Bangor council reviews Community Connector and public health budgets

[0:26] Susan Hawes: Catch me on the top. We are live. Good evening, welcome to the city council budget workshop. It is April 30th, it's 5:15. We are in the chambers around the table. We're going to start. We have Councillor Mallar who is on remote. We have Council, yeah, City Manager earlier, I'm happy not to vote, okay. And we have Council Dean, Councillor Carson, Council Walker, Assistant City Manager Courtney O'Donnell, and we have Councillor, oh yeah, Balloon, Susan Fallone, and we have Councillor Leonard and Councillor Beck. So we have two items, we have the community connector, and we're going to first go to City Manager Carollynn Lear, and then [1:15] Carolyn Fish: we'll move on from there. Yes, so I just wanted to note, drop a note about next week, so [1:23] Susan Hawes: So we originally put together the schedule, [1:26] Carolyn Fish: you were scheduled to hear from fire and TV on Wednesday. It's actually going to be fire and de-airing and storm water. And TV is going to go down to the ceiling there. The May 20th gate, the police chief just had something come up. So we needed to switch. So if you're preparing ahead of time, there'll be storm water, engineering, and fire, and then of course on Thursday there will be the joint meeting with the school board, the [2:11] Daniel Carson: date the PD was going to meet, they are going to be on May 20th. Okay, thank you, that's [2:19] Wayne Mallar: all I have. Okay. [2:22] Susan Hawes: All right, Assistant City Manager O'Connell. Yes, so tonight first on the agenda is community connector. I would like to welcome Lori Lynn Scott and Jim Landry to the table to join me. Yes, have a seat wherever you'd like. Counselor Fish, we good timing, we just kicked off, so you're okay. Yeah, over there. All right, so community connector regional transit system, the services six communities including Bangor as well as the University of Maine. It is, so it's a regional service, we offer both fixed route and ADA paratransit services for all of them. Let's see, I think we need to kind of just touch on sort of transit it like high level and then chat a little bit about some of the projects that we're going on that are both i think important for ridership but also investing in the system in the long run as well as it relates to like workforce development and whatnot and so 88 paratransit service is a required service that we provide to folks that are unable to ride the fixed route system and so there's a process for individuals to go through in order to be qualified for that service And it is, they do pay for that service the same way you do on fixed route. It is a little confusing, you'll often hear people talk about main care rides, that is what Pankos CAP offers separate from the Community Connector, just throwing that out there. And so with our partners, we all split what's called the local share. And so because we're such a small agency, we are able to use federal funding in order to offset our day to day operating costs, much larger systems, I guess, for lack of better word. They can only use it for capital. So we do receive those funds, we're a direct recipient of those federal funds, which as you might imagine, come with a whole list of requirements that we have to abide by in order to continue to receive those dollars and then what is left over is funded by the communities and that is determined based on a formula that's based on revenue hours right yes there's other ways you can do that but I think it was it was just before I started in 2021 so maybe 2019 or so that we all reached that agreement with all of the other communities and that way everybody was paying into the system as a whole instead of just like their individual route and things like that which of course helped us offset costs for the system as a whole especially as it relates to like big expenses and buses and things like that and so that's sort of high level what we do and then ongoing projects include the coal bus barn rehabilitation and paired with that is workforce development training center that is actually going to be attached to that coal bus barn and so that was a federal grant that Lori Lynn Scott was able to secure for us and it'll cost about 10 million dollars in order to do that and so that's in the works as well as the mobile fare ticketing and the tech ongoing technology that we've been implementing now for a little bit and did I miss anything Lori no I don't think so sorry I apologize so that time of year yeah so I guess I'll stop there and I guess like is there anything about The like high level community connector, what we do, that anybody has questions about as it relates to how we operate, it is owned and operated by the city of Bangor, and so ultimately this body, the council, does make those determinations as terms of budget and all of that, but we do meet regularly with all of those partners in order to get their feedback and keep them updated in terms of what we're doing, and so they were given a draft budget with the caveat that is just draft because of course they're all going through their processes as well, so I [7:15] Speaker F (unidentified): understand that increasing gas prices, that's sort of driving ridership up a [7:22] Susan Hawes: a bit, we said let's maybe have staff to handle that adequately, so yeah, we are prepared to actually chat a little bit about ridership, it is true, I think ridership's trending up a bit since we've seen the huge spike in gas prices, so that's a good thing, we always love more ridership, as it relates to staffing, that's something we definitely want to dig into too, especially as it relates to the new program request. So if you don't mind, I'll put that on hold. Okay, and we'll chat more [7:56] Speaker F (unidentified): about another question. So that's fine. But I was gonna ask how the price of gas is affecting things in the budget. So if you want to get to that later, that's fine. [8:09] Susan Hawes: Well, I think you do want to make that one? Yeah, sure. So [8:13] Community Connector staff (transit director): the yes, the price of fuel, and we don't use gas, we use diesel. So it's even higher, but we do use some gas for the vans. That's in there too. So we have that our best to adjust for that. Right now, just to give you a little insight, our diesel price in January was $2.91. Our February price is $3.54. And in March, we're paying $4.33. So that's just where we're at right now. [8:41] Speaker F (unidentified): But due to that price, [8:43] Community Connector staff (transit director): and I think the fuel price is everywhere, where our ridership from January of 26 through this March of 26, we've had a 21% increase in ridership in three months. So definitely, it usually does always trend up through high gas prices. But I have to say 21% is been the most I've seen here. And you all know, I've been here [9:07] Carolyn Fish: a long time so I [9:11] Susan Hawes: Could enter, oh I don't know, this is working. If I could interject, I think gas prices are something where we should actually connect sort of city-wide at the end of the process, because when we put together the budget in January, things were just starting to happen, and I think we sort of didn't know what to do with that, because gas prices had actually been trending down for the city, and then all of a sudden they shot up like right as the budget was sort of hitting print, and so I think we'll have better information and we can talk about, you know, based on where we sit in June, whether we need to adjust things up or down. [9:54] Wayne Mallar: Councilman, you have your hand up. Yes I do, I have a quick question. I noticed the intergovernmental revenue, I assume that's for the coal bus bond, where is the additional five and a half million dollars coming from? Is that a guarantee or is that a wish? [10:14] Susan Hawes: Are you talking about the $4,467,214? [10:21] Wayne Mallar: Does that have to do with the coal bond? It does not. Okay, well then where is the money on here for the coal bond? [10:28] Community Connector staff (transit director): Barn, the coal barn is in the capital line, it's only our, amount that we are saving in FY27. [10:40] Wayne Mallar: Okay, in other words, we, it's not a guarantee that we're going to get the full 10 million. [10:46] Community Connector staff (transit director): The 10 million, the 10 million is a project total, not the grant total. What's the grant total? The grant total is 7.8 million dollars and we have that already. Where do you get the other two million dollars? One million is coming from DOT and one million is coming from the [11:07] Susan Hawes: partners in, oh I'm sorry, what, agreed by them, the million, yes, yep, they, we've, yes, the short, the short answer is yes. In fact, this project has been in the works for a long time. And so we've been trying to chip away at that to make sure, because the grant was 80-20, right? So they fund 80% and we have to come up with that 20, but to Lori's point, Maine DOT funded half of that local share, which further reduced the burden on the city of Bangor. [11:45] Wayne Mallar: I'm curious as to why we didn't reserve it before this year. I don't see any reserves for it. I see a capital improvement program for the full nine million eight, but I saw no reserves in the past. Why didn't you have money? That would be the thing to do. [12:04] Community Connector staff (transit director): The reserve money has always been in the budget the last three years. This is our fourth payment. So when we initially, fourth payment on what? Tell me, because I don't understand. Okay, so we took the $1 million and we divided it into four payments. [12:23] Wayne Mallar: Okay, I'm with you. Okay. [12:26] Community Connector staff (transit director): And that was what we decided to do back when we got approval to apply for the grant. Like, we just didn't apply for that. We applied for it knowing that we were gonna have to fund that local share, and how were we gonna do that? We're gonna do it in small increments over four years. Okay, makes sense. [12:45] Michael Beck: You're welcome. up council back you had a question yep so i piggybacking out the fuel conversation i have a question about you know it looks like it went down by about 80 000 bucks versus last year i'm just curious what calculations went into that going that much lower well it was a lot just [13:04] Community Connector staff (transit director): on the gallons that we were using, and I think it was a little higher in the last budget, so that's kind of where I landed with it. But we can always, like I say, Manager Lear said we [13:16] Michael Beck: we should probably look, we'll look at that again. Sure, I mean, I like that, I like it going down. [13:24] Joseph Leonard: i had a sort of a off left field sort of question so it's not really pertaining to the budget specifically but almost two years ago janna mills is former commissioner of the department of transportation made a statement regarding that he the department wasn't in favor of expanding passenger rail to bangor but they would they are amendable to sending bangor more buses i guess my question is it just because we had a ridership increase of 21 has any liaison or official from the main department Transportation contacted the city whatsoever regarding incoming buses or support for the Community Connector [14:16] Community Connector staff (transit director): over the last two years? Well, over the last two years, we have gotten extra discretionary grants. That's how we got the CDL school money last year. We got EB money or money for our ADA vans last year, and then this year as well. I just came here a few weeks ago and talked about that. We also got money for that mobile fare that we're all talking about, that so they have been giving us discretionary money because this, because we're direct recipients, they won't fund buses like that, they'll fund portions, right, they'll fund that half of the local share. So I don't think would ever see them funding a whole bus, but like if we get the opportunity, I can always ask. Sure, and I [14:57] Joseph Leonard: don't think he meant he, they were going to directly fund it, was just speaking in term because of people may advocate for passenger rail. But I guess it's okay, if you don't know this answer, did you know what the sum total of the amount discretionary funds that the city received for the Community Connector? [15:19] Community Connector staff (transit director): Or from the state? Yes, I do. Goodness, last year, it would have been 486,000. And that was the first year that we got discretionary funding available. They just give us our formula funds, the state does, but we had an opportunity to apply for discretionary. We get about almost half a million dollars, and then in this current year in 26 we got 300,000 ish. I don't have that memorized, but about 300,000. Because we got bike racks, $30,000, $200,000 for a fare, a mobile fare, and $90,000 for a bus, a van, sorry. And also, on top of all of that, they did give us $1 million for a cold bus prime project. That wasn't part of our formula funding or the discretionary. I didn't have to fight for that $1 million. Dollars that came from them just and to your point he was still in office. Thank you. Yeah. [16:25] Susan Hawes: Sure. Oh, go ahead. No, I was just going to see if anybody had any. Actually, before you. Yeah, that. Segued kind of nicely, actually, because as you can see on the sheet that was provided in your booklets, our expenses are certainly up. They're about 7.4 million, but Vanguard's only paying about 32 percent of that at that 2.3 million, and so that is in large part, you know, the federal and state dollars that we receive, not to mention all of those capital costs that we're able to offset pretty heavily as well through grant opportunities and stuff through the state and federal government. So I would. Argue that for this service in particular, which I think provides a great benefit to Bangor as a whole, we're getting a pretty good bang for our buck, if you will, in terms of the return on that investment, because we're able to maximize those federal dollars and state opportunities as well. [17:30] Carolyn Fish: That's our team. Could you explain how the wages have gone up, [17:33] Susan Hawes: but the health has gone down? [17:39] Community Connector staff (transit director): Go ahead. Okay, yeah. Okay, so the health insurance always depends on what the drivers pick for plans, obviously, and some of them age out and get Medicare, so that also offsets it, and some of the wages right now are a little higher due to Union negotiations, so we just have to put some of that in there waiting for the contract to be. [18:03] Susan Hawes: Just decided, so yeah, those usually the health is a pretty good, like, known for all of our existing drivers, and then we usually do estimate on the high side in terms of any vacancies that we have, just in case they take that higher level plan that costs more. So yeah, that is, that's a good question though, and sometimes children age o2, in my case I got rid of one. Any other questions? Okay, great, so I'll just, I guess we'll just move into the other big item that we definitely wanted to chat about and certainly we can take more questions. So the new program request is for funds related to moving drivers to full-time status, us with the potential to add an additional position to help facilitate that transition that becomes necessary. The at the heart of it, our system was built on the existing schedules, the number of hours and things of our drivers, and we don't believe that all of the drivers will immediately want to go full-time, and so this, the new program request is meant to give us enough funds to move in that direction and create the flexibility that we need in the long run, because ultimately our goal is to return to full service. And we'd really like to get back to being able to say that we provide a reliable and dependable service. And I think that in the long run, that too would increase ridership and help Bangor in lots of ways. You know, public transportation is good economically, it helps people get to work, it reduces traffic congestion, fuel consumption. So I guess being, you know, I guess as Lori would say, transit nerds, we obviously really believe that the system is a huge benefit to our area. And so, and with that, obviously we wouldn't have the service if it wasn't for our employees, so whether you're talking drivers, the dispatch, you know, the safety individual, our transit tech, or the administration, you know, it's, it takes a lot of work to make sure that all the buses and all the vans get where they need to go when they do in order to ensure that somebody's not left waiting for like a bus that's never going to arrive, and as you all know, everybody knows that we have faced significant Staffing challenges over recent years, and in fact Lori actually shared a stat with me earlier that it was a 36 percent, 86, oh gosh, 86 of transit agencies across the country are facing driver's notages, so we're certainly not alone. And you know, I think we've harped quite a bit in the past over all the factors that have gone into that, and we've tried a number of things to help us offset that, you know, the in-house CDL training and things of that nature, and we actually kind of have an exciting thing to share. I'm going to [21:31] Community Connector staff (transit director): give it to Lori though because she's worked so hard on this. So today I was finally able to confirm we're in our finalizing an agreement with East Romaine Community College. They have been accredited finally again with the state as a school teaching CDL entry-level driving, and we're going to finalize our agreement in the next few weeks and hopefully be able to send some candidates to get their CDL through Eastern Maine. And yeah, that's where that goes. [22:03] Susan Hawes: It's really exciting partnership, and it has the potential to not only help Community Connector, but also Public Works. And so just having another opportunity for individuals looking to get their CDL is fantastic. For a long time, it was just down to one private company that offered at what would be I think a higher cost than what Eastern Maine Community College is going to offer, and they also have some grant funding and whatnot as well that they're working through around like I guess I'll say that there's interest if you will in an understanding in this area in particular that we need to create a better funnel for CDL drivers because it's not just Community Connector that's always on the lookout for those, but the private company is school busing, all of it, so it's a career with a purpose is what we want to call it. Yeah, it's a social service for sure. Are you ready for a question? Sure, councilman. Well I'm curious, we [23:02] Wayne Mallar: have the new transportation center, do we have cameras around that are shared with the police department? [23:11] Susan Hawes: I believe yes. No. [23:15] Wayne Mallar: That's not the information I got from the chief, but that's [23:17] Susan Hawes: fine. I don't know if they, I mean there are certainly cameras around the transit center and we do work with police and we hand over you know video as needed for you know if there's an incident and things like that. It's on the same system as like any other department that has cameras, but whether or not they can pull it up immediately I'm not sure. Thank you. Do you have questions, comments before she moves on? Yeah, so I do think that hopefully a lot of these things kind of coming together will actually help us with recruitment and retention of drivers, which again goes back to that goal of full service, sustaining it, creating that reliable and dependable service in the long run. And so I guess we certainly would advocate pretty strongly for funding of the new program requests in order to help us in the long run, you know, get back to where we need to be With service. So for people who are working, for example, for public works, if they don't have a CDL and they decide they want to because they want to be an equipment operator or something like that, is there a scholarship or could they go to this program and not have to pay the full cost or We haven't worked out like all the details, but yeah, I mean, I think that there's potential for us to potentially like pull an individual on an area and if they become interested, send them, because the wonderful thing about this partnership is it alleviates the internal burden for that school because we have entry-level driving requirements now that we have to meet in terms of classroom time and road and range as well. And so being able to send them to a third party to get that licensure is wonderful in a number of ways and through the partnership if we can help reduce those costs that 's a win-win as well so and it's a lengthy process Right now, Jim, could you speak to how long it takes to get folks licensed? [25:39] Speaker J (unidentified): Yes, it's a little crazy. So if you bring people in with a C class, they have to have two weeks of classroom and then 10 weeks of road and range. If you bring them in with a CDL and they just need the P endorsement, it's still 10 weeks. And I know Laurie's been working down on the guts, they're trying to ruffle up some feathers and get that shortened up a little bit because it's it's quite personal [26:08] Carolyn Fish: Yeah, Council Fish, I think he said 21 percent increase in ridership since gas has gone up. Do you see, do you have any idea what the conversion of those that may have not used it before may now that they've gotten used to it, do you have any idea of a conversion rate where they may now become regular riders? And then my second part of that question is 81 increase, do you know, is there a particular territory or demographic where there was a significant increase from one location versus another? I don't Have that with me, but I could get that for [26:45] Susan Hawes: You, Chris, and actually Laurie put together a chart around ridership for you all, so we'll pass that out. Councilor Mallar, we'll make sure you get that as well in your email. [27:01] Community Connector staff (transit director): but and just counselor hawes one point to your asking your last question i did find out from east romaine community college that because the colleges are free now from the governor list signing that this CDL isn't doesn't qualify for that but health grants are available and they're going to be working out more details in the coming days and weeks and all of that so there's potential there it's good to hear that they're [27:29] Susan Hawes: going to have at least pell grants I knew it wouldn't qualify for the free main tuition but [27:35] Community Connector staff (transit director): the other thing too is if somebody, me, of your, of any organization and you would like them to get the CDL, you can also apply for your L fund reimbursement grant of 1200. So, you know, helps if you take that plus the Pell Grant, it gets it just, you know, that much closer. So yeah, thank you. [27:57] Susan Hawes: Do you want to highlight anything around the chart? Sure. [28:02] Community Connector staff (transit director): So this is, this is the yearly ridership since 2010. Obviously, we had a ridership before then, but it was just kind of too old to go find, so I didn't find it, but we, as, you guys know, or maybe you don't, but back in our, you know, most successful years, we were over that million rides, you know, back in 20 12 and 13, and then, we declined a little bit, but since COVID in 2019, 2020, you know, getting back up to over half a million rides in the last couple of years has been a really big goal for us. And, you know, we're climbing and it's a good story. It's totally a recovery story, to be honest. 2024 was our year with full service and Saturdays. So you'll see that little bit adjustment in 2025 when we did not have Saturdays for the whole entire year. [29:06] Susan Hawes: The other thing too is ridership is like one factor that's taken into account as it relates to how much federal funding we receive. So it's not like a direct correlation. If we were to increase overnight ridership, for example, by like 200,000 and rides, like we're not going to see like a huge bump as a result of that, but as a whole, obviously we want ridership trending upward and that's beneficial for a number of reasons. The other thing too is that the, in recognition, I think this is, this the first year that the federal government has, Lori does what's called an NTD report every year, National Transit Database, where she has to report all sorts of numbers to them. And they actually were operating off of 2019 numbers, I think, for a number of years because pandemic and the recognition of the impact that had on public transportation systems. Is this the first year they've gone back or they've updated that? No, I think it was last, it was last year. Yeah, but they did hold it for several years in recognition that folks numbers have certainly declined during COVID. And actually that was probably a fun experiment in terms of social distancing on buses and things like that. [30:24] Community Connector staff (transit director): So well, I mean, there was a time during COVID you guys probably know, like we could only allow 10 to ride at a time, you know, so to get that, you know, number even to 300,000 in 2021, I mean, that's a lot of rides when you can only do 10 at a time, so [30:42] Daniel Carson: I'm just gonna make a comment that I really appreciate seeing this new program request. I think be a positive impact in a number of ways, thinking about ridership and bringing back our service, but I also recognize that in addition to CDLs, there are other challenges that we face in different areas, specifically to the requirements that drivers have to adhere to for the federal government. And so I think having the opportunity of full-time, the opportunity for workers to make this a career is going to broaden the pool of people who would be interested in staffing in these really important positions. [31:34] Carolyn Fish: I'm very excited that there may be a partnership with the school. I know a year or two ago, we got close to that and then I think the law changed and changed everything. So we're excited then. So I'm really excited that it's coming back around and I'm anxious to see more of them. [31:57] Susan Hawes: So yeah, at this point that those were the items I definitely wanted to cover. So we're happy to answer questions. I don't know if manager Lear had anything in particular. Okay. So. No further questions for Lori or Tony? You're welcome. Oh, you got one. Right. Good. Yeah. [32:24] Community Connector staff (transit director): Good for sure. Do you want them back? Oh, goodness. No. Yeah. [32:33] Susan Hawes: Counselor Maller, we handed out what I'm calling stress buses. We'll make sure we put one in your in your box for you. Thank you. About so we have then Benjamin, director of public health, who's joined the table. [33:44] Public health/community services director: Thank you for having me and thank you for your ongoing and continued support of public health and community services. I have felt well supported through the two years and almost one month that I have been here. So what I thought I would do is just provide a little bit of background. You have plenty to read here. I'm not going to repeat anything that you have here in the booklet about the department and then talk about our budget and then talk about those new requests. So I just want to remind you that the role of your local health department is to implement what we call the 10 essential public health services. And someday if you ever want public health 101, I'm happy to walk through what those 10 essential public health services are. But really what I have learned firsthand in this job, having worked at the global level, the national level, in the state level, is that this is where stuff happens, at the local level. You can make the biggest impact with the smallest resources right here, and it is a joy of this job to be able to do that. So one of the things that's really hard about public health is it's really hard sometimes to measure benefit because measuring prevention is super hard, and it actually takes a lot of research to figure out for every x amount of dollar that we spent on something, how much of this disease did we prevent? Or how much did we give back to the economy in this way? However, I will say is that there is research out there to say that there is a return on investment in having a local health department, whether that's a healthier workforce. You can even see through COVID-19, your local health department was really critical in helping to keep daycares open, helping to provide technical assistance to long-term and assisted living facilities, and being part of vaccine. We saw just in these past few, just in this past year, when the MM women measles cluster happened, we responded very quickly. We were getting a number of phone calls with questions about measles and about vaccine. We actually saw some parents bringing in their kids to get that other dose they would have waited weeks at their primary care provider to be able to get that, even if they had a primary care provider. So these are things that we're able to do right here for our community, and at the end of the day, our job is to make the healthy choice the easy choice. That's our motto. So a couple of things that I want to highlight that's not in the department highlights, but I think it would be interesting for you to know, is that we did complete our department strategic planning Process I've shared that strategic plan with you many months ago. I'm always happy to share that. I just want to highlight what our four values of our department are: empathy and compassion, collaboration, responsiveness, and data-informed decision-making. And we're talking already how we integrate that into our work, and even including our annual evaluations with staff and how they contribute to those values. As you can see from our org chart, our different programs, so I won't go into them and details. We hover around 45 staff members, so talk about an economic benefit and you are employing the city of Bangor is employing, you know, at some point about 45 staff. Around our department accomplishments and heading into the new year, our biggest overarching challenge in changing funding landscape both at the federal level, the state level, with foundations. And I just really want to point out that when we lose our funding for a particular position, we lose our staff. We did that with our SNAP program when that funding went away. We didn't ask to absorb that with city dollars. We had to let that staff go. One of the accomplishments that isn't obvious here but that I think we're really proud of at the department is we have really low staff turnover over. Staff will move among programs. Sometimes they'll move sort of to a higher leadership position. Sometimes they'll move laterally. We have staff members, two staff members that have over 30 years of working for our, for the city. And our WIC director, for example, has worked for the city for 16 years. I'm at the point right now I'm trying to quantify with the average amount of time someone works with our department. But even if you look at the people that were in my position, it was either retirement or they had been here for many years. I think that's a key success. This year we've had to do some pivoting. One of the biggest pivots that we had to do was our maternal child health program. As you may remember, the state changed the way that they were providing home visits. This was very upsetting for us after decades of doing this work funded by the state. However, I'm proud to say that we pivoted very quickly. With state funding, our infrastructure funding, we now are able to operate a lactation clinic where we get to see moms and babies come in and out our door and getting really amazing guidance and support from trained breastfeeding consultants. And we were able to pivot around our nutrition program, the SNAP education, money went away. But as you approved just a few weeks ago, so we're getting Rural Transformation Grant funding to start back up that nutrition education in potentially a more robust way. These funding challenges are actually sometimes presenting opportunities, and that's the way that we're trying to understand it. Back to that, one of the biggest things that we're working on for the upcoming year is that financial stability through diversifying our funding. And one of the things that I have brought here a number of times is us looking at billing. Billing. We've never really billed outside of vaccines, insurance companies for some of the clinical and direct service work that we do. Our next step is to put out an RFP for an electronic health record, which forms the basis of our billing. We've already sort of done a little research about what our options are, and we're really excited to kind of move in that direction. We know already that our lactation clinic, our STI immunization clinic and our case management will be billable services, and one of the things that we're trying hard to do is kind of, I wouldn't say rebrand, but brand ourselves in a way to remind everyone that even though I come to you often here to talk about issues that impact the most vulnerable of our community, the local health department is for everybody, and some of the ways that we're working towards that in the next year is our health promotion staff is starting to look at how we can build robust worksite wellness programs that our local businesses can benefit from. We are looking at how we expand our work in environmental health. This year we'll be participating in the statewide mosquito surveillance. We are getting traps to be able to do mosquito surveillance for mosquito-borne disease that we have started to see more here in Bangor. As I mentioned, our lactation clinic has really started to take off. Our community paramedicine program, we have our application going to for licensure probably next week. That will be a program for all of Bangor, and we expect to really take off. And the one other thing is that we offer is we are actually in the business of workforce development. We see a lot of students from Husson, Eastern Maine Community College, University of Maine Augusta come through our doors for clinical experiences and internships. Many of those students stay here in Bangor. It is free labor, but it's also an amazing opportunity for people to learn about public health on the ground level. It's how I started my public health career. Before I dig into some high-level perspectives on the budget, any questions about our department? [41:48] Susan Hawes: We do have one that's been waiting for a little bit. So we have Councilor Malheur and then Councilor Fish. [41:57] Wayne Mallar: What I was interested to know was that if we eliminated the health and welfare department, would the state be picking up the slack? And in that case, what is the loss in the department on a yearly basis that we as citizens pick up on our tax rate? I can jump into that because that [42:19] Public health/community services director: is part of the budget first of all to your first question no the state would not pick up the work we actually get many different funding sources and not all of it is state funding for the programs that we have that are state funded favor say for example wick has been in existence for 52 years all 52 of those years for the city of bangor have been on the same thing so if that program decided what the department was going to dissolve those wick dollars would go back to the state the state would then send out a new request for proposal out to community partners to bid. Another community partner would get that funding, and the city of Bangor would no longer participate, have control over, collaborate in that space. So that's one example of what would happen. Well, I will say sort of jumping into the budget is our budget as a department as a total ranges around $8 million a year. When I do the math, about 20% of our budget is city general dollars. Just to remind you is that in our department is general assistance. That is a state-required program. That 20% of the city general funds is paying for full, -time staff people just in general a hundred percent in general assistance. So if you were to sort of drill that down even further, the city general funds pay for a very small percentage of our overall budget. It [43:59] Wayne Mallar: would be nice to see it individually if possible, the individual grants that we receive in those amounts? Yep. Okay. I think a lot of them expire, I don't think, in June. [44:16] Public health/community services director: No, they range at different time periods. Some are one-year grants, some are two-year grants, some are five-year grants. They all range based upon the funding sources that we receive. So they're not all on the same fiscal year. They're not all for the same time period. Okay. Okay. [44:35] Carolyn Fish: Council Fisch. Out of the 1,000, a little over 1,000 applications on GA, it said I think a little over 800 were served. So does that mean about 20% of the applicants didn't qualify for GA? Yes. [44:50] Public health/community services director: So we, whenever anyone calls, we don't screen for their eligibility on the phone. We have them set up an appointment because every case is different. Every case has different types of income and expenses,, and our GA staff, half of them have been here for decades and are very attuned to GA policy. So even if someone called and said, hey, I have a million dollars in the bank, I don't know if I might qualify for GA. We say, set up appointment. Let's walk [45:18] Carolyn Fish: through your process. And I'm going to say, you could fall under that same umbrella. Out of the 800 that you've served, do you have any idea what percentage you might have served the unhoused or those with substance use addiction? [45:34] Public health/community services director: For general assistance, no, we don't. So for general assistance, they have to be in housing. So general assistance doesn't support people who are unhoused. [45:45] Carolyn Fish: Some that are housed though have medical issues that may fall under as a result of their substance use addiction. Yeah, we don't. [45:55] Public health/community services director: GA doesn't require to collect information on disability or health issues, we do. GA can pay for certain medications, but again, that's under very specific criteria, and we don't, GA doesn't require that information from a state level. And lastly, I've heard a [46:14] Carolyn Fish: lot from other town, I call a lot of times say, how do you do this, and you know, it's, it's why you're sending, you know, your people have to fill what facilities are or what we have in a lot of, a lot of conversations were that they, when the applicant from their town applies for GA, they don't qualify, but that same person can come to Bangor and apply for GA and they qualify. So I just, I heard that two or three times, so I just wanted to know if you could explain, are there different, as a result of budgets or population, is there a different standard for qualifying when they come to Bangor? No. No. So that information may not be. No. [47:00] Public health/community services director: So what's interesting about GA is the bigger the municipality, the more designated staff you have to deal with GA because the volume is just bigger. And that staff is pretty well trained in GA. You may be at a smaller municipality who only maybe does 5 to 10 GA applications a year and may not be as well-versed or confident in some of the criteria. I can tell you that we work really hard to go by the standards. We call the state GA hotline often to walk through. Sometimes when we deny someone, they often go, well, not often, but there's been a few times we'll file an appeal and we have to have that heard. So we are very by the book with our GA. GA. The other thing that's interesting about GA is that if another municipality moves somebody to say Bangor, we will go by policy, we go back to that municipality to say this is actually your financial responsibility for so many months. If somebody moves to Bangor on their own, that's when Bangor still has to resume all of the responsibility for GA. [48:15] Carolyn Fish: You can explain that very well. So it's probably they just haven't done the application, don't know, haven't had the staff, or maybe a little bit too, it's just easier to say you don't qualify. [48:28] Public health/community services director: And there are certain parts of GA that there's like room for interpretation that we have found specifically around the use of paying for hotels for temporary. For us, that is only under very specific emergency situations. Someone's house had a fire. American Red Cross put them up for three days. We can put them up for a little bit longer because there's another rule in GA that you can only get so much. And if you use all that up with, say, a hotel room and you need GA to help pay for rent within 12 months, you can't access it. We try and walk through every case very carefully. Thank you Karen. Is that it? [49:13] Susan Hawes: Any questions? Counselor Miller, your hand is up. Is it do you have another question or did you just not put your hand down? [49:30] Carolyn Fish: No. Counselor Miller, can you hear us? Should we loosen? Yeah, okay. [49:49] Susan Hawes: We can go for a few more minutes. We're just trying to make sure did he leave or did we drop him or whatever. [49:59] Speaker F (unidentified): This is actually kind of more of a general question. You might know the answer, but otherwise Steven earlier might help them answer it, but the costs under like under housing support navigator 56,000 and under homeless coordinator 56,000. I know we've seen this in the other fund, but is that just salary or is that salary plus benefits? Sure, I will. [50:26] Public health/community services director: I will jump to the new programs. Do you mind if I just spend just one minute, but I'm definitely going to walk through the new programs. I think there's some data that you'd find really under interesting with those with those positions. The other just a few other things I want to mention about the overall budget is if you look at the history of our budgets, we have not asked for dramatic increases. This is probably the biggest year of an increase, and it has to do with the new programs, a few things. that are different about our department's budget than say some other departments is the first of all is we are in a building that is rent we pay rent to the bangor nursing home we don't we are not in a city building so we pay sort of rent to that entity. the other thing that i will mention with our budget specifically our maternal child's health budget is that we are transitioning because that grant changed we're transitioning from a fee for service budget to this, you know, we're going to be billing for lactation. So that's going to be a change for us. And then the other thing that I would mention is one of the things that we want to do going forward is now that I've been here for a couple of years, I've recognized that our clinic budget specifically around immunizations and our STI, we want to do a deep dive and just sort of like that's one area of our department that could be run a little bit more like on a business model than our sort of public health model so we want to dig deeply into sort of like where are our costs there where do we make our money where do we lose our money so that we can make some changes within our [51:56] Joseph Leonard: clinic let [51:59] Susan Hawes: me ask you a question about the lactation Clinic sure are you affiliated with Northern Light or any of the subsidiary hospitals that they are no they are referring to us for services because they've closed all their departments so obstetric care is really [52:16] Public health/community services director: really interesting in the state of Maine this is actually a topic of my doctoral project so don't like maybe go digress a little bit but I don't if you may have heard Downey's OBGYN closed and so basically it is consolidating so much of the obstetric care to Northern Light because you know St Joseph's doesn't offer that care and because of the rural obstetric care unit closures including in Waldo County is now a maternity care Desert Waldo County doesn't do it is really pushing obstetric care to people that's a significant challenge it's also an opportunity for us because if lactation is billable and people are coming to bangor to get their obstetric care for their postpartum and then can come over to our lactation clinic that is also [53:03] Susan Hawes: an opportunity for us to provide services it also is very high in liability which is why some of the practices have closed because OB is one of the highest medical liability. The three driving [53:21] Public health/community services director: reasons for obstetric care closures is one that the birth rate has actually dramatically gone down so those smaller hospitals even less the reimbursement rate because of the malpractice insurance and other costs being so high and the shortage in workforce there isn't the providers. [53:38] Susan Hawes: Are your lactation people nurses? [53:41] Public health/community services director: They are public health nurses who are IBCLC trained, which means they are an extra certification. One of them is, and one of them is CLC trained, but is about to take their test for IBCLC. Great. They're also both trained in special maternal mental health training. [54:00] Susan Hawes: That's a nice addition. It is. Yeah. [54:02] Carolyn Fish: And they're both also just wonderful. [54:05] Public health/community services director: They're both just wonderful human beings. is pretty and I get to see a lot of babies every day so there's a lot of others so I wanted to jump into the new programs so the first program being the housing stabilization position that is a position that we have had funded so this is one of these rare occasions where we're losing grant funding and I'm coming to you to ask to continue to support a position, or these two positions. So the Housing Support Navigator, since a year ago, basically in January 2025, well, December 2024, we received funding from Maine Housing to offer a housing stabilization and navigation program. This was specifically to help people who were newly housed and who are at risk for eviction. Bruce Hughes stepped into this position, and we started this program completely from scratch so I just want to throw you a couple of numbers to you so we started the program in about December of 2024 we had to establish everything from policies eligibility process including referral process and forms we worked with people to stabilize their housing meaning they were newly housed they were just getting into that housing and they were potentially at risk of eviction. We received referrals from landlords, we received referrals from case managers, we received referrals from many other entities. The key support that we were offering is that this is not case management. Case management, which is a billable service in many organizations, is about how to build treatment plans with people and see them through those treatment plans. This was strictly about how do we help to keep somebody housed? Maybe it was with some of the funding that we have for Maine Housing to help them get some basic furnishing to their apartment. Maybe it was helping them learn how to clean their apartment. Maybe it was about helping them to walk through what a budget looks like to support your housing with utilities. It was sometimes to help somebody learn how to advocate with their case manager or advocate with their landlord or how to have conversations. Many times people came to us with, I'm so far back in rent. We weren't going to, you know, get them up to speed thousands of dollars, but what we could do is facilitate a conversation between the person and the landlord on how to get on a payment plan or if there are behavioral issues. So it was that type of problem solving. It wasn't case management. Interestingly, because Bruce is just like had such so much experience he was also providing technical assistance to case managers as well saying hey with your client this is how you may want to work together in the future this is how you may want to overcome some problems the budget for this supported not only staff time but it provided funding for getting some basic apartment furniture and basic supplies pay for a little bit of back rent pay for some cleaning say for example someone just really got themselves like you know in a pickle and really didn't have the skills to get cleaning a big cleaning done we bring someone in help them get through it and then set up what cleaning what their cleaning would look like so moving helping to procure documents so just in the first year remember that we were also setting up from scratch we received 168 referrals 59 of those referrals either the person refused services or we kept on contacting and they didn't engage. So that was 59. So that left us with about 107 clients. Oh, I'm sorry, two clients where we were just unable to assist with this program because they were in mental health crisis and they were referred to crisis and to their caseworker, but they just didn't have the skills to be able to work on the things that this program Graham works on. At the end of the year, when Bruce kind of closed out a bunch of cases and moved on to his new position, 107 people remained in their housing. So that was the majority. They were in rental housing. Three people, actually, he was able to get into assisted living. That meant they were living in a rental. They were about to be evicted. Did, they actually needed a higher level of care and was able to get them into assisted living. Some people went into transitional or sober living. As of today, 91 of those people are still housed. People who became unhoused were just problems that the individual had to address that we just couldn't support. And they may have had significant behavioral issues shoes or they got too far back on their rent or whatever that looked like. In this process for the first year, Bruce worked with 15 different landlords and property owners. So this is also about landlord and property owner relationship building. So I tried my best to think of like how to quantify return on investment. So this grant was for $400,000 for two years. So the $200,000 for year one, if we look at closeout, we had 107 people when they closed out the case, that cost was about $1,869 per person. That included staff time, that included anything that they may have needed for support. If we look at the 91 that are still housed, that cost us about, from the grant, $2,200. And for those 91 that are remained host. Return on investment is really hard to quantify in this work but I thought that this was just maybe some way to put some numbers in context. [1:00:29] Susan Hawes: Councilor Beck and then Councilor Fish. [1:00:31] Michael Beck: Actually, if I can quantify it a different way, I mean, just at minimum, just look at the 91, that probably saved the region $2.5 million in services by keeping them house, at minimum, probably more. More. So that's great work. [1:00:50] Carolyn Fish: I agree. I need to have 107 remaining houses, raising the 107 and up to 15 different neighborhoods. Is this all in Bangor? [1:01:01] Public health/community services director: Yes, this is this is Bangor. I'm sorry, let me re-say that. Some of the landlords might be outside of Bangor because people were housed outside of Bangor. The people that we provided the services to were in Bangor, but then they may have, housing may have become available in Brewer and they were housed in Brewer. This is a region-landlord relationship. And what we often found is that some larger landlords owned property in many different, this now has resulted in landlords calling us and saying, I have X amount of units, do you have anybody that you can put in it? We have a person when Bruce left,. We had Rob take over. He's doing an amazing job of providing even more structure to say, okay, a person comes in. Have you gone to GA? Are you in coordinated entry? Just a little bit more sort of a pathway for the person in the program. And so what we're asking for is to continue the program. And I believe in my request that was those operating costs of 6,000 was just for staff time, because this grant funding goes until December, it would be funding this position for the rest of the fiscal year. [1:02:23] Speaker F (unidentified): That's your name. Yes, I had a question on understanding the numbers, [1:02:26] Carolyn Fish: that the numbers were down to the 91. Are they still being supported or are we resetting [1:02:30] Speaker F (unidentified): and moving on and starting a new set of? [1:02:32] Public health/community services director: So when a case was closed out,, that meant that our program did all that it could do in terms of providing support, linking them with case management, linking them with employment, getting them sort of situated and stabilized. And then they were closed out. Some people are sort of, since they built a relationship with Bruce, still checks in on them, making sure they're working with their case manager. What also seemed to happen in some of these clients was that they were in a housing unit that was just too expensive for them and so Bruce moved them into a cheaper unit and that solved the problem so with the closeout if they've met the threshold for the program they're still kind of checked in on but the 40 or so that our current person Rob is working in are relatively newer but individuals that we've worked with in encampment closures and you know there are some people that we have worked with in other ways so the 91 number those would be considered a success yes yeah right well we've learned that anything can happen at any moment but those were a success yes yeah thank you thank you are any of these repeats or are these like these are 91 individuals unique individual yes yeah other questions okay and so the other new project request that we've made is for no surprise the homeless response coordinator this is the position that bruce is in you know i shared maybe a couple months Ago sort of his key activities, how they were going to be measured. Those are still his key activities. There's a few more that have been added to that, including what Bruce has found that he is being sort of pulled into in a positive way, is around this like technical. There are some people who are experiencing homelessness right now that are really complex situations. There's, you know, the complexity of mental health. There's the complexity of really challenging histories, and Bruce is being brought in to really help troubleshoot where the barriers are and where things need to happen, whether it's somebody who needs a Maximus done, or whether it's somebody, now that Bruce has experience getting people into assisted living, the lessons learned from that. So he's not case managing, but he's being brought in to really help overcome some of those bigger barriers that are happening. And again, because of the benefit of the work that he did in housing navigation, he now has built some really good relationship with landlords who are saying I've got a place how can you house can you get people in there are challenges to that I'll describe in a separate memo that I've provided to you but so there's there's he's outside of the work that I provided to you he's being pulled into a few different other directions in the right way to think of a larger coordinated effort and particularly with situations that have been extremely challenging for caseworkers and others. [1:05:57] Carolyn Fish: The influx of, I mean, it's not just the closing of the warming shelters, but there's been many business people and private individuals in public reports, to be honest, that we've seen in the past three weeks, especially probably started before, but I think now the numbers are significant, of people here from away, other towns, other cities, other states, being somehow commuted here. So when we have limited resources, especially a valuable resource like Bruce, and we have our own community vulnerable people, how do you obviously divide his time, how does he assess, well, you know, I work for Bangor and this is taxpayer grant money for Bangor, and I realize we're a service center in there, so I know that's another complexity, but to try to see the time and resources that he's applying for our house and how we go out into the field and assess his time related to our own vulnerable compared to those busts here, how does he handle that, how does that [1:07:13] Public health/community services director: So I would not say that Bruce specifically says I'm going to work on this because it's specific to Bangor. So Bruce's position is based on having a bigger system approach, and so he is working with the warming shelters, he's working with case managers. The times that he's working, say, with an individual, those individuals are people who've been here for a really long time and nothing has really worked yet for that person. And so those are what we would often refer to as high utilizers. They're people who use a lot of the services, whether it's EMS, hospital, case management, crisis. Those are the ones. Bruce has known these people as well. I mean, remember before, as he was at Hope House, there's a lot of people that he know that have been through various parts of the system and nothing has worked for this person yet. When I talk about those sort of complex situations, those are usually the people that have been here for quite a while and are just, we've seen them try and hit every part of the system and it just hasn't worked yet for them. And one of the things that I've been working with is getting, trying to get HMIS, that data, so that we can see what our data looks like for people experiencing homelessness in Bangor. I'm working on it, 's a little challenging, we don't have direct control of being able to pull that data, but that's on a priority list for me. The last [1:08:48] Carolyn Fish: data I saw, I don't know how it was accumulated, but I think we all got that report a few months ago, contacted Conley, and it was, and it'd be curious to know, even with confidentiality, we don't need to know who they are and their names, but if that, if I remember correctly, that report, it said 38 percent were considered the Bangor. Yeah, we cut that out from me, I know we circulated. Oh, it's a part of that, I think actually Mr. Sprague shared that. Oh, okay, yeah, it was older materials from that one. Yeah, but it did have specifically, this is the population that we know in general is the Bangor area, and this is from away, and it was like 38 need. So I just think that, you know, I'm hopeful with that new committee, but I think we have to be tougher on our limitations and, you know, where the boundaries are, because, you know, we need to take care of our own or something, so many resources we don't have the data. I mean, we don't know, is this really our own community that's up to three or four or five hundred, or is this in fact only 30 or 40% are our own, and what do we do with the other 60? [1:10:04] Public health/community services director: Yeah, and that's even challenging as we learn the stories of people here in our community. Typically the way that the data is collected in the system is what's your last zip code of residence, and that could be outside of Bangor. But what we're hearing from some, not all, some of the people that we talk to is that they've come back to Bangor because this is where they grew up. They may have lived somewhere for a while, and now they've come back to Bangor because this is where they had family, this is where they had, they went to high school, and so now they're back for that reason. So even the data of like who isn't reporting their last zip code as Bangor is even tricky with a little bit of nuance. So I think as we see the data, I think we just recognize that no data is perfect, but it is important to understand like what are people's backgrounds in getting and being here in Bangalore. Two other things I just want to mention. One is one of the things that's not a new project in this budget that I talked to city manager earlier about is our community power medicine program. That grant ends in the fall. It's not clear on how far the grant funding will extend. The idea with that grant funding, though, is that by the time the grant funding ends, there will be very clear billable codes for community paramedicine. So that can be billed just like our EMS. So just as sort of putting it on your radar, there's a good possibility that I'm going to come to you at the end of the fall with all this wonderful data on how successful the pilot was that we want to add a position or two, but that would be a cost-neutral position, meaning the billing would pay for the position. So I just want to say that 's not in this, but that's probably something that would come to you in the fall. [1:11:54] Susan Hawes: You said this is going for licensing? [1:11:56] Public health/community services director: So right now we got to get our application in for licensure, and looks like that will go in next week. We have everything else ready. We've got our community paramedicine hired, we've got our medical director, we've got our vehicle on the way, all the pieces are coming together, and it's amazing the person that we hired as our first community paramedicine is someone who is experienced in community paramedicine has just really come in and taken the ball rolling. She has set up the community paramedicine programs in Stockton Springs and St. George. So we're very lucky, I think. The other thing is the memo that I put together for you all, it's not in the book, but it's even passed out separately in the packet, and I just want to review. This is nothing that I am proposing to you. This was just something that I know that counselor Leonard, you had even mentioned at one meeting, are like, what are some of the costs that could be a return on investment that isn't, you know, millions of dollars, that could potentially help support people who are experiencing homelessness and wanting to transition out of homelessness. And so what I did is I just, in talking with our staff, talking with community partners, put together this table of things that we have found to be potentially or currently really beneficial. I won't go through each and every one of them because you can read it yourself itself, but you know, a shuttle for getting people to the doctor's office, to the warming shelters, to all the services that are needed, the Community Connector you know, not running on the weekends right now and after five, and with the cost, like there's just some challenges there with getting people furnishings. We saw this with our main housing Grant, that someone who gets an apartment and goes into an empty apartment, we're setting them up for failure, really, that's very hard. We use a lot of like the restore, some other organizations that get donations, but still that can be of quite benefit. I put down on funding for warming shelters. Main housing is going to be putting out grant money for warming shelters again this year. We will work with our warming shelters to apply, but that is not guaranteed Monday guaranteed money, so just putting that in as we did last year. I increased that amount because two of the things that we've learned is one, heating oil goes up, and two, is that having a warming shelter that is completely dependent upon volunteers is very risky, so being able to pay some staff. I threw in there a day space. We'll see what comes out of the rfp process that we'll get out there. I'm going to jump to the second to last one, is the sprinklers. You may want to be like, what does sprinklers have to do with housing? And I have learned this, sprinklers have a lot to do, and is one of our biggest barriers at the moment. One of the things that bruce hughes found was potentially with high success is shared housing, closing three people who don't know each other but who could live together on three separate leases, meaning if someone's behaving badly That one person has to go and a new lease can be done, not all three people. You can only do so many of that in a place before it needs sprinklers. So we've had landlords who would say, we are down for this shared living, but then we can't do it because they don't have sprinkler systems. That is the barrier to being able to house a lot of people. [1:15:34] Carolyn Fish: I think it's for three. I think if you could, yes, you would know. [1:15:40] Michael Beck: this may get about my pay grade here but is it a possibility because we have a legislative committee i know that for like silver living homes they have an exemption for sprinklers is there a way for us to advocate for the situation to say get some kind of additional [1:15:56] Public health/community services director: exemption or weigh that threshold? It's possible. I do. I mean, this is a tricky situation, right? Because it's like, who wants to be the person to not advocate for sprinklers, right? It's like, you have to like walk the fine line, but there is a precedent of sober living being able to be exempt. So for the same, I mean, this is a significant barrier and it's not what we've been learning is it's not just the upfront cost of getting the sprinklers in, but then the maintenance and all of that. So I think going to policy and seeing where there might be some wiggle room would be a really helpful thing to do. It is a huge barrier. That is Bruce Hughes's biggest pain, right? He's like, do you know how many people I could house? Yeah. The last thing that's on there for the 600,000, just to throw this out there, is there is a landlord, and I don't, I know enough details to be dangerous. There is a landlord who has a large housing unit, I guess it used to be a nursing home, who wants to use it for better use and has been working with Together Place. Bruce is providing some technical advice in terms of this is what you might want to consider. And so Together Place has really been trying to see if there's a potential for them to be able to leverage some funding to get this 50-unit building. They're talking to other people, other policymakers, but just putting this down here as a potential project that the city may want to become involved in at some point in a more formal way. [1:17:42] Joseph Leonard: I'm sorry. I had a few questions on this. One was, can you, I don't know what a housing simulation space means. [1:17:51] Public health/community services director: Can you just read that for me? So thank you. This was kind of like, we think a pretty creative idea is in this 50 unit building. Is one of the things that we've learned in working with people. So Bruce is building this tenant readiness program, right? So it's how to get people ready for housing. What we've seen is that people who've been living outside for a long time, they have skills to live outside, which are very different skills than living inside, and people are getting evicted because that transition is really hard. So this tenant readiness program will be bringing people together a couple of times a week to talk to things, develop plans. But we thought, wouldn't it be cool if we set up a simulation of an apartment so that people can actually practice those skills? And then the idea is that if they get through these skills, right, and they show that they're really increasing the skill, that they would be like priority for the housing stabilization program, right? They would go to the top of the referral list to our housing stabilization to get that support. So to really look at like the progression of how to support somebody. So the simulation idea is like in this space, could we set up a simulated apartment department so people could literally practice those skills. Okay, no, thank you for that [1:19:11] Joseph Leonard: clarification. Did you say where this building was that they were going to ask [1:19:17] Public health/community services director: me that question because it's such an obvious question to ask me I'll have to get back to you on it 's somewhere in the vicinity of downtown but I want to get you back to that okay thank [1:19:28] Joseph Leonard: Thank you. Also, I know Together Place was mentioned, but I know they have a few different subsidiaries underneath them. Who would, in this hypothetical, manage this 50-unit housing? [1:19:48] Public health/community services director: That's still all up for discussion. You're right. There's the Together Place, and then there's the Friends of Together Place. It's the Together Place that has been exploring what that could potentially look like for their organization. But this would be, and again, this is all in sort of formation brainstorming stage. They've taken the leadership to have the conversations with the landlord. So I don't know what these details would look like, but this would be a place that they're envisioning would take vouchers, would take self-pay, would have the ongoing support of like a housing first model. [1:20:22] Joseph Leonard: Okay. Because one of my thoughts I had on this was, this is a huge project for one organization. And my thought was, even if they have the experience and the drive for all this and the staffing, it's still a lot to take on. Is the idea behind this project to involve multiple different nonprofits and bodies to actually tag-team this? [1:20:50] Public health/community services director: Yeah, this is about this is about a collaborative model. And what I would recommend is maybe at some point having Joe Hartel from Together Place come and talk about the vision and the details. This has just been something that I put on here just for you to understand, like, this is kind of like percolating out there right now. And I wouldn't be surprised if Joe will come in and talk, want to talk to you more about it. [1:21:10] Joseph Leonard: Sure. And I just have one last thing. It's not a question, it's just a statement. I think we should think ahead on heating oil. As far as I know, New England gets all of its heating oil imported, if I'm correct on that. I know it's a very small number if we do get anything from inside but there is going to be a shortage of heating oil all across the globe just being honest and I do think New England's going to potentially hit a snag there. I think if we're in the mindset of that to coordinate with the state to see if there's some way to secure heating oil for not just for us but just for all other municipalities in the state I do fear that we're going to have a struggle with the cost if not the supply itself. [1:22:04] Public health/community services director: One of the things just thank you I think a couple of weeks ago like there was an order around accepting the funds for our heating assistance just let you know what we've done is we've now created a flyer about that program and sent it to the Eastern Agency on Aging to have it at their they have a some conference or annual meeting coming up so we are looking to promote that program more because we have some funds in there that we could be using. [1:22:28] Joseph Leonard: Thank you so much. [1:22:29] Susan Hawes: Okay, Council Carson, Council Flun, and Council Fish. [1:22:32] Daniel Carson: Would it be accurate to suggest in that housing simulation space, what I'm kind of hearing would be that is a creative way to assess pieces of risk that somebody would lose their housing. Like, would it be accurate to suggest that is a way to test and make more effective referrals yes thank you. [1:23:00] Public health/community services director: Particularly my [1:23:03] Speaker F (unidentified): question was just is the facility that you're talking about is it that one that's either on Tlesky or Valley Avenue and it used to be an [1:23:11] Carolyn Fish: Assisted living, I know that idea is on that one, but I think that's, it's much smaller, it's just 15, I think. [1:23:21] Public health/community services director: I'll get the address and share that. [1:23:25] Carolyn Fish: So again, I know it's just in Brancenau. Maybe it's a little outside the campus, but so is the idea to help those transition and also provide permanent housing for those that transition and then give them the availability of housing? [1:23:43] Public health/community services director: Yeah, I think, and I don't want to speak for the vision that they're developing, but in the conversations that I have heard or touched base with Bruce about is that this would be a type of entity that would have different, I wouldn't say levels, but sort of different offerings depending upon where somebody is at. Whether it's someone who just needs a transitional space because they have a voucher and they are going to be ready for their own rental unit somewhere, or it's somebody who might need more longer term. [1:24:14] Carolyn Fish: And I'm not speaking out of turn here, but I know Dignity First, they had housing first and they just got $2 million. So I just don't know if that might be, and they're looking for land and something, so [1:24:27] Public health/community services director: I don't know. I know that Joe's been having a lot of conversations with a whole bunch of people, but yeah. [1:24:33] Carolyn Fish: And lastly, off this subject, but I know we're talking about diseases potentially by mosquitoes now that are more disease outborn, but you know Bangalore Maine in general we have a lot of blind disease from the ticks and we and you know I haven't heard you know us as a community help have any type of grant or funding or program in Lyme disease is already here it's proven and it's pretty significantly impacting the health of many of our residents, so has there [1:25:10] Public health/community services director: been anything in the radar, is there anything? Yeah, so what we've started to do is I believe it is either last Sunday or this Sunday we start to put out some social media about ticks. There's, I mean, it's definitely about personal protection. There's not a lot that we can do as a municipality unless we want to think about, you know, treating certain parts of and that's a pest management conversation, but we've been trying to get the educational message out. We started with our social media, the other thing that in our social media that we encourage people are there are two resources, one that you can send your tick to get identified, and then another resource that you have to pay for, but you could get your tick tested. And so we're trying to get more educational. As soon as the first warm weather came up, we got to get something on our social media. Outside of education, there's not a lot there for us to be able to offer. There was a time that we had gotten a small grant that we could buy those tick spoons. Those grant funds went away. We're trying to figure out is there another way that we can, but outside of education there's a not a lot that we're able to offer around Lyme disease because I know once you know [1:26:16] Carolyn Fish: I was thinking about, you know, going to the doctor and trying to get an antibiotic for those. Yeah, it's very important that first few days. So I was wondering if we had any grant or anything to be able to help medically with that. We don't have any funding to [1:26:32] Public health/community services director: be able to support that at this time, but that's a good idea. So let me think about [1:26:35] Susan Hawes: about that? Is there any funds available from the drug companies that the prescriptions that are given to people that are diagnosed with one, they may have some money that could give you some of the spoons and other things. That's a good point. It's better spent than some of the packaging. [1:26:59] Public health/community services director: What they spend for one commercial, they could buy a whole lot of students. [1:27:06] Susan Hawes: Was that everybody that had their hand up? So any other questions? [1:27:12] Public health/community services director: So what I have is my take home is getting the list of grants and funding that we have, get the address for the location, I think. And we're going to dig in a little deeper, see where we could get some possible funding around more like disease that spoons and some other educational. Absolutely as [1:27:39] Carolyn Fish: I have nothing. Nothing. [1:27:41] Speaker F (unidentified): We have nothing. This is the last meeting. [1:27:48] Susan Hawes: Don't call out. She's not coming on Saturday. She's already made that move. [1:27:53] Carolyn Fish: We're going to miss you. [1:27:58] Daniel Carson: We'll call you on Saturday. [1:28:00] Susan Hawes: Oh, all right, are we adjourned? We are adjourned. Thank you all.