Aging & Disability Resource Center Committee - Regular Meeting

Welcome, everybody. I'll call the evening Disability Resource Center Committee to order. This is Monday, September 14, 2026. Are we in compliance with the opening law? Yes. Thank you. We have an agenda. I would take a motion to approve the agenda unless there are any changes.

So moved. Second.

All in favor of approving the agenda as presented, say aye. Aye. I received the draft minutes from the August 10th, 2026 meeting. I would take a Motion to approve those minutes.

I would move to approve with one correction. Okay. If you look on page one, number one, the end of the second line going into the third, it needs to read, as the ADRC is no longer pursuing a contract.

Good catch. Add the word no, please. Thanks, John. I'll second her motion with the amendment made. I'm sorry. So I have a second motion and a second. Any other corrections or concerns about the minutes? All in favor of approving the minutes with that one correction, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Same sign. All right. We have approved the minutes. Number four, public comment. I see no public.

Alright, so you can see the ADRC department report. As you can see, we'll just touch on some of the upcoming activities and issues on the horizon. So, Inclusa Eye Care Humana, you know, had extended the contract for us to provide transportation through September 15th, which is tomorrow. And then I was in an ADRC director meeting and learned that MTM was willing to change some of the wording, which was the sticking point for all ADRCs to contract with them. So they had talked to their legal team, and they said they may be able to modify a contract with the ADRC for inclusive members and transportation. So I have been working now again with Colin Martin from MTM, And I said we're basically starting from square one, though, because, again, initially they had said that our staff would have to be CPR certified as well as have drug testing. And that was two of the sticking points. And then the third had to do with contracted language that obviously our insurance company did not want to change. So now that the MTM legal team is willing to look at all of this, I am hopeful that, that we may end up with a contract with MTM. We'll wait and see. I'm hoping next month I'll have some positive news to share with you on that, but I can't guarantee anything because this has been a very slow, tedious process, back and forth, not being able to contract and all of that. So that is where we are now with MTM. So it is a change from last month. So our Powerful Tools for Caregivers class that was scheduled to start September 8th in Spring Green had to be canceled because there was a lack of registration. We will hold the class in the spring in Sauk City. So, just so you are aware, we had advertised it in our Add Life newsletter, our Facebook page, we posted flyers, and we just did not have enough participation. And you like to have how many people? At least six? Six with that one, yeah. And so I think there were two individuals. And they were fine with the cancelization because they're fine during the spring class. Our eighth annual caregiver boot camp is scheduled for November 14th. And so you can see that Marina has set up a keynote speaker. And that you had wanted, how many people typically signed up for this? Usually 30.

It's pretty popular.

And you have about 30 right now? No, I have six or seven.

But the AdLife newsletter just came out.

We'll fill it. So it's in there. That won't be a problem. You can see that our Dementia Live with Columbia County ADRC, who we have been working with on different things, is scheduled for October 14th at the Frank Fisher Center in Lake Delton. And it is immersive, interactive experience. So it really gives caregivers that experience of what maybe their loved one is going through if they have dementia. And then Kurt Geckerman, who is our dementia care specialist, is starting a new memory cafe. And so he's getting that set up. And then our elder benefits specialist, EBSs, will again be offering Medicare Part D clinics to help Sauk County residents navigate Medicare. Pam is here to talk about the EBS program in just a little bit. And then... My Choice Molina, which is one of our managed care organizations in Sauk County, which allows individuals to choose. We have three different family care options. We had the Inclusa, we had My Choice Molina, and we have Anthem. And currently, My Choice Molina has been put on a corrective action plan, which went into effect September 1st. And that corrective action plan is effective until further notice, and we haven't heard anything yet by the state. We don't know why they were put on a corrective action plan at all. That is all kind of hush-hush. Typically, though, it has to be something fairly big. Maybe there were a lot of complaints made. Maybe there was some issues with providing care directly to the individuals enrolled. But right now, it does limit options for consumers who are coming to us wanting to enroll in managed care organizations. They still have the other two options, Inclusa and Anthem. And then we have partnership in IRIS. So, I mean, there are still options, but it does limit the family care options with them being on that cap currently. Otherwise, you can see, you know, just our monthly output measures. There's nothing that really stood out that seemed like out of the ordinary at all. We are working on our goals, and you can see that, you know, kind of where our status is, what we're working on. So, you will see that... You know, we have been talking about holding a pop-up meal site for quite some time that's in our aging plan. And so we do have a tentative date scheduled in April of 2027 to set this up in Spring Green at the Spring Green Community Church for a pop-up meal. So that is all I have on that monthly report. I don't know if anyone has any questions about those.

Before we move on to number seven, I'd like to welcome Supervisor Soprano to the Aging and Disability Resource Center Committee. Welcome.

Pleasure to be here. Thank you. Thank you.

And I thought maybe we could just quickly go around the room. You may know a number of us because we're supervisors, but we have a number of citizen members on this committee as well. So if we could just start with Supervisor Friedrich, go around the room and say hi. Thanks. Did we not perform? Yes.

Tutte-Gramling, citizen member. Hello, Wally.

Hi, Tutte. Thank you, citizen member. Homer Schrader, supervisor, District 4, very northwest of Salt County.

I'm Quinn Haas. I'm the director of the ADRC. I'm Pam Fox. I'm one of the two elder bonds.

Wait, I just saw your name.

I don't know about it, but the specialist is here to give you a brief overview of our program today.

And I'm Gail Birchlong, supervisor from District 24 in Spring Green.

Ross Gray says move. You know me. I know you. I know you, too. I know you.

And you know me. I'm Stacey Dacre, and I'm the accountant and the transportation supervisor for the ADRC.

Karina Whitman, I'm the aging program supervisor for the ADRC.

Nice to meet you all.

it's just on the department report and then it's on the brannicus So I just wanted to briefly just touch base that you know yearly our ADRC driver program surveys individuals that utilize our services so Chantel put together this kind of nice printout that shows basically that we had a hundred responses out of I believe 247 that were sent and You can kind of see the questions that were asked and their responses. And then at the very end, you can see some of the comments that people made. There were 58 responses. about maybe changes about the volunteer program or something like that. I do know that some people had commented that they were upset that we couldn't provide transportation anymore because they were enrolled with INCLUSA. And again, working on the contract, but very much out of our control. And so we can understand why they're upset about that. I did follow up with individuals who asked to talk to me. And, you know, we went through the survey and talked about their responses. So I had conversations with several people as well when they wanted to hear from me. So that's all I have about the driver survey. All right.

It looks like it was a Google form. How was it administered?

The actual survey was mailed to our participants. Gotcha. And you guys put it in yourself digitally? And then we put it in, yes. So, yes. Most of our consumers wouldn't know how to use it. Right. They wouldn't.

How many unique drivers are different? How many unique riders are there? What's the total scope of the universe you're covering here?

I mean, you listed 250, but... Those are probably over the last year who has used our services. Because, you know, for example, someone had reached out about something and someone had... called us back in February of 2025, but they never utilized our services. So this survey just went to those who have utilized our services, whether it was one time or they do it every day because they're on dialysis.

Two of my kids are on the list. I just wondered how many. There must be quite a few in Baraboo.

Right. I mean, this was Sauk County. So, again... We sent out 247, and we got 100 back. So, I mean, that's not too bad. I mean, I'd like to see it more, but really, when you send surveys, we all know you don't get huge. I do, too. I mean, in the grand scheme of things, it is, but...

It's exceptional. So... Yeah. And not to make light, but did the woman driver clean up her car?

So... I did, yes, actually. We had a conversation about that, so I actually talked to the person who had made that comment. Thank you, everyone.

Any additional questions? All right. We will move on now to number seven, review.

I am one of two elder benefits specialists at the ADRC of Sauk County. I serve the eastern half of Sauk County, which is Fairview, Merrimack, Saxony, Prairie Shack. My coworker, Mindy Schroeder, many of you probably know her. She works out of our Reedsburg office, and she covers the western half of Sauk County, which is Reedsburg, Plains, Spring Green, and all those outlying communities over there. We serve people 60 and older only. We don't serve anyone under the age of 60. Primarily, we help with screening for benefits. We help with applying for benefits, renewing benefits, explaining benefits. The bulk of what we do, I would say, is primarily regarding Social Security and Medicare. People come to us saying, I'm over 62, I want to apply for retirement. Is it right for me? How much is my benefit going to be? Can I work and still be on retirement? Can I do it now or later? I'm not yet 62, but I can't work anymore. Can I apply for disability? What would that look like for me? SSI is another Social Security benefit for people with lower incomes, lower assets, maybe not the work history behind them. It's basically a disability program for folks that don't have that work history. We help screen for that and apply for that. Once people are on those Social Security programs, sometimes they get notices saying, you're not eligible anymore, or, hey, we've overpaid you, you owe us money back, we're going to stop your payments. People panic, they call us, we help them understand what's going on. We will help them appeal that if there's grounds to do that. A lot of what we do is regarding Medicare. We do... People that are turning 65 and newly eligible for Medicare, we do Medicare 101 counseling, both in our office and we do presentations to the public where we have a PowerPoint presentation and we present to a group getting started. I'm doing one of those tonight in SOC. Once you get on Medicare A&B, there's options to go along with that. So there's supplements and drug plans and advantage plans and people don't understand all the differences all the time. So we help them understand what those options are. We help them apply for those options. Once they're on those plans, lots of them need to be reviewed or renewed. So we help with that. I mentioned that in the fall we do our open enrollment clinics. That's where people can review their drug coverage or their advantage plans for next year. It's really important to review. We do those reviews, and we usually help between 800 and 1,000 people in that seven-week period every single month. Mindy and I don't do that on our own. We have the help of one of our disability benefits specialists always helps us, and then we have volunteers that help us. And our front desk staff is a huge help during that time. But yeah, we serve a lot of people during the fall. Sometimes people come to us and say, I'm turning 65, I'm eligible for Medicare, but do I need it? I have VA health care, I have COBRA, I have Marketplace, I'm working, I have insurance through my spouse. All sorts of questions regarding, do I need it? Yes, no, how's the coordination benefits going to work if you do have other coverage and help understand all of that? If people come to us and say, I can't afford Medicare, I don't know how I'm going to swing this, there are programs to help. We help screen people for those programs. We help people apply for those programs and do the yearly renewals that they need to do to keep those programs. Lots of what we do pertains to medical billing issues. Hey, I have Medicare to supplement, but I'm getting this ambulance bill. I have a nursing home denial. Something's not working with my insurance. So sometimes it's billed correctly and they have a full pay of some sort and we just help them understand that or apply for financial assistance with that. Other times maybe it's a billing issue, a coding error, or the provider didn't know that you had this certain insurance. So we just help sort through all sorts of that kind of stuff. We do some things with labor and tenant issues, evictions, understanding leases, consumer education regarding scams and frauds, those types of things. And we do community outreach presentations like Turning 65, Welcome to Medicare, and we help screen and apply for public benefits like key share, energy assistance, and doing those yearly renewals that have to be done. Mindy and I typically meet with people one-on-one in our offices, but we also do phone appointments. Occasionally we can do a home visit if it's needed. We do site visits to the outlying communities. So I go down to Sauk City once a month. Mindy goes to Plain and Spring Green once a month. And we just take walk-in appointments for people who maybe can't get to our offices. We will do appointments over the phone if that's necessary. We do a lot of phone appointments during the fall open enrollment just because we're serving so many people and not everybody wants to come in. And if it's a quick review, we can do it pretty quickly over the phone. We work under the supervision of attorneys out of Madison from Guar. And so anybody that meets with us is entitled to that same attorney-client privilege that they would have if they were working directly with an attorney because we work under their licenses directly. We do have that attorney backing, so if we do have to file an appeal or some legal paperwork, they are the ones that draft that and make sure that that's all up to code. Our services are free, they're not based on income. I work with a lot of people that have very, very low incomes, and I've worked with some very wealthy individuals and everyone in between. So it just depends on what their needs are, what they're presenting here for, but we never charge a fee for our services. We're open to all Sauk County residents 60 or over. If it's not the client calling themselves, then it has to be either their power of attorney for finance or their guardian. We can't take cold calls from concerned family members or neighbors or friends saying, hey, can you help my mom? They have to be wanting our services. They're all voluntary. So on the back of this page, and I won't go through them all, but there's just some examples of case examples that come through across our desk that we run into. If you go into those, you'll see there's some, hey, I can't afford my medications. What am I going to do? all the way up to, hey, if I'm being charged an IRMA, which is a higher premium for my Medicare because I have a higher income, what do I do? So it runs the government as far as income and needs, but that just kind of gives you an idea of some of the cases that come across their desks. So I don't want to bore you with too many details. I know you have a lot of other things going on, but if anyone has any questions, I'd be happy to answer them.

Pam, I don't know what IRMA is.

So IRMA stands for income-related monthly adjustment amount. When you sign up for Medicare, the normal premium is about $203 a month. But what happens is when you sign up for Medicare, Social Security looks at your gross adjusted income off your taxes from two years ago. So if I'm signing up for Medicare in 2026, they look at my 2024 income. And if it was above a certain threshold, they're going to charge me a higher monthly premium, which might be appropriate. Sometimes we just help people understand that. But lots of times people say, well, I was working in 2024 and now I'm retired and I'm living on Social Security. I can't afford this. That gives us grounds to appeal that and we will help people appeal that. And lots of times we win. Interesting.

Any other questions?

Just want to point out that EBSs are state mandated and a requirement for counties to have. Thank you.

Yeah, we just wanted to let everyone know that we are having a public hearing on October 5th, actually, to discuss our 8521 grant application. We do this every year. We have to. It is a requirement.

I'm sure you have a packed house every year.

letting everyone know if they want to come here we want you to say yes that the 85 so our 8521 is a state grant and it requires 20 percent um levy match

And it's a non-competitive grant. But, you know, every year we're required to have that public hearing. And so no one usually shows up, unfortunately.

It is a non-competitive, and actually we just got.

Did you tell Lisa about it? Does Lisa know we're having this?

Yes. We actually just got our, from the state, they sent out like, oh, you can apply for the grant now today. And we know how much we're getting. We're getting $180,450 or something like that.

So, and it helps pay for our operating cost. And so it helps us know. But again, we have a public hearing. And usually... Maybe one person. I've come to it in the past just to see and probably myself and another one in the room. And there's a legal notice that's put out and all of that. But I don't think that either people aren't concerned. I mean, transportation is brought up as an issue all the time when you're talking about what services are necessary or what. And transportation gets brought up all the time, but yet we have these public hearings on transportation and people don't attend. So...

to come if we'd like.

Absolutely.

If you would like. The non-attendance probably speaks to people being satisfied with the service. I mean, complainers tend to show up.

That's true.

That's true.

That's a good point.

Number nine, review of the monthly financial statements.

There's nothing out of the norm. We're still Right where we're supposed to be, need to be. Yeah.

Any questions on that? All right. Consider number 10, consider approval of the monthly invoice.

Jeff, is that you? Yep. All right. I have a motion. Second. And a second.

I see a registrar. To approve the invoices in the amount of $117,219.72. Any questions or concerns?

I would just like to point out that this is a little higher than usual. I know. Thank you. It's wonderful. Again, it is, I mean, you know, we're usually $40,000, $50,000 a month usually, but you will notice that... We did, you know, we've already all discussed the Chrysler Voyager from A&J Vans that, you know, we are using no county levy for that. That was all DOT trust fund. But obviously, we did, yeah, it was almost $70,000. So, of course, that is included in here. You will see that on page three. Okay. where the vehicle is listed. Just so that you are aware that it is in there to be able to pay for it. But again, no county levy. It's based on our DOT trust fund.

Thank you.

Well, all in favor of paying the bill, please say aye.

Aye. Aye.

Oh, sorry.

This is my wife, Maureen. Hi, Maureen.

About 52-plus years before Wally says, yes, long-suffering. Thank you for getting him here.

So many of them.

Did you get two? I thought one. I'll second that.

Well, we have three people that want to be able to be here.

No, I know. At least. So I think we're ready to take a motion and second.

Sure.

All in favor, say aye.

Aye.

All right. Have a great rest of your week, everybody.

Mr.

Supervisor, we'll see you tomorrow. This is for you.

I don't know how the second Tuesday ended up being a big day. The second Monday in this very Tuesday.