03/19/2012 Meeting Minutes - Laserfiche WebLink

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Minutes of the Regular Meeting of Council Monday, March 19, 2012 Page 2 from South Euclid, Lyndhurst and Highland Heights. A program was started whereby older residents within those cities could have access to a nutritious meal every day during weekda.ys and programming so that they could remain socially active as they aged. That was the original goal of the program. That grew over the years. When those seniors first came together, they had the support of their Mayors. Those Mayors entered into a Council of Government and signed an Agreement in 1978 establishing the Tri-C Consortium on Aging. Several years later, the four adults decided they wanted to be able to use transportation to be able to get to and from the lunch program they developed. In order to do that, they needed to apply for 501(c)(3) status to obtain secure funding for a van from the Ohio Department of Transportation. That was their next step. Over the years, the Agency has grown and expanded to serve many residents with many different programs and services. The original three cities were the only three cities until last year when the Mayfield Heights Office on Aging Director retired at which point Mayfield Heights approached our agency and asked about becoming a member which they did this year which necessitated a name change. Now our name is the Community Partnership on Aging. We have an identity issue in that we can be thought of as an Office on Aging since we are supported by the municipalities that we serve. We also can be thought of as a Senior Center. Primarily, we think of ourselves as a Social Service Agency. Our mission is to support older adults in the community by helping them to be able to maintain their independence, improve their quality of life and insure that they have opportunities for personal growth activity and civic engagement. We are committed to addressing those that are frail or vulnerable as well and insure that people with barriers such as cognitive barriers, physical, financia.l or social, can access programs and services needed whether they aze through our agency or not. One of the things we do well in each of the communities we serve is tailoring a program around the residents of that commtuuty we serve that meet the needs of the community. Our approach works for a number of reasons. Most of all, it's because we are able to make use of the resources of each municipality. We don't own a building. We pay a small rent to some of the cities we serve. We use space where we have offces. Primarily, we pay nothing in overhead expenses but deliver services, so all of our funding is to deliver services. We do so efficiently. We have been in business long enough that it is a very efficient organization. There are 19 employees who carry out all of our programs and services. We have over 200 volunteers that provided about 8,000 hours of volunteer service last year. We also have been able to develop relationships in the communities that we served in faith based and civic organizations and businesses to help support our mission. I believe the proposal covered our funding formula, but we do use a formula for funding. Again our budget is primarily supported through the cities that we serve. We get some funding through Title III of the Older Americans Act. I believe that's it. I would like to be able to answer questions that anyone may have. Mr. Marquardt asked, what kind of detail reporting do we get on utilization as far as how many people, which people and how frequent they use the various services?