The Fall River Commission on Disability convened on Wednesday, September 14th, 2022. The meeting commenced with a roll call, followed by a public input session where no input was received. The minutes from the August 17th, 2022 meeting were unanimously approved. A significant portion of the meeting was dedicated to the election of officers for the 2022-2023 term, resulting in the unanimous re-election of Dennis Paul Sally as Chair, Debbie Pacheco as Vice Chair, and Lisa Silva as Secretary. Lieutenant Nicholas Silva from the Fall River Fire Department's EMS division presented the 'CARE Fall River' program, a free initiative offering in-home safety assessments and resource referrals for seniors aged 65 and older, and individuals with disabilities of any age, without income eligibility requirements. The program, which began in April, has already served between 40 and 50 people. Discussions included potential partnerships with the Community Development office and the Fall River Regional Transit Authority (FRTA). During work group updates, Commissioner Tammy provided an update on the ADA grant application from the Massachusetts Office on Disability (MOD), noting delays from Stark Architects in providing cost estimates for improvements at the Veteran Center on Pine Street, with a September 30th application deadline looming. The commission also discussed the availability and benefits of virtual Community Access Monitor (CAM) training and explored the possibility of organizing a dedicated training session for Fall River city personnel. The next meeting date was changed to October 5th, 2022, and information was shared about an upcoming presentation by Eric Joseph of the Audible Local Ledger. The meeting concluded with a unanimous vote to adjourn.
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this is a meeting of the fall river commission on disability for wednesday september 14th 2022 pursuant to the open meeting law any person may make an audio or video recording of this public meeting or may transmit the meeting through any medium attendees are therefore advised that such recordings or transmissions are being made whether perceived or unperceived by those present and are deemed acknowledged and
0:42permissible roll call sandy bear therapy chairman dennis paul sally present vice chairwoman debbie pacheco president commissioner lisa silva president commissioner dan roblodge pleasure commissioner ann o'neil souza present okay next item is public input is there any public input is there any public input and i'll ask one more time is there any public input alright the next item on our agenda is
1:38approval for the minutes of the meeting of august 17th 2022 well promotion will approve the minutes of august 17 2022 of the form of the disability commission exactly second thank you um are there any discussion okay roll call vote chairman dennis paul sally yes vice chairwoman debbie pacheco yes commissioner lisa silva yes commissioner dan roblard yes commissioner ann o'neil souza yes okay the next item is the only
2:22item to vote on at today's meeting with the exception of a adjournment um and that is the election of officers um we will be electing chair vice chair and secretary i'm going to turn the meeting over to our vice chair debbie pichiko for the election of the chair
2:56yes commissioner i i'd like to make a motion to uh re-nominate dennis caselli as chair of the forward the disability commission for the year 2022-2023 i'll second that motion okay any discussion
3:24champions paul sally yes vice chairwoman debbie pacheco yeah commissioner lisa silva a big yes oh yes commissioner ann o'neil souza absolutely yes thank you madam vice chair um wow and thank you my colleagues on the commission for your support i appreciate this very very much the next um office to be considered is for the position of vice chair mr chairman yes commissioner i'd like to i'd like to
4:11re-nominate debbie pacheco as the vice chair of the four of the disability commission for the year 2022 and 2023 i'll second that motion okay um yep go ahead go ahead uh what am i doing here yes no no no no i'm sorry commissioner lisa silva yeah commissioner dan roblard yes commissioner o'neil souza yes congratulations madame vice chair even though my head is in a fog no worries thank you thank you everyone
5:02um appreciate everyone's support we can't do it without all of you so and the next is for the position of secretary mr chairman yes commissioner i'd like to renominate lisa silva for the position of secretary for the year 2022 and 2023 in the floor of the disability commission i'll second that motion okay roll call vote chairman dennis paul sally yes vice chairwoman debbie pacheco
5:47a big congratulations to lisa silva
6:05well since my colleagues unanimously voted for me i will say yes to myself too nice try congratulations lisa oh goodness thank you um the next item is our guest presenter um just a little very very very short introductory background um um i i heard about this this individual and this program specifically on a program done by our esteemed colleague and o'neill souza every tuesday afternoon at 3 p.m on
6:46wsar she does a show called the sixth floor report which i highly recommend listening to um is that for me um and and um um the guests were was a captain john morin from the fall river fire department's emu division um who discussed a program called care care fall river which is designed for seniors and individuals with disabilities i'm going to turn the floor over to um lieutenant nick silva i hope i'm correct
7:27lieutenant nick silva to give us more information about the program guys thank you so much for having me it's an honor to be here and to be able to discuss this program so i am lieutenant nicholas silva i'm from the far right of a fire department ems division um i created this program designed the program and i oversee it from the office here we started in i would say uh april um and we've had
8:00some really good success with the program so the program is fall river cares which is an acronym it actually stands for community assistant research uh resource education services and what we provide is free we do in-home assessments to clients 65 or older or people with disabilities of any age and what we do is a home safety check we check the entire house for safety concerns everything from loose floorboards to
8:30loose railings we provide all our clients with information on healthy eating for healthy stretches and healthy activities for seniors to do uh we do a medication reconciliation and at the end of the program we make recommendations for the clients to try to keep them healthy happy and safe in their homes and then anybody that needs assistance with anything we work with our current partners including
9:00bristol elders council of aging the veterans association and numerous others to try to get them uh the help that they may need if we discovered any uh lacking resources so we have we've had some really great luck with it uh they seem to be really receptive and really grateful for the free program anybody have any questions the one question that i have is is there um an income eligibility uh
9:37component to this is do you have to be of a certain um certain means to take advantage or could this apply to any senior individual with disability in the city no this applies to absolutely anybody and everybody uh regardless of their of their income um obviously there is a unfortunate you know if if a family does have money they have a better ability to take the recommendations you know
10:06some of the recommendations that we make are install shower railings install bath seats uh which you know assist in and out of the tub some families have the money to appropriate that kind of stuff and some families don't so we try to spend some of our time finding community resources that would help pay for that kind of stuff to get them installed for them but to contact you um for this program um
10:35uh it it doesn't require did you qualify in any way except for the fact that you're a senior in an individual with disabilities would that be correct that would be hundred percent correct sir okay mr chen go ahead thank you uh lieutenant thank you uh i'm intrigued by this first question is uh what gave you the idea to start this my uncle years ago was the uh ems director in fall river for a long time so
11:08i've always had a special place in my uh in my uh hut so to speak three ms well i i appreciate his service and he's obviously done a great job because this department is thriving currently he retired long ago when the center passed away but thank you he was behind no problem so i i actually based the program on uh stuff that i did for for my grandparents um they you know they're they're
11:41starting to get up there in years and basically i went to their house and and tried to say hey you know uh this house isn't safe for you anymore we should we should try to change a couple of things uh you know for some reason that they're older their portuguese and they're stubborn so they didn't want to listen very much but it is honestly it's it's simple little things like you know for some reason
12:06they wanted to keep all their really nice china uh on the counter and leave all their dinner plates that they normally use in the top shelf which they had to get on a chair to get and you know that didn't make any sense to me so we basically moved the the the stuff that they used all the time to the countertop and move the nice stuff out of reach where you know it's still
12:26there if they wanted it to show it off but uh the stuff that they use every day is now on the countertops at an easy accessible um range i went through and made sure all the smoke detectors were in in good working order uh you know gave them information on what they should and shouldn't be eating once they get up there in age um you know 75 at this point uh so really the
12:47program was based on what i did for my family so i know for a fact that when my guys or myself walk into a home they're getting the same care that i would give my family because that's how i base the program yeah how many uh how many um how many uh assistants do you have in the fire department or in the ems working on this program with you so we have uh four full-time paramedics
13:14dedicated to this program uh plus i have myself and captain warren oversees the program and we fill in when they get overwhelmed or you know if they decide they want to take a day off or whatnot so we fill in sporadically for them and uh i think this is great uh just a point of information from the general public while your your particular part of it is free uh services for bristol elders and other such agencies
13:46do have income guideline requirements and things like that so people should be aware of that uh i believe uh if you're gonna get services through other agencies often there are income guidelines that you must meet in order to be eligible for certain services massachusetts also has a great personal care attendant program in the state of massachusetts which gives eligible seniors and people with disabilities
14:23the ability to basically run their whole care program on their own you can have a case manager and stuff like that if you want but it's one of the great programs in massachusetts bristol elders does a fine job and other agencies um i wanted to say one more thing and i can't remember where i was going uh i guess that's it for now great job lieutenant thank you very much thank you
14:59i like the program because it's another way of keeping people with disabilities and seniors in their own homes and independent and that's that's that's a very good outcome uh very quickly mr chairman i just thought of what i wanted to say uh lieutenant have you ever considered partnering uh with uh michael dion um and i'm drawing a freeze as to uh in the community development office for for things like uh
15:29modernization uh repairs uh to bathrooms and other such areas in the house or uh yeah they wouldn't apply them on in housing um minimum housing but uh michael dion may be able to give some assistance there with community development yeah i i haven't thought of that yet but that's actually a fantastic idea we've been doing a lot of work to try to make good connections with our community
16:00partners um you know greater way fall river and greater new bedford area um united way with them too so we've just been trying to make contact and and try to partner with all these programs any program really that could potentially provide uh services to any of our clients uh you know our always the more the merrier how many quiet um i hate that word so i'm gonna refrain how many people i'm
16:30client sounds too institutional to me how many people are you currently serving uh so right now i think that we have provided a home inspection and a safety inspection for i want to say about 40 to 50 people so far which is really great considering this is the first year that we're doing it i i i never want any names i never want to break any disclosures anything like that do you know of the people
17:00that you've gone in to see do you know how many of them have followed up and gotten services with one of the community partners i don't have that exact number uh so generally what happens is once we do an inspection recommendations we try to give them the numbers of you know whatever community partner we think is going to best help them whether it be personal elders council of aging uh veterans association
17:27whatever it may be and then we give them our number again and tell them listen we'd love to do a follow-up but we leave it all based on you know each individual person if they'd like to follow up with us we love it we go back we do another assessment for free uh you know see if they did make the changes um and we have done a few of those i'd say probably
17:44seven or eight and they have taken the recommendations they did follow up and they did get some some of the services provided by our partners great if you get any questions uh regarding transportation availability refer them to frta as they run fixed routes uh bus services in the city of fall river as well as paratransit demand response if you're looking for more information i can get that to you
18:12offline through email or meet up with you somewhere to get you a couple packets yeah that would be absolutely fantastic okay thank you very much for your service great job thank you mr chairman i yield anyone else have any questions none at this time thank you okay uh lieutenant thank you so much for for your time and as you know these meetings are recorded so this will be on our website as well
18:45as on frg tv so this is a good way to get the one fantastic i greatly appreciate the opportunity guys thank you so much thank you thank you okay the next item is work group updates is there anything from the ada update i don't have any of this stuff i don't have any at not in this time uh policies vice chair none at this time um we just received today the budget
19:20report for august under finance so you can check with the budget report and outreach i have just one small matter to bring to the commission it's nothing um it's nothing outlandish or anything but we are actually getting feedback from um agencies and organizations who go on our website and have asked us to post links to their website i just got one today and what i like to do before we go ahead
20:03and post them is vet them so what i will do is i will send you we and we did this with the learning disability um booklets publication that was um that had come to us to post their resources on our website what i will do is i will send the link and if you guy if if my colleagues can get back to me and tell me that this is okay and give me some
20:31feedback then i can i can go back to the gentleman and say yes we'll be happy to post a link to your website so this is this is good um because people are going on and checking it out and checking out the resources and that's um that's one of the things i think we were really hoping that would come out of our of our website so anything else anything lisa
21:06okay um is there any old business okay hearing none new business there's going to be a change in our next meeting um our clerk is going to be getting a well-deserved vacation so we're going to be meeting on october 5th instead of the 12th um same time three o'clock but but just a note under from the bottom of the agendas that we'll be meeting at at 3 p.m on october 5th instead of on october 12th
21:52and also next monday at the flint senior center at 10 30 in the morning eric joseph the executive director of the audible local ledger is going to be speaking at the flint senior center about the audible local ledger and he'll have some radios and echo dots to give out so that people can access the radio reading service so if anyone has some free time or would like to come down and and
22:26hear him out he'll be at the flint senior center next monday morning at 10 30.
22:33is there any other new business to come before this commission none at this time okay do i hear a motion to adjourn it's tammy oh retract that adjournment for a minute okay we're going to retract the enjoyment for a minute um um because i was trying to get in for the ada update and i wasn't pushing my button fast enough and then you kept going so i thought you would just like to know
23:11and update on what's going on on my end yep yep so you know we're still trying to come up with something for the um the ada grant you know put out by mod um i did get a list of concerns from our veteran center on pine street so i was attempting to take their list and turn it into something that could be feasible for the grant and i contacted stark architects because
23:53they're the ones that had handled the council chambers and the hearing room upgrades when we did that so they went over and took a look at what was going on i gave them our transition plan list for that location and they were supposed to get back to me with you know a dollar figure that we could put on the grant uh like by the end of august and it's been like pulling keys to get them to
24:29um finish what they started and give me something concrete so i'm still after them to do that which i don't like doing i would have rather have just gone to somebody else but it is what it is i guess at this point and they assure me that they can come up with something for our grant to insert um before the deadline my concern right now is because our grant writer
24:58is on vacation which she did notify us about um but hopefully we'll get something in uh for this grant i'm trying really hard with everything going on over here uh as far as the polling places go i think that what has to be done like as far as signage and stuff i can do that in house with our with our money i i would think that the pine street location may come up with a
25:30with a more a larger dollar amount to be able to ask for even though i don't think it's going to be significant but it will be something so with that being said uh we haven't really moved forward too much on that i'm still plugging away and hopefully we'll come up with something uh to get that in in time i think there's a december deadline for the grant submission is that there's
26:04a september 30th deadline oh okay you submit the application and probably december 30th is when they will announce more i think yeah yeah i bet because i remember last time we didn't get the funding until just like at the beginning of the year and then it had to be used by june 30th so it's a very quick turnaround and which also concerns me with this architect because you know they would be on the
26:38on the hook to get out all the documents in place very quickly and they're kind of dragging their feet well here um i just want to tell the rest of my colleagues on the commission the community access monitor training has gone virtual um i i attended yesterday the actin commission on disability um day one of the training was yesterday and it's on zoom um you get the same kinds of materials the slides the notes um
27:12the photos and stuff like that that jeff dugan presents in his presentation on zoom and you can ask questions and everything but if when i get notices now that these are virtual i'll make sure that i pass these around and if people have an opportunity and i know with jobs and everything that's you know that's not possible this is uh it's not two days in a row this particular training was part one
27:40was yesterday and part two was next wednesday for some reason that's the way they're doing it but i just want to say that i highly recommend these um many of i know that on the commission um several of us have already gone through it but um i i'm i'm i always circulate these to um to you tammy and to the facilities maintenance department because i think this is a really good way to
28:11and plus they offer continuing ed training this is a good way to find out you know how things should look and grab bars and parking spaces and he goes over the legs with a fine toothed comb and presents that in training so this is a really good training and it's even better now because it doesn't cost anything it's it's you can go for your home or from your office but um so
28:37i actually thought i signed up for it and when i went to sign in evidently i never i had everything filled out on my desk which made me think that i had sent it in but um when i wasn't getting a link i i emailed them and they said yeah you didn't sign up but we'll notify you of all the future ones now that we have your email address so i am
29:04linkedin and i was excited to sit and join in yesterday the only reason why i'm doing it again is in case there are updates because sometimes like in the the state access building code updates and so on there might be some updates but otherwise um this is this is really i think um uh this is really really one of the best and easy ways of getting some good training so i agree
29:35this convention has sponsored two of them over the years yes that's right the most recent was 2018.
29:43um and now it's even easier i mean i can talk to our work group um maybe sometime next year and it's all it's all virtual now too so i can talk to our work group and see if we can we can put it together for the city of fall river but um since i do send out notices about these i i if i if i do do that i don't want to
30:11stick my neck out and get thrown under the bus so i would if we do something for fall river i i do i hope we get a turnout from fall river and i think i i'd like to i'd like to do them i i know you can't mandate this but i'd like to see one almost exclusively for building inspectors and those type of people within city hall that would would be working with this stuff you know
30:44so um between the work group and tammy why don't we see if there's an interest in in doing a cam training for just fall river personnel um because it's not just building departments because they go over the ada law too so it's oh absolutely i just use that as an example but we'll see if there's a we'll we'll work as a work group to see if there's an interest in doing it just for fall river
31:10this would be great for the school department as well that's there right else tammy uh no i'm glad i could insert myself thank you so much thanks for not giving up all right okay is there any other new business do i hear a motion to adjourn second second okay roll call chairman dennis paul sally yes vice chairwoman debbie pacheco yes commissioner lisa silva yes commissioner dan robard yes
31:52commissioner ann o'neil souza okay we're adjourned thank you