2001-12-10 Council on Aging Minutes

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3 'x J Council on Aging C L December 10, 2001 Senior Center Reading, MA 01867 - p 2- 4 q Present: Dick Anderson, Barbara Powers, Ray Cabot, John O'Neill, Dottye Foxon, Ed Merullo, Betty Cronin, Edwina Kasper, Gay Williams, Pamela Brown (Director). Absent: Joanne O'Brien • Dottye Foxon called the meeting to order at 7:00 p.m. • Mike Scarpitts, Assistant Principal of RMHS addressed the Council as a part of an effort to interview about 1500 people throughout the town. He and others hope to identify strengths of the High School, focus on areas to be preserved, and highlight issues and areas that should be addressed and improved. • The minutes of November's meeting were approved (motion by John O'Neill, second by Barbara Powers). • Pamela reviewed the Financial Report. The extra $2851 in the Burbank Trust is still a mystery. Pamela will ask Peter if he recalls how this came to be applied to the Burbank monies. Dick Anderson moved to accept the report, seconded by John O'Neill; approved. • The Administrator Reports for both October and November were distributed. Pamela highlighted the computer program and commented that we had an excellent partnership with the RMLD. The Reading Chronicle was working on an article about the computer room and its history. Marie Ammer has written several articles for the local papers addressing various topics of interest to seniors. A motion to accept the reports was made by Gay Williams, seconded by Dick Anderson; approved. • Offering more detail on the Computer Room Traininu, Ed Merullo said that there were five happy people in the class. He related that the materials were nice, and the explanations of terminology very helpful. Pamela is hoping that RMLD will continue its relationship with the classes, and that Theresa will do the teaching (benefit from continuity and familiarity). The High School student mentors she said, are wonderful; she will look into having the newspapers do an article this Spring about the students (H.S.) and the senior citizens. Ed commented that a two-hour class - rather than the current one-hour class - would be helpful. • The Thanksgiving delivery of hot meals to seniors went well - there were 27 meals delivered. Dottye, Dick and Gay volunteered to deliver meals from Boston Market on the afternoon of Christmas Eve. • In Other Business... • We spoke again about possible uses of the Burbank Trust fund monies. One suggestion was underwriting the cost of some of the programs currently offered at the center (e.g. line dancing, aerobics) in an effort to draw new participants. A suggestion from John was a "needs assessment"; he indicated that we might enlist a social work graduate student to assist - or Mystic Valley might have such a questionnaire from which we could work. Dick commented that North Reading had just done one. Another possibility is an annual dinner for town seniors, something that was done years ago. It was a Saturday daytime event, and town staff, Selectmen et al participated as cooks. One final suggestion related