Committees - Regular Meeting

All right, good afternoon. Good afternoon.

Hi. Hi, everyone. Hello.

We're just going to give it a minute or two more because a bunch of people just jumped on. So I just want to make sure that we give it an opportunity for everybody to join us.

Jim, before we start, I have to leave by 2.20. Sure.

Just so you know.

Hmm?

So in another word, say, don't talk too much, Jimmy.

No.

I already said that.

Hi, everybody. Sorry. Hello.

And Lori. We're planning this to be really only an hour. So Vicki, if you're jumping off, you're not going to miss much.

OK. Thank you. I have to increase the volume a little bit here. How's everybody?

Everybody's pretty good, I think. Good. So just to waste 20 seconds here in the beginning, Chief Reeds in the audience here, he just provided us with a little video of Father Peter was on the way to the community center yesterday, right at about a quarter to 12. And as he came down around Kaposi's doing probably 15, 20 miles an hour through the town, a deer, ran out from the gas station, right out of the gas station, jumped on top of the windshield, cracked the windshield, shattered it in bits and pieces, and landed on its feet, continued to run alongside the stores on the other side, on the water side, up around towards Volunteer Park. You have to see the video to believe it, but The good news was Brian told you was right there at the thing that Jim was right there at the thing that father Peter got a new windshield this morning at 8 o'clock in the morning. They came to the, they came to the, his establishment there at the church and put on a new windshield. But the dear apparently. Didn't take the heavies and kept right on running. Yet there was hair inside the windshield itself. Thank God he's okay. Thank God he is okay. I mean, he's right at the turn at the pumps where you're about to, you know, just before you're about to go up that hill. So he could have lost control. Somebody could have been coming down the other way, down the hill and making the bend to the left. It could have been a catastrophe. But thank God it wasn't. All right. So listen, let's call it to order. We're at 135 p.m. Yes. I want to put this on hold. The review and the approval for the March 13th minutes, that'll go into our May meeting. Okay? Is that okay with everybody?

That's fine. Also, since most of the people here were not at that meeting.

Correct. And we'll have a little bit more time. We'll have the meeting minutes in front of us. So, we'll do the approval for the March minutes at that time. We'd like to introduce the new members and. In 30 seconds, both Nancy and I, as Co chairman of the health and wellness committee would like to welcome our 7 new members. We're excited about having you. I just want to say in a nutshell, having been at all the interviews, you guys really did a great job with the interview process really did. I also would like to thank. both albert and meg who are our liaisons that's al al dixon and and meg larson for being so supportive in terms of the other three board members and getting us to be a committee to 11 which we really appreciate so thank you al and thank you meg uh for that All right, let's have a little introduction of the new members. So we'll start in the upper left-hand corner of the screen, I guess. We'll introduce everybody as we go around, but we'll use the screen as just say hello and 20 seconds, whatever you want.

The screen might be different.

Okay.

The screen could be different. Yes. Emily, why don't you start? And I can't even see myself on my screen, so I have no idea where I am.

All right, Nancy, you start since you're up, and we'll just jump in informally. Go ahead.

I thought you were saying new members.

No, go ahead. You start. You're talking.

Hello, everybody. I think I know you all. And I am the co-chair of this committee. And we have been an official committee for a year. I think most of you know that we were an informal committee starting with the pandemic, starting with Lori Finelli, who was our spiritual leader. And it was through Lori that we started as a committee to help with the mental health crisis. during the pandemic on the island. And since then, we've provided many programs over the last six years. And in the last year, we became a full-fledged town committee. And just to say that Gina and Callie and Jim and I are the last surviving old members And we are really excited that you're all a part of this committee. I'm a social worker. And what I do on this committee is I, every July, for those of you who don't know, Bonnie Stockwell and I run a bereavement group. And even though Bonnie is no longer on the committee, I hope that we will continue doing that. And I write articles for the newspaper. So that's me. Okay.

Anybody else up next?

Emily, why don't you go next? Okay. Wonderful. I see that Nancy and I wore the same outfit. I was noticing that. It's required next meeting, I think. Absolutely.

We'll talk in the morning.

Hi, everyone. Well, first of all, thank you for allowing me to join the committee. I'm very excited to work with you all and to learn more about each of your specialties and areas of experience and whatnot. It seems like a very dense group of knowledge and experience. So very excited. I am the town site manager for the nutrition program. So I run the congregate in-person meals, which we do a few times a week, as well as the home delivered meal program. So I work with our seniors, which I love. I've been doing that for almost three years now. And then I'm also the lettuce lady. So I enjoy cooking, making salads, obviously. I have two small children. My mother and sister are art teachers. I was born and raised here. And yeah, that's me in a nutshell. I'm very excited to be here. So yeah.

Glad to have you, Emily.

Thank you.

Vicki, why don't you go next?

Sure. Hi, everybody. I'm Vicki. I'm also a Victoria Shields, but my nickname is Vicki and I go by that. I am also born and raised here on Shelter Island, and I am a personal trainer and health coach. And my focus when I work with people in the health health coaching sphere is to help support their physical, mental, emotional and spiritual health. And I like to look at health from that lens because it's all encompassing. Just super happy to be here. I really appreciate everything that the Health and Wellness Committee has done thus far for our community. And I really look forward to being a part of whatever comes in the future for us as a committee and working with all of you.

Thank you, Vicki. Thank you very much.

Hi, all of you. I'm so happy to join this committee. I'm a newbie. I've only been on Shelter Island since 2018 and fell madly in love with it and never went back. My background is actually marketing, facilitation of groups. focus groups research and then the last job i had was working in marketing for a digital clinical trial company so that was a bit of a radical shift from previously selling chocolate bars and coffee and lots of other things fell in love with health at the same time had family who was very unwell many family members who were quite unwell mentally and physically and so just plunged into the world of health and realized i could spend the rest of my life doing that because god knows there's a need so i've been getting i'm happy to be on this committee i'm also on the health and wellness committee for a non-profit It's not a nonprofit, but an organization that we've started on Long Island called Democracy for Long Island to help with a lot of issues. But the one that I really care about is making sure people are getting their health care and that they can afford health care. So what I'm going to do in our own community should hopefully line up with what we need to do for all of Long Island. Thank you, Leslie.

Thank you very much.

Natasha.

Natasha Stowe. I'm a full-time resident of the island. That's the only home I own as of a year ago. And I am a cyclist, sort of concerned about safety for cyclists and pedestrians and runners on the island. I volunteer at the food pantry, which is different from CAST, the food pantry, which has its own 501c3 recently in the Presbyterian Church, although it's not affiliated with the church. So food insecurity is a special concern of mine, as is pedestrian and bike safety. Good. John?

I am really pleased to join the committee, having served as a volunteer sociologist in the middle of doing a major study for COVID. on behalf of the committee and they'll go to the town with a report that identifies major concerns that people have and suggestions going forward. We're in the middle of that study right now and it has three parts. The first part was collect any information that's already out there so we don't try to reinvent the wheel, focus groups in different segments of our population here. And we're just about at the very end of that. And then we'll do an attempted quantitative survey, I say attempted because of the sample size involved is probably going to be a bit small. And I can go into full details on that anytime. My own personal background is I've had two careers. I was an academic sociologist and administrator with the State University of New York for 10 years. based on grants, mostly from the Suffolk County government, where we provided one-to-one learning contracts for employees there. My second career is market research as a sociologist with a focus on the world of electronic media. which we all know and love and hate at the same time. And so that's gotten me deep into the world of marketing and advertising. And at the same time, I've always been a volunteer my whole life, kind of a family affliction and a long list of organizations that I've helped. Right now, I still hold positions in Nassau County. I'm three-quarters of the way moved out to Suffolk County. I've been here since 99. My kids grew up in the summer here. And I'm head of the Green Tree Foundation grant-making organization, which is the Whitney Family Legacy. I'm president of the Manassas Community Fund and downsizing. I'm exiting from all of that and looking for opportunities to be a helper, a sociologist. I taught courses in social problems, which pretty much covers everything we're dealing with. So I'm really happy to be here. Thanks for everything.

Thank you. Gina, you want to go next? Sure. Is that you, Meg, talking? Because I don't see you.

I'm coming to Zoom. I'm in the back of the room.

Oh, yes, yes. I'm recognizing your voice but not seeing your face. And I knew that you weren't Jim. You didn't sound like Jim. I know, I know. So I was a summer kid on Shelter Island, married a Krause and became a full time resident. I've been a full time resident for about 44 years now. I'm a new newbie, two year retired teacher. I taught in East Hampton for 31 years and I was also a teacher consultant for the Northeast Foundation for Children, teaching the social curriculum to elementary school teachers for 12 years. And now just I'm working through hugs. I teach in the middle school a program called Too Good for Drugs, which is a drug awareness and social skill program for sixth, seventh and eighth grade. And just have been pretty embedded in the community of Shelter Island. I love Shelter Island. And I want to do anything that I can to improve the health and wellness of our community. And I love working with the people that I've been working with. They're inspiring. They just make the world a better place. So I'm happy for the new, the new, new minds and brains and thoughts for us all to be a think tank together. So I'm happy to meet everybody. Thank you.

I'll finish up. My name is Jim Colligan and I was 35 years with CarPlay School District. I was the Director of Health, Physical Education, Recreation, Athletics for the CarPlay School District. I taught high school health education for 35 years. So my love of education is very, very obvious, very close to me. I also coached basketball. I was Probably some of, you know, I was in the army for 29 years. I'm a retired Colonel and the United States army medical service core. I was deployed to Vietnam and 7071. And that's a storm during 91, so that's pretty much it.

Do you want to give Lori a chance?

Oh, yeah, Lori, yes, we should give Lori a little, yes, the backbone, by the way, of our group.

Thank you. I have to tell you that I am not Alexandra. I don't know where that came from, but maybe we could change that. Anyway, Lori Finnelli, I've been on the island for over 60 years. We came on a sailboat and loved it and bought a house and then made it bigger and did all that stuff and raised kids together. Besides all that, I am a psychiatric nurse practitioner, and I worked for probably about 60 years in that. And now I'm retired, but I don't call it retirement because I'm busier now than I was as a psychiatric nurse. Anyway, I am so happy to see all of you here. And I... Yes, well, you all know Shelter Island now and the community that we have, it's really an extended family. And both Lucille and I did start this group after COVID because we knew that there would be a lot of stressors and it continues even to today. It was a terrible time. Yeah, we're still picking up the pieces. Anyway, I'd like to welcome you. Right now, the way I am at the Senior Center, and I do a little bit of case management here. I do make home visits. put out fires, also on a few committees, one with John, and we also have been addressing the seniors about their needs and seeing things. When I first came here, our biggest need that was obvious was hoarding, and that's still there. But I think we've been through everything. Whatever happened on the outside happens here, too. We have a dreadful need right now for service. We don't have home care coming in as we used to with the community health nurse, which I did also for most of my life. I don't want to go through my whole litany, but it's been busy. I am now working on a pool committee. We have a survey that's going to be going out very soon, and we really would like to grow a pool on the island and one that has four laps and one that is a smaller one for therapy and it really started because we were going to do therapy i'm connected with three different universities too with the ot and pt students that come here but um We were going to use one of our family pools on the island, and we had the instructor ready and everything, and then the guy's insurance company said, don't even think about it because it's just too dangerous insurance-wise. So anyway, bottom line is we're trying to get a pool. We're also trying to work on a playground for seniors, which would be a place for socialization and also exercise and just a good place to hang out for seniors. Other than that, lots of things going on here. Some of you may have been out at the luncheon yesterday. That was wonderful. And it grows. All right. And bottom line, happy to have you here. Glad you can join us. And roll up your sleeves. Thanks.

Since we have Chief Reed in the audience, I don't think many of you know Chief Reed. Probably more than any other town employee knows. other than our committee perhaps, is more involved in that overall health and welfare of people on this island. And I want Chief Reid to just introduce himself and the role that he plays here in terms of well-being for our citizens.

Yeah, and I don't know if you can visually see me. I can move to another spot.

Yeah, they can see in the corner of the table.

So, you know, for those who don't know me, you know, I've been working for the police department for, I'm coming up on 40 years and 27. and 30 of which I've been as the chief of police. And look, I wear it on my sleeve. I love this community. I love the things that go on in this community, and health and wellness directly impacts our police operation and what we do. I try to lead with compassion for people in the community, and I try to instill that on our officers every day. I want it to be a part of who we are and what we do. Honestly, I came to today's meeting, I haven't been to one and I wanted to just get a sense of what was going on and to listen and see how we can better serve better serve the community and what we do every day. But, you know, as most, you know, our officers are directly involved with so many different things. We all end up wearing so many hats as everybody on the screen does. Right. And we wear them because we love the community and we want to make it better. A little plug, tomorrow is our street cleanup day with the Lions Club. I helped head that up. Meet at the firehouse at 930. We'll clean the streets for about an hour and come back for a nice community barbecue. We probably have about 150 people signed up, and that's a really solid thing for the community. But really, I'm here to listen. to get input from you. And if there's anything the police department can do operationally to better serve the community, we want to try to do that. Thank you very much. All right. So without any further...

I just want to say it's great to have you at our meeting. And we really do look forward to working with you and your department moving forward. It's something that we've talked about in the past, but I think now with our expanded group, it's really going to happen.

Okay, and you can get on me a little bit if I can't make it, you know, we have other good people that could come sit in and it makes them better offices too. So we'll try to get somebody here. Get somebody here a little more often.

Okay. Yeah, we only meet 6 times a year. So wherever the other month.

Great. All right. Okay.

I'm going to introduce myself. Yeah. Hi, guys. Meg Larson. I moved over to the table, but I will be going back to the Zoom. Just a brief introduction on just a little bit about me because I don't do it often. I am a speech-language pathologist by education, and I've also been a director of rehabilitation at a skilled nursing facility. So that's kind of my medical background. background and kind of what I bring to the health and wellness field here. Currently working on a survey to help bring additional medical services to the community. So if you see that survey out and about town, please take it and encourage other people to do so. We're looking to not use taxpayer dollars, but to find some additional ways to bring services to the island. As Lori said, it's a bit of a problem. We have a deficit here. It's hard to get people to come and do post hospital care and medication management and things like that. So I'm working to fill that gap. So hopefully I'm going to rope you guys in and pull you into this more as it gets rolling. But we're trying to just make sure that the directions that we're putting our effort in are actually going to be fruitful and needed. So we don't want to put effort in a direction that turns out there's no real need for. So that's what the point of the survey is. But yeah, I'm here for any questions, anything you guys need, just let me know. Yeah, we'll take it from there. Albert?

Unmute yourself. Yeah.

Okay. Okay, we're working on that. Albert, maybe it's at our end, I don't know.

There we go. Sorry. Yeah, I have no background in health and wellness. I was a project manager for a demolition company and I was in charge of environmental cleanup prior to any demolition in New York City. But I am very anxious to be liaison here. The committee, since it started, has really been a tremendous asset to the island. It's gotten off to a terrific start. And now with all the new members, I'm really anxious to see how it comes together and really what can be done, really. This could be a dynamic group. and really impactful to the island. And it's wonderful to be a part of it. And I just want to thank you all.

All right. Okay. Thank you. Everybody. I just want to point out the fact that we. We don't have 3 members with us. Kelly Smith presented yesterday at the community center did a fabulous job, but she had a conflict today. Bill Mastro had a conflict today. He is going to be with us. Ronnie also, she's a doctor, a retired physician. She also had a conflict. So there are 3 other people. as well as the eight people that are represented today that are on the committee. There are 11 voting members of the committee. There are also people that are working for the town, somebody like Lori, for instance, our social worker, Ali. She's also kind of a, I guess we call them an ex-officio, a member of the committee.

An adjunct member.

An adjunct kind of person. Bonnie will... Probably also vermin will also probably be in that group. So, when you take a look at the overall group of 11. We also have some other people with talents that also can help us. So it's going to be a large committee. However, with a good organization, we can get a lot done without any further. Do I just really want to accomplish. 2 things today and talk about a 3rd, 1 terms of the, I want to talk about the mission statement. 1st, if you went to the town website. I'll read the mission statement as it now appears. All right, so everybody just listen. If you want to jot it down, I'll go slow. Our mission statement is to enhance and protect the well-being of all shelter islanders by providing effective mental health support, human services, and wellness advocacy in collaboration with as many stakeholders in the community as possible. Okay, that's basically what our mission statement is right now. I played with them and I put out, I spent a lot of time looking at various mission statements. I throw this one out. One thing I want to explain about a mission statement for people in the military, we were very mission oriented. So a mission statement should be concise. Maybe one line, maybe two. It should not be a paragraph. Your mission is concise statement. Number 2, it has broad purpose for the committee and the aims that we hope to achieve. And with that, it helps us select strategies and policies down the road. But I want to remember it's concise. Its purpose is to provide us with establishing our goals and aims for the committee. Here is what I wrote down as something that I would like for you to consider. Very short, one sentence, two lines. To educate, support, and empower our Shelter Island residents. Again, to educate them, support them, and empower them to improve and maintain their overall health and wellbeing through healthy lifestyle choices. It's a little bit different when we started this group 6 years ago. Our focus was strictly not strictly, but I would say 90% of it was on mental health. Now, we are really pretty much broadening out. We have a committee that's heavily. I've got a great background in nutrition, exercise, all the physical health. So, I mean, one of the things we always wanted to emphasize, and it doesn't necessarily say it in our first mission statement, education, education, education, support. We support you in any way we possibly can. And we want to empower our residents to improve, maintain their overall health and well-being through healthy lifestyle choices. I think it's simplistic, I think it's realistic, and I think it's measurable. Your thoughts?

I would also put in something about all ages, you know, maybe focus on your entire population, like womb to tomb or something like that, whatever.

All right. Does anybody else feel that that would be something that should be in there? It says to empower our Shelter Island residents.

Of all ages. All Shelter Island residents is what you have, right?

No, it just says empower our Shelter Island residents.

So I would change it to all. I would change our to all.

Okay. Empower all. Okay. Okay.

Laurie, does that do it? Yeah.

Okay. Yeah. Keep it. All right. To educate, support, empower all Shelter Island residents. That's how we start. To improve or maintain, or maybe it should be the other way around. Maybe it's maintain and improve. I'm not sure their overall health and well being through healthy lifestyle choices.

Jim, I would even take out that through healthy lifestyle choices and just leave it and maintain and improve their health and well being. Okay. Yep. And have goals that are attached to umbrella. And so it's like, bam, it's just really the health and wellness of our community. Okay.

Does everybody kind of concur with that?

Yeah, I had my little yellow hand up there. Yes, I'm sorry. So mine is more of a strategic question, I think. Because when I when I responded to the request, my reaction was that we should play some role in trying to improve access to health care, which is worthy of a conversation, because is that the role of this committee? Or is that the role of the town hall? Or is that completely out of our ability to impact. And I just wanted to at least raise the question.

I mean, to be honest with you, that word access is extremely, extremely important. It's a great point. So to educate, support access to, or support and comma access and empower, let's put the word access in there, right?

Or no. It's at a different level. I guess I'm looking at access more as one of our goals. Okay. I was going to say the same thing, Nancy. I think it's really, really important. But, you know, after the mission statement, we have our goals. And I absolutely think that that should be one of them. All right.

I want to get back to Gina's comments about ending it with just overall health and well-being, period. Not through healthy lifestyle choices. I'm going to cross that out. Okay.

Is there any way, Meg, who's running this meeting, you? I am, yes. Is there any way to write that statement as we have it and put it on the screen?

I can do that if you want.

I don't know. Leslie, if you can, can you do it? Okay. Yeah.

Give me a sec.

Just so that you all know that normally in our meetings, we have a clerk, Jessica Montgomery, who's fabulous, but she was not able to make this meeting today. So she really helps us out with all this. Yeah.

Keep going and I'll put it up in a sec.

All right. Okay. So, so, so, so basically, yeah, so basically what we have now is to educate support and empower all shelter island residents. To improve and maintain their overall health and well being period.

Yeah, I like that. That's that works. That works.

Yeah. And then, Leslie, then the goals come in with access to health or, you know, educational programming, you know, whatever it's going to be.

I agree with that. You can put that in the goals. And then where it comes, where lifestyle choices come in, you can also put, you know, supporting lifestyle choices in the goals as well if we want to.

Meg, is there any possibility we get the existing goals up? The goals, I think they're listed on the website, by the way. I don't know if they could do that on their computer and then stay. Okay. Okay. Thank you. Meg is going to put the goal, the existing goals up. Okay, let's just talk a little bit about goals though. Well, Meg is doing that. I went with the smart goals. Smart standing for specific. measurable, achievable, relevant, and time bound. Smart, specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time bound. Okay. And obviously, specific is describe exactly what you are going to do. Measurable, provide a way to evaluate success. Attainable, make sure you have the time and the resources you need. And realistic, make sure it is achievable and sustainable goal. So that's kind of where I got that smart kind of thing from. uh we have as meg just posted six excuse me five goals at the top let's take them wanted oh let's just everybody take two two minutes to look at them without any talking just take a look at them make some notes and then we'll come back sorry so where are those

Can you guys see the shared screen of the town website?

What we see right now is just the to educate, support, and empower all Shelter Island residents.

We're not seeing the town website. Okay, there it is. Okay, great. There it is.

Thank you.

It's probably inferred in so many ways, but the need for us to facilitate communications between the different constituencies here is very important.

Yeah, we had that as a goal to facilitate and that's the last goal that we have similar.

I didn't see that. Yeah.

Yeah, I would say I would say that last goal has come up constantly in all the feedback that we've gotten. In personal interviews, group interviews, the stuff that I just got back from the parents from school. Communication, communication, communication, you can't over communicate. So, I think the facilitate communication between community groups to enhance access efficiency and achieve effectiveness of outreach is important. The other ones, by the way, are not really goals. There are events. Yeah.

You know, like when we say facilitate communication between community groups, that's where the library comes in. That's where the connection to the police department comes in through the groups like the Lions Club. So that one goal encompasses actually the library issue. Right. So we can knock that out.

Yeah.

The grief support would come under creating educational programming and same with the overdose event, you know, so those are like actions that apply to the goal. So even those goals that facilitate one is good, conduct an assessment probably still needs to stay in there. But the grief support and the overdose comes under organizing educational programs related to health and wellness.

Yes. Correct. Yes. Correct.

So the one that's missing in goals is to improve access to health services and medications on the island.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Yeah. All right, so the top three we're agreeing are not goals. The other thing I was thinking of, as we break down into our focus groups or our subgroups, whatever we want to refer to them as, each one of those probably should have an individual goal. So something about the people that are involved in exercise, diet, nutrition, that kind of stuff, that may be a goal of the committee. And it's surely, maybe we should wait for those groups to break down and develop a goal and submit it back to us?

Well, I think we can't. Yeah, I think we can't complete all the goals today. Correct. I think we'll all agree that the last one that we have stays and the access that Leslie's talking about, we can formulate that. But I agree, we're going to talk about the subgroups next and it makes sense that that would be a place where each subgroup would have their own goal.

Correct, correct. I think that's, and I don't think goals need to be more than five and it would be perfect if we reword the fourth goal, keep the fifth goal and have the three or four subcommittees uh focus groups come up with a goal that would be that would suffice i think it would be perfect so you want to just jump down into um the the subcommittees i have a more i have a more basic question

about the role of of this committee which i think is probably for all shelter island town committees but okay isn't one of the important i don't know if it's a goal or part of the mission to advise the town board on on steps that should be taken and and potentially on you know budget aspects of I don't know what the official role is of this committee, but it does seem to me that aren't we in the position... We can't actually do things. We have to advise the town board on things that will cost money, right? How do we...

We do, but I will tell you that the money end of things are, we're fairly limited in terms of what we've been provided in terms of money. So we've increased our 26 budget over 25. But we don't have a large amount of money. I thought we were going was advising the town boards on. You know, the playground that you don't, yeah, I think events and right.

Yeah. I think what Natasha is saying is, like, make recommendations to the town board on actions that we should be taking, you know, topics that we need to address. Like, we know the playgrounds 1 of them, you know, fixing some infrastructure things, different programs, or the issue of the social worker might be correct.

Right? A recommendation.

And also when we get the results of this, when we finish finally with the surveys and the focus groups, I'm assuming that we're going to have a lot of information that we can make recommendations about.

Yeah, so definitely making those types of recommendations for programming changes or events or... Different things that you guys feel we need that would benefit the community are always welcome and that's part of your role here is to help the town board, you know, sometimes think outside the box in order to meet some of the needs of the community.

And that's also that's also why Meg and Albert come to all of our meetings.

Yes. Chief Reid has something he wants to mention here.

Just to interject, it was still a small town. I don't want to bog it down with the town board. If this committee had a recommendation for the police department, I would rather just consider it. If you got pushback from me and you felt it was super important, then I would say you take it to the town board as the police commission to make it happen. But otherwise, if you came to me with a great idea, say let's roll. I don't want to bog it down with the town board. Please, Albert and Meg, I'm not trying to usurp any authority, but if you have a great idea for the rec director, let's go talk to the rec director. Health and wellness is a committee of the town. I have a great idea for the direct director. Can you move this forward? She'll probably say, yeah, great idea. Let's go. That's all my 2 cents. I shouldn't even speak.

No, no, no, no, no, no. To be very honest, you know, I kind of concur with that. I said, make recommendations on new ideas and action items. To appropriate town departments. Okay. I mean, that's something that I think, I think the point, I love the fact that you brought it up because I think that should be our goal. Make recommendations, offer new ideas on action items to the appropriate town departments.

We don't have to go through the town board. The members of the town board are pretty busy enough. Just like when we do stuff with the library. We do that directly with the library, and it's fabulous that we can now do it with the police department. You're going to be part of us. It sounds like a great thing.

And by the way, when these recommendations are being made, Albert and Meg are going to be CC immediately, going to be part of the discussion. So they're going to hear it. If they think there's some type of warning sign that we say, you know, wow, that may be a little bit, you know, they're going to let us know. So that's the purpose of having the town liaisons. And we're fortunate to have two very good people from the town board represent us That's it so I love that goal and thank you very much for bringing that out. That's and Jim. Thank you very much for your ideas on that.

Okay, before we move on to the next topic, I know Vicki, you have a hard stop at 220. so I want to ask this question of the group before you leave because I think you might be interested. um we are have are putting a group together to work on the ola legislation to review it and make comments and think about it and we're asking if there would be two volunteers from the health and wellness committee to participate on that group so i wasn't wondering if two of you are interested yes i'm definitely interested okay and as well Oh, you're breaking up, Em.

You're muted. Oops. This was for health and wellness?

It's for health and wellness to participate in working on the OLA legislation.

Oh, I see. Okay. Explain what the OLA is.

What is that?

Yeah.

It is the legislation that is being proposed by OLA to address the ICE actions that have been taken in the East End.

I can tell you a little more. So, sorry. It's okay. So it's an amendment to the Public Safety and Accountability Law. They came to the town in February. Minerva Perez from OLA came to the town to pitch this to the Shelter Island town board about amending their public safety and accountability law to include language that would basically provide more clarity on the role of, like, just make it very clear about where the police role is and then federal ICE agents. And it's just a clarity thing, really. I mean, it's really for, like, the safety of all Shelter Island residents.

I believe that East Hampton adopted it already.

East Hampton Village just adopted it yesterday, probably.

Yeah.

All right. So who are the 2 volunteers with me?

Gina and Vicki.

Gina and Vicki. Okay.

You guys, I just wanted to make sure that was out of the way before. I know Victoria has to leave.

Thank you so much.

Thank you. You're welcome. Okay. Go here for another. 5 minutes.

Okay. Okay. The last item that I really wanted to go through is this idea. What are we calling these subgroups? These focus.

Let's let's don't call them focus groups. It's too confusing.

Okay, all right so so let's open it up. What's an appropriate name for these subgroups that.

Subcommittees subcommittees.

Yeah.

Subcommittees subcommittees. Yes. Yeah. And Vicki and Vicki don't leave before we know what your interest is.

Okay, and then let's identify these committees. We have mental and emotional.

Let me just say that Jim and I just, you know, made these four different buckets. They're not, they're not set in stone, but we just were thinking when we were thinking about it, this is what we were, these were our thoughts. Okay.

Go ahead. Nance, repeat the four of them.

Oh, um, it's, um, mental health and, uh, I guess that's health and mental health. Um, Education and communication, wellness and fitness. Those were the four that we came up with.

um okay so does that sound right i'm saying it now i'm saying it from my head i'm not i don't have it written down so jim if you have anything written down that's that's that's not quite that i i have it but i don't have it right here so mental mental health is is is separate in itself or you're talking about all health physical health issues being separate because or is that all part of wellness is that well i guess for physical health you know i'm talking more about um you know

not wellness, but more medical. If we're talking about mental health and physical health, more would be in one group.

Yeah. In what you sent through before, there was mental health, education and communications. Then there was wellness and nutrition. And then the fourth one was fitness.

Okay. Okay.

See. Okay.

I'm glad to know you have it in front of you because I don't. Okay.

And the fourth one was fitness.

Was fitness.

Okay. All right. So we're talking mental health in group number one, subgroup number one. Number two is education and communication. Yep. Group number three was wellness and nutrition.

Yep.

Group four was fitness.

Yep. So I'm just, you know, what does everybody think of this? As I said, Jim and I just kicked it around.

I think fitness could be in any of them.

Mm-hmm.

You know, you want to be mentally fit. You want to be physically fit.

I certainly think fitness and nutrition could go hand in hand. So maybe there could be three subgroups. Maybe wellness, fitness and nutrition could be one.

yeah and then what's missing is the access piece something because those are really the everything that you've done is about helping people help themselves but the access is going to go beyond the individual to having to find more structural i guess i guess we were thinking of that more in the um communication and education uh group okay if you can if you can think of a way to if you want you know to make a fourth group with with access I heard you talking about communication and education. I was hearing communicating outward within the community to help people understand what the opportunities were, to help them self-improve. That's the way I was imagining it. But it feels like access is a different area.

I was just thinking group number two, we have an acronym here, ACE. Access, Communication, Education. Spells ACE. ACE is the place. I don't know. If you want to separate access out?

I'd love to hear from other people.

Yes, I agree.

These are subgroups that are aligned. Is this public-facing subgroups or is this all internal so we can do some sort of more focused brainstorming?

Yeah, let me help clarify this a little bit because I think people are confused. So like the group on education and communication would be a group that organized and put out educational materials for the community and helped communicate events and information to the community. The mental health group would put together programs to support mental health and wellness, would put out information on mental health and wellness. The nutrition group would put out information on nutrition do programming for teaching people about nutrition and fitness would do different organized exercises things of that nature so it's like which one do you kind of feel drawn to or what do you want to educate the public about or what fun activities you have that would fit under what category and that's kind of how we're and it doesn't mean that everybody's always staying in their lane of course right but

But there may be some programming and only three or four of you are going to be super involved in that programming that we're not meeting as a whole group every time. You know, there might be a something having to do with fitness. And for example, I'm I see myself as a mental health person. I may not be involved in that particular bucket, you know, in that, you know, so that, you know, we're a big group and we're trying to figure out how, you know, to make it also manageable.

Can I add just one important thing here? I would love to keep it to 3 if we were going to add a 4th, 1, I'm looking at John. And I'm looking at the massive effort that's gone in in the last year and a half collecting data. What subgroup is focused in on developing that data into a plan to help us move forward. I think that's a separate category.

It's education education and communication. Okay. When I was. When I was when we were setting these up, I was actually setting them up with all of you in mind. You know, in my mind, I was kind of thinking where everybody was going. And for example, just to give an example, and I may be wrong, I was thinking education and communication was John, Natasha and Leslie. You know, that was just, you know, the way I in my framework. So, you know, take it from there.

Right, so some different ideas that had come up when we were talking. I know that for fitness, Bill, who's not here today, had said he wanted to try to get together a bicycle group that could get together on a regular basis. And so he wanted to see if anyone was interested in helping him organize something like that. So maybe it happened once a month or twice a month or was a regular standing thing. So that's the kind of thing where maybe two or three of you could work on organizing, setting that up, and then communicating it to the public. I know for mental health, there's a lot of programs that like, over the winter, we did a program for sad through the library. So maybe 2 or 3 of you would work on that kind of programming and it's really up to you. If you have something that you're passionate about, or you think would be a great idea for the community. See, if there's 2 or 3 people who want to work with you. And then, you know, you're not locked into always doing a fitness program. Maybe you had a really great idea for mental health program and maybe there's 2 people who are really into that same topic. You guys could work together to put something out. It's just so that the entire group isn't working on 1. Thing all the time, so you can diversify and you can get more done with more focus and efficiency is kind of the objective here. So maybe if, you know. Everybody thought about it and came up with 1 or 2 things that you think would be really great to put together. We come up with a list of maybe. 3 or 4 things that the little subcommittees could be working on and rolling out that might help.

I just have a quick question and then I do have to run, but obviously I would want to be in whichever group was addressing fitness or brainstorming ideas about fitness programming. But also from my health coaching perspective, like I said, like my focus or my approach to wellness and health is all encompassing. So I don't know if we can be on more than one committee, but I would be interested in being in the wellness and nutrition committee as well.

Mm-hmm. Vicki, that's where we kind of thought as well. We got your strength. Yeah, definitely.

We got you there. We got you there. I almost feel like that one, that's why it kind of makes sense to have the wellness, nutrition and fitness, possibly all, you know, especially if within that group, we're working on a few things. Yeah.

I agree, but if they're separate, I'd be okay with that too. On that, I have to go. I'm sorry, but thank you all so much. Thank you very much, Vicki. See you soon.

So let's just clean up that one. What do you want to call that idea of nutrition, fitness, wellness? Let's give it a final title here. We've got Bill, we've got Vicki, we've got Emily.

wellness nutrition fitness physical wellness and fitness i mean that's that's fine i'm sorry nancy you could do mind body wellness that's nice yeah that's good

Mind, body, wellness.

As long as everybody knows what that means. Yeah, I don't know. We can also just keep it wellness, nutrition, and fitness.

Yeah, I like that better. Yeah. Wellness, nutrition, and fitness. Yes. Education, communication is separate, and mental health is separate. Okay. All right. So those are our three.

And they'll be broad. Yeah, and it'll depend on what you guys want to tackle and when you might have a list of three or four things that you think would be great, but you focus on two of them to get them done effectively. And then knowing that, you know, maybe for the next two, a new person will step in and someone will step into something else. And, you know, so it has flexibility in it. It's just we know that these are these are the different strengths we have to play with.

All right, I would like to, I would like to join John Natasha and Leslie and that education communication. Nancy, I think you are definitely in mental health.

I'm alone. I'm alone. I got Lori. I got Lori.

You have you have Lori that can be with you and I will.

And me. And Gina.

And Gina. Great.

And also, you know, with education, obviously. Yes. Okay. I think you're talking about just overall education in different areas, right? It's in all of them.

Let's tentatively look at Callie and Ronnie. Where would they best fit?

Ronnie wants to do education, and Callie would be wellness, nutrition, and fitness.

Okay. It is Callie. Yeah. All right. I think we've pretty much accomplished what we wanted to.

I'm just wondering, maybe, do we keep education and communication together? I would say not. I think they're in everything. It's such a large group. And are they, is it something that might be split? I'm just. playing with that thought.

Yeah, I will tell you that my readings of what I got from the school and what we've got at the, Gina and I got at the library two days ago, communication, communication, and they want to see calendars, they want to see events, they want to, they want, that thing is, they kept hitting that home, right, right, Gina?

Yeah, no doubt. Yeah, I mean, that's a big that's a big area, but it is an area that encompasses all of the other 4 the same with patients.

So it does. But I think education education lends itself to communicating that to the public. I think the other 2 committees can can can can provide things to be communicated. But I think education communication, I'm comfortable with that. Being being 1.

Leslie, you look like you're about to speak.

Yeah, I was just going to say, I'm thinking a little bit about what we were doing in our other organization. The communication piece has a lot of execution components. And so, you know, actually writing things, finding visuals, getting them out to everybody. And then there's all of the other, it is true that all of the other committees have things that they're going to want to communicate. And so it all winds up flowing back into communication. communications to get them out there. The only question is the education piece, how we want to define that, because that's more about potentially events or all of the work that John has done. Once we get those findings, we're going to need to communicate them back to the community in some way, which won't just be written. It feels like we should have some sort of events around that so that people really are able to get the message and interact with it.

Okay.

So moving forward, it's now 2.30, and we have our official meeting in a couple of weeks. We do.

On May 8th.

Is it the 8th?

It's May 8th on a Friday.

Okay, okay. And hopefully as many of us who can be in person will be in person.

Yes. And one thing, Nancy, I want to remind everybody, for the new members, the seven new members, we need to get the word out. It's not at 1.30. The committee meeting starts at 1.30, but the town would like you here at 1 o'clock. The reason, they do a 20-minute orientation program prior to the meeting. All of us went through it, it's only 20 minutes. So, rather than have 2 separate days. I asked Coco from the office if she would start that at 1 o'clock. And then we'll have a 10 minute break and then we'll go right into the 130 meeting. Is that okay?

I just have 1 question.

Yes.

Are you wanting us to meet within these subcommittees and discuss anything beforehand?

Now.

No, it's not necessary.

No, no, I don't. I don't think I think I think that it's a legitimate concern, but I think we can do that right afterwards. I mean, it's not like May 8th is a month or 2 away. It's weeks away. You know, we're already at the end of April, you know, so we're exactly a couple of weeks away from that meeting because really what we wanted to do was was.

Everything that we did today, we wanted to do in advance of the May 8th meeting because it puts us in a really good place to kind of get moving. As opposed to doing all these preliminaries, starting May 8th is our first real official committee meeting.

And how long is that meeting?

That meeting is what we try to keep to one hour. just about an hour. The other thing is on the agenda. I and Nancy developed the agenda for the group and we submit it to the office. So one of the things I've never said to anybody, if you have an agenda item that you think is important that you would like to be placed on the agenda, contact either Nancy or I for that purpose so we can place it on the agenda, okay? Anything else?

Just an answer, Jim, just I think before the next meeting, if just that statement of the thoughts of the mission and maybe those few consolidated goals, so that everyone has a chance to digest them and think about them before our next meeting. I'll have them posted. Send it out into the town email, and we can gather our thoughts before we attend the meeting.

It looks like everybody's now on the email. It looks like everybody's on the town email now. Yes.

I'm not, I don't think.

Because today I went on the website and all of your names were there. And I clicked on one or two names and it looked like you had your emails.

Everybody does. But John, in your case, I'll send it to both. I'll send it to your other one as well.

And Leslie too.

And Leslie as well. Okay.

And obviously we can all communicate by email in between meetings. And as we do, just keep in mind the reason why we have the town emails, which is what we're supposed, the way we're supposed to be communicating is as it was explained to me by Meg, is that if there's ever any reason where our emails need to be public so that it's only our town emails and not our personal emails that become exposed.

Got it. Meg, is that why I wasn't able to share my screen because I was using the wrong email?

No, no, no. That was me having to click a button. So that was my inexperience at running your Zoom, so I apologize for that. No worries.

Leslie, you're also going to need to set up a password to get into your email, so that has to be done for you.

Yes.

To establish that, you have to create it to connect to you. Thank you.

I know I'll end on this normally when we have a meeting. But Jessica records the entire meeting and is responsible for the minutes. I usually within 24 hours, I think Nancy will agree the 24 hours I have by the minutes. A rough draft. because I take notes no matter what I do, as Jim is nodding his head, maybe too much, but I take all my notes and I get them out immediately. Jessica appreciates it. That helps facilitate her job in terms of getting those notes route to you right away. So that's the way it normally goes.

I'm sorry? I recorded this meeting. First of all, was I allowed to record this meeting? Because the reason I did it was so that I could send back notes that summarize the meeting directly from ChatGPT, but maybe I wasn't supposed to do that.

No, no, that's, I don't know, Meg.

I don't know, Meg.

So this meeting is already being recorded and it is a public meeting. So like you'll notice Julie Lane is on the meeting. So she's with the reporter. So it is recorded and we will, that your clerk will do minutes from the meeting and send those out to everybody. So you don't have to worry about doing it yourself. The clerk does it. It's public meeting. It's on Zoom. It'll be recorded. You can watch it on YouTube. And it will also, you know, so it's available for everybody.

So if you can't remember what happened, you can always go back to the YouTube channel for the talent and find your meeting and rewatch sections if that's helpful.

Thank you. All right. Anybody else have any final comments?

Yes, John. It would be very helpful if, as part of the orientation, especially for the new members, if we had details on the town budget for this committee. There's some monies available. How much? How is it to be used? That would be useful. Maybe you have that in the back pocket.

john john what i'll do because it's come up twice now i'll bring a copy of the budget to our may meeting and you'll see it line by line exactly what the 2026 budget is okay

Okay. The other question that I had is the actual decision-making process. So somebody has an idea. How does the committee work besides debating it and suggesting changes, et cetera? How is a decision actually made to move forward?

I can answer that. When we were a committee of seven, everything was done by consensus. we never had a disagreement on anything moving forward. With more people, there may be more debate and different kinds of viewpoints. So it's a good question.

It's a good point. And in that case, John, it would be majority rule. So if something came up and there was a little split, let's say a 7-4 split on the vote, the 7 would have it. The ayes would have it, you know?

Right. But Gina, I think you would agree that up until this point, everything was done by consensus.

But it was done by vote. Do you agree or disagree?

Yes. But it's a democratic process, John. We like to say that's still alive and well here on Shelter Island. All right. Anything else? If not, have a great weekend, folks. Thank you very much for your time and we look forward to it. I'm excited about it. And God bless. All right. See you in two weeks.

Thank you, everyone.

Thank you.

Bye-bye, everyone. Meg, Meg's still on? I am. Meg, when will there be then the meeting for the OLA?

We'll send you the invitation because I don't know.

Okay. Thank you. You're welcome.

Thank you very much.