Senior Center Report: Amherst Is Not Meeting The Needs Of Its Older Residents

Report On The Meeting Of The Town Services And Outreach Committee, May 19, 2022

Present
Dorothy Pam (District 3, chair),  Anika Lopes (District 4), Ana Devlin Gauthier (District 5),  Shalini Bahl-Milne (District 5),  Andy Steinberg (at large).  Bahl-Milne left the meeting  at 8:15 p.m.

Guests: Rosemary Kofler, Council on Aging

Staff:  Hayley Bolton (Director, Amherst Senior Services),  Community Participation Officers Brianna Sunryd, Angela Mills, and Jennifer Moyston.  Town Manager Paul Bockelman

Seven members of the public also attended.

Highlights

• Heard a report on the state of Amherst senior services and the needs of the senior community, emphasizing inadequate facilities, staffing, and budget
• Heard a report on the expansive activities of the town’s Community Participation Officers
• Approved the nomination of  four of the seven members of the Solar Bylaw Working Group
• Engaged in a lengthy discussion of priorities for  future TSO agendas

Public Comment
Richard Yourga, a 59-year resident and president of Friends of the Amherst Senior Center, noted that neighboring communities with much smaller populations are providing far more for their seniors than Amherst. He said it is embarrassing for the town that seniors, many of whom have contributed to the town throughout their adult lives, are not getting the support that they need, and that they deserve better services.

George Cernata said that he retired about 20 years ago and has been a member of senior center and participated in many of its programs since then.  Some of the  activities, such as  dance classes, have had to be discontinued due to lack of space. He lamented that the entire physical structure has deteriorated so much over the years that the building is not adequate for the physical challenges many seniors face.  He said he hopes that Amherst will do a better job meeting the needs of its seniors, as we see happening in neighboring communities.

Kay (no last name given) is a member of  the Friends of the Amherst Senior Center and a regular volunteer there.  She said that as someone who volunteers at the reception desk, she has firsthand knowledge of what is lacking and needed. Foremost among concerns of the users are insufficient programming due to lack of space, insufficient staffing to run classes and activities,  insufficient budget to plan activities and events,  insufficient parking, a dismal atmosphere, and  no transportation services, which seniors need desperately.  The center provided transportation to medical appointments when it had a working van,  but their van no longer works, and appears to be irreparable.  Other centers are far more impressive, she said.  “The neglect of the town’s seniors is shameful,” she said. She is looking for a commitment from the town to build a new senior center.

Senior Services Director Haley Bolton noted that many of our seniors live on a fixed income, and that this is especially challenging in the current economy, so it is important that senior centers provide the essential services that help seniors have a healthy life and that support their ability to age in place.  The Amherst Senior Center provides many essential services but inadequacies in the budget, staffing, and facilities make it difficult to meet the community’s needs.

Presentation By Senior Services Director Haley Bolton
Senior Services Director Haley Bolton presented a Power Point, reviewing the services provided by the senior center and outlining its most pressing needs. She prefaced her presentation by noting that many of our seniors live on a fixed income, and that this is especially challenging in the current economy, so it is important that senior centers provide the essential services that help seniors have a healthy life and that support their ability to age in place.  The Amherst Senior Center provides many essential services but inadequacies in the budget, staffing, and facilities make it difficult to meet the community’s needs.

These essential services for seniors include:

Grocery and meal programs;

1. Monthly Brown Bag program;
2. Emergency food pantry;
3. M-F To Go meal;
4. Meals on Wheels;
5. Social connection;
6. Arts and crafts classes;
7. Therapeutic musical programs;
8. Group fitness classes;
9. Health and Wellness Programs;
10. Educational workshops, such as aging in place, Medicare, dementia training, etc.;
11. Health clinics, such as foot clinic,blood pressure monitoring,hearing aid cleaning, etc.;
12. Individual services including:
    1. Application assistance: SNAP, fuel assistance, etc.;
13. Licensed social work counseling;
14. Computer tutoring;
15. Income tax preparation.

Bolton pointed out that the need for senior services in Amherst is significant and the center is heavily used. There are over 5,200 seniors  living in Amherst, representing 13% of the total population.  The senior center served 2,109 unique visitors in 2019 (pre-COVID pandemic), and 1,798 last year (during the pandemic). Bolton expects the number of users to increase substantially in the coming year.  She reported that 99.9% of the senior center’s annual budget of $235,757 goes to salaries.  Funds for other operating expenses and programming must come from grants or donations.  The full presentation can be viewed here.

Rosemary Kofler, from the Council on Aging, said that it is important to look at what other communities are doing to meet the needs of their seniors.  She noted that the town did a study in 2017 of 17 senior centers around the state and that Amherst’s effort is “insubstantial” in comparison.  Nearly all of our neighboring towns, even smaller ones,  have larger centers with considerably larger budgets.  

Rosemary Kofler from the Council on Aging said that the current facilities at the Bangs Center provide an unattractive and unwelcoming space that is unable to meet the needs of Amherst’s seniors.

A consultant to the 2017 study recommended that Amherst needs a one-story structure on two acres of land with 25,000 square feet of building and 129 parking spaces.  The study also noted that Amherst is the only center among the 17 where seniors have to pay for their own parking (and there is little parking for seniors nearby).  She noted, and Bolton also emphasized, that the needs of seniors are sufficiently different from the needs of other members of the community, that seniors require their own dedicated space, and that it is best for a senior center not to be incorporated into a civic or teen center. 

Koeffler said that the current facilities at the Bangs Center provide an unattractive and unwelcoming space that is unable to meet the needs of Amherst’s seniors. She said the problems for seniors at the Bangs Center site include:  

• insufficient space to hold classes and activities
• space that must be shared with other town functions
• poor acoustics, even though most seniors have hearing issues
• dark rooms with little or no natural light, even though most seniors have vision issues
• pervasive absence of safety features,  such as hand rails for folks with balance issues or pull cords in bathrooms for emergency assistance
• defective, out-of-code kitchen facility
• heating and cooling issues
• inadequate storage
• insufficient parking

She concluded with a statement that the town needs a building that has thoughtful considerations for the seniors who would be using it.  She and Bolton asked the town to undertake a feasibility study for a new building that would include design services to address the specific needs of seniors.

Discussion
Bahl-Milne and Lopes asked about the possibilities of meeting Amherst seniors’  needs through partnerships with UMass or local senior living communities such as Applewood or Greenleaves.

Bolton responded that senior services is indeed exploring possibilities for partnerships but seemed to suggest that these would be unlikely sources of solutions to the shortcomings of the senior center.

Pam, who had once been a director of a senior center, said that she found the numbers “eye opening” and “useful”, and expessed hope that the town can do more. 

Bahl-Milne and Bockelman seemed skeptical that there could be any effort to construct a new building for seniors in the near future.  Bahl-Milne wondered whether it might be possible to rent supplemental space for senior activities some other place in town.  Bolton replied that senior services need to be integrated and centralized, and that, for example, holding classes in a satellite space would not really be helpful. 

Bockleman acknowledged the need and said that the town has “tried to be responsive to it.”  “We made improvements last year, as part of trying to do the best we can for the senior center, and that made it a more agreeable place than it was. Last year we changed the director’s title to Director of Senior Services in recognition that we can take these services across town and engage them wherever we can, for example  in the libraries.  We’re now trying to get services  that we’ve lost back in place,” he said. 

Pam noted that the current center is located at the Bangs because of its proximity to senior housing in the Clark and Ann Whelan houses.  She wondered if a senior center would be as effective if it was constructed elsewhere in town.  

Bolton replied that the majority of the center’s users are not Clark or Anne Whelan residents and that if a new center was located on a bus route and if the center had its van restored that a new location ought to work fine.

Devlin Gauthier wanted to know why a van for the center is not in the capital budget.  Bockelmand said he would forward the question to Sean Mangano, the town finance director.  Steinberg, who chairs the Finance Committee, said that a request has to be brought to the Joint Capital Planning Committee in order to be incorporated into a long-term capital spending plan. 

Regarding the prospects for a new building he said “we are already committed to four capital projects.  But a new senior center has been out there for a long time as one of the town’s anticipated needs.  And now there’s a lot of community demand for a youth center. I don’t want to see competition among the projects but there are lots of requests to be next on the list (of funded capital projects) and we certainly ought to make the council aware that people have waiting for this for a long time.” 

Bahl-Milne asked if there will be dedicated space for seniors in the expanded library  as has been discussed for teens.  Bockelman said (speaking as a member of the library building committee), that “no, there’s been no discussion of that.  We have a lot of needs and we’re trying to line up the resources that we have with those needs.  The first step (for senior services) is to get a group together and begin discussions on where the need is and where we can go with this.”

Community Participation Officer Presentation
The town’s three community preservation officers, Brianna Sunryd, Angela Mills and Jennifer Moyston presented a Power Point, introducing members of TSO to the work that they do.  That presentation can be viewed here.

The role of community participation officer (CPO) is mandated by the Town Charter (section 3.3c).  The CPO’s duties include the following:

• Provide support for individuals interested in being involved in local government
• Devise and implement strategies to enhance public engagement
• Conduct community outreach efforts to increase participation  by underrepresented residents in town government
• Aid in the planning and conduct of district meetings
• Analyze data on resident engagement
• Regularly submit reports to the Town Manager and Town Council
• Carry out any additional duties designated by the Town Manager

CPO’s noted that the pandemic required a pivot in their approach to outreach and that as activities moved on line, they saw participation increase in ways they had not seen before.   The experiences have produced lots of ideas on how they can sustain that engagement as we return to a more conventional mode of operation.

Discussion
Pam asked about the housing outreach that the CPO’s did before COVID at various housing complexes around town, which she enjoyed and found extremely helpful and wondered whether those activities would be resumed as the pandemic wanes.

Moyston responded that they have a series of events planned around the introduction of CRESS (the town’s new civilian responder service) to neighborhoods and housing complexes.

Bahl-Milne asked about how councilors might get assistance from the CPO’s in doing outreach to residents. She wondered how the CPO’s identified stakeholders and whether they had established lists or maps of different constituencies noting that the Community Resources Committee is attempting to devise a strategy for doing more outreach to residents.  

Sunryd responded that they indeed have compiled all kinds of lists but she and Bockelman cautioned that they have worked hard to cultivate trust with the community and that they won’t share out their lists in a way that would violate residents  privacy or would inundate them with communications from the town.  Bockleman suggested that if CRC needed to indentify a specific constituency, that they should draft a proposal of who they needed to reach and why and that such proposals would be evaluated on a case by case basis. 

Appointments
TSO voted unanimously to endorse Bockelman’s nomination of four individuals to the new Solar Bylaw Working Group.  Those nominations will now go to the full town council for approval.  Three positions on the council remain to be filled.  The four people nominated were:

• Janet McGowan (representing the Planning Board)
• Dwayne Breger (representing the Energy and Climate Action Committee)
• Laura Pagliarulo (representing the Convervation Commission)
• Jack Jemsek (representing the Water Supply Protection Committee)

Read more about the Solar Bylaw Working Group and the nominees here (add Link)