 years, he was one that worked with Yasmin to initially set it up. So he has a lot of expertise on how we're using the system. And he was a great presenter. He was really able to get down to what our needs were and try and communicate with staff. on that. And then I think, I think anything else I would have to report, somebody else will be reporting after me. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna leave it at that. But I just want to thank all of you. It's been such a pleasure to be a part of this group and get to know you and, and see everybody's passion. And I believe so strongly in the work you're doing. And so I hope to kind of see what you're doing over the next few years. And maybe one day you'll see me again and I can be involved in a different capacity. So, but thank you.

Community member position open.

Maybe not just yet. So with that said, I will turn it over to Denise.

Good afternoon. Denise Ramos, the program coordinator. So Beth and I were able to attend the National Night Out in Placerville at the Haytown Plaza on August 4th. We were able to reach about 300 people came in and out of there and heard a lot of folks just say, wow, I didn't know that this was available. So we were able to give a lot of good information out. Eric and I met with Denise Davis. She's from the Alzheimer's Association. We met with her last week. And in the past, we have partnered with her to provide a mini series for family caregiver support. And what that is, is bringing in matter, subject matter experts to come and talk on specific topics for caregivers. So in the past, they have done Um, some in regards to advanced directives, pulse forms, financial, um, power of attorney, um, knowing what are some warning signs of Alzheimer's. So just a lot of, um, more educational things for the community. So we're partnering with her again. Um, we, I am in talks with Michelle, um, senior legal to come talk on October. It looks like probably the 21st, but we're going to get all of this together. And then next month I will have a flyer so we can get that out to the community. And then we'll do one in Placerville and then we are waiting for dates for Tahoe to make sure that we get Tahoe up and Michelle would go up there as well. Farmer's Market is going well. I know a few weeks ago, Lynette had spoke about possibly needing the commissioners, the COA to help us, but we were able to chat with our point of contact at the state and felt really good after that meeting. So we have issued out those cards. As of yesterday or a couple days ago, we've between Placerville and Tahoe have issued out 75 farmers market cards. So that we have about until the 30th to issue out the remaining 56. Bingo size is moving and trucking right along. And hopefully here shortly, we should be able to get myself and some other Staff members trained in running bingo size. I do have one gal that my volunteer said that she would help assist me in that. So that's great. And then we'll be looking for volunteers to be able to run it up in Tahoe as well. That is my report.

Question on bingo size. If you get to be a certified instructor, does that expire or is it forever?

Do you know? I don't know the timeframe.

Yeah.

Because that was one of the original ones.

Are you interested in doing it again?

Well, I'm thinking about it. But I don't want to have to go back through the training.

Yeah. Because I did it.

I got certified along with what's her name?

Lori Carter.

Lori. The very first one. But I don't know if it's still valid.

I'll look into it and get back to it. What program is that for?

Bingo Science. It's an exercise program that you play bingo for a little while and then you teach exercises for a little while and then you do a couple of rounds of bingo and it's really fun and it teaches seniors to do certain exercises. It's escalating. You start fairly simple and then you get a little more involved.

It's kind of a fall prevention. So you're working on developing muscles that will help strengthen your balance and prevent falls.

And it's a certified program so it can be reimbursed. But you have to be qualified to be instructor too. And it's not hard, it's just fun. I could use the exercise .

Okay, anything else on the area of agency of agency? Rebecca?

Hi, good morning, everyone. Good morning.

Welcome back.

Thank you. I've got a few things to share today. So our 2026 LIHEAP will be accepting applications again on Monday. So that was really nice to open that back up. We were closed sometime in April. We had spent all our funding and then we got our amendment, which means just the rest of our grant. And that's a normal thing that happens every year. And so we're happy that we can open back up on Monday. And yana I would love to encourage you guys to refer folks to the yana program on the you are not alone. Program. Me is for, I'm sorry, for homebound seniors who receive a telephone check-in call. So if you're not familiar with that program, let me know. If you have any neighbors or friends who are mostly homebound, don't get a lot of interaction and really could utilize just someone checking in on them on a regular basis, that's what that program is there for. And the Community Action Council is doing good. We still have one more vacancy in our low income sector. So hopefully we can fill that. And I have Liz and Raylene coming in October to do a presentation about your commission to our commission. So I'm really thankful that you guys will be coming in October to do that. Because as Liz mentioned, you guys as the Commission on Aging are one of the more active, proactive, and very involved councils. And so I think you should take pride in that. And showing that to other councils is great. So I'm looking forward to that. And our senior activities, we're doing great around here. There's a lot of folks coming in and out. It's a well-utilized building and nothing too different on that end. Did you guys have any questions about anything?

I do. I understand that the papers, the senior times went out with the meals recently. Yeah. You have any feedback on that?

Yeah, I did have, I don't get all the phone calls coming back, but I did have one person call me shortly after their meal was delivered and said, I love this. How can I sign up? So that was great. And it's helpful to have those folks who, again, are homebound getting that resource. There's a lot of education coming through those articles, events that might happen throughout the county. And the menus on there. So if they lose their menu that their volunteer gives them. And sometimes the senior center will have really low impact things like our movie of the month or we have, you know, chess or Scrabble. And so sometimes giving the senior times out to those homebound seniors, it's fun for them to just come out with support once in a while. So that was good. It was a good success to do that.

How many did you actually send out?

Ah, 80 to 100?

I don't know. So we reached 80 to 100 people with the senior times.

Just from the home delivered meals. So we had an extra stack. And so, yes, that's a very rough number. So I really don't, I didn't count them. We just had a few extra and we wanted to make sure they weren't sitting around. So, but yeah. Yeah.

It speaks to outreach. So, you know, we're all very concerned about that.

Yeah, and we did some cleaning up with our Senior Time subscribers last year. So we do have on a regular, we'll have a few extras. So if there's an event you guys are doing, a talk or something, and you would love to have a few extras to hand out, please reach out to us, the front desk office. and say, hey, do you guys have any extra on hand that I can bring to such and such? And we'd love for you guys to do that. It's just another way of promoting not only the times, but our services, because we have quite a bit of information about our senior services in there.

I just have a little feedback for you. I live in a senior community, and there were a few papers there a couple of Fridays ago or no, Saturdays ago in our, we play games on Saturday night. And while we're in the middle of playing Pictionary, this one gal was leafing through the senior times and talking about, you know, oh, this is what I met.

I wrote the article on the Mission to Honor event coming up, and I was surprised how many calls we got. I mean, I probably had two or three dozen calls right after that article hit.

That's really good to hear. Yes, we do get some good feedback. Yesterday, we had a gal come in to sign up for her next year just to renew, and she commented on another one of our articles as So yes, it's really nice to know. And that's also kind of, I don't know, humbling to know that it's reaching a lot of people. And so the information in there, it has been a good resource for our community. And so we're gonna continue to do that as best as we can.

Great. I see no comments here. Do we have any public comments?

Now taking public comments from participants on Zoom. Participants will have three minutes to make their comments. Please raise your hand if you're interested in commenting.

Seeing that, we will move along to the Health and Human Services Agency report.

That's me. You're the one giving it? I am. Yes, yes. And I have to say, I love the Senior Times. The last, actually, I wonder if it's the one that hasn't yet been published, but there's a recipe for, or there's a reference to a blackberry pie in the oven. And when I was editing that article, it I was thinking I need to make a pie. I really, I enjoyed the newsletter very much and staff put a lot of effort into that. So it's really nice to know how well received it is. And thank you all for writing your articles too. It's wonderful. I just have a couple of things to add that haven't, a few things to mention that haven't been talked about yet. I do want to say we are going to miss Yvette so much.

Oh yeah.

And we have been just so lucky to have her. She was trying not to get emotional. I get a little emotional thinking about this. Yvette has been a lovely colleague and will continue to be a lovely colleague for the next day and a half. And so, you know, 28 plus years of service to the county and that's, it truly has been service. She has just put her heart into her work and what a, What a pleasure that is to have colleagues that do that. So thank you, Yvette. And she will be a hard person to replace. So thank you, Yvette, for everything. We will miss you very much. But keep her in mind. And here I teared up. All right. So a couple things that haven't been mentioned. On Monday, the 24th, our veteran service officer will be doing an outreach event at our Placerville Senior Center from 1 to 3 p.m. So if you're a veteran or know some veterans, it would be good to have some opportunity to talk with our veteran services office. That would be a great place for them. And so that's our Placerville Senior Center. There's a Placerville Veterans Stand Down that's being – held September 11th and 12th at our Veterans Memorial Building. Our veterans staff will participate in that. There are other community groups participating in that as well. That's 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. on the 11th and 12th. Really exciting. One of our county colleagues is receiving a Purple Heart for his time in the service. And those presentations often happen while the The active service member is still in the military, but this one is happening as he is a veteran. So that's taking place on August 28th at 11 at our Veterans Memorial Building. And that just kind of really exciting for the county to be able to honor a veteran for their service with a Purple Heart. I think that's it for veterans. We did receive word that we will be receiving discretionary CSBG funds and our CAC Council has had some conversations. Our community action agency has had conversations about how to potentially use those funds if we receive them. We haven't received them yet, but we have received word that we'll receive $29,800. So it's an increase from previous years. And they would like to put that money into fall prevention and then do some marketing for our YANA program, You Are Not Alone, because we know in our area plan that YANA is a program that people are really interested in, and yet we need to get the word out so that more people participate in that. So once we have that funding, I'll let you know, but we are looking to be able to contract out again for the fall prevention.

And so we're working on that now, knowing that that money may be coming.

I wanted to mention, and Jim, you might have some additional information here, but our housing and homelessness colleagues mentioned that there are some new developments that have opened up that might be affordable housing options. Eldorado Haven, along with Mercy Housing, has some new developments opening up. Sugar Pine Village, Phase 1B is complete, and they're opening a waiting list. And then Mallard Apartments in Placerville. El Dorado Haven is in Diamond Springs. Sugar Pine Village is in South Lake Tahoe, and Mallard is in Placerville. And their websites, they're accepting applications. You can take a look at that. And then finally, I'll just add a little bit to what Yvette mentioned about senior daycare. Um, we are, we have, um, Yvette and I are doing an interview tomorrow for a senior daycare position that's open. Um, we're excited about that. And then next week I have another interview, um, uh, set up interview set up for some other senior daycare positions. So we're, we're doing everything we can to staff up there. Um, we have, um, another retirement happening over at senior daycare and, um, and then, um, another staff person is transitioning eventually, um, to another program. So, um, We are continuing to do everything we can to keep our staffing levels up. That's it for me. Any questions?

I have one question. You said that the funds that they create are going to one of the programs is YADA. What kind of What kind of financial support is that?

Oh, we're going to do some marketing, some advertising to get the word out maybe. And we're going to, Rebecca and I and Amy will talk about that, kind of what that'll look like, what we're going to do. But we just want to make certain that we have this wonderful program. We know, you know, there are people out there that probably need it. We really want to figure out how we can better get the word out and get more people to come in. So that's what those funds will be used for. Yeah, but the bulk of those funds we're hoping to direct to fall prevention. Perfect. Yes.

I just wanted to elaborate on the veteran stand down. For those of you who don't know what that is, it's a term that comes from the military when you come back in faith and you reload, repack, rest. And so it's called a stand down. And so they took that term. And what we do is at least once a year, they do it in Hofstra County as well, at the veterans buildings. On Friday and Saturday, all day, it's directed towards veterans you may know that need help. Homeless veterans is a big thing. But you'll see all the veterans organizations are going to be there. You'll see the county veterans people will be there. And then you have people that do haircuts. Vets have even been there for their animals.

There's clothing. There's food. There's a lot of stuff that you can get. So we draw...

A lot of veterans that you might not normally get into the office, and we kind of try to help work with them. So it's a pretty big deal. If you know anybody that's having any kind of issues, there's somebody there that can talk to them.

That reminded me for some reason. One other thing I'll mention. So you learned a bit ago that your Commission on Aging presentation is at 9 a.m. The Veterans Affairs Commission, if you're interested in staying on and seeing your fellow commission presentations, is at 1030 on the 15th. And then the Community Action Council is scheduled for 11.

I've been thinking about how many different aspects there are. where we can reach seniors. And I would love to see a lot more participation, even if just sitting in on these different commissions and committees. Because we have a large commission, but we touch so many different aspects of people's lives. I'm just writing down a couple of veterans, housing, just everything, practically everything that the Board of Supervisors touch, we have somehow involved in that. senior students. So we're important. Yes, you are. Public comments.

Now taking public comment from participants on Zoom. Participants will have three minutes to make their comments. If you are interested in commenting, please raise your hand. There is no public comment.

Okay. Executive committee Well, we met on a couple of different committee topics during July. And I addressed those at that time. There really wasn't anything other than that. So you will hear about more of it as we move forward. Policy and legislation.

Right. CSL is gearing up for the fall legislative session, which is basically November through March. And the teams have been assigned now. So the team leads, Gina and I will team lead. And so we will be meeting with our team members. And we will be the ones going out and trying to sell our proposals to the leadership over that period. And we're also following up on the elections because there are a lot of new potential, the new legislators, because there's so many elections coming up. And so I know we have District 4, and that Alvarado Gil, she didn't make it, so there are two people to be following up on. And I happen to have gone to one of the candidates' meet and greets. What do team leaders do? We have all the proposals that we have every year. We will take those as a team. It'll be a team lead, myself, and then we'll have another member too. We will then be assigned six or seven legislators to take those proposals and send proposals to those legislators so that they can hopefully decide that they might like to sponsor one of those proposals for legislation. So we're about it. We have to study the proposals when they come back for alleged counsel. Alleged counsel writes them up for us. And then we somebody. Actually, that's, there's a lot of administrative work that goes into that.

We basically choose our top 10 list in the end of October. We've got November, December and January to meet with the legislators because that's when they're deciding what proposal they're bringing to the floor. But to get a hold of a legislator, that's kind of tough. We're dealing with the staff, the scheduler, and typically we meet with the junior staffers to talk one-on-one with us. And depending on how their knowledge base is regarding issues that affect older adults, There may be some more education that's needed, or they may be well-versed because their legislator is really attuned to older adult issues. So you don't know exactly what you're going to get when you meet with the staff for the first time. But it's always interesting. We always get a sense of what is important to that legislator. And we also learn about what is happening in that district. So it's a pretty great meeting for, it's typically 30 to 40 minutes. And you learn a lot as a CSL member. And you'll also connect with the legislature.

One of the other things that happens, I think it's interesting and it happens to us, is that the legislature, a lot of legislators we met with last year, was very interested in scams. So rather than us selling scams, our proposals to them, they were trying to get our help working on scams. So you really don't know the direction of where you're going in this meeting. I mean, you can be scripted, but that script isn't going to get you there, because there'll be all these little turns that have got to come up. So it's been a very interesting time.

I think this is good feedback from the commission. Did you have a question or you seem really engaged?

Oh, no, I'm just nodding my head.

No, I love it.

Well, let's move on to the AAA. Oh, so we meet quarterly. So our next meeting is September 17th. So I probably will send out a general email asking for any input that you'd like me to include in the quarterly report. But until then, I don't really have anything else to report.

I think there was something on September 2nd or 3rd. No, my calendar has too many things. Revenue generating.

That would be me. There you are. So my apologies. I've been probably most of the last three months. So I have not been around, but we are regrouping. It's Janet, Joan, and I. But I did have a question for Joan yesterday about your other committee that was created in my absence and whether they should be formed together or joined together in the discussions about just these programs that might be cut and how we can fund them and if they should join forces together.

Is that something you feel that maybe we should look at for the next meeting as an agenda item? Yes.

Well, that instead of working independently on something that might have the same goal.

Put something together. Bylaws and policies and procedure. We did meet. We met. And he gave us this wonderful packet, which was overwhelming. And we decided that I could not cancel this meeting, but the goal, as I understand it, is to have everything, not only in compliance, but coordinated among the various aspects, bylaws, policies, procedures, the, what do you call it, from the Board of Supervisors. Board of Supervisors. Or you see organs. Yeah. So that's, that's a pretty lofty tasks and we will be meeting again. Do you have anything to add to that. That one. at our committee to develop outreach curriculum, including information on scams. Who is addressing that?

Well, I would like to turn it over to Julie regarding what she put together with this . I'll

I just want to say I can't copy because when I try to copy, I wonder about how four times is it? It's this. Yeah, I can see that. So I did

I appreciate it. I can see it needs to be slightly updated. Well, let me start updating. So I took the information that Jed gave us at the last meeting two months ago and tried to consolidate everything and put it into a more readable format. And so this is what I came up with. It looks a lot better in color. So this is a little bit boring, but it looks a lot better in color. But as the gentleman over here was talking to us, I kind of flipped through it to make sure that I included some of the things he was speaking. And actually, like the IC3 that he's talking about is on here. But I would like to include the information about there. So the post office has some good information. I don't know what that is, but I'll kind of look that up and maybe include it on the page. But I feel like this is a good Pretty good document. I wish I was here to see it because I got this information. We break the wheel and just got it prepared into our readable format. And hopefully this is something that we can distribute to people. We hate everybody, obviously.

You said me, probably.

Yeah, I can say that. Yeah, we'll need to attach it with the minutes. Right.

We'll need to attach it to the minutes. This. Yeah. Okay. Okay.

So what's the next step in the process once the committee or the Commission. Choose the size to adopt this Does it have to go through Now you wouldn't you would have to go on approving this material to include with your outreach.

Right. But after the commission. That's it.

We approve it. We submit it. We copy it and distribute it.

Okay. So not everybody has this information. It was just, I just got it out a few days ago. So it wasn't attached to the meeting. So maybe this is something that we can put on the agenda for next time and approve. Because I do need to make that one adjustment to it. So I'll try to revise it a little bit and then send a copy for the next month. Yeah, and then that would allow for public comment to if anyone wanted. Yeah, okay. So I do have a few extra copies, but I'll go ahead and send a PDF out to everyone just as a draft.

Membership. We still have two vacancies, and almost have one built. I think that when she found out what we do, it scared her off.

It's unfortunate.

Anyway, we do need to get to work on at least figuring out how to, can this go with the senior times? Does it have to be, is there a format? Didn't that go in the Senior Times? Our openings.

Oh, that can be your next commissioner article. You can talk about what you do.

Standard format that we use for recruitment too. It's just a standard statement that we always use.

Okay.

Are you available?

No, I think that would be good. It's my personal hope that we can pull somebody in for the north part of the county or the south part of the county. We're kind of, what's that? Yeah, it's been, we all go out previously, but we've stopped at several occasions.

I remember we got something in about Democrat also to, if you will, open it to whatever the reason is about Democrat initiatives. Is that still?

Yes, that is. That will have to be run through Carla Haas or public information officer for approval before it goes out. I have the template so I can send it to you. See if that's what you still want to say before we send it over.

I'm thinking for the senior times. I don't know what who's submitting the next article, but maybe what we could do, instead of that being the article, we just have a pop-out box with your Commission on Aging article, and then that box could say, you know, the Commission on Aging has the following vacancies. That could potentially impact your word count just a smidge, but we can try and make that work. So that might be a nice thing to do.

Let's talk, that has to go in, what, by the 8th?

Yes. Yeah. By the 8th of September in order for our October issue, because our September issue has already been sent to print.

Who knows about the next article? Is that me?

Because I'm trying to remember.

I mean, I can do it.

Yeah. Okay. I'll do it.

Rebecca, I forgot that you were still there.

I think that it's a recorded meeting. I think it's best for me not to be on camera all the whole time. But I do want to mention we will just forward, I will forward the submission policy to Yasmin so she can share it with you guys again. And that gives you some guidelines on what we're able to receive, how we prefer the submission and everything. So you have that.

The last one is the committee to focus on budget items. The word supervisors budget items. You were on that committee. You haven't met.

Well, the committee of S3 that you addressed earlier.

No, this is to monitor what's going on.

We need to get with, now that you've asked, we need to get some direction from that. And generally, as to how we move forward to dive into this as a teacher. We can do it immediately. I think it was Raylene and myself. There's a third person. It might be in the minutes. I think it is. But we haven't been.

We're looking to consolidate it with the other committee. We do have a vehicle for fundraising in the way that we can promote the

the website link under the senior services banner. We also can partner with different foundational groups that provide grants, submitting a grant application. So I think it's a little bit premature to put us all together to do the deeper dive. I mean, I think obviously it's of interest to the whole commission, but I think we need to formulate a better, concise goal structure as to how we're going to do the deeper time. And the committee is you, Raylene, and Jen. And Jen. And then a staffer. Obviously.

Raylene, and yeah, OK, one of you is one of the commissioners that has a year for the supervisor. Okay, Commission outreach and events. Did you want whether something coming up later about that. Is there anything else needs to The only one I'm aware of is the one we're doing in October for the deck.

For the community action. That's October when When Rebecca It's October, the

18th 28th October the 28th at 10 o'clock in the morning and what is that yes yes and I I will reach out to you because there may be actual conflict we may have to move our meeting up a week but I will reach out to you um that would that would actually work for me better because my husband's having surgery that day

I might be and we're not, you know.

Yeah, there's just conflict. I don't have to discuss here, but I will reach out to you about the date if there is a difference. But yes, it is. Thank you.

Oh, well, we'll work on it.

Outreach on financial issues. Jim, how's he? I just got a couple brief things.

One, next Tuesday, the affordable housing unit is doing a presentation at 1.30 before the board.

It's basically cleaning up language. They have not removed, they're now removing ADUs from the language for traffic impact fees. That's not required, but it's not a big deal because they were exempt since 2016. So a lot of it's just cleaning up language. So I kind of blew through it presentation at the red line, and that's pretty much what it is. But I wanted everybody to be aware that we are looking at this stuff. We're watching for affordable housing and stuff.

And I saw this come across, and I just wanted to, we often talk about Placerville as kind of, we should look at what they're doing because they're doing the right thing. I had no idea how well they were doing the right thing. But there's only five jurisdictions in the entire state who are hitting the income or the target. There's

four different targets from what we call the top end houses, what do they call it? Market rate, thank you. Down to very low income, there's four. And there's only five jurisdictions. Now that's county, city, that's the whole state.

And so when they look at it, they say, there's only five, they're permitting at a pace to hit all four income targets. By the way, the county is kind of in the middle of the list And that's only because of our market-made housing. We didn't have that. We wouldn't even be that part of this. But those are Pluess, Napa, Yolo, and Mono. They're mostly rural counties, and there are unincorporated bits of those. And the fifth is Placerville, a town of roughly 1,100 people in the Sierra foothills east of Sacramento. 1,100. 1,100, it says. I'm sorry, 11,000. Yeah. They were in the 40s. And they are the only incorporated city in the state that is doing it. That's how well they're doing it. When I say we should look at it because what are they doing right? The county's doing wrong.

That's how well they're doing it.

So we need to, people in the county government need to actually take a good look and see what they're doing. And is there anything crossover that we could identify and use for that? Because they're definitely doing the right thing. That's all I have. Any questions?

Other than I know we have a representative from city of Placerville, is there any other way that we can reach out to them to get more information?

How would you like to- How about people that are hooked to supervisors, talk to their supervisor to maybe ask staff?

But that's supervisor district three, the city of Placerville.

Right.

So that's the person.

I'm going to do the bigger picture. The whole county wants to know what the city is doing. So how about all of the board members talk to staff, county staff, and say, why aren't you looking at Placerville, what they're doing? So it's El Dorado County staff, affordable housing, building, all the people who are involved that we're talking about are trying to build more houses. Maybe they need to staff them. reach out to Al, if you will, and say, hey, what can you tell us that we don't know? It might be very easy.

Yeah, I was just trying to think of something more direct.

Well, that's pretty direct. I mean, the staff, although, how do we get it to the staff? Through the board. Everybody works for the board.

Okay.

They have a lot of power. They can tell everybody what to do. We didn't always do it, but they told us what to do.

Okay.

I thought Frank's, just very briefly, Frank's little word that he was telling us about. The churches. Yeah, the faith-based.

Yeah, there's a new, we're looking for property. To make things work for affordable housing, a lot of times property has to be donated, sold very cheaply, things like that.

Mercy Housing, that was donated from the Federated Church. So a new thing, and they did it already in Placer County, and now we're trying to get something going in this county, is they're talking to churches. There are churches, the Catholic Church is one of them, has a couple pieces of property in this county that I don't believe they're going to use. They haven't used them yet. And so there are other places that maybe they had a piece of property they were going to do at school, and now it's not physically possible or feasibly.

So they're trying to get these people together. They had a group in Placer, and out of the group that got together, they got three places that they're looking at. So that's huge. We're looking at property for places like Bridge Meadows, where kids from foster homes are with seniors.

A great program, multi-generational.

That would be a great faith-based thing. So if you know anybody that, if the churches you go to, you might want to talk to them about looking at that.

They have people that can help. They're going to get together. They're going to talk about it, much like they did in Placer, and try to identify some of these churches with property and maybe make room. It might be less of a nippy issue because churches aren't usually like in a neighborhood.

They might be a little bit more open and transportation issues or less of a problem. So it looks good on a number of fronts. Hopefully we'll be hearing more about that too. Thank you.

Thank you. Any other comments? South Lake Tahoe.

Well, I kind of spoke earlier. Okay. Jim, one thing, it's not official probably, but Jim mentioned the veterans activities and stuff. So I thought I'd go ahead and mention that last weekend, I helped the Seniors Inc. sponsor a, or host a rummage sale for the American Legion in South Lake Tahoe to raise funds for the ladies auxiliary. And they're the people that actually go out and they're doing a lot to help our veterans. Very nice. It was very successful. Big job, though. That's about it.

Thank you. Oh, Behavioral Health Commission, that's me. They were dark last night. They decided to take August. And so they don't have a report on what might have gone on, issues that are of interest to us, housing and mental health. We're seniors. The peer council also. So we'll be meeting again next month. If any of you have any kind of specific interest, please try to sit in on commissions or committees. We have affordable housing committee people go through. So if you can, yeah.

And if you've mentioned that a few times. And I think if we had a list of things that we wanted to attend, I'd be happy to sign up for it. But just, you know, just putting it out.

I'm not going to So you're talking about a list of the type of commissions and committees and councils.

Yeah, I mean, if there if I knew where you wanted to have a commissioner go to, I'd be happy to sign up and go to it. But maybe

Well, we're involved in everything.

So, you know, I will bring a list next time. Well, we don't know the meetings sometimes.

Well, to go on the Board of Supervisors website.

If we had an organized list, I mean, I would be happy to do it, but I also don't. I'm busy. So if somebody else is doing it already, I mean, I guess.

You need to coordinate it. If it was coordinated, I would be happy to volunteer. I just like the idea of having this person.

So who's going to put together the list?

Okay, that being the end of the reports, are there any public comments?

public comments from participants on zoom public will have three minutes to make their comments um please raise your hand if you are interested no public comment no comments thank you i have a non-public comment is that okay well

What's the best?

So does John. In conjunction.

Open forum.

She's confused like I usually am.

I'll do open forum. Unfinished business now?

Right. Very first order of business on the unfinished business is reappointing gail woman um born out for a three-year term beginning september 1st there's that's so move second anybody objecting hi motion carries welcome to the crowd second one uh commissioners who attended the county fair um any comments on what What went on? I mean, I know it's been two months. Anybody have any reports from having? It was great.

It was really good. I mean, for once, it wasn't blistering hot. So, I mean, there was a, you know, so it was actually nice to, you know, be in the booth and talk to people and not be sweltering. HHSA had a tremendous amount of materials to give out to the public. It was amazing how much information they had available at the booth. And again, it was pretty easy to talk to the public and engage with them and answer questions. I always enjoy going to the fair because you never know who you're going to meet, who's going to want to know some information that's relevant. And the fact that people are in the booth that can talk specifically about some of the services. It's a, it was good. I really enjoyed it this year.

I was kind of there on, I wore both hats there, but I was there very long. I can tell you that in the weeks following, I did four intakes for the senior care counselor. So A lot of people that are combined. Any other comments? I guess we're supposed to open it for public comments.

This is just business. Pardon me? This is just business and we have to do new business and then you can open it.

I have...

It's probably on there twice for public comment.

Is it? We usually have a lot of each.

Yeah.

And today we don't.

Yeah. We have a lot of places to see all those remarks. So there being none.

Well, Kelly hasn't raised her hand, but I'll give them. Now taking public comment from participants on Zoom. Participants will have three minutes for their comments. Please raise your hand if you're interested in commenting. No public comment.

Okay. New business, the commission on aging will appoint Liz Cowell as the outreach event coordinator. She will be replacing Julie in this position.

Is that okay, Julie? Absolutely. Public comments. All right. Wait. Joan, we need a motion and I'll make a motion.

Second. Any comments? If all approve, please say aye. Aye. Motion carries.

So in conjunction with our trying to get as much information on scams and fraud and stuff, I did go to the LPC.gov site and I requested five different brochures and it came in four weeks. It was nicely packaged. It was all free. And so just to give you a feel for what I got and think there's like, I probably, I think there's like two dozen different types of brochures you can get. This is an example of what you get and it's all free. So I highly recommend you order your own set and share it widely with your community. Raylene and I are sharing it widely within El Dorado Hills. And I, after... seeing how easy it was to order and have the delivery to my house, even a nice little box. I'm a fan. I highly recommend. It's free. I'm sorry. FTC.gov. Federal Trade Commission. Oh, the FTC. Yeah. And they basically had a webinar back in June and they said, please avail yourself of all this information. It's free for the taking and You know, and it's wonderful. It is.

It's great because you have a presentation with the senior center of bills on scams, and the sheriff is there. And at the same time, I had shared this information with the, what's her name, in charge of the senior center, and she went ahead and ordered it.

Yay!

So it's great.

meet with the people whoever you talk to not just a person i mean you know it doesn't cost anything no it's evident they're great they're very big i mean it's a focus topic like one of them one of the cards i've sent is on identity theft um you know so it's real it's a nice connector a nice handout it's not pages of material where people might have their eyes going silver. It's just something catchy when you do a meet and greet or whatever. That's right. Yeah. So anyway, I'm a fan.

So thank you.

Thank you. Okay, John.

What? Oh, you have a big dicker? Yeah.

Well, okay.

Well, what I did want to just share with you is a program list of the staff. All for our senior program. Oh, great.

Thank you. Let's keep going on. One more. One more. OK. OK. OK. OK. OK. OK. OK. OK. OK. OK. OK. OK. OK.

Just thought you'd be interested. South Lake Tahoe conducted its annual city survey a couple months ago, and I wanted to make sure that the seniors were represented in it, so I did as much outreach as I could. And it turns out that two-thirds of the respondents were seniors. So we are active in South Lake Tahoe. I just thought I'd say that, you know, there's a support out there for us. Excellent. So.

Great. Yeah. You're responsible, you and your group.

Yeah, I'm just saying we're getting support from the community, which is good to show.

I want to share one more thing. This is a medical supply company, and I've been kind of acquainted with the person who owns it. And she had indicated that she would be happy to include some information about our programs in her catalog. Wow, this is just an issue. we have that page. Is that endorsing a product or a company? No, it's telling us. What she's doing is putting out information to us. We're not doing anything. We run through. Yes, we do.

We're going to put staff on it. So it's not an endorsement of a company? No, it's just advertising our programs. We can advertise. Her company is...

And if you know anybody that needs something that she offers, tell them when they go. If they were sent by safety, you'll get 10% off. I've known her since I started.

She also has a free room. You go to her retail store, she has like a little closet area where it's basically, it's excess stuff only. You could just take it if you need it. She also has, I'm a big fan of hers. She also has, say you have the scooters or the wheelchairs, the fancy ones. She actually will sell refurbished ones at a discount, but only if they meet the criteria that they're safe and they work. So she doesn't just sell new stuff. She also gives dollars refurbished. She also, like I said, she has a free room, which is incredible.

I really think this is supporting an individual business. We are not supposed to do that. We are apolitical. We cannot endorse. I'm really glad it's an individual. I'm going to have to get a commission meeting. As individuals. This is an open forum.

No, it's open forum and for the public, not open forum.

As an individual, I'm saying that this life care medical supply has three items that you're not under obligation to support her in any. So do you.

So I'm not seeing it as a commission.

Not seeing it. Okay. Let us call this. Is there anything else for the order? Does anybody have anything for next month that you'd like to, besides for what you were talking about, would like to see on the agenda?

I won't be here.

Well, let us. We will be in top of this. I didn't want to say one thing. I've got to add, you know, I was probably one of the first ones you heard. We are going to sort of all see that. Thank you for all of your support.

Thank you. You guys make it easy.

We're going to talk to you about doing a little something for you next month because we didn't have time to get together. But it's going to be in Tahoe, and I don't know if you'd like to come to Tahoe. Special advocate to the commission. There's that, too.

We'll see you on the ocean about a year. Six months. Six months? It's on the ocean, and then we'll do it on the earth.

Yeah, you got to plan some of the plans.