Health, Education & Welfare Committee — 2019-08-26
Attendance
Manisha Bewtra ; Robert A. Boisselle ; Scott M. Forbes ; Jennifer L. Lemmerman ; Kate Lipper-Garabedian ; Shawn M. MacMaster ; Monica C. Medeiros ; Peter D. Mortimer ; John N. Tramontozzi ; Francis X. Wright Jr. ; Michael P. Zwirko
Agenda
- Call to Order
- Public Comment
- Orders
- ORDER-2020-7 : Appointment of Jennie Wengrovius, 585 Main St., #402, to the Commission on Women for a three-year term; said term to expire on the last day of February.
- ORDER-2020-13 : Appointment of Stacy Minchello as Director of the Council Aging, effective September 16, 2019.
- Adjournment
Minutes
CITY OF MELROSE HEALTH, EDUCATION & WELFARE COMMITTEE CALENDAR● AUGUST 26, 2019 Aldermanic Chamber, Melrose City Hall Committee Meeting 7:45 PM 562 Main Street, Melrose, MA 02176 The public should take notice that the Melrose Board of Aldermen may, on certain occasions, have a quorum in attendance due to standing committees of the Board of Aldermen consisting of both voting and non-voting members. Members attending this duly posted meeting are participating and deliberating only in conjunction with the business of the standing committee. Attendee Name Title Status Arrived Peter D. Mortimer Chair Present Kate Lipper-Garabedian Vice Chair Absent Robert A. Boisselle Voting Present John N. Tramontozzi Voting Absent Shawn M. MacMaster Voting Absent Jennifer L. Lemmerman President/Ex Officio Member Present Francis X. Wright Jr. Nonvoting Absent Monica C. Medeiros Nonvoting Late 7:48 PM Scott M. Forbes Nonvoting Present Michael P. Zwirko Nonvoting Present Manisha Bewtra Nonvoting Present
ORDER-2020-7 Appointment Appointment of Jennie Wengrovius, 585 Main St., #402, to the Commission on Women for a three-year term; said term to expire on the last day of February. Recommend Passage Board of Aldermen
ORDER-2020-13 Appointment Appointment of Stacy Minchello as Director of the Council Aging, effective September 16, 2019. Recommend Passage Board of Aldermen City of Melrose Page 1 Updated 8/26/2019 8:50 PM
Transcript
▶ 0:00 Peter D. Mortimer: Good evening ladies and gentlemen. This is the Committee on Health, Education, and Welfare. I am the Chairman, Peter Mortimer, and I am joined this evening by Committee Member Robert Boisselle. Sean McMaster had family obligations and he could not be here tonight, and Alderman Madam Lippa Garabedian has sent me some email questions which I will read later on in the evening. We are also joined by non-voting members Alderman Scott Forbes and Alderman Michael Zwirko and Alderman Manisha Bewtra. We have two orders on our agenda tonight. One is the appointment for the Commission for Women, and the candidate is Jenny Wangrovius. And the other order is an appointment for the Director of Council on Aging, and the candidate is Stacey Minichiello.
▶ 1:10 Peter D. Mortimer: Is there a motion to open the floor for public participation, please? Second. Alderman Boisselle has made a motion to open the floor for public participation. Duly seconded by President Lemmerman. All in favor of opening the floor for public participation? Aye. Please say aye. Aye. Aye. We are now open for public participation and public comment. This is not time for the candidate to come up here, but if you would like to say a few words on her behalf, you certainly are welcome to. Ms. Petrouas. Okay, but if you want to say something before the candidate comes up, you can do that, absolutely. Motion to close public comment. We have a motion to close public comment by Alderman Boycelle, duly seconded by President Lemmerman.
▶ 1:57 Peter D. Mortimer: All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Hearing none, public comment is now closed. And this is the first order. It is order 2020-7. It is the appointment of Jenny Wengrovius of 585 Main Street, apartment number 402, to the Commission on Women for a three-year term. said term to expire on the last day of February. Alderman Boycelle has made a motion to suspend the rules, duly seconded by President Lemmerman, so we may hear from the candidate. Please come forward. That's all right? Good evening. Good evening, Ms. Petroulis. I'm here to nominate her to present to you Jenny Wingrovius for the Melrose Commission on Women. We are very excited that she put her application in she isn't from the arts community she's a
▶ 2:56 singer I believe and a really excited about helping us out in different ways on the Commission so I wanted to we are very happy to have her application in thank you very much would you like to say a few words miss one grovious I just wanted to say that I'm relatively new to Melrose and I have two young kids I have two daughters three and six and so I was really looking for a way to get involved in the community and when I found out there was a Commission on women I was very excited this has really been a passion of mine for my life and to basically have an opportunity to explore that and to serve my community is wonderful and even just having been here for a couple years we want to settle in
▶ 3:43 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: Melrose so this is yep so I'm just very excited that this opportunity came up Thank you very much. Are there any questions or comments from members of the committee at this time? Or the President, because she is completing our quorum this evening? President Lemmerman, please. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you very much for being here this evening and for being willing to step up into this role. I also just want to say thanks to, we have a few members of the Commission on Women here this evening supporting this nomination. So thank you all for being here and for everything you do. did provide us with a letter stating some of your background and some of your interests as well as your as well as your resume you currently work at one of
▶ 4:26 my favorite downtown shops so that's great do you want to maybe just take a minute to talk a little bit about whether you've thought about any of the activities that you'd like to get involved in on the Commission or what some of your priorities might be sure so for activities I have a background in event planning and how would you say schmoozing just meeting people and kind of doing networking and things so I want to put together an event basically to kind of as a debut obviously the Commission has been around for a long time but kind of an event for us to reintroduce ourselves to the public and have everything organized with women so female entertainment we can have female we have many restaurants and many organizations here that are run by women
▶ 5:16 and owned by women and so just kind of create a space where we were putting this event on we invite everybody from Melrose and it's just a good time and we can introduce some of the things that we're looking to do and one thing that I know that we're we're working towards is just kind of I know that we keep a pulse on what's happening politically with with women and girls and i'm hoping that we can continue to expand kind of um our base of people just having people know what's going on more so maybe engaging more with the newspaper or doing a bit more um you know through the through facebook and things like that so that's my first thoughts of what i would really like to do and support the commission in
▶ 6:00 Peter D. Mortimer: doing great thank you very much thank you thank you president lemmerman motion to recommend we have a motion to recommend from alderman Boisselle duly seconded by president lemmerman please let the record reflect we have also been joined this evening by non-voting member of non-voting on this committee alderman monica Medeiros uh seeing uh no further comments all in favor of the motion to recommend this order for passage to the full board please say aye aye any opposed hearing none this order will be recommended to the full board for passage at which time your nomination for this position on the commission on women will probably be passed by the full board you need not attend again okay if that becomes necessary you will be notified but it's a 99 chance we will
▶ 6:50 Peter D. Mortimer: not need to interview you again thank you very much for coming this evening thank you and thank you for your service to melrose the next order we have on our agenda this evening is order 2020-13 it is the appointment of stacy mincello as director of the council on aging effective september 16 2019 we have with us this evening the candidate stacy mincello and mayor gail inferno who is nominating miss mancello for this appointment we are still under suspension mayor or miss mancello whoever would like to go first please proceed great thank you very much tonight i am here to present stacy mancello as director of our council on aging she comes to us from the city of lynn the council of aging director there she has a wealth of experience
▶ 7:49 Gail Infurna: in the susan bayless assisted living as an associate executive director she worked for fitz voight and associates as an area manager and consulted with other assisted living skilled nursing facilities and retirement homes and also managed budgets and supervised over 260 employees she has experience in the food production and sanitation department and accounts manager for food service operations for patient care systems and public cafeterias she also comes with us with involved with many diverse community service organizations such as the Greater Boston Food Bank my brother's table the veterans role to Washington DC very similar Scott I think to what we have here in Melrose and she belongs to the polish legion of american veterans ladies auxiliary she also belongs to many
▶ 8:49 Gail Infurna: professional services she's a member of the at large board of directors for the massachusetts council on aging the north shore she's president of the north shore association of council on aging she has been a community advocate and public speaker for the massachusetts senior action committee and she's also a notary public here in Massachusetts and if you have her resume in front of you there's also diverse training that she has done with all sorts of behaviors and techniques and CPR so she we're very fortunate to have someone of her caliber here with us to join our Milano Center so at this This time, I present Stacy Minchello. Thank you very much. Here are two questions from Alderman Kate Lipper-Garabedian, who was unable to be here tonight.
▶ 9:46 Peter D. Mortimer: I'm going to read them both, and it may forestall some of the other questions that people have around the horseshoe this evening in the interest of being efficient and expeditious. Question one, what initiatives and programs have you overseen in Lynn or become aware through your work with the Massachusetts Council on Aging and North Shore Association of Councils on Aging that you will want to explore for Melrose. And the second question, because from reading them it appears they kind of overlap and interweave. The second question is, with which other city departments do you interface most often in Lynn? you see opportunities for greater cross-department collaboration or collaboration with non-governmental
▶ 10:31 entities in your field generally. So you can address that, and then we'll proceed to the horseshoe. MS. Okay. Good evening, everyone. Thanks for having me. The first question, I believe that the initiatives that are out there now are age-friendly communities and or dementia-friendly communities, and that is spearheaded with the partnership of Alzheimer's Association and the Massachusetts Council on Aging the other burning issue is grandparents raising grandchildren with the opioid epidemic there's a lot of grandparents raising grandchildren and the last one is through activism through mass senior action on a state level but also more on a national level we're looking for a Medicare savings plan so that seniors
▶ 11:20 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: who are i'll give you just one example they're house rich pocket poor they can make their tax bill but they can't afford their health care expenses so there's a large population if that plan passes that will be their budget will be a little more positive for them so that they don't have to make a decision between food and meds thank you very much are there any members of of the committee with comments or questions seeing none we will proceed to president lemmerman thank you mr chairman um thank you very much for being here thank you mayor inferno for bringing miss mincello down um i wanted to point out i don't think you said it when you said she had come from lynn um but forgive me if you did but uh it was 12 years of experience with the
▶ 12:10 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: with the Council on Aging, as the Council on Aging director there, and a rather large department. So, you know, you bring, I think, a unique perspective here and a lot of experience, which was great to see. I also selfishly was very happy to see your experience as a volunteer with the Greater Boston Food Bank. In my day job, I work for Project Bread, and having somebody who understands the unique needs of seniors in food insecurity and the fact that it does happen here melrose and can have wide-ranging effects i think will be very helpful um so uh there there are lots of of points on this um resume it's an impressive resume but those are two that i wanted to to lift up thank you um so i you know i think alderman Letter garabedian sort of asked what i would have
▶ 12:57 Monica C. Medeiros: asked which was you know you clearly don't have a work plan yet but what would be some of your priorities so it was good to hear some of those so thank you very much thank you thank you president levelman next in queue we have alderman Medeiros please thank you uh thank you i have uh more comments i guess than questions i just wanted to say i'm very excited about this appointment and it's a thank you to mary ferner to yourself we're glad to have you here i'm very happy to hear that you want to make you consider the age friendly and dementia friendly initiatives a priority that's something that's near and dear to me and i would love to see us get there in melrose so thank you very happy about that and you certainly have an excellent amount of
▶ 13:42 Peter D. Mortimer: qualifications and um and i think it'll be a nice addition i think you'll find that melrose is a great place and that we have lots of wonderful people who will be welcoming to you and and we're very excited thank you i look forward to it thanks thank you um i'd like to point out at this time that alderman mcmaster could not be here tonight he had family obligations and he wanted me to pass that on to members of the public that's alderman mcmaster had family obligations and he asked me to uh give notice of that to the public next on the roster we have alderman butcher please thank you um thank you for coming here tonight um i i think piggybacking on uh president Lemmerman question on sort of again um the difference of scale and
▶ 14:26 Manisha Bewtra: complexity of kind of greater lynn um senior services which is exciting for us i'm curious kind of like what is it that excites you about working in Melrose and what do you see as some of the different challenges given that we're a much smaller Council on Aging and and also will you be properly stimulated with a smaller I smaller smaller department but maybe more on your personal plate in certain ways I think um I go by the person so even though there were 15,000 seniors in city of lynn and proportionately a smaller mountain melrose it basically comes down to what their needs are there's still parents out there that have empty homes and i don't weigh in on which kids are helping them or not helping them but as a you know they're actually the
▶ 15:16 original pillars of the community that we deserve to take care of them and it's um with dignity and respect um as far as being challenged um i think there's a lot of challenges that we can do there's the fun side and the health and wellness side and then there's the the economic insecurity and aging in place the most difficult decision is when do they give up their license when should they when are they not safe at home so you really need a liaison to help with that those type transitions of course the families come first but families typically rely on the resources available to them excellent um yeah no I remember kind of a couple years ago the opportunity to have a little focus group at the Milano Center I think Mayor Inferno may have
▶ 16:06 Manisha Bewtra: been a part of that as well as part of our master planning process and it was it was really I think one of the things that struck me in that conversation too was social isolation and I'm just curious I mean I think you kind of indirectly touched on it but what your ideas might be in terms of partnerships with the broader community to reduce social isolation right i think if you build it they will come and i know that's that's a baseball analogy isn't it but it truly is um just to weigh out see what the needs are um and welcome them so that they want to take care of themselves and that's the difficult part yeah great um and i think finally the just a point that i think in a in a conversation I had with someone maybe yesterday
▶ 16:50 Manisha Bewtra: or in the last couple of days, just an idea for programming. The person had mentioned that there are kind of these fun things like, I don't know, bingo or those kinds of things, but having more stimulating, I guess, brain stimulating ways of getting people together as well would be exciting. So just a programming. I'm sure you have tons of experience in that. there's a technology element to it too yes oh yeah so seniors need to learn how to use smartphones or there's a large proportion of seniors that are wiz at emails and Facebook and all that but then there's a another group that they shy away from it and once they learn it yeah actually they learn a new skill now that you mention it that is actually a big piece of the conversation we had was
▶ 17:37 Peter D. Mortimer: was the computer skills and just the technology and all of that great well Thank you so much for coming tonight. Thank you, Alderman Bewtra. Any other aldermen wishing to be heard at this time? Seeing none, Alderman Boycelle has made a motion to recommend this order for passage, duly seconded by President Lemmerman. As you probably heard earlier, you will not need to return to the full board meeting, 99% likelihood. If something should come up, you'll be notified, and at our next full board meeting, your nomination will be recommended the full board for passage thank you very much for your service to melrose and thank you for coming tonight thank you all thank you thank you ma'am have a good night well thank you all in favor of
▶ 18:18 Peter D. Mortimer: the uh motion to recommend for passage please say aye aye aye any opposed hearing none uh the the motion to recommend for passage passes thank you thank you very much to adjourn we have a motion to adjourn by alderman boyce before i take that uh before because i should have said so at the At the beginning of the meeting, Alderman McMaster did say that he had a family obligation tonight and couldn't be here. I should have said that at the beginning, so I'm repeating it now, just so we can make sure. All in favor of the motion to adjourn, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Hearing none, the Committee on Health, Education and Welfare is hereby adjourned. Thank you, one and all.