Health & Human Needs Committee - Regular Meeting

So let's call the meeting to order.

And we'll have a quick one to the minutes. And is there a motion? I have a motion. Is there a second? Second.

So is there any discussion?

Any discussion on the minutes? Okay. If not, then I'll call for a vote. So all in favor say aye.

Aye.

Opposed? Motion carried. Thank you very much. Has Rick ever been introduced?

I was here at the last meeting.

Did we introduce you?

Yes.

I don't remember doing it. So why don't you tell us a little bit?

about.

Introduce yourself and tell us a little bit.

My name is Rick Marks. I am a trustee for the Township of Oregon and a retired employee from the City of Madison and have represented and advocated for public employees for most of my career and continue to do so with helping after retirement along with my obligations for helping with the township and village of Oregon. Right now, one of the big projects going on in the village is the new construction of the senior center in Oregon. And so I'm on the senior center fundraising committee, and we are working on trying to draw funds to help offset

ahead.

Okay, so my name is Nathaniel Brown. I supervise the transportation call center here in the Department of Human Services. We're both Vocation is here in the ADRC, although most of the staff works from home most of the time. And let's give an overview of what we do and then see what everybody's interested, no one beyond that. So the Transportation Call Center, is myself, and then we have one full-time and one half-time mobility program specialist. And the mobility program specialist, most of what they do is answering the phone and talking to people that call in and responding to the emails that come in. And then taking those, you know, whatever direction it needs to go. It ends up to be plenty enough to keep one and a half people busy in addition to myself helping out with that too. So we report to the Specialized Transportation Commission. It's a board of Dane County. We don't quite meet every month. We probably average eight to nine meetings in a year. So there are four county supervisors on the committee, two from Madison. They try to have East and West Madison on the committee, then someone from rural, Eastern and Western Dane County, transportation providers, and then some consumers and consumer advocates. The... The biggest things the Specialized Transportation Commission does each year is to approve our grant application. So we, and maybe I'll save those until we're talking about funding an event here, but that's the biggest things they do on a yearly basis. They also are involved with approving the, there is a plan that needs to get approved every four years. It's the, COORDINATED PUBLIC TRANSIT HUMAN SERVICES PLAN. THE GREATER MADISON MPO WORKS ON THE PLAN AND THEN SPECIALIZED TRANSPORTATION COMMISSION APPROVES IT AS WELL AS THE MPO BOARD. THAT'S ANOTHER OF THE BIG IMPORTANT THINGS THAT THEY NEED TO DO WHEN IT COMES UP. So anyone can call the Transportation Call Center, regardless of age, disability status. It can be any person, and we'll talk to them about what's out there and available to them. Even if it's a person in their 30s that drives, just can't right now for some reason, and the only thing that's available to them really is the Metro bus system, we'll talk to them about that. Tell them about that. You know, mention the tax season stuff. Tell them, you know, here's what's gonna be cheaper, here's what's gonna be more expensive. Just go through options with people. You know, that's a big part of what we do. So in 2025, we handled almost 12,000 calls, calls and emails combined, that is. And then, The transportation programs were needed about 211,000 rides. I have a question.

I don't know if it still exists or not, but there used to be a program run by the YWCA.

And I remember that the MPO funded some vans for them. I was a chair of the MPO at that time, so I remember that pretty vividly. But at any rate, they did some very wonderful stuff. And I'm curious if you interact with them or.

Yeah, yep, yep. They're one of the places we do interact with. And David County helps fund some of that too.

Good, good. Could you remind me what... they're involved with something work-related transportation outside the metro area or something?

Yeah, they call it JobRide and it's focused on people getting to or from work that can't use metro. So it can be outside the area or outside the hours of metro. They can do the way they, although they've had to scale back We had some funding cuts in the last year, but for this year they did scale back some of their hours. Can't do as much of the late, the really late night stuff.

So they're getting any funding from like, I assume that they're filling a security issue with the late night stuff. I mean, I would think some of the recent people need a ride, but it might be for security reasons.

I think you could look at it that way. I mean, there's not another very affordable option either. But they don't get any funding from that standpoint. Not that I know of. I don't know their whole funding stream. I just know, you know, Dane County contributes some. I know it is a minority of the funding for the program.

The FBO could only do capital, so we can try to help them with their capital. Operating funds were always an issue. Okay, sorry.

Nostalgic. The Transportation call center funding. So the biggest chunk of funding we get is the Section 8521 County Elderly and Disabled Transportation Assistance. That's state funding that's available to each county in the state. And there's a pot of money that's divided up based on your percentage of the over 60 population and your percentage of the individuals with disability population. So Dane County gets a big share of the state funding for that. We also get some section 8520 state urban mass transit operating assistance that comes from Madison Metro and agreements we have with that. We actually send them some of the 8521 funding from the paratransit program. They send some of their funding towards us to fund some of our bus system and the volunteer driver program that RSVP operates. And then we apply for 50 through 10 enhanced mobility of seniors and individuals with disability program funding each year from the Greater Madison MPO. That funding that we receive is used to fund the 1.5 mobility program specialist positions. And then we also fund a program called Bus Buddy that RSVP operates. I'll talk about that in a few minutes here. There is a county levy put in for the programs. We need match for the 85.1 program. It has to be a cash match, so the county puts in levy And then there are passenger donations for some of the programs. Those donations just go into funding the programs. They can't be used for anything else. They have to be used for the programs. So Dane County contracts with several organizations. for transportation purposes. With New Bridge, the Dane County AAA has a program for older adults that's like minority representation in the community. They have that program. We provide some funding to go along with the AAA funding of that program that helps them helps New Bridge be able to get people to the programs that don't have a way to get there. And they do Hispanic programming. So the county provides transportation funding so that people can get to New Bridge's programming of that. We do provide the funding for YWCA for the job-ride program. And then with RSVP, the majority of the funding that we provide to them goes for the driver's service And then the 5310 funding that we received and passed on to RSVP is for the Bus Buddy Program. And that is a program that volunteers will meet with a person that is interested in learning how to ride the bus. They'll meet them at their home, walk with them to the bus stop, go through the process of getting on the bus. where you swipe your fare, you sort of sit, here's how you signal you're going to want to stop, you know, all of that will help them navigate to, you know, some location they've identified that is a place they would go, and then they'll help them navigate back home. They might work with them, you know, the one time if the person feels comfortable, they're good, they might work with them a few times if they've got, you know, different places that they're going to go that are, opposite directions require different transfers. They also do, over the warmer months, they do some group trips where they have people sign up to meet at somewhere. Usually they'll do old gardens. Sometimes they'll do a movie or different museum or some event. They'll work with the people over the phone and through mail. They'll get them instructions on how to get the bus and get on and get to the location. And everybody's there. They'll check in with them. They'll do the fun thing. They'll check in with everybody, make sure everything went smooth, and then help make sure that they go back and it works.

Back home again?

Yeah. Excuse me, I'm sorry. Is that for any age group? Yeah, anybody can use BusBuddy. The trips are focused more on 60 or older, but I'm not sure. It might be open to anybody, too. looking at the names that come through, the information that comes through. It's mostly people 60 and older that do that.

Or disabled, I would assume.

Yeah. And they could be, but it's mostly over 60. And for that one, they try to make sure people are know able to do the walking at the location on their own and stuff um you know that's that's part of it with the with the one-on-one they can do a little more um you know if a person uses a walker or they've got a power wheelchair like they can they can go along and guide in that aspect but when it gets to be the bigger group it's

You mentioned that these folks generally gain independence from the process over time. Are there some folks that it might actually be a consistent thing that they need that, say, with a cognitive impairment or something that they may want to continuously? Is that possible even?

It's designed to be a help to help a person learn the system and then And then graduate from it. It's not an ongoing thing.

I would assume there's other points for disabled stuff that's ongoing one way or the other. Oh, they're wrong. Yeah, resources.

Yeah, they may be enrolled in long-term care.

Yeah, either having an agent goes with a person. And for training purposes, that can happen, and then the aide can learn and then graduate so that the person and their aide could do it together. Otherwise, if it's not working out for a person, then if the person's not already signed up for the paratransit system, did connect them with that. And we're very fortunate in County and Madison that, you know, one of the, you know, the lead volunteer for RSVP's bus buddy program is Chuck Camp, the former head of Madison Metro. So he, like, he knows the ins and outs and he'll send reports about how, you know, training went great it's just the construction that's going on right here where we're trying to do the transfers making it hard so we're going to run through this another time just to make sure they get it. yeah I don't know that there's a whole lot of places that you could say that you know the farmer. of a bus system is the lead volunteer.

I'm going to leave family care and IRIS aside because I know how those work. But I'm curious, there's a whole other adult constituency that Dane County serves in the Human Services Department, the Adult Protective Services, mental health, and to some extent substance abuse, which might not be appropriate or relevant here. But at any rate, where in the array of contract organizations Are you able to provide some assistance for those populations, particularly the populations that are not in the eligible area, paratransit format or adequate access to Metro?

Yeah. So those programs will have, sometimes have transportation in with what they do. And it's not part of what what we do on the transportation call center. Part of the service plans. Yeah, yeah. We're handling people that are living independently in the community. And that's one thing to mention is that, for the services that we provide and the ones that the contracts are under the transportation call center, It's people that are either in their own home or apartment living independently or have some help there. But once a person goes to assisted living or they're in a skilled nursing facility, then they're no longer eligible for the services that we're overseeing.

Question 85.1 covers some of those?

It could, but in Dane County, we don't. The last one on here, the Southwest Community Action Program runs a car loan program for people to get a car so that they can get back and forth to work. The county puts in some funding. They have other state funding, but Dane County provides some funding so that they expand their service area to include Dane County. They're one of the most successful operations running that type of program in the state. That's interesting. Yeah, they do no interest loans and the cars aren't real expensive. The loans go for... Basic car. Yeah, and used, and it used to be $4,000 was the limit. Well, after COVID, that's had to go up. It's like tires for work. Right. Yeah. So now the upper end might be eight, but they try to stay down down from that. And, you know, a person, you know, they fill out an application and then they go through sort of a counseling process looking at their income expenses. Are they going to be able to afford this car and make payments? Because it is a loan, they do have to pay that amount back. And then it's set up as a like revolving loan fund so that money that gets paid back by people, loan out in order to be able to get more people cars. But they go through and figure out insurance. And that's been a hardship since COVID. Now two prices on car insurance have gone up so much.

What about the Madison dealerships? Do they do anything with that? I mean, do they donate cars or anything?

Not that I know of.

I would think they would. That'd be good publicity for them to buy cars for the program.

You better put a bug in there. Selfless CAP, they do have connections with dealerships and repair shops. So they help people in that respect too. And they something does happen to your car, they can do a loan to help them get repairs done so they can still use the car. And there's a bunch of conditions with the program and stuff. One of them is, you know, they have to try to carpool and help other people get to work as well. It's one of the things they do. So in addition to the contracts, and those are sort of the more outside contracts. Talk more about some of our other programs that also have contracts with them. We also make a lot of referrals to Metro Transit. There used to be shared ride taxis with both Sun Prairie and Stoughton when I started. Now it's just stolen, so less referrals to the one taxi than there were to the Veterans Service Office because they've got a bus pass program for veterans. The Job Center, the Food Share Employment and Training Program, because they can help out with transportation for work search purposes. We connect people with Roundtrip Greater Madison who are looking for transportation that doesn't fit with YMCA or Metro to try to make carpool connections. We connect people with the American Cancer Society for the Roach Recovery Program that helps people get back and forth to cancer treatments. And then we talk to a lot of people who have Medicaid and refer them over to MTM for

gets in, right, is the MTM.

Well, some people on dialysis are on Medicaid and some aren't. So we refer some people there and we refer others to RSVP and through the transportation call center.

I hear a lot about it from across the state, you know, outside of the state.

We have a bus pass employment program. So for someone searching for work, we'll get them started with a 31-day Metro bus pass. If they receive food share, we'll refer them over to F-CET. And then after that 31-day pass is expired, they haven't found work, you go through F-CET now, they're gonna help you transportation to get to interviews but they're also going to help you with the work cert you know finding the leads coaching for any views um that's the more comprehensive work search program but we we help people get started right away so they if they've got interviews they can get to them that's it asset food share employment and training okay um and we'll also help a person that's just starting a new job with the bus pass so that they can hopefully have a paycheck or two come in and then pay for their bus fare to get back and forth to work after that. And we always talk to people about Metro's half price fare when we're setting them up with a bus pass so that their bus pass runs out. They hopefully have already gotten signed up for that and can take advantage of that as they're going forward. So we have group rides, bus, bus, group buses that help people out. In Madison, we call it the group access service or GAS. That's clever. One of my predecessors. In the rest of the county, it's the rural senior group. But it's open to people, six-year-old, older persons with disabilities. And it provides rides to the senior focal points for the senior meals. And then there's also rides for groceries and general shopping. I'll show you that in a minute. But they're routed. group service. So the easiest way to describe it is it works like the school bus. People call in, they sign up, and then that day, you know, the bus comes, it picks everybody up along a route, and then takes them where they're, the location where they're going, drops them off, and when they're done, they bring everybody up, and they drop everybody else, drop them back on at home.

So the focal points, organized staff, I mean, they're the ones that

they do the problem and stuff for people they they do they do some um and then the two contractors for the service uh transit solutions handles um the majority of the county and then uh caravan service handles the southwest part of the county um what is the senior um the the senior centers um the 15th

Food service areas.

All right. So they are designated as focal points.

Focal points. And they come. Right.

OK. They're all accessible vehicles. Drivers help. They carry grocery bags. And most of the reservations are made through the local senior center. Some people do call directly to the contractors, depending on what it is they're calling for. But if you're calling for lunch, you need to call the senior center for sure. But the shopping, the contractors set up some of that on their own. And then from the Madison area, all the shopping just goes right through transit solutions. New Bridge will handle the lunch funds, but

I live out in Montrose, so we're with the Sugar River Senior Center. So that would go through, that wouldn't go through the Madison one.

No, you would go through.

I mean, the Senior Center is where it originates, but what group does it end up in? If the Senior Center calls, who are they calling?

Oh, Sugar River is... It's Caravan. Caravan?

Okay. I'm sorry. I could have called and asked.

Nope. Yeah, so Caravan does Southwest Dane and the Belleville area.

Yeah, that's where he would be down at...

in this area over here. Yeah. And then Transit Solutions handles all the other ones. So there's three, at least three buses in the New Bridge area each day. There's a north and east, a south and a west. And sometimes they need to throw another vehicle to help between the lunch and the shopping and getting everyone where they go. There are two buses in Fitchburg most days. They have so many people that want to get to the senior center in Fitchburg. They were having to do two loads of people on the bus. And then by the time the second group would get there, It was to the point there had to be two buses. So they've had two buses now for probably three or four years.

Yeah, I think I remember, I'm talking about it, Jill. Yeah. I think about having to, didn't they have a van for a bit? They had their own van for a while, and they outgrew that, I think.

That would have, maybe before I started. Oh, yeah. And then one in the rest of the areas each day. So this is, you know, just sort of an example of a schedule. So on Monday, they're just doing lunch, you know, start picking up around 1030 and then starting returns at 1230. But then on Tuesday, they've got, They've got lunch as well as they've got shopping at Festival Foods that people can sign up. And a few different, you know, a different store on Wednesday. And then Thursdays, they'll go to some place out of Verona, so coming to Madison somewhere to do something. And then a food pantry trip on Friday. And that's fairly typical. They will try to fit in other trips within Verona for Verona. You know, that Monday when they've got the lunch, they get people there, and then they've got that time while people are at the senior center.

They often include pharmacies, don't they?

Pick up, I think. They can do that. One of the ones where they're trying to... Where they're adding. Where they're adding them in, yeah. This is the part that takes up a lot of... the mobility program specialist time. So it provides for people 60 and older or individuals with disabilities. The call-in provides the doctor appointments. And we start out with trying to connect them to other resources. So for anyone that's able to get in and out of the car on their own, we first refer them to our And RSVP needs time to work through figuring out if they can find a volunteer and stuff. So they're asking for a week or more notice. And so we refer people over there, check with them. When they can't find a ride, then they'll send them back to us. And then we work on scheduling a ride for them at that point. We were contracted with the taxi companies in Madison medicine taxi, knee cab, as well as several wheelchair van companies. And once someone needs a ride, we go through the list, starting with our cheaper option, see if they've got availability, and if they do, then we schedule with them. We'll schedule the wheelchair accessible vehicle if someone needs it. If they don't, we'll schedule with a taxi. You know, we'll try to connect them with RSVP. If they're in the paratransit service area, we'll ask if they're signed up with paratransit and refer over to them if that's an option for them. We try to to screen the rides out to the other options before we schedule. But we try to be the backstop so that if someone can't get a ride through the other options, then we're able to schedule it. And with the providers we've got on our roster, we can schedule most things up to the day beforehand. Sometimes with the person that's needing a wheelchair, the day beforehand's a little tight. There's less capacity for that. And sometimes, you know, the providers get booked up if it's that close. But generally, we can do up to eight. And then this is just our contact information, our main contact information.

Okay. So any questions out there?

I noticed DVR is not even mentioned anywhere.

Is there any connection? We don't work directly with them, I guess. We'll have people that call in. One of our staff was a disability benefits specialist gets the sense that, you know, DVR might be something for a person to look into.

They, she'll recommend that, but- Service they fund.

Yeah.

That's part of your plan.

Yeah. And, you know, we have that conversation more with people that, you know, DVR is doing this and stuff.

So any questions for Nathaniel?

So does this number tell you about BusBuddy?

Yeah, you can call that number and we'll talk about anything transportation related. BusBuddy too. Get you a little bit of information and connect you with RSVP. Yeah, I'm really interested in that.

Well, I'm sure he can always call you.

Yeah, we'll make a connection.

Contact information. Put your screen back, your last page back up.

Are you able to share the PowerPoint?

Yeah, I'll get it to Janet for the Oh, that would be good. Yeah, let's do that.

So that people can have access to it.

Yeah, good. Any other questions?

Yes, I had one. Okay.

You didn't mention much about anything. It doesn't sound like it's missing.

for transporting yourself. The county wants to help.

Yep, yep. Yeah, there's no income guidelines. The bus pass employment program is supposed to be for low income individuals. But there's not really any, you know, we don't ask for any verification on that. If you're looking for a bus pass try to find a job or get that important to work.

Probably exhausted your other options. I don't know.

I know Metro contracts with three companies to provide the paratransit service for student transit solutions and quality transit.

But I haven't heard anything. Because they left me stranded at Walmart for five hours.

Oh, no.

And it doesn't directly provide it anymore?

No.

Did you file a complaint? No, I didn't file a complaint because they tried to I wasn't having a problem except they don't want us in Walmart. They was trying to get us out.

Okay. Any more questions for Nathaniel?

great thank you very much i'm sure everybody learned a lot about i don't live in the city so i i have to let my own transportation arrive in trouble so um okay well you can call us esther can i call you can you come all the way down and pick me up well i won't but we can set you up I sat on that board for probably about 15 years or something, and I decided they needed new blood. Okay, well, thank you again. We don't have any action items. I don't have much to report, but I do want to, if And now we can, what is Barb's last name? Nichols. Barb Nichols. I would like, unless somebody has an objection, I would like to send a card to Barb's family from the board. So I will go ahead and do that. I think there was something in, there was an obituary in the paper on Sunday. So I should be able to get that. care of doing that I think so because she was on the board twice and I have a lot of information on nursing was that was near and dear to her heart she had a lot to say about that so board member reports then you had something you wanted to ask about because there are so many people with grandchildren and great-grandchildren

I wanted to know if there were any incentives to help children get better grades because we're going to start competing with other states.

I think the only one who might have some information on that is Casey with the transfer program or whatever it's called. High school transition. High school transition program. That's what it was for Peter. But other than that, I don't know that since we're aging and disability, we wouldn't have any funds available to help with just normal students. But I think probably there are other areas in Dane County that certainly do that. And maybe Dave might know.

I don't know much about it except that my daughter is doing it at Memorial. And it's a program that helps kids who come from families that don't have anyone in college to get into college and have it. And again, my connection here is very unusual. So I can't kind of tell you how it's put together. I stay away from the educational bureaucracy. It's a board of education program. I think it's a national program that gets separate funding. I don't know. I can give you my daughter's phone number and you can find out.

Dave, would you know anything about anything like that? Is it county funding at all?

Nothing that doesn't know it would be Board of Education, I know it's Board of Education may get some federal funds.

To win this state competition.

Um, AVID's probably not going to have any specific kind of like carrots to offer, you know, to incentivize students specifically, like if there's like a, if it's a monetary thing. Uh, but yeah, they do definitely, uh, help like scaffold, like very specific post high school plans. And, um, it's really like a, like a very, very structured learning style. You're, you're meant to be enrolled in AVID. you know, throughout your high school years, you get kind of a specific resource hall that you're attending and they have like very specific benchmarks that you need to be meeting in order to like stay enrolled with that. There is like a larger coalition though called Love Dane that, not to be confused with Love Inc, L-O-V Inc, that is like a community network for folks and families with significant disabilities. But Love Dane is a coalition of, I guess, Dane County churches that often get together and try to hear from the Madison Metropolitan School District and the outlying districts to get a sense of where do the schools need the most help when it comes to the connections to homes. So lots of times that might be organizing efforts to even just honestly finish painting a hallway in an elementary school that ran out of the budget. Or, you know, coming up with money to be able to then generate like a scholarship fund to incentivize students to meet, you know, requirements really specific to their neighborhood or, you know, their specific school. So that's information that I can pass along to Jennifer, Bill, and Esther, if that's helpful to get back to you.

Yeah, I was going to ask you if you could give that information. Thank you so much. You're welcome.

I was just going to pipe up about AVID, but I think it's covered.

What did you say?

Oh, I was going to weigh in on AVID, but I think that's been covered. So nothing for me. Okay, thank you.

I have vague memories. Geraldine, also I have vague memories of the Urban League and some of the Boys and Girls Clubs have their own internal programs that do some coaching as well. I don't think there's any upper organization of that. I think these are just community from below. So that's another option.

Okay, if you all have any information at all. Send it to.

Yeah.

Well, Casey's going to send it to anyone else. We'll see. Thanks. Appreciate it. To everyone. Okay. Appreciate it.

Does anyone else have anything they wanted to bring up?

um can i just ask there i believe at one point in time that question was asked in our group email thread and i can't track it down it would be helpful if i could see the language one more time about what we're specifically looking for or what kinds of resources we're looking for from today uh no i think it would have been sent you know when there was a call for any agenda items to be added it's okay i'll track it down i won't take up meeting time to look for an old email. Sorry about that.

Okay, thanks. If you can't find it, you know, we can certainly, Jennifer probably remembers if something happens. Okay, anyone else? If not, we'll move on to Bill, managers.

Yeah, I have no major. I'm managing. Jennifer had her second surgery. She's recovering. She plans to be back the first or second week of September. In the meantime, we are carrying on and doing business and helping people and no major. She will be back for the September 14th meeting. And Alice, I've already made the request to have an ALS INTERPRETER PRESENT, SO WE WANT TO HAVE ANY MIX-UPS OR ANYTHING LIKE THAT.

OKAY.

FUTURE MEETINGS, ITEMS AND DATES, WELL, I ASSUME WE'LL CONTINUE WHAT OUR SAME SCHEDULE UNTIL MAYBE NOVEMBER WHEN WE MIGHT WANT TO LOOK AT COMBINING NOVEMBER, DECEMBER, BUT WE NEED TO Let me know if there are items you want to hear from, because we could certainly have speakers come in. And I was going to ask if there's any interest in hearing from the elder abuse program, the state program. I saw her presentation to the State Aging Advisory Council, and she's also going to give her talk for my Wisconsin Senior Advocates Group. It was an excellent, her presentation was excellent on elder abuse and what's being done. So if there's interest on that, I will ask her if she would be willing to come and talk to us. Anything else, other things that people want to hear about? Casey, anything you might want to hear about? Alice, anyone, what would you like to, Elizabeth, what would you like in the form of presentation to speak with?

This is Alice. I think, you know, as time goes on, I'll probably think of something. But right now, because I'm new to the group, I'm just going to probably observe a bit. But if I think of something, I will reach out.

Okay. Please do. Please do.

Elizabeth? You've been doing such a good job of covering things. I'm quite satisfied at the moment. Thank you.

I certainly have an interest in identifying grant funding or funding for senior centers, where the sources for funding are, who I should be as a local person lobbying.

Yeah. Thank you. During the community listening session and then, you know, today's presentation, I had a chance to talk to Nathaniel about transportation and specialized transportation. You know, his purview doesn't really allow him to, like, dig too deep into metro paratransit. And I think Geraldine gave us a good example today. And I can give you a thousand more about how Paratransit is pretty instrumental for folks, you know, getting across the city of Madison. So I wonder if we could get a representative from Madison Metro that could speak more specifically to that, because I think Nathaniel wasn't able to say too much because of, you know, his county association and serving a larger demographic. So if that's not too hyper specific for the Dane County ADRC, at some point, I'd like to get someone here to tell us more about their services.

Certainly, yeah. Let me see. I'll look into that.

I'd have an interest in that as well, as I've been a user since 1994, and I've been hearing some kind of shocking reports about it lately.

Okay, we'll work on that.

Chris Hannett- Maybe a good way to frame that to would be so so that the representative doesn't feel as if they're in the hot seat which they may. Chris Hannett- could be that they just overhauled you know their whole system, they have a whole new software system, they have a new booking system, they have new subcontractors. Chris Hannett- We could just you know be saying hey we're we're here to learn more so that we can help you know the the folks that. are in contact with our local ADRC, and maybe that would help with a smoother introduction that doesn't feel like we're just getting them here to be mad.

I totally agree. I'm not an anti-paratransit person.

Same.

Okay.

Do either one of you have a name or somebody that... Contact.

There's been a couple changes, and I'm not sure who would be like the most appropriate person to ask at this point. Nathaniel might know.

Yeah.

Here we go. Nathaniel.

Yes. Yeah.

Specialized transportation.

Okay.

Well, we'll just get Janet out to people.

get something scheduled i'll try to get the elder abuse program or well maybe lynn would be a better one they're interested in knowing about the senior center i'll look at somebody's schedule for next month or september whichever i can this is more me wondering if other people have an interest in this but given that thousands of dane county elders and people with disabilities are being served by family care and iris

I'm going to guess that knowing a little bit about how those programs work, how people get into those programs, et cetera, and Iris in particular is such a different kind of animal than we've ever had before. Someone that probably, I don't know if that or

Well, that's what we do. We determine eligibility for those long-term care programs.

Okay. So do you want to do that?

Jennifer would probably be able to do that at an upcoming meeting.

Yeah, at an upcoming meeting.

Yeah, it may not be her first week back. But if you're having others, you're making a list of upcoming residents. I'm making a list. Yeah, if that would be an ADRC.

We've got somebody here. Every month, that's a presentation from now.

That would be the ADRC. And so this is ADRC. Long-term care, eligibility criteria, and program, how people get connected.

Yeah, there's no governmental. I mean, the contract now is, I think, there's one or two providers, and they can't privatize everything. So if you wanted to dig into the program, it would have to be a volunteer organization.

Again, I'm so out of the loop on that. I think the ADRC would be the best because otherwise you're going to have to invite every IRIS provider. There's five now. And you'd have to invite every managed care organization. You can't have one because they would all love the IRIS. So I think we could give a good framework and overview.

Yeah, that might be the best way.

Okay. So that's one, two, three.

I also have a retired friend who created Iris who lives in Dane County.

John O'Keefe. Oh, yeah. That was like three years ago.

Who loves you guys? Okay, so we're hopefully educate us on what we need to know, right?

It's a change. So anyone else have any thoughts now?

So any other businesses allowed by law? I could think of a lot of things. Public comments on items not on the agenda. I don't think we have So I'll entertain a motion to adjourn. I have a motion, but I have a second. So is there any discussion on adjourning? Usually there isn't. So all in favor say aye.

Aye.

Abstain to motion carried. Thank you very much.