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HUMAN SERVICES COMMITTEE
Minutes of the Meeting of December 3, 1984
Present Roberta Black, Leonora Zola, Ed Foley, Judy Zabin, C.C. Chao Stan
Finkelstein, Sheila Martin, David Budding, Bea Phear
Minutes
The minutes of the meeting of November 19 were approved as mailed.
MR Housing
Town Meeting voted to OK the Selectmen's ability to transfer the Hill Street site
to the Housing Authority for housing for retarded people Bea is now interested
in working with the Housing Authority and Bill Crane (a neighbor with experience
in retardation) to help ensure that neighbor acceptance is there She is considering
an advisory committee on architectural and vendor selection issues She is
tentatively planning a meeting with Jim McLaughlin and Bill Crane on Sunday and
wondered if any committee members were interested. Kay Tiffany was also suggested.
Roberta reported that at the Selectmen's breakfast, Rita Sullivan had said that
a few more possible sites were unofficially identified.
Lexington 2,000
There was a long discussion about the Selectmen's request for input for their
strategic planning Bea was asked to draft a memo to the Selectmen summarizing
this discussion. Draft is attached and should be considered part of these
minutes Bea was asked to distribute census data to all members (enclosed)
Budget Recommendations
RePlace
Ed Foley was prepared to recommend that the Replace funding reflect current funding
plus the amount necessary for a cost of living increase to staff, but not the new
position He felt they should use existing staff to develop their proposal further
Sheila was interested in exploringpartial funding of the position
Committee members raise questions of justification of the new staff position, of
RePlace' s reluctance to agressively seek other sources of funding (such as pursuing
DSS) , the possibility of other needs such as teenage suicide and depression
and weekend hours for the drop-in center Ed and Sheila were asked to go back to
RePlace, particularly the Board, and raise these issues with them.
It was decided that the question of exploring the underlying viability of an agency
that is based on town support versus an area-wide orientation should be addressed
with the Board, but not as part of the budget process
Council on Aging & Cooperative Elder Services, Inc
Judy and C C. presented their recommendations in writing These recommendations are
attached to the minutes and should be considered part of the minutes The
committee thought the CoA increase was a small move relative to the growing
nature of the population. There were no disagreements with the recommendations
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Coordinator's Report
1. Bea talked with Alan Feilds about the possible funding of the Hospice request
through the Trustees He was very pessimistic that they would vote for it
as it doesn't meet the Trust's requirements of being for low income people
He personally would vote against. Bea did not speak with the other Trustees
2 Alan November said his students could not do data collection, but only
programming Bea feels that to try to use them for a resource booklet
would be too much work for her The committee will try to schedule Alan
for a future meeting
3. Bea asked for clarification on the use of committee drafts The question
arose around the release of the draft for MR housing, before it had been
aproved by the committee It was decided that an internal committee
draft is for the eyes of the committee only, until it has been approved
for release
4. Bea distributed the Council on Aging FY 1984 statistics
5 Federal surplus butter and cheese and honey were distributed, reaching 195
households representing 306 individuals The supply ran out before the
scheduled distribution is over Bea will arrange for distribution again
in March and will order more
Selectmen's Breakfast
Bobby attended the breakfast last week She found it very interesting One
subject that might interest the committee was that the Arts Council was unable to
fund the fit as a fiddle program for exercise in nursing homes this year because
the did not have enough money We should make sure the Arts Council is on our
list for committee responses next year
The Hastings School is scheduled for closing In the fall of 1986 there will
be five lower schools (K-5) ; two middle schools (6-8) and one high school (9-12)
The committee might think about planning for new uses of Hastings
The question of salary calssifications in comparison to the School Department
had been raise Bobby wondered if this meant Bea's classification was being
addressed, but Bea thought the comparison was only for the upper level staff
Next Meeting
The meeting of De-ember 10 has been cancelled.
The next meeting is Monday, December 17, at 7 30 pm.
Respectfully submitted,
Beatrice Phear
L