Committees - Regular Meeting

Second item of business would be a review of the minutes from May 8th, 2026. There are two pages of notes that Jessica was nice enough to print up for us and distribute. And those are our official minutes. Give everybody just a second if you need to look through them at all. A lot of the stuff that's in that those minutes are going to be repeated again today. Like, the. We're going to talk a little bit about the bike program. We're going to talk a little bit about the opioid awareness. We're going to talk about some, some other things that we've that are also in the minutes. From from May, do I have a motion to approve to approve? Okay. Bill will give that. To you and 2nd from John all in favor please by saying aye aye. All right, are we counting the people on on just the people in the room and the people in here?

We have to.

Okay. So we're 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. all right. So we're 7 0. Yeah.

Yeah.

We're 7 0. Okay. All right. Okay. Community needs update just had a short little statement that I wanted to read on on behalf of that. This will be an ongoing process, obviously. This doesn't happen when we make even a final report. I think this committee has to continue And its entirety to always be seeking feedback from the public on how we can do a better job. So that's that's the number 1 thing I wanted to talk about. And it should be done periodically. This is not something like. We develop our short term goals are intermediate and long term goals. That they sit up on a shelf and we don't look at them because we'll be addressing them all the time. I know that used to be a common response to the comp plan, you know, all that work and it sits up on a shelf. Well, I guarantee you after this adventure of four-year adventure, I guess, right, Meg?

A six-year adventure.

I stand corrected, six years. To putting together the comp plan that it'll be alive and well. However, again, it doesn't have to be something that waits a decade to be updated. So we're going to do that.

We're going to know when there's going to be a new coded or whatever. That's right.

Exactly.

She's happy with that 1.

And by the way, we have, we will continue to conduct community assessment, which identifies health status. Uncovers disparities, which we have some obviously on the island that we're aware of. That guides targeted resources allocations. Because they're changing all the time. It's all it will also help to create and strengthen existing partnerships and that's something that this committee relies heavily on the partnerships. If you take something like just the visual that we're going to run. There are partnerships that and the biggest partnership that we probably have other than the town board, because we're a member of the town board committee is the library library has been probably our strongest advocate over the course of our existence. So, although we've only been in existence a year and a half. You know, as a town board, as a town committee, we've been in existence for 6 years as a, as a committee all together. We also want to engage residents and local organizations to enhance that collaboration. I think that was something that comes across loud and clear in the feedback that we get that we could always be working on improving communication, building trust. And that's a big thing, building trust. That's something that government is being questioned on all the time, whether it's local, federal, state governments, always that trust factor. Fostering sustainability and mutual relationships, which we hope to have here. People like Ed that are coming to the meeting and Susan, Sandra, who's online with us today. Our subcommittees will also be A big part of this group, and we've divided into 3 subcommittees and they're, they're going to be actively. We felt that we are a committee of 11. we felt that we could get more done. In a shorter period of time, by branching 11 people into 3 different committees, which we've now established that we've already started working on. So that's kind of a background in terms of community needs assessment update. Does anybody else have anything. That they want to add to anything that I've said, or modify anything.

John, yes, just to let you know, we've talked over. 400 people over the past few months in different groups and interviews. And we're continuing that process right now. And we'll be taking a look at the the comprehensive plan that should be updated. The demos go back to 2020, 21. You remember those years. And we'll decide at that point whether to move forward with a quantitative study or kind of wrap it up with this qualitative research.

Right. So that's that's a good I mean, that's a good point. So everybody realized the comprehensive plan has 11 chapters in it. Chapter 2 on demographics is obviously very big to know who we're talking about because it is a changing community. And you can see that from the enrollment at school. It's dramatically changed over the last decade. But thanks to Meg and her committees and that update, that stuff has all been updated to 2024, which is the last real revision, I think, of chapter two. They're working on other chapters. And chapter nine, which is another important chapter to us too, which talks about the makeup of the community as well. So everybody on my subcommittee has copies of chapter two on the demographic. Jessica will be putting together the information for chapter 9. I'll get that early next week and I'll disseminate that. So that we actually have that created a binder for everybody on our subcommittee that looks something like this binder right here. That has all our meetings we've met twice in the last 2 weeks. So we'll be meeting very, very frequently in terms of trying to get. Because the other committees are waiting on that information. You know, not that they can't get going because Bill took the initiative right away with the bike safety thing. And Bill, I have to say that, unfortunately, I had a conflict with family that I wasn't here on the island, but I heard nothing but great things about it. I think it's something that's very pertinent to the island itself. And while we just have you a little bit, can you talk about your feedback from that? and maybe on a follow up what you might be doing with that.

Yeah, that's easy. That feedback was those who were here and online, I think had a really good time. I know it was it was fun. It was informative. It was too long. That would be my critique. I would, you know, to do it again. There's a few things I would cut out. This was more kind of like cycling 101 and i would focus on a few aspects a little how long did it go bill maybe once an hour and a half i don't know and that's what what we had done uh jessica was absolutely amazing because she was working the uh These are the PowerPoint as I was doing, and so that all went extremely, extremely well. The disappointment of it was that the turnout, because it was really hot and hard, wasn't as good as what we would have liked, but it does give you know, it would be worthwhile doing again in a different context. There's also a subset that wasn't just from that meeting. Well, there's two subsets. One is, you know, what type of follow ups can we do? And Natasha and I have actually gotten together and discussed some of that. And the second is, what can we do to actually help to get people moving? and being active. And we've talked about doing a kind of an introduction to group riding, where also, you know, we take a look at people's drive trains, their tires, et cetera, get them so that they look so that they could go out on the road. I've had a conversation or two with Meg. Meg is wonderful. She checked on, they were covered by the insurance of the town. We would still have a waiver, but honestly, waivers are only good to a certain extent because you can't wait gross negligence in New York state. So it's good to have the insurance we spoke and I wanted to have a follow up. It was sounded like the best thing was to try to do it on an evening at around 530 ish. So people who work. could come and a weekend would probably be too busy and you could probably pull it off Sunday afternoon, but it sounded like we could do that and we're going to look to some dates. Okay, great. And we want Gina out on her bike. I ran into her while I was riding and said, we got to go.

And it would be something- Not literally.

I ran right over her. We probably do something short like six, seven miles and just so people can get a better sense of safety and also what it's like to ride with other people because it does enhance the safety in terms of what you call out, how you do things. And so I'm hopeful for that. Okay, great.

I think the other thing we need to do is kind of revisit some of our publicity methods, which, you know, we've been doing the same. Old publicity stuff for the last 6 years, and we need to have some new ideas and from the new committee, some new ideas. as to how to really get more people involved actually that's because i had so many people after the fact after they saw the article oh i wish i knew i wish i knew phil diorio got me at one thing and said oh i ride i would have loved to exactly so so something there's this there's a gap somewhere between our our communication and the programs and that's something that we really need to work on that's a good that's an excellent point it would be a good idea to work with the recreation department

to put that under the rec department because they reach out through their great idea and it would be good to involve them and so it would be a town sponsored program and it doesn't cost anybody anything so i would work with bethany to and this way your reach is greater two very good points

And I would also suggest that we invite the highway superintendent to the next 1, because a lot of the discussions, not all, but quite a bit of it was relevant to the roads. And I think that would be really useful to have in there because he can comment. I mean, there were a lot of questions. Why don't we have bike lines? It would have been helpful if you were there to answer those.

And I also think it would be good to have invited chief. Yeah, I would say both of them. Yeah.

And enable chat on that. It wasn't enabled on the zoom. So for interactive, not Zoom, just for future. We didn't know that.

We usually keep the chat off. Really? Sometimes people can kind of sneak in and sort of Zoom bomb you that way. If we were in COVID, it was a problem. When people were at home with nothing else to do, we did actually have someone crash one of our meetings and drop graphic content. cut everything down very quickly. So, never mind. Never mind. Raise your hand, okay.

So excellent points, Nancy, Gina, and Natasha.

I think they'll be fine. Because it's come up twice, I think, with the Brain Day event. We did 90 minutes, right? Yeah. And the comments I had heard was that it was so great, but it was just a little bit too long. I don't know how long this research had.

presentation short that was all that was only an hour so you know I think presentations and and for brain day we had a lot of speakers yeah you know for this and for this the sad yeah only one speaker so when you have multiple speakers the one speaker was funny You know, you can expect it to to be a little bit longer, but it's true in our presentation. Anybody have any time?

I would be sure meeting or thereafter to come back on the question if it comes and what's not working and how can we already start to improve that? Yeah, those are good point.

All good points. By the way, while we're on that committee, and I want to go back up to item number four on the subcommittees, just skipping down to your committee, Bill, of wellness, fitness, nutrition group. Do we have a point person for that now? I just say, what's a point person? Well, what we've done in our committee of 5 is we've applied to John as because she has done this research before this data gathering to be our point person for our subcommittee. So. We've met at John's house first, met at my house this week. We're moving over to Natasha's house in a couple of weeks after we gather some data. We're kind of moving it around a little bit. Actually, we're going to your house. Josh will eventually get there. Now dropping it off at the wrong 81 Ram Island. you know in a public place did you actually get that on your car by the way okay so thank god thank god those people on the other address weren't home because i would have been on their camera saying who is that old man creeping around that gathering this information i jumped in the back door um but yeah so so when you guys meet and and and you do need to meet in between meetings we've purposely staggered these meetings a month apart because i think as subcommittees you can and you You know, you have it, you have a nice group of people if you get a point person, and you can get a couple of meetings in between our meetings to say. What's next for you do a follow up to the bike and taking a new topic. And the other thing I wanted to say is that when we get to the planning stage. When we get to the planning stage, what I would like to do is I would like all the subcommittees to end up with with 3 increments. And I've defined, we're trying to develop a 5 year plan for the committee. And what I thought and I throw it out to you for your acceptance or your thought is short term goals. I envision first 18 months. Anything we could do in a year and a half time would be short term intermediate would be defined as 18 months out to 36 months. A year and a half to 3 years long term being 36 months to 72 months, 3 to 5 years. So, let's use an example of bike safety since we've already talked about it. So you've had an initial program that you put into it as a short term goal. You might want to develop another one next year within that first 18 months, modify how you do it. You might expand upon that on ideas that you've already expressed about actually getting out on the road with groups that might be short term and intermediate as you look. That thing about getting a bike lane on 114, that's not a short term goal. That's not probably an intermediate goal that probably I envision is something that's going to be a long term goal. It's going to could take up to it's the 5 years. Hopefully it wouldn't take that long. Ken has actually spoken with the state about this. However, I mean, the good argument on that is, as you go into it. There are bike lanes clearly developed on North Fork. You can travel, you know, dozens and dozens of miles. Or 114 in North Haven and down to Sarekhar. Correct. Correct. You know, they're already there. Why not connect them? You know, why not connect them and why not make it safer for people to be on 114? You know, there are tons of people who want to do that loop. People like yourself that get out want to do a 50, 60, 70 mile loop. They park in Riverhead, they come out on North Fork, Rorschach Island, hit the South Fork, have some lunch and then work their way back to Riverhead. It's a no-brainer.

So really what you're saying is that every subcommittee should have these Um, you know, long term and short and mean little terms. Yes.

And it may take it's going to take time. I don't expect that. It would be nice if we had a preliminary. Like, this is July, so in September that we've thought about what we want to do in the 1st, 18 months. That we have a program set so that we can coordinate our programs. Start thinking about some intermediate goals that we might wanna look at and maybe one long range goal that we might wanna look at.

It came up for two for us already, so that was helpful.

Yeah. So having a point person, again, Nancy and I, as co-chairs of the committee, do not want to appoint people for those positions. We sat down as five people and said, no, listen, John does this. John has been actively involved with this. He's been collecting data for this particular purpose for a long period of time. He was an actual fit for that position. So, we're going to, we'll go with that. All right and then we can, you can switch point people up. You know, you try it for a year. You want to go rotate that responsibility year at the year. That's all good stuff as far as I'm concerned.

And 1 of the advantages of that is that. The 3 point people from the 3 different committees can be in communication with each other. Right? And you don't have to have. Everybody involved, and it can really just be in between our big committees. What's going on? What's going on? What's going on? So that we all know what everybody's doing.

It also helps us develop a master calendar. For the committee, you know, and with the idea is, are we bumping it to other things? You know, I think 1 of the things we talked about at the library, the thing that jumps out at me when we interviewed the library staff. And we had 810 people there given feedback was the need for a master calendar within the town. So, because people don't. don't they're not aware again if it was easy access easy to get to where you can press a button look on see what's happening in july here on shelter island see what's happening in august and september have a three-month calendar out i i again i don't know whether you have to put a yearly calendar out but a quarterly calendar would be nice just so that the next 90 days and you maintain it You know, as July ends, you go August, September, October. So you have 90 days to look out. What do you what could you possibly want to attend? The library does a pretty good job of that in terms of putting out their programs. And that's why they get a pretty darn good response. But we would need Bethany on board. We would need, you know, we would have to be a collaborative effort to be able to do that.

Are you talking about including events like at the Historical Society and the whole town? Correct.

Correct.

Does the chamber not have something like that? The chamber doesn't put out something like that. Could that be on a town website of community?

So Shelton was working on trying to develop it through the town clerk's office. I mean, that would be the most appropriate place for it. And so she's been working on trying to get something like that together, where it pulls in the library, the rec department, all the different services. So it's more of a social calendar. We have the town work calendars, but trying to add like a social calendar so people can submit activities to her and she can post them on the calendar.

Also seeing where they clash for dates of fundraising.

The reporter does it, but it's only weekly.

That's great for the week, but it's not long term. Right.

And it would have to be something where people would submit it to her. She can't go chasing. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. And if you don't submit, it doesn't go in. That's really good.

It was the biggest cry and the one square mile town of Court Place. The conflicts between things. Why did everybody choose this weekend to put three or four? We have nothing during the month. Everybody put it. That's a problem. So if we can better coordinate what we're doing on Little Shelter Island.

Our vigil and cast always seem to be on the same night. Right. And that draws the same population. Right. So that's important.

Yes.

So, while we're on the subcommittees, what would be really helpful for the next meeting is to have you the 2 chairs of our overall committee explain how you envision the subcommittees feeding the total committee. Okay, so I could make something up right now, but I'm not going to, but it would be helpful to have your vision for that because the mental health and the wellness are a little bit different from community engagement. As I see it, but maybe you don't see it that way. I mean, I think that when we talk about subcommittees now, I think that's something that we. Okay, well, then, yeah, in that case, you know, I think what would be what would make sense. I mean, I think that that the community engagement committee, which is mine will be, we will be giving you other subcommittees information about what we learn from the work. We've done talk to the community. But we also envision you all coming to us and saying, you know, we want to do a program on X, Y, and Z. And then we would be coming up with better ways to. Exactly.

For example, there's certain things that we will be waiting for all your information. But there are other things which are no brainer. topics which we don't need to survey a community to know about that we need the financial and the fraud.

Exactly.

For example, one of the things Ronnie and I have been talking about is, you know, adolescent health. You know, you don't need to you don't need to survey to know that.

But we should find ways to help you guys communicate better, get more outreach into the community so that your programs get a better following.

Exactly. That's what Natasha was saying, that it's kind of a reciprocal process. Yes, absolutely.

I think also, too, your access piece that you talked about last time.

Yeah, absolutely. We haven't talked about it yet. And we may not talk about it today, but it is another component.

Yes, because that's in that group.

And also just a reminder that groups are fluid. So if I want to join in on something from the mental health or wellness, that they're fluid groups.

I'm writing all very good ideas, by the way, and I think you've made our job easier. If that was the challenge, basically, what I'm looking at is a 2 way street in terms of communication between between the subcommittees and the, and the total group and the total group and the subcommittees, you know, and. And working on those lines of communication, which, hey, you know, what will perfect it. It'll take us some time, but we'll perfect it. Having ideas generated in between meetings to the two of us would be very, very helpful. You know, so we're all ears. People. No, go ahead.

I want to just remind everybody. to check their town emails on a regular basis. You know, I sent something out on personal emails because it was like immediate and I, because I can't, you know, I don't know for sure that people are checking the town emails, but this is our way of communication. And I'm not saying that we have to do it every day, but just on a regular basis, because there is stuff that's coming up and it's good to communicate that way. Okay.

So one more clarification on the subcommittees. So am I correct in understanding, though, if the mental health group comes up with an idea for a program, they have to come through. They're recommending it to the whole committee. The whole committee will say, great idea. then it will come to the community engagement committee to get the word out. Am I right about that? Or can they just on their own say, we're doing this next week? I mean, I just want to understand, can a subcommittee on its own decide to do something? Or does it have to come back for approval?

I think the thinking was that unless it's something of time, we have an opportunity to jump on something within two weeks in between a meeting. And it's critical that it all lines up. I'd like it to come back. I'd like all the subcommittees are working. We're getting work done. We need the approval of the 11 people. I think it helps suit for a collaboration. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And also, that's why there should be regular communication with the point people. Yeah. Yeah.

And there's also that opportunity between the mental side and the physical side and the social side and everything else, all the aspects of health is to combine ideas and so they fit together.

Nobody works in isolation.

And that's a good way of putting it. No one or no subgroup is working in isolation. You're working together. Okay.

Sorry, Jim, just while we're on that topic, is there anything that would be helpful for us to understand? Because we're new about how this. Committee then works with the town board and where we can actually. help because you guys have so much stuff on your plate when is it appropriate to try to delegate things to us at least you know small pieces of projects or whatever is going to help you guys i mean it depends a lot on the topic itself of course i mean most of what you're doing like the program development and stuff like that you guys can do on your own there are a few things like if we were going to try to start something program that

far more funding and things we have to approve of it. But most of the things you guys can do on your own. I think when the town board comes up with something that they can delegate to, they will. But at the moment, we don't have anything really that's at that point where it's ready to hand off. And then I'm sure that once you're finished with the survey and have more information, And you can share that with the town board and kind of let us know the findings and what we should be focusing our attentions on too. And what kind of support you guys need to help move some of these things forward. So I think that, you know, right now we're kind of putting all the pieces together and then we'll be able to kind of figure out the different paths.

But also if you have something going on and you think that the expertise of one of us might be useful to you, then of course we are available. Absolutely.

Yeah. The function of the liaison to the town committee is this very purpose, you know is is there the. Go between between as as an individual or two individuals, we have to people that are assigned go back to the other three people on the town board and every meeting like after this meeting, then we'll go back and then. They go around the room with reports and some people are better at that. I want to say the 1 thing that Jim Colligan did for 8 years. I think the reports, he said he's taking those short on other areas, but it came time to keep people informed. That is important. It's important to get your colleagues. And it gets back to the committee, the fact that we're worth something, that our voices are being heard, that our liaison is taking this to the rest of the town board, that they're hearing a condensed message of what happened. Again, that's pretty much how it works. If by chance we have something on a high priority item, we need to tell Albert and Meg, this is a high priority item. We need to start that and make sure that we need approval on this. If we're going to go forward, again, it's a little tricky business when a committee interacts with the director of, you know, Laurie, for instance, who's on Zoom, you know, that she's kind of on the committee, but it has been a major contributor. For 6 years on this, you know, on our committee, big time. But we don't just walk in as a committee and tell Lori or the, you know, Bethany or something, you know, what to do. That's not the chain of command. The chain of command here is that if we need something simple, like a suggestion to work together, we can do that without town board approval. But if it's anything major. that we're asking or requesting somebody, a town, whether it's Jim Reid or anybody else, Bethany in the direct, or Kenny, we should probably go through the proper methods and say, listen, this is important to us. We would like to make sure that this is a high priority item with these people. And just to get their support. There is a chain of command, so to speak. So there always is. Anybody else have any questions on the subcommittees? On mental health, Nancy has been You know, I've lost track, you know, the dozens and dozens and dozens of articles that Nancy has written for the reporter. These are quality, quality pieces that if you read them, you can't help but become enriched by the information that you're getting on a vast majority of topics that she writes about. And that will continue. And that's what do you what else do you see in that?

Well, I want to give I think we're changing the name really to health and mental health because Ronnie as an MD is part of this group.

Okay.

And under wellness, fitness, and nutrition, I don't see health. So I think that that's what we're going to be now. And also, I don't really feel like being a committee of one.

So- We have Lori too.

Yes. Um, so just to give a report from, um, from my group, you know, committee of one here is that the bereavement group is starting tonight. And Laurie, yes, it is. I will, I'll get there at 430. Got it because I have the committee starting at 5, because 1 of our participants has a job that we get there to 5, but I will see you at 430 tonight. Perfect. Thank you. And that will be going for six Fridays in a row.

How do you do Nancy? How do you guys do outreach? I'm assuming, you know, who you need to do outreach to when you do it on a 1 on 1 basis or how do people find out? Well, that's something that I need.

I will need help with because that's something that's really hard because it's a, it's a community where there are a lot of people who have had losses and don't know about the group because my outreach. has not been fabulous. You know, we do word of mouth. Laurie knows a lot of people who she feels might be appropriate. So that's been our greatest source. I write something on the Shelter Island neighborhood Facebook page. I put a letter to the editor and the reporter every year. You also emailed us, right? I did. I did email the group. That was different this year. But if anybody has any ideas for next year, because it shouldn't be that I should have trouble on this island finding people who are... Now, not everybody who's lost someone is interested. Correct. Someone might say, I'm not a groupie person. No, thank you, which is fine, and I've had that. I shouldn't be pulling teeth getting the group together.

So, Lori, what do you think is missing that we're not getting out there to the people that might be interested?

Yeah, I would really like to see maybe in a little note following the funeral, a note to the bereaved, informing them of our group and that also that when they're ready and we really suggest maybe six months. Is that right, Nancy, six months?

It all depends on the person. It all depends on who it is.

Because I know when I went right away, I was crying the whole time and I wasn't ready.

I was ready right away.

Everybody varies. But we'll offer it to them whenever they feel they need it. And then a contact information just to let them know. And we can also get a little more help from the funeral home on Shelter Island. He usually let me know too, but, you know, to have a loop there.

Good ideas, very good ideas. I'll add 1 more of the religious leaders here. They obviously conduct all the services. They, they too would be an excellent source of the years have gone to father Peter.

We have done that.

Yeah.

And since it's in the summer too, how do we reach out to the summer population? Right?

That's 1 reason why we have it in the summer because we want to be able to get everybody. Right? Yeah.

There is no doubt.

We should have a nice group this year.

When you experience a major loss in your family, whether it's a friend, family member, I know I did. I lost a daughter at 26 years of age. Definitely needed help. Both Mark and I and our kids. Unfortunately, Worse than my family was JP being at Boston College. I had to go back to school, take finals, and bammo. I went to work every day, and people came to my office every day. I went on the basketball court every day. I went to visiting schools, and players came over and hugged me before the game. Coaches came over. Fans came over. Refs came over. I got constant reinforcement every day on the job from family, friends, and distant friends. Which was great.

It was great, but it wasn't the same as sitting in a group with people who were in a similar situation where you could cry and laugh less.

There's no doubt about it. But I will tell you, I personally would never have survived. Margaret being at Huntington, it was like, after a month, it was over. You know, JPay was, if you came back to school, it was over. Move on with your life. Me, it was tough.

We talk about children, though. There's also a camp, Good Morning, that's run twice a year at Camp Quinnipet. His name is Paul Rubin. I know I reached out to him this week, who's looking to make a connection with our community, a deeper connection. So that's also something I think that will connect us with ages 7 to 17. And they do an overnight, Friday to Monday. It's going to be October, I want to say, like, 23rd. These are kids who have lost a sibling or a parent. and they are adding a parent component to it. This year will be the first time they're adding a parent component. So it's called Camp Good Morning, M-O-U-R-N-I-N-G.

It's different than the camp, what is it called? Good Grief.

Well, Camp Good Grief got so big they couldn't be in Can't quit it anymore because they're so large. There's so many kids. They had to move up the island. So this is again, this will be his 3rd year running in point of pet. So that will also be a good reach out.

All Reuben is the contact.

Reuben is his name. Yeah.

And what's his, what's his position director of camp?

Good morning. So, and you can Google it. I listened to a podcast from him to understand why he came to why he is and they. You know, for good, really good things, so they're looking for volunteers for that weekend and things like, I know we do we have the dates on that. Did you just say that you have to look in October if it's a Friday? Is that right? I want to say it's like the 23rd, October 23rd.

Is that a sat Friday Saturday? 23rd is a Friday. Okay.

It's the 23rd. I believe there's a Friday.

Yeah. You know, also hospice should help us. The hospice team.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Eastern hospice.

Oh, this is great for next year. Yeah.

Yeah. I would, I would like to get involved with that. Okay. All right. Um, we right along. Um. We go with item 7, the visual.

What about wellness, fitness and nutrition?

Oh, I'm sorry. Okay. I thought they. You guys have any kind of report that we'd like to give. I'm sorry. On the stick.

Yeah, we need to get together. We do.

It's just an idea that said in that category of fitness for recovery. You know, I think that that could be something that we could think about people in recovery. Yeah, you know, or mental health issues, how we know how there's a lot of research about fitness and recovery, fitness and mental health. You know, it's research. So how we can maybe take a look at that.

Also anti-inflammatory diets.

All good suggestions. All right. So you guys are going to try to get together. He can sometime in the next few weeks or so and get a point person and just get a little get a little background. Our 1st meeting, by the way, since we were really new with 1 another. We probably met for a little over an hour, an hour and 20 minutes. But I would say 45 minutes of it was just getting to know one another and our backgrounds and things of that nature. The second meeting was obviously a lot more productive and got a lot more things done. But there's nothing wrong with that first meeting, just trying to feel one another out. what they like doing, what their background is, what they feel comfortable, how they can contribute best, you know, and then select the point person that want to be a spokesperson for the first year. You can rotate it around the group, you know, year after year.

John, I came in a couple minutes late. Were you able to share everything that we needed to share from our group?

Yes. Well, Jimmy and I did that.

Yeah.

All right.

Vigil of Hope. Jaina, we've met.

The three of us met. So the Vigil of Hope is August 27th, 630, and it's in collaboration with the police department. We have a $500 budget from the opioid funds in collaboration with the Shelter and Library. So Anthony Rando is our point person with police department. I spoke with Sierra Torres. So we usually put an ad in the reporter, a quarter page ad is $273.

Does that come out of our funds? Yeah. That comes out of our funds. Okay. Yeah. It's money worth spending. Yeah.

I think it was once that you add for color, we usually do it color. Yeah. So it's 273. We go to posters, come from the Shelter Island Library. You usually buy them the paper. They'll print them, and we put them around the island. We do social media. It goes on the town website, Shelter Island Neighborhood, Shelter Island Local, and the Shelter Island Library website. I was thinking just... The Thrive, who was going to be a speaker, when they did the other events on Shelter Island, they brought people over from the North Fork and South Fork. So maybe we want to extend that ad to go to the Suffolk Times. So I'll find out the price for that, but I think that that might be a good idea.

That's a great idea.

Yeah, to just maybe see if we can draw those people in.

And don't forget to do the flashing lights in front of the library.

Oh, the flashing lights, yeah, the flashing.

from the police department it says road signs yeah but those are those are other signs i have road signs that i put in change we purchased a few years ago um little sign signs metal signs that yeah actually the lions club the alliance club did this yeah and then we just and then we just sort of changed the date of the year where we kept the same sign yeah i remember i've seen that

We usually have tables with information. There'll be an RN there with Narcan for anybody who wants that in the training. I reached out to HUGS on waiting to hear. I reached out to the program director. Thrive is confirmed and I just wanted to mention what Thrive is. So Thrive is based in Riverhead. They used to be based in West Hampton. They've done Two programs in coordination with the town and our social worker, and their mission is to help individuals and families find maintain and strengthen their recovery through peer based support, navigation, assistance and referrals, provide interactive educational programs that promote wellness. economic prosperity and civic engagement and maintain a safe, welcoming haven for substance-free recreational and social activities. So I'm very excited to have Samantha Morales come out and speak. She'll also set up a table. So we'll have a table also with printouts hoping to get Marianne's info, she was a parent that spoke last year and had amazing information. We had the information about suicide. Laurie, didn't you provide that? I did. Okay. And I think that that would be important to also have. So, and we created the time so that after the event, people can go to the tables and we will

And we're starting it a little bit earlier this year because every other year, by the time we finish and get to the tables, it's dark and people just want to leave their cars and leave. So that's what we're doing.

Just really quickly, just to go back to the social media, with Thrive and Hugs, what you can do is once you have something that you're going to put on social media, especially if it's going to be like on a story or a post, You can add them as well, like include them in it, and then they can share it to their walls. Okay. And they can share it on their stories.

So is there anybody that wants to take over that piece?

I mean, I'd be happy to help. Absolutely.

I mean, I'm familiar with Instagram posts. Do we, the social media piece like.

So it's just really, the library will probably be able to do that easily on the poster. Put that even though they're not, sponsoring the program, but we can also get their logo and put that on.

I'm just wondering, outside of Shelter Island neighborhood and SI Local, there are Facebook pages. The town has a Facebook page and Instagram. Okay, so that's what we'll do. When we create that for the town website, for the town's social media pages, we'll put in the Hugs and Thrive

um handles and then they can easily share it and usually we put the poster anybody be willing if you really want to get more engagement can you think of anybody that's involved that would be willing to show themselves on camera and just talk for 10 seconds saying hey there's this great thing coming up and you know here's why you should attend

I'll help you, Gina. We'll talk about it.

Hey, Seal. Seal, in Riverhead, there's a residential area now that I hear people going from ABC Radio when their director goes. I can try to find out the leadership over there, but it probably has about 24 men there. in a rehab. And they also provide jobs, you know, networking following the recovery. So that you may be able to get, you know, someone who's actively involved in that to speak. Do you have a speaker?

I think right now we're kind of, we have speakers yet. Save it for next year. So let me just go down then to that piece and then I'll go back up to speak to just the outline is usually someone, and I have feelers out just talking about loss, losing someone to an overdose or alcohol, of alcohol or whatever, a drug. We have the Ecumenical Prayer, which has been Steve Atkinson every year. That's a good job. The tagline of Thrive is, it's about the journey, not the destination. And I thought that that would be a great way to look at this year's We always kind of have a theme of the vigil because the people who are speaking are, we have two speakers or possibly three, two who are very new in sobriety and are willing to share that, and one who has 20 years and is willing to share that journey. And I think that that's a really brave and beautiful thing. Then Samantha will speak from Thrive. and especially to speak about the connection to Shelter Island and the things that they're working on through the town and our social worker. We have someone who will sing, she's agreed to sing, and also one of the speakers plays an instrumental guitar that maybe we could play before. We have a little ad from last year. We talked about having more of an interactive piece, maybe a Q&A, where people would write a question on a card. Nancy would peruse them. We might have some prepared questions. The people are going to speak and share about their journey, but then we will offer some questions to just kind of engage the audience.

The cards, it's like if anybody has been to the 92nd Street Y, you have, instead of having people raise their hand and possibly asking questions that might not be appropriate or might not be helpful, people would write a question on a file card.

I already got them. I got the pens and the cards.

And then we'd walk around, collect them, and we can go through them and screen them for questions that we think would be useful.

Or prepare some questions. I think you would be great for that.

That's a different thing, to have an interactive piece at the end of each person's talk, to have a little interactive piece where one of us would ask them a question, a question which they happen to know in advance is going to be coming, so that there can be an interactive engagement. I like that.

Yeah. I don't know. I would wait. Maybe that could be something we can decide that the question that comes after. Because I think it's hard for people who are waiting to speak or other speakers who have shared their journey, say they were shocked at how nerve-wracking it was. So to have Q&As just makes it more anxiety-producing, to be honest with you. So it might be at the end of the speakers, that's why. That has to be. That has to be. Ed. A voice from the audience. A voice from the audience.

Ed, could you come up to the podium here and just identify yourself to show you're on camera here.

Ed Heidman, for getting the word out to the Vigil of Hope, is also a Shelter Island community, which is a new Facebook page. Oh, okay. And the North Fork Sun for advertising. Sun, okay.

Just for my bona fides, I'm a graduate of Nancy's group and neighborhood associations, by the way, what's it called shelter island community?

I haven't seen. Yeah, future.

I will announce it at silver beach next weekend. But all the neighborhood associations meet during the summer. Mostly July and August before before this. If every neighborhood association just puts a little blurb out, or we have something we can hand out to them at the meeting, that would be helpful.

We email over where I live. Yeah, it would be great to get the. Whatever it's called sending it to you for all of them. Hey, beach. Thank you. Thanks. Great. Thank you. So, going back to anybody in the beach.

Yeah. Okay.

I'll do an email blast once we get that poster done and just send an email.

Can I ask a question? So I've gone for the last, I've only missed 1. I've gone, I don't know, the last 4 years. Yeah. And my observation is that it's the same people pretty much showing up and. my question just real question is you know do we want different people to come and if we do what is the message so i'm happy like i could send a message to my entire contact list which by the way almost none of them have ever shown up but i'm not sure exactly what to say to them about this i mean i i can talk about my own experience and why i go every year um but i guess part of my question is i feel like this has been a little bit of a No, you're right. It's a little bit like old home week. It feels a little bit. It is. Especially for, you know, I'm now year-round. I have a different perspective now. But, I mean, I went before I was year-round. But I just think maybe we need. So if we could just have a little bit of, like, just a paragraph of messaging, I will send that out to, you know, my own personal list. And I think that would be great. I think it's just not for people in recovery.

It's for so many people who want to be inspired by. Absolutely. But I don't think that messaging has necessarily.

come through to everybody. And I'm happy to help get the word out. No, that would be great. But I need some language for it. Yeah, we definitely need to work together.

What would be interesting is just a show of hands. A number of people are here. They're here for the first vigil. And just to see if there's, you know, just to see, I don't know. You think it's super corny.

I think it makes people feel. Yeah. Okay.

Okay. All right.

Especially I think people who aren't full time residents are sensitive if they feel they're intruding on a, I'm just being very honest about how I think that would be the wrong message that we don't want to hear.

It was a good suggestion, but it doesn't always resonate with, you know, they either feel like, oh, it hasn't touched my life or that's over there. It's not a part of my life. And I think that there's a huge public education piece that probably needs to happen around that. So I think there's probably the gap that you're feeling is people have either been touched by addiction, have experienced addiction. A family member who's had addiction, whatever, and they feel like that's their connection to it. Whereas other people are like affected my life, but also. Where do I go?

Yeah.

And I can't imagine that there's not anybody ever who's that.

No, it's like nobody.

But also, like, I know when I put it out there, I say, just if you want to be inspired, like, I know people come to me and say, gee, like, you know, it just is so inspiring. It's so great to hear somebody share their story that we can all resonate with, even if we're not in that. So and I think there's been like this core group and then other people coming in and out. You know, and that's okay.

The numbers though, and I keep the numbers from the first year of 60 to last year, 120. It's doubled in size. How many are repeaters? Probably a majority. I don't say a vast majority. Probably a good portion of them are the same people see every year. However, if we're getting 15, 20 new people, That's great. We build on that. We love it. And to answer that other thing about, you know, everybody knows somebody, it depends how close to home it is.

Exactly.

It really depends how close to home. Everybody, you'd be, I don't know what planet you'd have to be from. You don't know somebody that's had a drug problem or alcohol problem. Yes. I mean, you just, in your own family, you wouldn't have to go too far or from work, but it's how close home to home it is.

But also on the file, maybe on the file cards, a good thought is on one side of them to write either like, what brought you in today? Why did you come? Why did you come? Yeah. Oh, I love that. What would you like to see next year?

I did meet with some people from AIA to get their feedback who are there every year. So that was important to get that feedback.

So, even if we don't use their question, right?

A little bit of a survey. So, just going back, we usually do a printed program with resources on the back and I think we just need to. So I'm sure the library has that copy will add thrive. and maybe look to see, because I think we keep the same stuff, like even Marianne's stuff, you know, because she had a website and so forth.

Yeah, she'll find her stuff.

Logistics, table chairs.

So I'll get through Mr. Dunning. I'll get 120 chairs from school. Right. I don't know how many we'd get from libraries, but I like to try to say, I love moving the chairs up front.

Right.

Keep making it more personal.

Right.

As opposed to spreading it across the entire basketball court. It is held, by the way, down at the first field.

What did we do for sound system last year? We got this from the Legion. From the Legion, we didn't use Steve.

No, we gave we actually gave a donation of 150 dollars or something to whatever is out of that 273.

I'll take care of that and add in the other another times review or, you know, um. You know, we'll make sure to make a donation, but we're tight money.

Okay. Yeah. Yeah.

So, let's say, maybe a 100, a hundred dollars and the podium and the podium comes back.

Right? So we have to take the donation.

We can't just donate so.

We can't give a gift.

No, they gave us like a bill. Okay. We got a bill from that. So I'm sorry. It was not a donation. It was, we were renting the sound system. Yes. Right. Yes.

Without a good sound system, you know, you saw it on Memorial day. You have to have a good sound system with a 100 people there. Plus right now it's key for everything we do there.

How does it work with the Shelter Island reporter? Is there any sort of discount for anything ever? No.

They're struggling to stay in place to survive.

We do put out a separate invite to the police department. Anthony is aware, but we do do an invite town officials school administration. Yes, we did reach out to the synagogue. I think last year. Yes.

Right. I will reach out.

Is there anybody else?

Chief Reed Randall, because he is integral part of the school program.

Dr. Let's put those community. Yeah, yeah, we have, we have that.

We have that set up.

Yeah, but also in that piece, the invites would be then the community. Hey, each silver beach.

And Gina, you can get to me, because as president of Hay Beach, I also know who's on Shelter Island Association, so I could make sure.

We have a list of all of them.

You have everybody? Good.

Oh, OK. And I updated it this year. Right, right.

And once the poster is online, it can go to all that. You'll do the invite to the town board. Yeah, yeah.

Gina, did you know that we were saying hola? Thanks for that.

Hola, yeah.

The other thing is help in terms of setting them. Now we're starting a half hour early because we need the daylight and it's been getting dark the last couple of years, way too early. And we're in the dark literally by the last speaker. Couldn't even see last year by the time, you know, we didn't have that extra lighting. So setting up at 6.30, we've got to be there at 5.30. The other thing is when we do these events, and I'll go back to Bill's thing, like when we do an event like this, We got 11 people on our committee. We should get a vast majority of people. If not all the people to these to support the other committees. Now, so this thing is huge. It touches the entire community and the other thing I wanted to say is. And being a health educators, don't wait. For alcoholism, drug addiction or anything to come to your to your being. Attending things like this learning. through other people and other experiences makes you a stronger person. And God forbid, when it happens in your family or touch something that, you know, comes close to you, you're better prepared to deal with it. I honestly do believe that that far too many. Yeah. Well, why do I got I don't have anybody in my family that falls in this category. You know, by the way, being a good community member, I have the people in the Silver Beach community, several families that I'm working with that have a spouse that's in very, very, very bad shape. And just having them over for dinner, seeing them after church, coming up to them and calling him once a week, finding out if he's OK. How's everything? Yeah. you know i mean these are things that you have to do if you're a human being and you live in a community like this that's a good point that's another good point for messaging yes and hope who doesn't need hope these days everybody needs hope and learning

And learning learning. We do need to find ways to engage the kids and maybe that's something vicki for like i've tried with the school, you know we've tried to ask them to help set up or. Volunteer hours always custom volunteers. And Brian dolder actually said to me that.

National Honor Society.

No, just that it sets him for the year. It's a great way to begin the school year. And I would love for him, like the PTA would be, you know, he sends it out in the PTA. That's something else just.

If you want to get kids there, if you need help setting up. Even just to attend, they get community service. I don't know, yeah. I think inviting them to come and help set up if we need extra hands. And then ask them to stay and maybe help with the gathering of those kids, whatever. So that they're there.

If there's other programs for the kids, I feel like that's kind of a a thing where they're like, I'll go with my peers to something like this versus, which we're working on with Anthony.

I'm just a nitty gritty. I'll order the candles. They already got the index cards and pens table. Plus I have and we'll ask for a donation of flowers and we're good to go.

So, if we. The 3 of us have the initial meeting, and we will have another meeting. So, if anybody wants to be part of that, I didn't do it or give you more time. Yeah, we'll try to give you some more time and check your town email. And if you want to be part of that meeting, that's good. We just can't have too many people, I guess, because we want this to not be an open meeting.

Yeah. So does everybody get that? So we're we're a committee of 11. What do you time? We have 6. We have to, it's an open meeting, right?

I mean, theoretically, it's an official meeting. You can't fire.

Correct. So that's why we're at 5. that's important. It's a fine point, but. You know, we talk about that with, uh, let's 3 council people come in and meet. No, it's an open meeting 3 or 5. so.

only other thing is i did have a conversation with allah because i wanted her to be there she can't be there but reggie might be able to come so you definitely want to have reggie and maybe he could do that so reggie is the intern working with our our town social workers so and he came to the last meeting he's great he's enthusiastic he's young and he's you know he just comes back and social he'll be continuing and getting actually yeah So I met with him. And so his day job is that he's the chef at Quinnipiac.

Yeah. And all the kids know him because my grandchildren all know him.

They love him. I love him. I love him.

They talk about him all the time. He's a rising star.

Just to add on the kids, this year some kids did go for the leadership from Hubs weekend, right? In Camp Quinnipiac? They did? Yeah, so that's really good. That was something that we had wanted to happen.

So we're over time.

Yeah, I just want to get back to this. I think I think we need to wrap this. No, no, no, we're going to an hour and a half. We are.

Yeah, this is 1 of the few meetings that's allowed to be 90 minutes.

No, no, that's that's why I brought up the thing before that started the meeting or I'll bring it up. Great expo. Green Expo is August 22nd, 2026. Megs, give us a little, because you've been such an integral part of that process, give us a little background on Green Expo.

So what we've been doing, I want to say maybe the last four or five years, is it started off as sort of like a green committee event, trying to get vendors and different groups together to help people learn how to be more environmentally friendly you know at plant native plants there was one time we had all the different ie technologies come but when it's it's branched out to more of um having all the different town committees come to to have informational tables and to get the word out on what they're doing so it'll it'll be vendors like some some green environmental vendors and Different people who can give the community different ideas on how to talk about their landscapes and stuff, but it will also include all the different town committees, like the water quality committee, the wellness committee is welcome to join us. The community housing board has always been coming. So you guys are more than welcome to have a table and bring whatever information you want to share with the community. Yes. Feedback. Yes. What time and where? It's August 27th, which is the Saturday. It's the same time as the craft fair. So it's all that same day in the center. It's at the school. It's not as long now. It's on the school street on the side of the school building. So essentially what we do is we line both sides of the sidewalk with tables and information so people coming from the parking lot have to walk 30 miles before they get to the craft fair. So it's kind of nice. So you actually get a lot of interaction.

Wonderful.

It starts at 10 o'clock. And it goes until, it depends on the day. If it's super hot, we'll wind down early. It kind of depends on how much attendance we're having. So if people sort of stop showing up, we'll go home at like 2. So it goes at the latest of 4 o'clock. But that's like the hours of the craft. The green expo tends to go shorter just because it starts to fizzle out.

Are they going to have the thing at the firehouse again this year?

no i haven't heard it's a big success but it was fun last year yeah and it got more people it did and what was that they had the country fair it would be nice that was good we don't know the lions partnered with them so i don't know if they're doing that this year because the lions is doing the big rock the rock fundraiser at garter's big country club So I'm not sure if they had their attention to Divided, but I'll find out. I'll reach out to them.

What's the Rock the Rock? You know, I'll ask you later.

July 25th, Saturday. And all the money being raised is going through the Lions Club to the American Legion, Senior Center, CAST. Pantry. Food Pantry. 100% is going because it's being expensive. There's a letter in the Reporter. Okay, I'll check it out.

The full page letter in the Reporter this week.

So on the Green Fair, I just think that was a fantastic event and I've gone both years and I've learned a ton of stuff. There are a few new ideas that could be added. Who should I talk to about that? Tim Purcell. Tim Purcell, yeah.

And his email's on the website for the Green Committee.

Thank you.

So if we want to have a table, should we come up with who wants to man the table?

Well, I was going to put it into two shifts rather than have a stack of the hours. I have a morning shift from 10 to 12 and an afternoon shift from 12 to 2. We're beyond, you know.

That was basically, I was going to say with community housing, we had people come in shifts to do, you know, to distribute whatever we were going to distribute and discuss whatever we were going to discuss. So it doesn't just fall on someone, especially if it's a really hot day to be there from like, you know, 10 before because you get there early, you know, to be there five, six hours, that just would wear you out.

It's a great idea to participate and publicize our committee to the community.

One of the things we could have, a couple things we could have, we could have an email list. So if we should have an email list that we're sending information about events like the Vigil of Hope. it would be good so we could start an email list or a contact list if they want to like hear from the health and wellness committee what we have going on and the other thing we could do is we can have sort of that idea of what's going on what we're going to do with the vigil hope like maybe have a little jar of like suggestions of what people would like us to address maybe or

Meaning when people come to our events, we ask them openly, what else could we be doing?

What are your concerns within the scope? I mean, obviously we should have our mission and what exactly it is we are doing as a committee, but maybe get some ideas about within that scope, what would people like to see us do?

It might be new people too. And somebody that we haven't touched in our focus groups.

You get a lot of people who are not here all year round that go,

going to say is that i didn't know if it was too premature but because it's an ongoing process it would be nice to like have the message slowly get out to the community that it's just an open line of communication like an open suggestion box all the time so that our programs are continuously developing and evolving and whatever yeah john i was i was thinking from our committee that if we felt that the data

We needed to seek additional data and we had a survey together that this might be an opportunity as people come by to pull out a survey and put it, fold it up and put it in a box.

Or at least get their name so we can send it out to them.

Or get their name to send out a survey or something of that nature. So I think, honestly, Do we do a follow-up with the bike safety?

Well, one of the things I was going to ask, do we have educational material? On that one, I wonder if I can get stuff from Bike New York or League of American Bicycles. But for all the topics, is there educational material that we would also want to distribute? Yes. And who could get it?

You can even share information from past things that you've done. So if you have... Some information from when we did brain day that would be probably good to have a 1 pager that just has your mission and all the things that you guys have been doing, like, even just past events. Right? Right. I'm understanding of what it is that you're doing. You know, just another question on that.

How local does it need to be? Because for the organization that I'm involved with in Suffolk County, we created a document that has resources for people that are not that have lost their access to health care. Like, where can you go? So getting back to the access thing, is that too far away from Shelter Island to be relevant to Shelter Island?

Not necessarily.

No, they go to NAMI in East Hampton. there's some places on the North and South Fork that support mental health.

Not just mental, but everything. But Lori, I'm gonna share the resource with you and maybe you can tell me if you think it would be relevant.

We were putting stuff too on our- Resources on our town website. Yeah, link on our specific page on the town website. Of resources, you guys are not the committee. Yeah. I mean, you can give it to.

It would go to the clerk and she would post it. Yeah, there's there's a bunch of different topics on there now. So the discussion documents, there's 53. Dr needs assessment, eliminating stigma and violence in our children. It's only normal aging, psychology 101, resilience, substance abuse, recovery resources. There's a lot of stuff.

So there's stuff on here. Do people use it? Do they go on to it? Do you know? Probably not.

People don't even know it's actually, I can talk to the it community and see how many hits the page bets. Um, but I know that a lot of these resources are things that, like, Allah will share with people will direct people to certain information. So.

I can add some stuff. A lot of those are old articles of mine.

Do we know if she's going to be on the island for August 22nd?

I'm not sure.

be nice if she's on the island right now yeah if she if she's on and i know this kids are not back in school yet yeah it'd be nice that you could have her as a social worker kids go back to school that week so right

Yeah, this this resource is called long island health care resource guide. It just came out a month ago and it's got from federally qualified health centers to free clinics run by licensed physicians use this site to find options for adults, kids and families who need a doctor, but can't afford 1.

I think that would be. Yes, that's that's that's people on show trial and drive a long way. Even if. Right. I do have all the insurance.

So, like, gathering resources and. is as important, I think, as the subcommittees meet, but it's something that we'll address a little bit about, you know, from our group, obviously, That would be important. Yeah, I think we think we can do that and I think we'll go online and sign up. Get 2 or 3 people in the morning 2 or 3 people in the afternoon and we should be good. Okay. We don't need all 11, but obviously, if we get 6 people and 3 and 3, and we have a couple of tables. That'd be great. Okay. All right. All right, moving right along. Future programs, we've talked about perhaps putting together something. And this is, again, some informational piece on financial well-being and fraud protection. This is a topic that's obviously near and dear to the hearts of Chief Reed and our police department, because obviously they have a lot of issues with this. Something that I think we're going to follow up with, you know, our group is going to follow up with, um, we have them.

It's 2 separate 2 separate things.

2 separate things. Okay. Yes. Financial well, being and separately from. The fraud, right?

So, sorry, what are the next steps on that? And who's in charge of that?

If anyone in charge last time the police department ran the fraud protection seminar so they've done educational luncheons with the senior Center and the RAC department, and so they have done them on fraud prevention and protection in the past, so the police department might be able to take point on that. The financial well being i'm not sure who you guys are thinking of as the speaker or somebody had a speaker yeah.

I had an idea for a speaker, but she didn't want to do it. She was giving me lots of resources from, but I could find someone if we decide that we think. That it is worthy of people's time and I'm happy to take ownership of finding a speaker.

Okay.

So this is 2 separate programs. Yes.

Okay. Thank you.

Any thoughts of when we're talking about. It would be in the fall. Yeah. Yeah. In the fall. Yeah. Obviously not summer. I know that.

So I would say, you know, by the time we get organized and think about it, it would be like October, November, November. That sounds good.

Yeah. Yeah. Away from the holidays. I would say mid October to mid November is the target because you don't want to. You don't want to get me a Thanksgiving.

You don't want to go into December and the idea is to have a version of it. That's, you know. Perpetuates that people can go back to it because some of these things require you to actually spend time to think that and then hold it up again when you're having a problem.

Maybe we can have this program in the new library. Yeah.

Oh, yeah. Yesterday, because we had Terry there, she's like, she's hoping before Thanksgiving, you know, we don't know. So we'll have to sort of figure out what the real date is.

Yeah. All right, that makes you guys going to organize this because you had talked about how successful this ad program was, but doing it a little bit earlier. This year again, we need more outreach. Yes, is that was that something that was going to be on the calendar? Also?

I didn't know. Do you think it should be.

Well, I thought that that was what's discussed at the last meeting or the meeting before whatever we discuss.

Yes. So, you're saying earlier, like, January. Before the end. What program are we talking about?

The SAT, the one on seasonal life by disorder.

Yeah.

Yeah. To do it before the winter hits.

Or the dark sets in.

Probably in December. I mean, even do the same one.

She was great.

She was great.

She was great. Nancy, I also wanted to ask you, I think I mentioned to you that we have someone who's just written that book called The Connection Cure, which is about how to, it's really engaging the medical community, but more broadly to recognize all the people that could, in fact, through social prescription, find ways out of their depression and other things through isolation. And so the woman who wrote the book is someone that's very close to us and she gives talks and she gets paid lots of money for it, but I bet you I could get her to do it for free.

There you go.

if we thought that that was going to be relevant.

What's amazing is that when people become guests of other people in Shelter Island. Take it in. So that suddenly their fees drop. So I mean it's.

Or maybe do that instead of the seasonal affective disorder one. That I don't know.

It's a thought if it encompasses all that.

I like that. Because connection is really important.

You use that word, yeah.

And it becomes less and less important. or people self-isolate seniors don't go out as much so that might be a really good topic okay i'll ask her once again this is a program that we can have without having a

A survey to tell us that we need it because we just know we need it isolation.

Yes.

Yes. Yeah. Another potential pragmatic thing to see. I know I mentioned this to you. Nancy is whether or not we could work with to, at some point have a CPR program given and that's not certified. Not a certified. when we have it it's red cross yeah i thought it was a certified one because i know jody took it and it's you know so that you could get a mass a good number of people to come out and and just not have to pay to get certified and all the other stuff to do you can also inquire with the red cross i know um we reached out as a family because we wanted to have cpr and they will oblige by if you need it I'm not thinking for an individual. I'm thinking for like EMS, like working with EMS to do it as an event.

There's so many updates on CPR that, you know, if you learned it 10, 20 years ago, you've got to be updated. Every two years certification.

Right. Just so people say, this is grandmother's life. Yeah.

No doubt. I'm just conscious of the time. I really want to hear the updates and also I have.

Yes. Okay. So, moving right along, let's go to item 10 updates from town layers on anything.

Um, I. Yeah, I want you guys to start thinking about next year a little bit. So we're going to be starting budget season end of August, early September. So right now, your current eating schedule is every other month, I believe. So think about whether or not you'd want to continue every other month, or if you think moving to every month would be helpful, once a month. So think about that for the upcoming budget season, now that you're a larger group. Is it necessary for you to eat monthly in order to kind of feel like you're touching base with everything and everyone's on the same page? Do you still feel comfortable with every other bus? Okay. Let us know because that will impact how we do the budget and how we allocate clerk time and things like that.

Okay. So, yeah, that's for your consideration.

Can we have an update on the NORC?

I actually haven't gotten anything new from the state on it yet. So it's still waiting. I'm still waiting for the application to get released. It's not out yet. I'm not sure yet because I need to see what the requirements in the application are. When I spoke to them, I spoke to the Office of Aging, they said that we met the requirements to be able to apply. So we can apply when they roll out the application, but they haven't rolled it out yet.

Who are you networking with for that? Because the NORC is located in the Empire State Building.

Well, that's for New York City. So I've been working with Office of the Aging. I can't remember her name. I want to say Caitlin, but I might be wrong. I have two contacts in Office of the Aging that I've been talking to specifically about this. So it's just a matter of when the application goes live. They just haven't released anything yet. Part of it was waiting on the budget to actually finalize, which took forever.

That's not to put you on the spot, but a couple of months from now, when we meet in September, will the town board be prepared to make some type of statement about what they've done In terms of the total island medical center, in terms of coverage that you think you think of 2 months. No, no, no, but I think that people. People are asking the question and they, and it reflects on the committee because they say, why haven't you even brought this up on your agenda? You know, because it is a critical item that people have hit us with and constant feedback in these surveys.

So, it is actually something that we're currently actively working on. We're trying to get a meeting together with Stony Brook in an executive session to talk about them and their contract and staffing because they're having staffing issues because people have been out on medical leave lately. So it really has been feeling like non-existent. So that's something that we're actively working on as a town board. So, yeah, we're addressing it.

So obviously when people sign a contract and they come in with good faith saying they're promising you something, it's kind of incumbent upon everybody who lives up to the spirit of the contract. And then when you see that there's some shortfalls in that time and coverage, obviously that presents problems for a lot of people that find it difficult to travel great distances. I think generally speaking, the committee is very much aware of the fact that What we used to enjoy here on Shelter Island, and many, many people took advantage of the facility right here, our medical center here on Shelter Island, now have moved to Greenport, Southhold, now Mattituck, now Riverhead. And it seems as if, medically speaking, if you speak to any of these groups of people, whether it's Stony Brook, Southampton, or Northwell, or any of them, Getting medical coverage to the east is difficult at best. It is very, very difficult to get coverage. So that's what the town board dilemma is. I just want the public to understand that this committee is that is going to be a high priority of the committee working with the town to try to bring some resolution to the fact that when you come into it and you sign a contract, you need to live up to the contract. You know, because people that depended on you, this is not something that's that we want to negotiate every 2 years.

Just brought in the context in which all of this is happening. You know, 1 of the things that we know is. part of the problem is the cost of living on the side and so in in the way that you guys are approaching it meg are you trying to figure out whether there's some kind of an adu or other solution that would make it more attractive to bringing people here right so part of the problem that starting group is having is keeping people longer than their internship or externship or whatever their rotation is right because housing out here is expensive can't afford to buy a house out here if you're

you know, fresh out of med school and you're working on your rotation. So one of the things that Stony Brook expressed when we spoke to them last is that if somehow there could be some kind of partnership with housing or even just a list of possible housing locations that people could rent, that would help. So it is a big part of the problem. It's a big part of the problem that we came into, we ran into when it came to pharmacy. and starting up new medical practices and trying to get housing is one of the biggest problems we have. It's either not available or it's ridiculously expensive and it makes the whole project cost prohibitive. So it's something that we're working on, hoping that with the ADU program, we can maybe get people who are willing to rent those ADUs to medical professionals to help offset some of the problem.

So, it is something that we're working on, so I'll end on that on a scale of 1 to 10. 10 being the most difficult this is the 10 plus from up from the town board point of view. This is complicated. And housing is is the big issue with ferry lines and everything getting people here. It's just tough. So, what I do want to go on record as saying is that. This lady, Meg Larson, councilwoman, has been on this, working hard on this for quite a while. We met back in the fall. Nancy was good enough to set, this committee was good enough to set up a meeting in the firehouse, up in the Heights Firehouse, had a great turnout, had a lot of great ideas. Those ideas haven't just fallen by the wayside. Those ideas have been pursued with a small group of people. not represented by this committee, but a small group of people that are well qualified to handle this particular problem, and they're working on it. I just wanted the public to understand that this is something that is not going away. And is it solvable? Somebody stops you and says, are they bringing a pharmacy back? That's a toughie. That's a real tough question to answer. Are we going to get better staffing at our medical center? That's a tough one to bite off and answer directly and honestly. There's so many things working against us. However, we are, and I credit Meg and the people on that committee, We need, that is the high priority item for us.

It's two separate issues, the pharmacy. Yes, it is.

It's also three issues. We have no home care. Exactly. So you don't have a visiting nurse coming anymore.

Right.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's crisis folks. It's really a crisis.

It is. Yeah, there's, there's no doubt about it. And I'm glad you brought the home care thing up. Because people in silver beach friends of mine went through this very, very thing. And it's been, it's been an issue and been a tough problem. So. All right, with that in mind, any other business that anybody would like, we're now at 1 and a half hours, 90 minutes. Exactly. Does anybody have anything else they would like to bring up? Yes.

Yeah, it just seems to me that I'd say the fourth thing maybe would be having more social workers. I just don't understand why we have a part-time social worker. One of the things that's come up in this committee, and I apologize if I'm speaking from not understanding, but I think that that might be a way to address some of the mental health issues. I, you know, we, we, the town has money for some things and not others. I know. But I, I just would like to put that on the agenda to better understand, um, you know, what is the constraint there? Because, uh, that seems like something it seems like the 4th big thing to me, because, I mean, I, as I understand it. We can't meet with her she doesn't have time to meet with this committee so that really makes it tough, because I think it would be great if we could hear directly what what some of those constraints are and issues.

Well, you know, she is in touch. We speak to her all the time. And for some of you who don't know, I'm a psychiatric nurse practitioner, cognitive behavioral therapist. I'm retired, but I still use my skills. I would say I would really prefer to see an NP over here because having worked that in the city and all over, I really feel that I had a lot of contact with people and I know that my peers did too. So, you know, when you're looking for someone to come in here, look at an MP. I also want to say that Reggie now has his license. He has a bachelor's in social work and he works under Alla and he's in communication with her all the time.

Yeah.

I don't know that you can have a license with a bachelor's.

No, but he's not licensed, but he's got his degree, but he's going for his degree and he's going for his masters and then he will be going and eventually he will get licensed and he's our guy.

All good points productive meeting anybody on zoom that would like to ask a question at all. Before we have a motion to adjourn.

i put in two cents more you always can you can pull back anytime laurie well anyway i have been in contact with amy loining the the family that owns the bellcrest the father passed away both the father and amy were in agreement to consider using bellcrest which used to be a nursing home as like a functional place for maybe home health aides to stay and then i'm thinking if we had stony brook bring over like a chief community md and use the residents let the residents hang out at belcrest also so you would be getting services community services plus residents for them and some free help and then the master supervising the whole thing

wishful thinking but you know why not look at it yes lori send me an email okay thank you laurie you always save the best for last thank you for that uh sorry about that no that was that was a good way to close the meeting very positive on a positive note we have a motion to adjourn someone we have a second okay all in favor please say aye aye thank you very much next meeting by the way will not be at 1 30 i think because of the school back in session is it more helpful to go to one o'clock and get out at 2 30. is that better or does it matter to you guys i i'd rather be 1 30. okay okay can we stay at 1 30. all right that's the only reason the date is september 19th everybody's got that yes yes september 19th there will be more notifications thank you guys