HUMAN SERVICES COMMITTEE

Monday, January 13, 2025 - 10:30 AM

JoePete Wilson, Chairperson

Charles Harrington, Vice-Chairperson

Chairman Wilson called this Human Services Committee to order at 10:40 am with the following Supervisors in attendance: Clayton Barber, Matthew Brassard, Chris Clark, Robin DeLoria, Derek Doty, Shaun Gillilland, Charlie Harrington, Kenneth Hughes, Steve McNally, Jim Monty, Cathleen Reusser, Favor Smith, Matthew Stanley, Davina Thurston, Michael Tyler, Joe Pete Wilson, and Meg Wood, Mark Wright.

Department Heads present: Angie Allen, Linda Beers, James Dougan, Judith Garrison, Krissy Leerkes, Terri Morse and Michael Mascarenas.

Also present: William Tansey and Renee Bruno.

WILSON: Good morning I’d like to call the Human Services committee to order. First up we’ll have social services and Angie Allen.

ALLEN: Good morning everyone. Instead of highlighting something in my report I have something else to highlight but first I’d like to open the floor to any questions you might have on my report.

WILSON: Any questions?

ALLEN: I would like to take this opportunity to introduce my Deputy Commissioner of Administrative Finances, Administrative Services overall. So Renee Bruno I will have her come up in a few moments was just appointed as the Deputy. She is an expert in the side of the house that I am not. She has worked her whole time with us since 2008 as a Clerk, worked in Medicaid, worked in our employment unit, became a head social services worker, she was our Director of Eligibility so she really is the expert that I need on the side of the house that I am weaker in so at this point in time I’d like to have Renee Bruno come up front so you can see who our Deputy Commissioner for Administrative Services is. Renee, her number is in the book that I gave you of all the services you can find her. If it is her area of expertise so anything Medicaid, HEAP, TA, employment, Food stamps oh my goodness what else is there? Burials, everything is really her area of expertise and so when you guys call me about that I actually call her. You will have her direct line it’s in the services guide I provided you and so I’d like you all to join me in a round of applause in the appointment of Renee Bruno.

MASCARENAS: I promised I wouldn’t embarrass Renee she’s easily embarrassed but what I will say is that this is really a step in the right direction in terms of what we’ve been practicing over the last handful of years and as Angie was going through the titles that Renee has held this is an individual that started at the ground floor and has worked their way up through to the second highest post in that department and there’s really something to be said about that and to people looking for jobs look no further than Renee Bruno. If you want to work hard in Essex County you will get somewhere and I’m a similar type of individual that started there and Robin DeLoria picks on me about it but I think it’s really a testament to what we do. It’s not what people think that you know this one or know that one it’s about the work it’s always about the work and doing the little things very well over a period of time gets you noticed and so congratulations Renee. It was a pleasure working with you when I worked with you and I know you are absolutely the right choice.

WILSON: Thank you for your dedication and hard work.

BRUNO: Thank you. I am really excited.

HUGHES: Just very quickly Renee is an excellent product of the Town of Essex. I don’t get these opportunities very often but I just want to say congratulations Renee we in Essex are very proud of you and you’ve always been a hard worker, you’ve always been a diligent worker, you’ve always worked with high integrity and I wish you the very best of luck as you continue your work here at the county so thank you.

BRUNO: Thank you.

WILSON: Anything else for Angie or Renee? Thank you very much. Mental Health and Terri Morse.

MORSE: Good morning. Happy New Year everyone. I hope you had a wonderful holiday season. I prepared my report for you and submitted that so I wanted to make sure that there weren’t any questions about that but I did have something I wanted to chat with you about today. And once again I have no resolutions. That’s three months in a row and so as I was reflecting about what in the heck is going on and why don’t I have any resolutions for quite a while I think it’s because we in the community services board and the mental health department we have been working so hard over the last seven years that it seems like a lot of initiatives that I as a kind of a frustrated psychiatric social worker that was my title before I became the director and I had all these ideas about things that needed to be done in our department to help improve Essex County as a whole and so in some ways we stand up here and give our reports on a monthly basis it might be difficult for you guys to kind of connect the dots about the initiatives that have been put in place over the course of several years. So I thought what I should do is put together a little overview of what has been brought to fruition through the Essex County Community Services Board and also the Mental Health Department so as I have explained to you very often I have two hats and sometimes they overlap and sometimes they don’t so one of the things that has been in place since 2018 is something called LEMHRS or Law Enforcement Mental Health Services. That is a program that connects the law enforcement in Essex County not just Sheriff’s, not just State but also Ticonderoga they can fill out an online form if they feel that there is somebody that they’ve interviewed based with who has some behavioral health or maybe they are homeless or food insecurities so they fill out an online form, it hit our system and we do outreach on the backend so hopefully what that’s doing is reducing the amount of need for people to go into or get incarcerated and also that we’re giving people services at the time that they need them.

The other thing too is you’ve heard me talk about Credible Mind which is a partnership between the public health department and our department. I don’t know if you saw our statistic but we are over 24,000 people with access to that platform since October 1^st which is amazing.

The BRIEF coalition you’ve often heard me talk about that. In March at your general board’s meeting we are going to have BRIEF come and provide you with a BRIEF overview of the coalition so you can learn what they have been doing over the past year.

The critical time intervention program is something that is going to be starting in probably the spring of 2025 and that is a funded program to Mountain Lake Services, funding is coming from the Office of Mental Health and the Office of Persons with Developmental Disabilities but this is for those kids and Angie and I have been working on this one for quite a while because there is a handful of kids that just, we aren’t able to provide comprehensive services for and this is an opportunity for us to help support parents for individuals that have what we call duel diagnosis mental health and development disabilities so that’s going to be covering both Tug Hill region and also the North Country.

988 you’ve heard me talk about 988. Another program called home based crisis intervention that started in the fall of 2024 and it’s nicely dovetailed with the program I just talked about with Mountain Lake Services and this is an opportunity that when there is a family who is struggling with a young person this is a 24/7 program so if it’s 2 o’clock in the morning the family can reach out and get support. This is a five year grant provided to community connections that based in Franklin County but it’s for our region so again, it’s trying to reduce the need for hospitalization so therefore we are reducing the Medicaid funding and trying to get services into the hands that the time that they are needed.

We are looking forward to the crisis residence in Ticonderoga which is a three bed facility that mental health association in Essex County will be overseeing. This is something that we have been working on for quite a while. There is a situation with them having to have a sprinkler system so that keeps putting in some delays but we are looking forward to that crisis residence 28 day place where adults who are experiencing kind of like they don’t need to be in the hospital but they need extra support so this is an opportunity for us to serve adults. That’s all the community services board initiatives that we have been implementing since 2017 and the things that I would like to highlight about Essex County Mental Health is that we’ve increased our school satellites and I know we’ve had a lot of discussions at this venue about school satellites these are mental health services that are provided at the school. They are funded by insurance reimbursement but the initiative is to help prevent individual’s mental health crisis’ becoming or developing over the course of time because I’m very proud of the office of mental health finally sort of seeing the light about hey, let’s work on prevention instead of always waiting until things get serious so providing services at the school will help reduce needs for children as they become older. We’ve increased our productivity over the last seven years. I would say that by 25% which reduces costs and increases revenue. Our psychiatry services have stabilized very well over the last two years and then also just so you know Essex County Mental Health also provides 24/7 crisis services we are looking at how we can dovetail with 988 so we are doing less duplicative services.

The other thing I wanted to share is that the suicide prevention coalition and also post mention team has in 2023 and 2024 we really did a full court press to make sure those are adequately providing support to our county.

DOTY: Thank you Terri that’s really the first time I’ve seen a complete list because you’re right it is easy to lose sight of all these programs. My question is centered around, are these programs like in many cases state grants where we have to pay for these services up front and reimbursement follows because the number of client interactions changes every year. You might serve 300 people in one category and next year it’s 450 so I guess, help me with how you arrived at a budget this year verses all these programs and how we recover those funds?

MORSE: So a lot of the community services board initiatives are funding that comes through Essex County from the state agency and passes to the provider so for example, 988 that money comes to the community services board and then we pass that onto mental health association so that they can run the program.

DOTY: But a lot of these intervention programs are a case by case. I guess I don’t understand do we apply for $35,000 but we spend $55,000?

MASCARENAS: Could be so what Terri just alluded to an area where you might have an allocation that specific in your budget that is a hard number every year and we are simply a pass through for those services. The money comes in, the money goes out it’s a fixed amount that is very easy to plan for. That’s very easy to plan for. You’re right when it comes to her patient encounters and when we are starting to budget insurance type receipts that we are seeing come in and cash bases verses accruals bases and how we look at that so for me one thing that Terri and I have worked pretty closely together over the last few years in trying to get this straight because it is a bit of a moving target where you throw a dart at the wall and hope you hit something. We’ve been really working hard at looking at our actuals and taking averages over time so that we can arrive at the most realistic budget number that we are going to get because it does, it changes the amount of encounters change. She saw a revenue boom during Covid. Her people were seeing a lot more individuals but we don’t want to base that budget based on Covid knowing that we likely are not going to recoup that amount of money and how much does it actually cost us to do that service? It’s a one-time hit so we are somewhat conservative in that and Terri has been more aggressive than the past directors in her position in terms of increasing the efficiencies. We’ve actually have saw that cost go down in our county to where we were probably about seven hundred fifty to a million dollars in the past. There’s years where we’ve actually operated in the black which is really unusual so she’s done that through increasing efficiencies and productivity within her department so there is no exact science other than looking at the actuals. That’s all I can tell you I do and that’s what our debate is when Terri comes in it’s like well, I think I’m going to get this. Well, hang on Terri you only got that. Yeah, but I got this. You’ll see that push and pull at our budget workshops on that and we’re usually pretty good. We are pretty close when it comes to that.

DOTY: And within the realm of this whole list I’m sure you do budget amendments every couple of months?

MASCARENAS: Not really.

MORSE: Only when we receive money from the Office of Mental Health for example, 988 I might get that in the middle of the year but again, that’s pass through money so it’s coming in and it is going right back out.

DOTY: Anyway, thank you.

MORSE: You’re absolutely welcome and just to piggyback on something Mike you were saying is that’s why I am providing you with information about trends. I’m providing you four years’ worth of trending information because that helps guide me on like what did it look like in 2024, what did it look like in the past and how are we trending which helps me project for revenues.

WILSON: Further questions?

MONTY: I’m not on the committee but I want to thank you Terri this is incredible services that you and your group are providing and mental health is very much a tough issue. It’s increasing every day. My question is the LEMHRS do they get used quite a bit?

MORSE: So you have some data on that every month and our numbers from that started in 2018 we are trending. I believe we did 259 services in 2024 compared to under 200 two or three years ago.

MONTY: And that to me is an indication to what is going on in the world.

MORSE: Law enforcement really appreciates having this program in place especially Deputies.

MONTY: Thank you.

GILLILLAND: School satellites Terri you increased by five so I was just wondering how many staff do you have doing that work?

MORSE: So we have one school that there is a staff member in five days a week that’s a larger school –

GILLILLAND: Forty hours a week?

MORSE: Well our work week is thirty-five.

GILLILLAND: Thirty-five okay.

MORSE: And we have some schools where it is one day a week so if I have fourteen therapists approximately half of them provide services in the schools in one way or another. Some of the staff have three different schools that they are in one day a week.

MASCARENAS: Chairman if I could ask, how many full time equivalent hours? If you have seven that are doing it but is that two full time people if you were to put hours to it?

MORSE: Yes, so twelve times thirty-five and two times twenty-one so I have two part time staff members who are twenty-one hours and I have twelve full time.

GILLILLAND: And the second question I have for you is the schools do not pay any part of the service? Am I correct on that?

MORSE: That is correct. That is all insurance reimbursement.

GILLILLAND: Okay. As you know I am sensitive to this. So isn’t it part of the schools state mission to help provide those services to their students?

MORSE: So clinical mental health services are different than something like a school counselor would provide. So a school isn’t going to provide let’s say psychiatric services so these students are individuals that would normally come to our office and receive clinical mental health counseling and/or psychiatric services but instead we are going to the school so that we can ensure that that student presents for services, it reduces the amount of time that a student is out of the classroom and so it’s more efficient for both our agency and also the school to have a satellite in their building.

HUGHES: If I could just piggy back on that, I’ve had experience with this stuff ten, fifteen years ago. The Etown School only had a school psychologist and they focus only on elementary students. We had high school students who needed assistance so we were grateful for the ability to walk across the street to help those teenagers with whatever they needed the assistance they needed and we had one school counselor who was responsible for helping people get into college, schedules and things like that so the word counselor is kind of a –

MORSE: It’s a wishy-washy word.

HUGHES: Yes.

GILLILLAND: And I completely understand that but my question is responsibility of the school what is out there that is actually written that they are responsible? Just because a school doesn’t do it aren’t they on the hook to do it according to education law?

HUGHES: I don’t know if education law says that.

MORSE: The one thing that we would want to look at in regarding what you’re asking is that if for example they said okay, Essex County Mental Health I want to contract with you to provide clinical mental health services in our school that would cost a number let’s just say $50,000 I wouldn’t then be able to submit claims to an insurance company if they are providing me that $50,000 for example because it would be double dipping. So in some ways the insurance companies reimbursing for the services that we can reimburse for is probably more cost effective for the county as a whole because we are not reducing, we are not charging the schools which increases the amount of tax burden on the home but we are able to get probably more than what the schools would be paying us through insurance reimbursement. A forty-five minutes session for school reimbursement is $258.00.

GILLILLAND: I hear you. I’m not criticizing you I’m concerned from a tax payers point of view, you brought it up. Schools charge our taxpayers a hell of lot more than the county or the towns do so if they are required to provide those services then I just think they should and the opportunity cost of using your people to do that when there could be other high demand areas is concerning. I’m not picking. I’m just exploring.

MORSE: Yeah. I don’t know the answer to what the regulations for the schools are to provide clinical mental health services. I do not know the answer to that.

REUSSER: Twenty some years ago I sat on the school board and at that point in time the CVTech programs provided psychological services to the children in the school district so you bought into that service. What the regulation is today I couldn’t tell you but twenty plus years ago it was the school’s responsibility.

WILSON: Angie, did you have some information?

ALLEN: Yes if we want the conversation to continue but I think from a services perspective it’s two different tracks, it’s State Ed and it’s OMH two different tracks so schools are responsible for providing school counseling services so in terms of CVTech Mineville BOCES campus it’s specific counseling for children that have IEP’s and individualized education plans. It has to be on their IEP so it usually is two thirty minute sessions where they just talk with the kids about how it is working in and out of the classroom so school counseling services and social and emotional learning who responsibility of schools address kids with special needs through an IEP. There are supposed to offer also generalized education information that gets pushed into other classes. With Terri I’m hoping to be able to explain it it’s OMH it’s Office of Mental Health nothing to do with state aid so basically what OMH is saying listen, there’s a way to serve kids more effectively for schools who do not. A lot of counties don’t forget don’t have a clinic within the county structure it’s more a contracted mental health provider so it is a total different lens when it comes to what is discussed with the kids. So what I learned because I would say schools why aren’t you because one of my kids I’m seeing is working with the school psychologist why aren’t they touching base on what is going on at home and coping skills and stuff like that? And they say that’s not our area. Our area is about supporting children in the educational realm teaching them skills they need to do underneath the school house not when it comes to community and home needs that is the difference that I’ve learned over the years so perhaps that helps in terms of a little bit of guidance.

WILSON: Thank you any further comments or questions? Do you have anything else Terri?

MORSE: Thank you. I appreciate this opportunity to do a seven year review.

WILSON: Thank you. Public Health – Linda Beers.

BEERS: So I’m going to give a one year review. We listened to what you had said in the past and really all my board reports have been about data and then data doesn’t tell the story unless you put in some graphs, some charts so what you have in front of you is each one of my programs for the last year and the data that supports it. Something that really came to mind for me was an email that Jim Monty had sent out to most of you guys but I happened to be copied on it that was asking you and town folks what services you get from the county and I was writing down things and whatnot and totally true I represent and support the entire town and the entire county but as I looked through this program my programs I just want you to understand the scope and magnitude that I don’t do anything that isn’t in every one of your towns ever so I just talk about I love this format and I have just amazing people I work with I cannot ever say that enough. This report is Jessica Darney-Buehler and Andrea Whitmarsh and they went to each one of our programs and it says what we have to do, what we did do in 2024 and why it matters. So I really encourage you to look at each one of those programs and say why does it matter and why does it matter for my community? You can pick anyone of them and then look at our data. Look at communicable disease you can see respitory illnesses rise in all of the year. You can look at sexually transmitted disease and let me tell you there’s not one town that does not have sexually transmitted diseases in it that we monitor and get people services and whatnot. These are the things that you just don’t see that are happening all the time in each one of your programs. We are really well versed in rabies you can see the numbers there and the story really isn’t about you can see not what you often hear but look at the red one investigations those investigations are one of my staff talking with one of your folks in your town endless hours people get really nervous and uptight when they get bit or they think they’ve been exposed or they want to talk about so these are really countless hours. Pet vaccination again and why it matters.

Emergency preparedness – we have an entire full time staff that does this. These are how we set up points of distribution they don’t just happen. We have contracts with every school district, how we get to those places, how we drill and the down times how we work with our MRC our medical reserve corps. one of the biggest ones in New York State, our little tiny county and how we in fact we did Covid so well, how we vaccinated so many people in a short amount of time. At the time I think we had two nurses we went down to one it’s just that we organized all year long a group called the medical reserve corp.

And then chronic disease, chronic disease goes to all your towns. These bar coasters, we have a small grant from Division of Motor Vehicle but this really comes from chronic disease and our alcohol rate. Take a look at what this coaster says. These are in every bar in Essex County, people love them. There’s also a small supply of glasses that match this and lots of cocktail napkins so they are going out all across places and I dropped some off at the brewery and places all over, Sporty’s in Minerva and they are at the brewery in Paradox, they are in the Mineville where you just had your board thing and what this means the rates of alcohol in New York State alcohol related crashes with injuries and death New York State 31%, North Country region 36% Essex County 40% we can do better and we really strive to do better by calling awareness to that and all of our campaigns.

Just going through, family health and what does that mean. Our baby steps to bright futures is I believe confidently the only one in New York state that does universal home visiting for every baby born in Essex County. If you wanted to know how many babies were born in Essex County you could follow that red line when you guys get this in the email you will see it is color coded and so in July we had the most babies born and how we are going into homes and doing that. It’s a short, quick visit but it’s a referral and a connection to services. This is where we need to start to get people connected to where we need them to be and if anything we just drop a seed so people know about Terri’s services, they know about Angie’s services. I would also really say I don’t do this in a vacuum there is not one department head that doesn’t work with the other here we have a really amazing group of employees and department heads. I call on Angie and Terri. Krissy Leerkes and I work together so much between CHHA and our senior staff. Just this morning I was working with her on a case someone had called me over the weekend, somebody with severe dementia and Alzheimer’s that really needs placement and she as she always does rose to the occasion and said have them call me.

Lead poisoning and our numbers. Car seat program – we do car seat checks. We give out a lot of car seats. We are not the only program that does it but I think we are leading the numbers in it. The community overdose program and we are now opening up and going to start something together Terri, myself and many community members called the OFR, it’s going to be an opioid fatality review system. Terri already trained up on. In the next month they are going to take us to another state and we are going to move forward in taking a deep dive four times a year looking at someone who died as a result of an overdose and what’s the data say and where might we have done something differently? How could we have improved that outcome? What happened? And we are going all the way back to kindergarten if we get the records. What happened in school? Were they good? Stuff happen in senior year? Where were all the breaks in the road? So that’s next.

Children services I speak to you all the time about early intervention and preschool services they are vital and children and youth with special healthcare needs is a new grant we got. And then we got the extra services, kind of extra because not every county has WIC. We do and we are blessed for having it but Krista Berger who does amazing things and her data is here for you. We also have Children Services not every county, most counties have Early Intervention it is a mandated service, and not every county wants preschool. We want both. Most counties in upstate New York do and again I’ve come to you, you’ve answered me always with wonderful results in supporting our Early Intervention and preschool services. You know I am the President of NASAHO now and I will be going to the state with our lobbyist to really advocate at NYSAC you will see me there, I have a presentation if you’re going I look forward to you coming on down we will talking about preschool transportation something that cost this county a great deal of money and of course we do all the environmental health stuff.

One thing missing from this report because it is really a whole report on its own is our CHHA, certified home health agency and maybe to answer Shaun’s question a little bit when I look at my schools who do it mental health is a medically billable thing so if I go to school and I have to go to the dentist or schools that have a dentistry program in it but as a rule people go to the dentist if my child goes to a public school and has a mental health disorder which is a physical or a medically billable service then typically people go. If my kid has a cold. If my child has a broken arm the school doesn’t do that they take them in because there is another mechanism for billing. Terri does an amazing job for billing for those services. I mean I think Mike made it really clear she is in the black that’s how productive they are so I don’t think that those services are necessarily costing the county anymore because she is billing for the rate in which she gets to bill for those services and they are unique to the absolutely individual child just as much as mine are in Early Intervention. I do PT, OT and the State of New York is supposed to bill Medicaid and all private insurances a 50-50 split because they are medically necessary. So that’s my report and the data on the back for your review if you have any questions? I equally have no resolutions.

WILSON: Linda, thanks. I really like the format. What we have to do, what we did and why it matters that’s very helpful in giving some context. Anyone have any questions?

STANLEY: So listening to you Linda and listening to Terri and all the services that the county provides and I know we talk about standardizing services around the county but for three years I’ve been trying to figure out how to get my seniors involved, volunteers involved and it’s really come through our comprehensive plan update that we been using our committees to do this type of stuff. It has only taken three years for the lightbulb to finally go off in my head to create a human services committee in my town so that we can actually talk to you guys and see what services because the list is immense and your mind can be blown by how much this county actually provides to its residents so I just wanted to say I think it’s going to be a great thing to be able to utilize these services and try to within each of our towns to try to get something that can help to find more volunteers for seniors to find more ways to connect with residents who need the help that we can provide. So thank you. Thank you Terri. Thank you everybody in this.

BEERS: Terri coined this a long time ago. We don’t need a psychiatrist or clinical social workers I don’t need that replaced sometimes all we need is one caring adult, one somebody to listen to somebody but I really do appreciate that and we work really hard. The other thing is we gather most of the data in this county and there is a community health assessment coming up it’s a survey and I really encourage your people if you want your town represented have them do it. Are you getting heard by your doctor? Do you have enough medical care? Do you get specialty care? When we do it goes up to the state. We also initiate. We don’t create these programs in a vacuum. We have unique programs here because they are unique because of Essex County’s data right? So as you say you’re having a human services board how wonderful. There is always something more we can do. Maybe I need to step up and do something I’m not doing and I’m all about that. There’s an opportunity waiting for everything and sometimes when we solve this problem it ends up solving four others so if you come up with something in anyone of your towns and you’re like this is a real need and I don’t think you are addressing it bring it us if one of us isn’t we’ll probably come up with a plan to do it. So, thank you.

WILSON: Further questions?

MONTY: I think Terri had something she wanted to add here?

MORSE: So I am so thrilled that you asked this question and you have this need. So one of the things that the BRIEF coalition is doing is we are starting to meet with communities and getting more volunteered based people to look at how we could possibly kind of the community takes care of its own and so actually there’s one in Elizabethtown tonight. We hosted one in Moriah a couple weeks ago so these are going to be rolling out over the course of the next year, year and a half so I love how you’re thinking along this line, we are thinking along this line which is so exciting about how we are becoming more integrated as a system of care.

STANLEY: Well it just comes to communication and education and I think the more that we can actually work together the better we will be.

MASCARENAS: If I could just say one thing. You’re all on the right track and what a lot of what you guys don’t see unfortunately behind the scenes is not only the individuals in the room that we talk about working together, almost every family or individual that you deal with is a cross sector individual and they might go and take a little bit of service from Linda and Terri and some from Angie and some from Krissy Leerkes right? And how the non-profit world plays into that as well right? Sometimes you bring in United Way from the outside and ACAP and the amount of knowledge these social workers and individuals in each one of these departments have to have to best serve the individual that is sitting in front of them at a given time and the amount of work they put into working together and collaborate to make sure that people’s needs are met and how that goes about. One thing Terri I think would be beneficial too if you could provide this board all your rates of reimbursement because this board is used to rates being low and not substantial enough to meet the needs of anything they do so when they are looking at ambulatory and their EMS services and what they get for a call for Medicaid holy crap it’s terrible but what they don’t see is your rates are really high. That’s where Medicaid reimburses at a really high rate for mental health for some reason where they don’t other area it’s bizarre. I don’t know why but I know they do so I think maybe providing some of those rates and those billable hour rates are for the different providers would be helpful in seeing how that shakes out.

WILSON: Thank you. Other questions?

BEERS: I would also just say a lot of this has really come about by Mike’s leadership and organizing all of us and really it’s has been a delight and really wonderful to have a fresh look at things. I’ve been here a long time and Dan Palmer and I were just wonderful and Dan just had a different way of management and Mike has pulled us in, has regular meetings with us and we share a lot more information and he’s very receptive.

MASCARENAS: Thank you.

WILSON: Thank you Linda. Office for the Aging, Krissy Leerkes.

LEERKES: I do not have a very detailed report but I will have one next month with balloons. You have my report and the thing that we are working on right now is we talked about open enrollment last month fortunately we opened up Medicare open enrollment our Medicare advantage open enrollment January 1 through March 31 and as expected we are just as busy because some plans did not send out those reminders that your plan is now not going to be offered in 2025 or now their premium went up or their provider is out of network so at least we are fortunate to have this second opportunity but we are back where we were back in October and November.

And then the other thing just to bring up and I will work with our County Manager and Mr. Wilson there is a lot if you have not seen or heard it there’s a lot of talk at the state level in regards to advocacy for aging. There’s a master plan for aging that is being rolled out. We are an age friendly state and unfortunately I think as many of my other counterparts and departments at the county level there is just not enough funding to really provide the service that’s needed so there is a lot of advocacy. Our association is at the forefront of that advocacy and Mike you mentioned this a couple months ago but to bring Becky Preve in. she is a past Franklin County Director and now Executive Director at our Association just to talk about at the state level. Linda mentioned advocacy from her association. We are looking at an advocacy day on believe February 11 up here in the north country we do some advocacy a little bit different we kind of work together so we went Warren, Hamilton County, Washington County, myself and the Association met with many law makers back in October and we had an almost two hour meeting just one on one with I believe four representatives and they got it. We talked about really boots on the ground direct service where we are seeing major adapts, barriers, concerns and they were very receptive to that and the last thing I would add is congrats to Renee. Renee, sometimes sees my number come on her phone and is like, oh god, I’m not answering that. Anytime that there is anything that hits my desk I call Renee and within minutes we have a solution, we have it figured out how we can help the person that we are working with so that’s all I have unless anybody has questions?

WILSON: Krissy I wanted to thank you. I got very positive feedback from some families of residents that you guided through the Medicaid enrollment and some residents directly so they were all so happy that they had your assistance to navigate that so thank you to you and all your staff.

LEERKES: We are fortunate because we are not affiliated with any insurance companies so we have that trust factor. When in doubt, have them give us a call.

WILSON: Any questions for Krissy?

TYLER: I was going to say for all the supervisors who haven’t reached 65 yet you’ll find out what a great agency this is to work with that’s for sure. The Office for the Aging does great work.

LEERKES: Thank you.

WILSON: Thank you Krissy. Anything else?

GILLILLAND: I will say it Krissy guided me through Medicare enrollment so I would have been lost in the darkness.

WILSON: Anything else for this committee?

MONTY: I’ve just got two things. I’m not on the committee but one is we are in the final month of the United Way campaign and I really would like to encourage us as supervisors to consider a contribution. The United Way has helped in many of our communities especially in the past year when it’s needed. There is a form you can get from personnel to have your payroll deducted, you can make a one-time donation. I really appreciate it because I am a firm believer I can’t ask my people to donate if I am not leading the charge so that’s one thing and secondly we will be, the standardizing services committee will meet immediately following this meeting or shortly thereafter. Thank you.

WILSON: Anything else? Okay we are adjourned. Thank you everybody.

As there was no further discussion to come before this Human Services committee it was adjourned at 11:25 a.m.

Respectfully submitted,

Judith Garrison, Clerk

Board of Supervisors