1991 02 15
.^
CHANHASSEN SENIOR COMMISSION
REGULAR MEETING
FEBRUARY 15,1991
Chairman Montgomery called the meeting to order
MEMBERS PRSENT: Emma st~ John, Selda Heinlein,
Barbara Montgomery and Sherol Howard
MEMBERS ABSENT: Bernice Billison
STAFF PRESENT: Paul Krauss, Planning Director and Sharmin
Planner I
APPROVAL OF MINUTES: Emma st. John moved, Betty Bragg seconded to approve
the Minutes of the Senior Commission meeting dated January 18, 1991'with a
correction on page 1 by Jane Kubitz that Emma st. John nominated Barbara
Montgomery as Chairman. All voted in favor and the motion carried.
PUBLIC PRESENTATION:
OPEN DISCUSSION.
Montgomery: This morning we were hoping to
from the Chanhassen Senior Citizen Club but apparently
anyone. Are you with the Club?
Zetta DemorYett: I'm not officially with the Club
e.,
Montgomery: r see. Alright. Well in that case r think what
is to go over some of the information that was given to Selda
meeting and perhaps. Perhaps you could give us your name and
you'd have something to say too.
we could do
at the last
I'm sure
Zetta Demorrett: Well r understood there was supposed to be some
decision making ?r something relative to grant money.
Krauss: I'm not sure how that got in. The City, we received some Federal
money and there's very limited categories of things that can be used t6 pay
for. It can pay for building. It can pay for kitchens. It can pay for
handicap accessibility. Things like that and we do have an allocation each
, " -, : - - " " - ( - - ": - ',':
year that has been, well last year but we have another one coming 1n a
month.
Zetta Demorrett: Is there any...spending?
,
Krauss: Yeah, if you don't use it by, well this existing
use this up by December, we lose it.
Zetta Demorrett: That announcement was made at. this, it was a
situation over at the Elementary School on Thursday afternoon.
Montgomery: Did you mentione that?
.e. St. John: I wasn't there last Thursday.
Zetta Demmorett: Well maybe it wasn't last Thursday. ..something about part
of Chanhassen is in Hennepin County and they were getting some grant money
that was supposed. to be for us and I don't know.
Senior Commission Meeting
February 15, 1991 - Page 2
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St.. John: I mentioned'that the meeti ngthat I was there but I thought that
wasn't last week.
Zetta Demmorett: I know but it was mentioned again this last week...and
the meeting was going to be at 9:30 this morning. So that's why t'm here.
Montgomery: And what is your name again please:
~.
Zetta Demmorett: Zetta Demmorett.
Montgomery: Thanks very much. Perhaps, this is Paul Krauss who is the
City Planner and perhaps he might have more response.
Krauss: 'Well there have been no specific proposals made. In fact I have a
couple proposals to make to the group today on a few things to spend some
of that money but I guess I'm concerned if the Chanhassen Senior Group has
some thoughts that they have an allocation of money that they need to
spend. It hasn't been allocated to anybody and basically it's federal
dollars that comes through the City. But if there's any kind of proposals
that they have for spending that might qualify, we'd love to hear it.
Zetta Demmorett: I haven't heard anything. As I say again I'm so new
I don't know but the one thing that touched me was the idea that it had to
do with crossing the line because Hennepin County would go to Hennepin
County because part of Chanhassen was in Hennepin County. '
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Krauss:
get the
through
County.
And it's fortunate in this case that it is because that's how we
money regularly. We get about $35,000.00 every year. We operate
Hennepin County but it doesn't mean it has to be spent in Hennepin
Zetta Demmorett: Well that's what I was told and that was getting...
Krau~s: No, because then we could only sp~nd it over behind the printing
factory over there.
Zetta Demmorett: But I mean it would go to Hennepin County anyway.
*
Krauss: No. No, no. No. It's federal money and the way they give it
out, you can get it, it's a complicated theorem and I don't understand it
all but basically we get a steady allocation applying through Hennepin
County. If we applied on our own as a Carver County city, every year we'd
have to go through a competition to get the money and probably wouldn't.
So this way we have a steady source.
Zetta Demmorett: Are you talking about State now?
Krauss: This is Federal dollars.
-~
-.'
Zetta Demmorett: oh Federal.
Krauss: And Hennepin County just operates as the bureaucracy to pass it
through.
.. Senior Commission Meeti ng
February 15, 1991 - Page 3
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Bragg: I have a sugg~stion for the future for spending some money. Is
Chanhassen getting a grocery this year?
Krauss: We hope so. We hoped to get it last year too.
Bragg: Well that's what I mean. It's been delayed but again, in visting
Anchorage a couple years ago I saw somethi~g that impressed me. My sister-
in-law was bedridden and in a wheelchair and at their large grocery, they
had, well it's similar to, I cut this out which is called the Lark and it
was with their carts and disabled people could get around the grocery store
and pick out their own things.
Montgomery: I wonder if, I think that sounds like a great
suggestion but I wonder if we could stick to the Senior...
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Bragg: They just got off on spending.
Montgomery: Yeah, right. Thanks for the suggestion. I'm really glad that
you asked that question because I think a lot of people do have a lot of
confusion and it's hard to know about something because it does come from
so many different sour.ces with so many di fferent condi tions attached. I
think it's really important...but. I think what we were hoping for today was
that there would be some response from the Senior Club in Chanhassen so
that we could ~especific about what it is they really would like to have
and do something in trying to help them. I think first maybe what we need
to do too is just to explain why we're here and what our function is.
.First the city of Chanhassen and the City Council decided that they needed
some more information about the growing senior population which will be
almost 2,000 within a few years ang this is something to really think
about. That's the population over 55. And so because they were concerned,
they had a study done by a task force and by a research person who was
hired by the Council. As a result of that, the Council decided that they
would llke to appoint another Commission like the Park and Rec or like
the Planning Commission that would deal with all of these issues and not
just recreation but in the areas of transportation and informational
assistance and independent living in the home, social and recreational
programs and senior centers and senior housing and whatever issues seemed
to be imp'ortant for any of the senior population. So we're here as an
advisory body. We don't make the decisions but we're here to help
facilitate some action. Something for the needs of this population so I'm
really glad you came and... We'd be very happy to have you come any time.
and either bring us information or ask us or whatever. We hope everybody
will do that. We'd like to get that message out. We do have some
information that came from the Senior Club and perhaps I can read from this
list. One of the things that they said was give us back our M5C.
Bragg: MTC.
.
Montgomery: Oh, okay. And I understand fr6m Sharmin that this
discontinued. This line when they changed bus service. I don't know what
we can do about that. Apparently it was the route from here to Excelsior
that is the one that they missed. So let's talk about that. See if we can
. come up wi th anythi n9.
It
AI-Jaff: It's a high subsidy system and when
this area they decided to cancel that line.
Senior Commission Meeting
February 15, 1991 - Page 4
Montgomery: We do have the dial-a-ride service now that goes to the Senior
Center but we don't have.
Howard: The open line to
St. John: Yes it does.
Montgomery: Yeah, now it goes to the Senior Center.
Krauss: It will go to the Center. It won't go to TCF bank or
like that.
Montgomery: No, but it will go straight to the Center. So at least that
was one improvement that anyone was to call dial-a-ride and get a ride.to
the Center at any time.
Howard: 75 cents they charge each way.
Montgomery: Yes.
Krauss: It didn't used to. We worked with them to get that put in
Howard: Was that within the last 6 weeks?
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Krauss:
Well it was the last 6 months I think.
Howard: Oh, because I called them and they said they would not go into
Excelsior.
AI-Jaff: To South Shore if you ask to be taken to the South Shore Center.
They.will take you.
Krauss: And if they don't, callSharmln
Montgomery: But you do have to identify South Shore Center as your
destination you're taking. We'll try to publicize that some more. The
next item down here, we want our group just as it is. We do not want
regimented association. Well, I don't think we have that in mind. We
think it's fine they have their group and we're all for it and we'd like
do anything we can to help them out. They would like our own senior
citizen place to play cards. Also, our own kitchen. Where they are. now,
in the school of course, they don't have access. There are strict rules
about that sort of thing and we would like to find some space. We'd like
that too. And we are looking. I think that was one thing that, we may
have some information but I'll tell you we're hunting. We took a trip out
to Buffalo just last week taking a look at that senior center out there and
we certainly are trying to find something we could use and we would
appreciate'any information. If anybody has any bright ideas, we'd love to
hear about that too.
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Bragg: That center in Buffalo is very nice and it took them 10 years to
get to the point of having it and 3 years of intensive work before they
Senior Commission Meeting
February 15, 1991 ~ Page 5
St. John: And it was money put away during these years.
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actually accomplished their goal~
overni~ht. So keep trying.
So that let's you know
8ragg: Seed money.
st. John: Seed money set aside for that.
Krauss: Well we do have some information on some of that. I don't know if
you want me to do that now.
Moritgomery: Maybe we could wait until later. Well, except if you're
to be here for the meeting.
Zetta Demmorrett: I'll be here. Thatwl11 be fine.
Montgomery: Okay. I don't want you not to hear it. Okay, the last
question was the same one that you asked. What happens to the money? I
think Paul has explained that the money is there but there are conditions
attached which have to be inserted but if anybody has any ideas or..
so~ething specific that they want those; funds used for, they should let us
know. .
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Krauss: Maybe it will be useful if we wrote up some sort of a response to
those questions and gave it back out so copies could be distributed. We'd
be willing to go talk to the group. I guess the only time I've done that
in the past was when the community center was being discussed and they just
wanted to play cards.
That's all they want to do.
Krauss: So it's a rather tough environment to tal k to.
Heinlein: They ignore anything. I mean last week I was told I didn't
speak loud enough and I said well, and she was asked to step in~ I felt
embarrassed for one thing and I just said, well if they would be quiet and
not talk when someone else is trying to tell them something, they might
hear. . .
Montgomery: Well maybe Paul can talk loudly.
Krauss: I'm good at that.
St. John: I just wish I probably would have said some more after I had
seen those questions, those suggestions that they want to stay as they are.
That. they can stay as card players but there are so many more seniors all
over that want to do other things and we want to do something to please
everybody and not just a certain group.
.e
Heinlein: We want to enlarge the group is what we want to do~ 8ring more
of the senior citizens from Chan into the group. That I think is what we
need. We average 35 sometimes on a ~oodday. Possibly 40 and well as the
first thing. Some of them beforehalf.ofthem are in the building are
already playing cards.
Senior Commission Meeting
February 15, 1991 - Page 6
a
.,
st. John: Excuse me Selda though.
striving for.
Enl~rging that group is not what we are
Heinlein: No, I mean to get out the ne~s that we will and they
understand this, that they are not Just the conglomerate of the
citizens in Chanhassen.
Montgomery: I think there are lots of pe6ple out there who
needs and that's what we're going to try to combine. It isn't that
to .change what they do. If they like to play cards, that's fine.
8ragg: This morning the question was put to me, what about a place where
we could at least have a space for ourselves and have the use of possibly a
coffee urn and we would use like we do now, pap~r plates and paper cups,
etc. rather than the necessity of having a big kitchen as a facility.
Montgomery: So they would just as soon have something they can use
temporarily until they're able to make some..~.
Kubitz: That's what .we want too
Montgomery: Okay. We'll see if we can't have
really appreciate your, thanks for coming.
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Montgomery: We had asked the Fire Marshal, Mark Littfin to make a
presentation this morning. We had some information about fire protection
last week and I'm sorry we didn't...last week but we're really glad to have
you explain to us.
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Littfin: First of all when Sharmin mentioned that there was a commission
forming and asked if I would like to be 'a part of passing along some
information, I was more than very excited about it. Just a little bit
about myself. My name is Mark Littfin. I'm the Fire Marshal for
Chanhassen and have been for about 2 1/2 years. I've been on the
Chanhassen Volunteer Fire Department for about 18 years going on in May
nO~I}. Currently within the Fire Department what we're doing for fire
education and public education. We do have a committee within the Fire
Department that meets and discuss what we try to do with our big thing that
we work on is the schools and daycare centers right now. During Fire
Prevention Week we do a very extensive program. We try to expose some fire
prevention aspects to both the schools In town. We try to get to every
student. The same with the 3 daycare centers that we work with. We also do
fire prevention activities for in-house daycare so we do have a very strong
commitment to fire education and fire prevention. We'd rather put the
money into the prevention end of it than try to put in the suppression end
of it during the course of the fire and after the fire. The fire service
in general is leaning more towards the prevention and that end of it.
Unfortunately up until now our involvement with the senior citizen groups
have been very limited. I've only done a couple presentations. Two of
them have been up to the S,ojourn Adult,. they calli t an adult daycare
center up on TH 7. We've had a coupleprogy'ams up there and presentations
so When Sharmin mentioned that if we could get more involved with working
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Senior Commission Meeting
February 15, 1991 - Page 7
with seniors, I was very excited about it. I put a few statistics together
and I'll pass these out but you can take a look.at these. These are yours
to hang onto but it kind of explains. These are statistics from Minnesota.
Not from Chanhassen. Fortunately Chanhassen up until now has had an
excellent track record with fire deaths in the city. But on a statewide
level, on a hational level right now there's about 1,300 Americans that die
in fire and that's of ages of 65 and older so there is an issue with that.
Statistics are that people over the age of 80 will die in fire at a rate 3
times faster than the rest. 75% of the people who die in the country don't
have smoke detectors or working smoke detectors in their houses. As far as
smoke detectors, what our fire department currently does is we have a smoke
detector give away program that the American Legion is co-sponsoring as
well as McDonald's. That if anybody wants a smoke detector, they call up.
I'll bring one out and install it for them so they're all set to go.
Howard: Is there a charge?
Mark Littfin: No charge at all.
Montgomery: Is this for any particular age grOup or just anybody?
Mark Littfin: Any residence in the City. We did put some limitations on
it. The areas that we install them are in corridors or hallways outside of
a bedroom. We've had requests to put them in garages, laundry rooms, etc.
so we do have to limit it to hallways and the reasoning behind that is the
majority of fires happen at night when people are sleeping so ,if they're
awake during the day, they're going to become aware of either the smoke or
the noise. So at night that's where they concentrate putting them iM the
hallways. So right now, and we've been: doing this for about a year and a
half and occasionally we'll have a little article in the paper about it. or
the newsletter or I'll put up something at the Fire Station marquee there
to remind people about it. We've installed approximately 40-45 of them
throughout the City right now. We even had one lady whd called up and she
needed a battery so I just took a battery up and installed that. Some of
the reasons that there is a higher death rate among seniors is, they've
done a lot of research on it and there's figures in here but one of the
reasons is they may be able to take less quick action. If somebody's in a
wheelchair or a walker, their escape plan has to be, their escape route has
to be planned out so we go through a particular door. Or if you need a
walker or a cane or whatever, that's next to t~e bed so they can use this.
At times if somebody's on medication, it can slow the senses down. They
may not be able to respond as quick and a lot of times a lot of them live
alone to where if it's a family situation. There's other people helping,
there may be a family of 3, 4 or 5 which can help each other. A lot of
seniors will live alone so they're dependent on themselves. What I told
the last group, things such as making sure you have your glasses near the
bed or a flashlight or something to help with your escape route. There's
some real good information that we can, if we have a meeting or if we have
a meeting that we can bring out and we can work with the groups and give a
presentation. Little ideas of.information. Things to .play ahead.
Something as simple as getting a free smoke detector installed can make a
big difference. Make sure there's a. phone near the night stand so if they
have to call 911, they can do that. We have on a couple instances, we've.
even preplanned a particular individual's house. The gentleman was
bedridden and couldn't get out. Called, what do Ido if there's a fire
Senior Commission Meeting
February 15, 1991 - Page a
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and I can't get out of bed? We can do a preplan of that house we mention
to the membership so if we do have a call on that particular apartment or a
house, we know that there is somebody bedr idden'. That we have to go to
this particular part of the house first because we definitely have a rescue
situation. There are some, as far as programs, there's some excellent
programs that are out. Sharmin made copies. That was in your last packet.
Because on a national level, the national fire academy recognized that this
is a national problem. There's some excellent programs put out. I think a
lot of it is educational. Trying to work with the seniors because what
we're doing now is we're doing so much emphasize on grade schools. We even
start kids that are 3 years of age and a lot of this wasn't around, wasn't
available when, even myself was in school. We had a fire drill and that
was pretty much about it so we're hitting so heavily on the schools and
daycares r ight no~'" that we have another whole section of the population
that. kind of has to be re-educated and made aware of and just let them know
what the problems are. The facts speak.for themself as far as 65 and
older, high fire deaths. A lot of injuries and so I guess a lot of it is
just basic education. Things to kind of plan ahead. Being aware of what
areas of the house fires will start in. A lot of fires start with cooking
habits. Something is put on the stove and it's forgotten. They come back
and the curtains or the cabinets are on fire.
--
Bragg: Wearing robes with the long, loose sleeves.
Mark Littfin: Yeah, robes over a gas stove. It isn't necessarily fire
deaths but just injuries in the home. Whether they're cooking or .from
falls or smoking is a"high fire death. . Somebody falls asleep in the chair
smoking and that's a real common eause of fatality. What we'd like to do
is get word out and we. can either do this by the local newspaper which Dave
has always run good articles fOl. us. Whenever we've requested it.
Informational news letters or fliers or something to at least let the
seniors know that there's a program that we're working on. We can give
them a lot of information in the mail. . A lot of it's just getting the
information to the people so they're aware of it. We've got a lot of
excellent pre-written articles that we can submit back to Dave.
Bragg: Would you ever consider doing that beyond just Chanhassen?
South Shore...people there and they're aware of all these problems
about a third of the membership there, out of the 6 communities is from
Chanhassen and I think you've got a wonderful message and you should have a
lot of interested people.
Mark Littfin: What we could do is if we go into another city, we're
fortunate that the cities surrounding us, at least on the east and north .
end have full time Fire Marshals and a lot of time and effort that they've
put out is for education and prevention. I could almost guarantee that if
we were going to do a program up at South Lake, that I could easily get a
hold of Excelsior's Fire Marshall and the two of us can put a program
together and he'd be more than excited.
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Bragg: Tonka Bay all the way to Deephaven would be included and Chanhassen
is the farthest south.
r1ark Littfin: Sure. I see him weekly. We have different meetings that I
run into him at.
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Senior Commission Meeting
February 15, 1991 - Page 9
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Bragg:
That would be wonderful.~.
Montgomery: Do you have fliers or something that can be
meeting?
Mark Littfin: Yeah. This is a brochure that NFPA puts out. National
Fire Protection Association. I'll pass this around. This is justa small.
flier that e'xplains a few safety tips more or less. But if it's something
for statistics you're looking for, you know people kind of respond better
if they get a little shock first thing.. Boy, there is a fire problem. All
of a sudden our age group is at the top ,up here as far as fire deaths,
injuries and once they've recognized that and accept that, then we can work
on ways of working fire prevention. Safety tips and things to look at. I
have no problems if someone would call up and want to do a safety .
inspection check of their house or apartment. I'd be more than happy to go
out and look for problems or suggest things there. Like r said, the
statistics in Chan are minimal but on a.statewide basis, they get up there
and on a national basis, they're quite high. But coming up with some
programs and ideas, we've got some real good research or real good
literature that we can use on that. Like I said, I'd be more.than happy
to . . .
Heinlein: r must have driven by that sign that said free smoke alarms 50
times and I as~umed that it was probably on a needy basis like you would go
to the church and get free cheese. And. I wonder if people understand'
that's for everyone. They don't have to not be able to afford it.
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Mark Littfin: Yeah. Well, we're about due. We haven't had an article
the paper explaining this for a while we'll probably do another
in there but I've had people call.
Heinlein:
...benefit of everyone, not just th~ poor people.
Mark Littfin: Sure. We've had people call who just moved into a
$400,000.00 house and saying can you put a smoke detector in? They've
them allover a.nd if they already have them in; we're not goi ng to pub
in. We're putting them into the people. that don't have it.
Heinlein: Well that was my feeling driving by, I thought well I wouldn't
qualify.
Mark Littfin: No. We can make that mention about what they would have to
do to qualify. Basically anybody from any income, any resident of the
city, if they don't hav~ one we'll come out ,and install one. If they
of them, we'll put two of them in.
Jay Johnson: It probably costs more to check qualifications
of the fire alarms.
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Mark Littfin: Homes built generally after, oh the early 80's required to
have them by the Building Code so most of the houses we're installing them
in are from the older part of town. Sunrise Hills, probably Western Hills,
east of St. Hubert's, Carver Beach are~, some 6f the Minnewashta area. So
the new homes, Ii ke I said they're in because the buildi ng code requires
to be. Apartment buildings for example, there'the landlord, the building
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Senior commiJsion Meeting
February 15, ]1991 - Page 10
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owner is req~ired to have them in so it's important that residents of
apartments, if their's isn't working, they should get ahold of the landlord
or the owner/and if they're not working and they're not getting any
response, they can certainly get ahold of me and I'll say get these things
checked and working within a week. Otherwise you can be cited for that so
that should ~ot be your responsibility to make sure your apartment is safe~
People are living so that should be the landlord's responsibilities. But
we do so much with the grade school kids and the daycare that I'd love to
work with th~ senior citizens group because I think it's so very important.
You wanted m~ntioned that the...light I've been working on. You're going
to get into that?
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Bragg: WeIll I brought it over because I was very interested
some kind of I. . .people are going to have medical problems but
have a medicbl problem...immediately while you're calling.
!
Mark Littfin~ A lot of times, and I've,been on a lot of calls with seniors
with everythiing from strokes to heart attacks and it seems like we get
there, whoev~r's there, they call us for whatever reason and welre asking
them a thousFU,d questions and a lot of times they're incoherent or not
functioning well and the paramedics will ask them the same questions and
they're just] trying to do everything they can just to breathe and hang in
there. So the idea is excellent. Where it's .t right now is we've
contacted thb company that supplies them and I just had about 100 of them
delivered laft week. We've contacted, the fire department mentioned 'it at
the last mee1ting. They're very enthused about it. OUT fire department
medical end pf it works, coordinates our efforts with Dr. Welch at Waconia
Ridgeview Ho1spital and he's very much in favor of it. Currently he's
checking with the County Health Division so we're not duplicating efforts
so his param~dics are familiar with the program. The fire departments are
and he was dhecking with, there's another division of ' the County and the
ambu's do nolt, what they call DNR forms. Do not resuscitate forms. It's a
form that a ,Person would fill out if they had a heart attack, they would
not want us !to work on and this is a form that could be put in the tube as
well. So itl's a matter of coordinating it. How to get the, I like to call
them my testl tube but how to get the tubes out. Who will fill them out if
they need hdlp filling them out. Whether they're hand written, typed.
Easy to rea1d and then once the system is in place, letti ng the paramedics
know, fire department, sheriff's department know that it's working. The ,
tags on theJ'refrigerator. If we get a call here, check it and you don't
have to ans ,er questions. You can just ki nd of lay there and rel.ax and let
the rescue ~nd paramedics do their thing so there was a lot of enthusiasm
about that. I So once I hear back from Dr. Welch, hopefully this week, we
can put tha~ into play and we'll draft up something for the citizens that
they know atlout it. If they want it, 1'11 take the thing for them.
Explain how!it works or however we want to distribute these. I work for
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the City full time so that's part of my responsibility is to work day to
day distributing things or handing things out. ' Delivering them as far as
the fire de9artment's concerned so that's no problem with getting these
things handed out to the city.
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Bragg: canlI just lead in.
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Senior Commi~sion Meeting
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February 15'11991 - Page 11
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Bragg: I think that's the thing a senior commission should be doing. ,You
see a problem that you know exists, do something about it and I really
appreciate that you took that on. '
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Montgomery: i I'll be on the list for on~ of them.
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Mark Littfin~ I'll bring everyone
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Montgomery: i.. .hat way too. That and we'll have...
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Mark Littfin: yeah, you know whether it's a fire issue or a safety or
medical. Ifl they have one phone number, whether it's City Hall to get a
hold of me because if it's a medical we,can easily refer them. If they
have a questIon about what to do, we refer them to our paramedic service.
They have ani ambulance parked in town at our west fire station. They're
there almostl 18 hours a day. With the Sheriff's office and ourselves'we
can, Ii ke I said, i f it's a safety check. If they have any ki nd of
questions. !If we have a senior that's hearing impaired, there's devices
that. can be ~nstalled. A smoke detector that will flash the bedroom light
on and off ahd try to wake them up. There's numerous things that can be
incorporated! for fire and life safet.y. What we're going to try to do is
incorporate ~ package or there's some information regarding what the police
end of it, what the ambulance, paramedic and the fire department so we're
going to try! and look at the whole public safety item as one. Something to
offer so if ItheY're concerned with buglar ies or robber ies or what can they
do to make their home or apartment safer and we'll let our crime prevention
specialists ~ork on that and also get the paramedic service involved so if
they have quesfions, what to do also.
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Jay Johnson:1 Two quick questions for You said we got 100 of
these comind from the company...
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Mark Littfi~: No, they're free.
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Jay Johnson:! They're free. Now this is ki nd of a hook. They send 100
out. That obviously is not enough to do a whole lot in the city of almost
12,000 peop~e. How much are they once ~hey get the program going.
Mark Littfi~: I asked the lady down there. I said what do they cost and
she said no~ ~ thing. I said well can I get aGout 50 or 100 of them and
she said we'll 1 send them right out. She was enthusiastic.
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Jay Johnson:: This is a charitable type deal that they're sending these
out? !
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Mark littfi~: They're out of Golden Va11ey.
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Bragg: I o~iginally wrote for it because I was elected President of the
Sout.h Shore I!and because I am concerned, it happened to me. It happened to
me the year I retired that I had an asthma attack. The first one I had in
my life and II had to call 911. And after that, I mean that was an
introduction to how quickly something like this can happen. It gets out of
controland/what if and then since!'ve been active in South Shore, I've
met all kinds of people. People that needed Life Line. People that have
had heart aitacksand living alone and different things like that and what
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SenTor Commi~sion Meeting
F~br~ary 15,~1991, - Page 12
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do you do? ~ha€ do they do? And so I iead about this and I sent for
and I didn'tldo anything about it because I had too many oth~r thi~ss
of a sudden ~nd so when theard, when I was plabed on this commIssion
I thought n00 here we have a cohesIve group. We want to,show that we have
something gobd for these people. We want to take care of the card playing
club but we~ant to,take care of those people that are seniors who have
natural problems and when I heard you were going to work wi'ththis, I
thought' I 'Illturn it over and let us get started. And I really .
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congratulatelYou on all that you've done and it's good to hear we've got
advocate her~.
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Mark Littfin~ Very much so.
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Montgomery: ~We thank you Betty...
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Howard: Don!'t you have concerns also, what are these things that they wear
around theirf neck?
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St. John: T~at's Life Line.
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Mark Littfin!:
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Howard: ...~on't you go ahead of the ambulance and that sort of thing?
Don't you ge~ involved in that?
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St. John: That's another program.
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Bragg: Thatl's what that community grant
applied for ~hat because there's quIte a
arid then theli person that had theprob,lem
certain amount each month to have it.
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Is that the one with the telephone?
is for. The community center
bit of expense in having it put in
wears the device has to pay a
Kr auss : We III
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Mar k Littfin':
heard pro add
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Howard: Weill I know they have them over In Excelsior because.. .belongtoa
club over t~ere and he had a speaker co~e in. Fire Department.
apparently they're covering cost
that too.
That I'll let Dr. Welch take a look at that because
cons on these things.
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Krauss: Betlty just gave us this thing here and Sharmin and Mark will talk
and we'll g~t some more information on It.
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Bragg: Thi~ was ,done with the ~DGB, that grant money that you know
and we've b~en talking about.
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Heinlein: that's what my chIldren want~d me to put In. The ones in
Illinois and they wanted me to get something like that in the house. I
haven't begJn to look for that.
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Bragg: This lady who has that who is from Greenwood and taking advantage
of that pro~ram, says she can go out in her yard too. She likes to putter
around and she has a heart condition. In the hospital last year, in 1990
for quite a iwhile and I think she had by-pass and so... Anyway, she lives
in Greenwood and- Greenwood provided her with that. She says she feels
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Senior Commi~sion Meeting
February 15, 11991 - Page 13
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much safer n9wbecause she can go about her business alone and she knows
she's not alone.
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Mark Littfin~ Is this what I've seen advertised on TV?
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8ragg: Yes you have. It's a very effective, I mean perhaps even more
effective th~n some of them have calls go out to all the people in their
home but thi~ is, you are aware that something is wrong and you push the
button and you get right into the hospital.
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Mark Littfin~ I can check with Dr. Welch and see if he's heard of
he advocates 1 it or if he's... I can certainly check on that too.
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Jay Johnson:! One of the main problems with Waconia is that they're on a
different telephone system. They're a long distance pho~e call.
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8ragg~ But ~ think though that this does, this particular one that's
tal ked about! in this, it's from the Vi llage of ,Greenwood which is north.
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Jay Johnson: i Yeah, I know where it is.
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8ragg: Anywb,y, they have their two sources are Ridgeview and Methodist
which are thib two nearest hospitals . I guess st. Francis would be too but
I don't thi~k they offer the service.
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Jay Johnson:1 So this does go through Ridgeview too?
Bragg:
YeaH.
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.. .~eople in Excelsior that had it too.
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Howard:
Mark Littfi~: So they press the
taped messa~e on the phone?
out a pre-recorded
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Bragg: I tHink it goes directly to either of the two hospitals. I'm not
too sure whilchone.
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Montgomery: I Are there other systems too or the only one?
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8ragg: This is a proven system. There are problem other systems that
don't involJe wearing a littl~ device. .
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St. John: ~xcuse me. There was somethIng on television here not long ago
about peopld selling these things to the aged and they had pictures of this
salesman beiing in the home and almost forcing the people, and they were
expensive arid that is something that they were not supposed to get involved
~AJith. 1
Krauss: I think that's the one with the commercial, I've fallen and!
can't get u~ kind of a thing but if we did this, I.mean this w6uld be
through MaY~ and through our Public Safety folks ahdthere would be
nothing. i
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Mark Littfi~: We would have to give it our endorsement first and we'd be
looking for la hospital's endorsement so. Because there is a ~roup that has
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Senior Commission Meeting
February 15, 1991 - Page 14
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been working in the South Lake area about, they must be a private
organization but they come in and they do police and fire talks and they
use scare tactics and they try to sell expensive alarms systems and
expensive fire extinquishers and in checking with South Lake, they were ,
going to be getting a hold of the Better Business Bureau to see what kind
of group was involved in this. So we want to make sure it's endonsedby
the right people, being the hospital and public safety or whatever.
Bragg: I think that's really important.
Mark Littfin: Yeah, because they can come in and.
Bragg: Seniors can be preyed upon very easily.
Mark Littfin: You bet so we want to make sure ,that if we're
endorse it, it's worthwhile system that works.
Hei nlei n: Well my son and his wife are fami 1 ia'r with the one in Chicago
because the gentleman across the road from them lives alone and he has a
heart condition. Well the hospital calls them ,if they don't get a response
from him within a certain length of time. There's something he's supposed
to do and he doesn't always do it. She's gone over there and he hasn't
been in the house and there's no way, they don',t know where he's at and
he's been down at the neighbors and forgot all about doing what he should
have done. The hospital is already checking why they haven't heard from
hi.m so that's why they were pushing me to get into something like that. I
really don't need that much. '
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Heinlein: I'm home, believe me.
Jay Johnson: You're not home that
st. John: Mark, would you talk to Methodist at all?
Hark Littfin: Since we get most of our medical direction on Waconia, I'll
run through Or. Welch. He's in charge of Carver County.
St. John: Betty Pickle is the one that's in charge at.
Mark Littfin: What's his name?
St. John: Betty Pickle. The Life Line at Methodist.
Krauss: Hopefully we'll have some more information on that for your next
meeting.
Mark Littfi n: , Yeah, because I' 11 check into this and then also by then we
should have what the decision is on the ViaL of Life or the test tube and
then once we, get their endorsement, then we can get an article in the
paper. I think Chanhassen~s putting a newsletter together or they already
have or they're working on it so we can let it be known and then work of
.. mouth may help. Then through the County, if they're trying to get into
~ like Dr. McCollum. Let him know. Make him aware of it so he can suggest
or even hand out the ~ials right in hi~ clinic;there.
Senior Commission Meeting
February 15, 1991 - Page 15
Montgomery: Is there anything that we can do ourselves that would be
helpful?
Mark Littfin: The only thing you can do is if you've got meetings or if
you've got a group and if' they want someone to come out and give a
presentation whether it's day,afternoo~or evening, we can certainly do
that. We can bring out some literature:and brochures. We've.got tapes and
films. Now it's just a matter of letting us do the teaching and
instructing and working with them. The.smoke detector thing, We ~~n do
that continuously.
Montgomery: How would you feel about small neighborhood groups? WoulddYOll
rather it's a larger grou.p?
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Mark Littfin: Makes no difference. What I do with daycares for example is
I let, when I have to go out and do an inspection for certain daycare
business and what I'll tell the provider is that do you want me to come out
and give a fire prevention talk, let me know. So I've had, usually in the
summertime they'll call up half a dozen of them. I've been out to some
where it's been just the provider and her 5 or6 kids and I've been to one
where they've had 6 providers and 100 kids so if it's a bigger group, I may
bring somebody to help with. Neighborhood groups are fine or larger
groups. It makes no difference.
Heinlein: This is what we had in Chicago. Quite frequently either the
fire department l<Jould come or the police department and make people aware
of ~hat was going on. At a time when there was so much purse snatching and
that, the police department were there and showing on film how to protect'
yourself. And these were all interesting facts and this is what I'm so
used to and I get kind of perturbed at the senior group here that they
don't seem to be interested in anything: like this. And it's for their own
benefit I think.
Mark Litt.fin: Well we could do it, when t.-Je do ,it we could do it l<Jith a
police, fire and paramedic presentation if that would work out. Each ~ne
of us could have 10 or 15 minute presentation cind talk and combine public
safety issues...
Montgomery: Somebody had a question that they wanted me to ask you and
that is, how about the dead boltlocki that had to be unlocked from the
inside?
Mark Littfin: With a key?
Montgomery: With a key.
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Mark Littfin: You'll never get out. If you lose that key, you'll never
get out. Fire departments and crime prevent.ion unit.s usually have a little
battle on that because they want to keep peopl~ out and make the house as
secure as possible. On the other hand, we have to make the house
accessible for people to get out from the inside. So if people do have a
double cylinder dead bolt lock that requires a key from the inside, if they
lose it, misplace it. If it's not right there, you'.e not going to get out
of the house. You can get thumb turns o. different type of locking devices
that ~<Jill do it but if you haven't got that key . ight the.e, you're just
Senior Commission Meeting
Feb~uary 15, 1991 - Page 16
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not going to get out of the house. And if it's in a smoke situation or a
panic situation, you're going to find somebody laying right at the front
door there where lots of times it's going to be too late. But you want to
have escape plans. We teach the kids, if you can't get out your bedroom
door, shut the door, go to the window, crawl along the floor and some of
that everybody should learn. I mean if,it's a 3 year old or if's a 20 or
30, 40, 50. You know something as simple as shutting your bedroom door if
the smoke alarm goes off because that will keep it out there for a while.
Get on the floor, crawl to the window, open the window and crawl out.
Jump. Whatever it takes. Get to a nei~hbor's house and call the fire
department. Don't go back in. But escape routes, you've got to plan this.
You've got to practice it ahead of time. We have the kids practice this
and practice it and practice it so when'the alarm does go off, you're going
to panic. I'll guarantee it because I had a fire at my folks house. I was
home. This is just a few years ago and I paniced and I've been doing fire
fighting for 18 years so when I say you~ll panic, believe me you will.
St. John: I didn't.
Mark Littfin: You didn't? Well you're doing better than I did because I'
certainly did. So an escape route is extremely important. Whether it's to
t he door, t he wi ndow . Ca n you open the' loti ndow? Do you have to t hr ow
something through it to break? Is there a phone in your bedroom. 00 you
have a flashlight because fires are dark. They're extremely dark. The
power goes out. What we do with the kids, we say imagine you're in a fire.
Close your eyes. That's how dark it is and that's how dark it is in the
fire.
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St. John: I know it can happen real quick too because we were in a fire.
Our travel trailor burnt. Exploded. 5=00 in the morning. It ,was fire all
over the place. And you're supposed to, have your escape route. Well, we
vJent out and then I thought of my purse and I walked right back through all
that fir,e and I couldn't find my purse. It was all smoke and there's
somebody watching over us that we didn't get burnt but it burnt completely.
Mark Littfin: Well they say, everybody in the United States at least twice
in their lifetime will have to call the fire department for some fire
situation. Whether it's in the house or a vehicle or whatever but
everybody twice in a lifetime is going to call the fire department.
Heinlein: What if lightning hits a part of your building? This was my
experience and I didn't realize what it was. The neighbors called me and
told me that it had hit the cornice of the building that we were living in.
It was right above the bedroom. And my husband at the time was almost
totally blind and he was already in bed. WeIll smelt smoke and I
immediately went to the phone and called the fire department. Well they
came but they didn't find any fire, yet'I smelt:. in the bedroom the burning
scent and I said will you please. No, there is no fire. I said will you
please go in and check that room. I said my husband's in bed there and I
said I'd have an awful time getting him out if something did happen. We're
on the second floor to begin with. Well they went in and they did check it
a and finally after I just kept saying please, and they did come up into the
~ bedroom and check it out. They said, no. That's just the sulphur type
fumes that were caused by the bolt of lightning and it was the only, there
l~as no storm. There was nothi ng. This was out of the clear blue. The sky
Senior Commission Meeting
February 15, 1991 - Page 17
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was beautiful outside. People wer.e water i ng their lawns and everything.
And yet it hit that building.
Mark Littfin: l.)e've had lightning strikes and we've had everything from
starting the house on fire to killing a squirrel that was in a tree and
lightning does strange things every time it hits. But if we smell smoke in
the house, obviously we're going to investigate it as far as we can to
determine where it's coming from. I mean certainly if you ask us to check,
we're not going to say no or don't worry about it. We'll check it as far
as we can. If we have to go up in the attic, we go up there. And lots of
times you can somewhat follow the path that the lightning took but we're
certai nly not goi ng to leave you si tti ng there .i f you're nervous or scared
or fearful. .. .
Heinlein: It knocked the bricks and the cornice and everything off.
Mark Littfin: It does strange things. It will blow gutters off. It will
blow shingles off and it won't even do any damage to the house but uSt)ally
there is a smell from.
lawn and she heard this
that and she couldn't
had seen where it
around. . The sun was
Heinlein: Yeah, the lady next
noise and all at once bricks wer. flying at her
figure out what it wa~. Somebody across the street
happened. There wasn't a speck of rainor anything
shining.
e Jay Johnson: Maybe it was a message.
Heinlein: After 20 some years.
Montgomery: Is there anything else we should hear from you Mark?
Mark Littfin: Not right now. I just want to let you know that we'llhave
services and programs available so if you have a group that wants somebody
to come out and give a talk or presentation or whatever and then with the
smoke detectors we'll be getting another article together. Maybe do it
jointly with the Vial of Life or the test tubes so we can get a nice
article written on that. Dave can take pictures. What I'd like to do,
when I put an article is get Dave involved ~nd ma~beget one of you to be
in the photo standing next toa refrigerator with the sticker or whatever.
pictures can speaker a lot more than words.
8ragg: Would you be willing to come over to South Shore Center when
everything is ready?
Mark Littfin: Sure. What we'll do is 1'11 coordinate that. Let me know
and I'll coordinate that. with Tom Ruddolf the Fire Marshall upin.Excelsior
and either ~..,e can do it jointly or get him involved because we kind of have
our own borders but on"something like this, the two of us could definitelY
work along as we have seniors from both communities. We'd be more than
happy to and I'm sure I could speak to him on that.
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Montgomery:
l.Jell thank
Mark Littfin:
Senior Commission Meeting
February 15, 1991 - Page 18
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Kubitz: I have one thing to say. The Chanhassen Fire Department is
superb. We had a chimney fire. They came and put it out. When the
inspector, the insurance man came he looked and he looked and he 'looked and
he came in and he looked and he says, where's the water damage? Where's
the fire damage? Is this all there is?' How did they ever put out that
fire without creating any more damage? And they were very impressed. And
then they also covered the hole in the roof before they left. Before the
snow storm came, which is fantastic. And then when my husband had a heart
attack, they were terrific then too. '
Heinlein: I had the same experiencewith,the emergency...when my husband
was sick. Took sick unexpectedly at night ,and r didn't realize what was
going on and I waited hours before I should have. And my son, when I
called him he says, get 911 on the phone. We'll be there shortly and...
96th Street. Well they were there pronto and boy they took care of him.
Called Waconia and...but I had wasted hours taking care of him myself for a
problem that I didn't know anything about. I'd never do it again.
st. John: I have a question please. Does it make any problem for the fire
department when there is a call in Chanhassen village have an Excelsior
address?
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Mark Littfin: No because anybody in the city if they dial 911, it goes on
the Carver County Sheriff's office and they have a computer system there so
if you would dial it and all of a sudden you would drop over the phone, it
locks onto their computer screen your name, address. So if you couldn't
even say help or anything, they're going to say we've got a 911 call and
I hear this all the time on the police scanner. The dispatcher will tell
the squad car, we had a 911 call or there's no answer. You'd better go
check it out.
St.,John: Yeah, Excelsior's in Hennepin County though.
Mark Littfin: Excelsior will go to Hennepin btit no, we know our address
system how it runs north to south, east to west s6if they give us an
address, we can find it.
Bragg: I agree because when I called 911 that time and they asked me
whether it would be Chanhassen Fire Department or Excelsior and ~said I
think it would be Chanhassen and there was someone there immediately~ Big
patrolman.
Mark Littfin: Location we will find. Somebody will call 911 and when they
put the system in, there were some homes that. because of the address may
have gone into Hennepin County or may have gone into Chaska. Sometimes
when people move, they don't get that information straightened around so.
For a while there, what you could do is make sure that your 911 does go to
Carver because first of all it's called in on a non-emergency number and
say this is, give you name and say I'd like to. check my 911 to make sure
that it does go to Carver County and then hang up and dial it and make sure
it does go there. We'll encourage people to do that. 'Like I say, when the
A 911 system first went in, they were letting people say, give it a dry run
~ and see if it does work. If you ever have any doubt if it does go to
Chaska, call the non-emergency and say I'd like to test my 911 and see if
it does go to Chaska because occasionally it does go to the wrong area but
Senior Commission Meeting
February 15, 1991 - Page 19
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immediatelY they'd recognize that.
They'd get ahold of Carver County.
APPROVAL OF
Montgomery: Well, thank you
Montgomery: Our next item is approval of the By-Laws. Did you all take a
look at those? There was just one correction that I thought you should
take a look at. On page,2, Section 3, number 3.2. It was just a typo but
I thought it was important that we had it corrected. Can you find where it
is? Page 2, Section 3, number 3.2. On the left side of your page. On the
other side of page 1. Okay, Section 3,. the second one. Where it says,
every appointed member shall, before entering upon the charge of his/her
duties and it should read, take an oath. That he/she will faithfully
discharge the duties of his/her office. I thought we should clarify that.
Anybody else have anything that we would 'want to change or...?
Selda Heinlein asked a question that could not be heard on the tape.
Montgomery: I think that's what the other commissions do. Is that right
Paul or isn't that necessary?
Krauss: This kind of standard boiler plate for all the commissions. I
don't think, and Jay correct me if I'm ~rong, I'm not sure that anybody's
ever really taken an oath.
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Jay Johnson: The Council does but I've never seen a commissioner do it.
Krauss: Dave would know because he's always around taking pictures when
people take oaths. You know, you basically accepted the responsibility
when you accepted the appointment.
Montgomery: That's the oath? Okay. Anything else?
Krauss: There is something in here abo~t staggering terms. You may want
to draw lotsfor that. First of all I should say that I don 'thaveany .
doubt that if things are progressing well and if somebody wants.tobe
reappointed, then the City Council 9 times out of 10 will reappoint them.
But you want to get on a pattern whereby you don't lose the whole
commission in one year. So that's why t.he staggering makes a lot of sense
and maybe you know, for next meeting we'll have you draw lots just to see
who comes under which term. That seems probably the most fair way of doing
it at this point.
Montgomery: Is there a motion that we accept the, is
Bragg: I make a motion that we accept the By~Laws as
.
Bragg moved, Kubitz seconded to approve the By":"'Laws of the Senior
Commission as amended 1.n section3as follows:
Kubitz: I second the motion.
Senior Commission Meeting
February 15. 1991 - Page 20
_3.2
Terms and Vacancies. The City Council shall appoint seven members to
the commission for terms of two and three years. Vacancies during the
term shall be filled by the Council for the unexpired portion of the
term. Every appointed member, before entering upon the charge of
his/her duties. shall take an oath that he/she will faithfully
discharge his/her duties of his/her office. All members shall serve
without compensation.
All voted in favor. and the motion carried unanimouslyw
Montgomery: I thought for the next item on here. it looks very official
but it says Goals and Objectives but I think we really have some and I
think we've stated what our goals really are. All these things that we are
concerned with and we are going to try to address that we talked about
earlier and it was the subject of our whole ta~k force study actually. And
any other things that come up as we go along. I thought it might be really
helpful if we decided that what .we see as our first pr ior i ty. Sharmi n did
you come up with any pages on that?
AI-Jaff: Item number 5 on your agenda?
Montgomery: Right.
e AI-Jaff: And did you get this
Montgomery: This one.
AI-Jaff: It basically waseverythi ng that the Senior. <Ci tizen
ident~fied as an issue of concern or something the City would
concentrate on and improve.
Montgomery: I thought it might be helpful just for our group and
personally too to iank these according to what you see as the most
important item for you. And would also' be helpful if you would write after
your number 1 choice what convinced you of that. Why you see that goal.
And you 'can do that now if you want to take a few minutes or we could bring
it up at the next meeting? How would you like to do that? Anybody have an
idea? Look at it for a few minutes and see how you feel about it?
St. Joh~: Some of these though it seem~ that it would not take as long
period of time to gain them as some of the oth~rs which I think are my one
priority.
Montgomery: Maybe we should put short term and long term just after that?
Krauss: Also, when you look at a heading like Transportation, then as you
get more involved in that yo~ can break that down further. Are we talking
about Oial-a-Ride? Are we talking about a van that we would buy for a
senior center? Are we t~lking about taxi service. I mean there's all kinds
of things that you could. do.
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Senior Commission Meeting
February 15, 1991- Page 21
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Jay Johnson: It'd be ~asier, rather than going 1, 2, 3, 4. High. medium,
low priority. So you don't have to actually say is this one a little
better than this one because you might have 4 or 5 that you're really high
on and a couple that, yeah. We'll get to them.
Bragg: Well and sometimes there are things that we've already
on more or less and then they'll crop up agai n.'
Jay Johnson: Sometimes the timing and economics, a low priority might get
accomplished way before a high priority.
Heinlein: Well I think senior housing would probably go to one of the
lower.
Jay Johnson: As a long term thing. You can start it early. Get the HRA
thinking ab6ut it.
Zetta Demorrett: You mentioned earlier a time that this
allocated has to be spent. Isn't that an objective?
Krauss: Well certainly to put it to good use is a goal. You know what
we've typically spent, I think I gave a\1 indication in the past we've spent
it recently on, we've both handicapped accessible playground equipment and
fishing piers and now we've got this allocation for our seniors. I've got
some ideas on where we can spend some of that that hopefully addresses some
of these goals. That was getting into that.
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Zetta Demorrett: So we're assuming spending the money is all intermingled
with these....?
Krauss: Well yeah. We need to do two things with the money. We need to
figure out where you want to gpso we set these goals and then we need to
thi nk, as far as that 'money goes, is it an eligible activi ty for block "
grant because not everything is:
Howard: Now when we went to Buffalo they had seed money that they had put
away at a rate of $5,000.00 a year.
Krauss: Yeah, apparently the titydid that off of general revenues.
Howard: Is there a possibility of putting any of that money into?
Krauss: No, not block grant. That would take convincing the City Council
to set money aside directly. We have some possibilities for funding though
that I'm not sure Buffalo had that, we talked to the City Manager quite a
bit the other day about. I'll get into' that whenever you like.
Montgomery: Maybe it would be helpful for us to b~ar this in mind and go
on to the next section over there but keep....
St. John: I was just going to ask Paul a question.
have now that has to be spent by a certain time, what
spend it? What ideas have you got that it could be?
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Senior Commission Meeting
February 15, 1991 - Page 22
.
Krauss: Well a couple things. Now I'm not sure it's going to take, keep
in mind we have something on the order of $26,000.00 .nd I just put a
blanket senior kind of category on it so there's no specific requirements.
And if we don't spend that on that, we've also got our next year
allocation. We get the information on that next month and we're expecting
another $35,000.00 to $40,000.00. That's typically what it's been. IT we
can't spend all of that on senior activities, eligible senior activities,
before December, what I would do is transfer some of this money that we
have sitting in the pot right now. We have ongoing, the handicap
accessible park facilities, we're going to fund that out of next year's
allotment. A portion of that so we can transfer money around. .We can pay
for some of that now and just save next year's money. But a couple of
things that we've been talking about. One of the things we're talking
about is the short term space and that's tough to come up with. We're
short of meeti ng r-ooms in town and everybody's short. I mean if you have a
Cub Scout meeting or if you have a Rotary meeting, whatever, it's just
tough to find place to meet. But the long term goal of having a senior
center and senior housing and/or both together, it's an idea that seems to
be, I don't want to oversell it but it ~eems to be gathering a little bit
of momentum. We've talked to our Housing and Redevelopment Authority. We
have one in town and they are interested, to the extent they're interested
in housing, I'm not going to say they're dying to do a project but they'd
be willing to consider a senior housing project'. As far as a senior center
goes, you know I think it's good that you had somebody like Ursula along
with Jay who were with you and it's an idea that needs to gel. You need to
get it together~ Our senior needs study pointed out that these are
facilities that people want. They're obviously very expensive and it's not
something we're going to be able to do instantly. One of the things the
City Manager suggested is that, I don't know if you're aware of it but a
lot of the City is in the tax increment district. A lot of the downtown.
Now trying to tell you what tax incremerit. Tax increment is pretty
complicated but basically what it does is it's a mechanism for cities to
get additional revenues to do public improvements and it could be paving
new streets or new sewers. It could also be a senior center. And this
money is generated over time. Basically what happens is if you have a
property that generates $100.00 a year in taxes, you put it into a tax
increment district. Then anything new that's built on there, all the new
taxes that that would generate go into your tax increment district and can
be spent on public improvements and public projects. And it lasts for 10
years or 25 years, depending on how long it is .and you sell bonds based on
this money that you're going to be having coming in. To make a long story
short, Chanhassen has a lot of tax increment districts that are going to be
generating a lot more money than we need to pay for direct street
improvements and that sort of thing by 1995. Now there's been., I mean the
sum of money is quite considerably and Carver County wo~ld like some and
the school district would like some and we'd like to capture this money and
use it for local projects. If we don't capture it, what happen~ is it goes
right back on the tax revenues and everybody gets a very little piece and
40% of everything we get goes to St. Paul. I mean we've a fiscal disparity
is where we share property taxes that are outside of the tax increment
district in the Twin Cities. So what it means is is that there's a
potential, if the idea can be sold to the City Council and sold to the HRA
and sold to the residents that there's actually demand and a desire to get
these facilities, there's a potential that we could have revenues out of
this in 1995, starting in 1995 that could be used to pay for those
e
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Senior Commission Meeting
February 15, 1991 - Page 23
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facilities. To buy land. Build buildings. Get programs running. Maybe
not the program itself but to build the brick and mortar and all that kind
of stuff. '95 you know sounds like it's a long ways off but it's really
only 4 years away and if you were going. to build something in 1995, you've
got to get your act together in 1991 and starting thereafter. Now one of
the things, in fact Councilman Johnson. Honor~ry Councilman Johnson.
e
Jay Johnson: They still call Reagan, President Reagan.
Krauss: When we did the senior study itself, ihe senior needs study that
this grew out of, that was funded out of block grant money and it was
basically so we could get a general idea of what we were looking for. I
mean we had no goals going into it. No. preconceived notions. We didn't
know what the answers would be. Well now we have a list of things that
we'd 1 i ke t.o do. If we are goi ng to be in a position to proceed with
housing or with a senior center, 2 years from now, 4 years from now,
whatever it is, we're going to have to demonstrate that that need exists
and exactly what sort of facility we're talking about. Like for housing.
What sort of rents are reasonable. What sort of facilities should it have.
Are we looking at 1 bedroom units or 2 bedroom units. I mean there's some
very specific studies that you do to justify a project and then what you do
.with th'ese studies is you kind of take them to the HRA and City Council and
get them involved. In fact the HRA may be willing to help pay for one of
these studies. And then you also, when you ne~d to, you take them td the
bank and you say, ybu know we're looking to doa project an~ we're going to
take out a mortgage for so and so and we've got these people who want to
come in here. One of the things I'd like to do with some of that money is
to hire Judy Marshik or somebody like her to do a study of, you know an
actual housing study. .
Bragg: It's going on over in Shorewoodright ~ow.
.
Krauss: Right, she's doing one for them there. To do an actual study of
the type of housing project that we can justify here and the type of senior
center that we need and can justify. And we'll do that with the goal of,
you know ~e're on a 5 year track or something like that, 4 year ttack to
get these things up and running. It would be a very specific and focused.
study unlike the senior needs study. I mean it would be, they get a lot of
specific housing information. Selda, when you got your apartment, you had
some very specific needs. You know you wanted to be in town and price and
all this kind of stuff. These reports are very detailed and get that
information out. Judy does those kinds of things. Other firms do that as
well. And last time I spoke to Larry Blacksted from Hennepin County, he
said that those were eligible projects at this point in time. So if I've
got your support to do it, what I'd like to do is get what we call an RFP,
request for proposals. Where we basically send out to the consultants.
Here's the kind of a study we're looking for. Give us a price and tell us
how you'd approach it. Then they would come back in and each make a pitch
and we could select somebody to do the work. As I say, the HRA is probably
willing, we have $26,000.00. I don't know.if it's going to be more or less
than that. I have no idea. But the HRA is also willing to help pay for
some of that. And I guess I can give you more information as we get
feedback from the consultants. Whether: we use Judy or not will be decided
in the future. Now if we pick somebody, you would have to get that
authorized. You know you have to get the whole spending program authorized
Senior Commission Meeting
February 15, 1991 - Page 24
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by the City Council but I'm pretty, Ihaveap~etty good belief that they
would support doing those kindsofproJ~cts.
Montgomery: Do you have an idea what that woul'd cost to do a study?
It
Krauss: No I don't. We've got a call into Judy to see what she would
charge. You know there are other people out there who do a lot of
different studies. A lot of people will do good housing studies and I
guess I was real pleased with Judy's work with us and if we could use her
again, great. If we can get somebody else who does a better Job, that's
okay too. We have to go and get bids though. jhat's one of the strings
that's attached to the federal grant. . .'
Jay Jdhnson: And you have to accept low bid. Is that a string? Or can we
first j90 by qualifications and then go by price?
i
i
Kraus.: I don't know.
I
i
Jay J~hnson: By first saying, okay let's qualify vendors. 50 we go in
we sa~, okay we selected these 3 vendors and we say these 3 can do a good
Job. 1Please give us a price now. And you qualify the vendors without even
looki~g at price so you don't get a guy who cari't do the Job giving you a
low bjd and the government saying you have to take it and then you get a
rottell piece of wor k. You know, you get what you pay for sometimes.
Krauss: Yeah, you really want, I mean. this is. the document that if these
projects are going to go ahead, you're going to be carrying around for .the
next few years. Going to the City Council. Going to the HRA and using it
to talk to residents. You know, this tax increment money sounds like it~s
free bucks. I mean it's not coming out of anybody's pocket directly but
you know, it's public money.
Bragg: It's our money.
Krauss: Yeah, and if it's not, it's to be spent on things that the
residents of Chanhassen decide are important t6 the residents of Chanhassen
so you're going to need to compete with any other good idea that somebody
else has for the money as well. So I think anything that you can do to get
a better picture on what you're going to be needing, what you're going to
be asking for would help a lot.
Howard: We'll work on that right away.
Montgomery: Would you like a recommend~tion from us?
Krauss: Yeah, if you'll do th~t.
rolling.
Howard: Okay, I'll make a motion that we...
Krauss: Generate a request for proposal.
e
Montgomery: Okay, is there a second? Alright, it's been moved and
seconded that we ask them to go ahead and generate a study of the senior
housing in Chanhassen.
Senior Commission Meeting
February 15, 1991 ~ Page 25
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Howard: And that includes senior center too...
Montgomery: I'm not sure that that in~ludes senior citizen center.
Krauss: I think it should. I've seen a lot of, I mean one of the
fundamental questions t.hat has to be resolved in my mind is if you do .a
housing project, does it. work better ordoes it not work at all if you
don't. have a senior center attached to it. A lot of folks would look for
to move into a senior housing project that if they could be off, to have
somebody on site, next door, where you could get a meal if you want to but
you don't have to.
Howard: That. was the situation with the Buffalo senior housing. Right
next door.
Kubitz: Well yeah, they had the advantage but they've also fo~nd out that
for the center is in the senior housing, that the others don't come Into it
like they have down inChaska.
Montgomery: Yeah, that it should be free standing;
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Heinlein: I had visited the one on TH
st. John: Freestanding, yes.
Montgomery: I think that~s important.
Montgomery: In Eden prairie?
Hei nlei n: Yeah. And they had a beautiful di ni ng room that was oh', just
fabulous. Of course the apartments aren't all that cheap as I found out
after I said no. That. had I come up wit.h a different idea, I could have
gotten in there for less money. I really didn't want to leave the town of
Chanhassen. I felt like I was away from t.he church and I was away from
this and that and I really didn't, although I liked the place, it was
beautiful and t.hey have lovely facilities and elevators and all of t.he
works. They sent me Christmas card and everything else this year.
St. John:
apartment.
But their activities ar~ just around the people living!n thit
It isn't open to the.
Heinlein:
They have bus trips and all this sort of thing.
St. John:
Their own people there.
Heinlein:
Yeah.
e
Krauss: These are real p~ematurediscussions that we've had with th~
manager. We've talked about, our City Manager is a computer wiz and
samethi ng of a financial mad scientist.. We were looki ng at projections of
how do you structure a housing project as ballpark numbers and things and
one of the things we were looking at is, one of the good uses of tax
increment money is that you can buy down the cost of the project enough so
that the rents that the project needs to support itself are low enough that
'seniors can provide it. And one of the other things we've talked about is
I .
Senior Commission Meeting
FebrOary 15, 1991 ~ Page 26
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a lot of times when, publ,ically funded. Typically publically funded senior
projects, ora lot of senior programs. If they use a lot of federal tax
dollars, have a lot of hooks on them. Unfortunately some of them almost
make you, you have to be destitute before you qualify. You have to lose
a.ll your equity in a house or something like that and what we've talked
aboJt is we don't want to, you know we'd like to see something that meets
the needs of our residents, not federal ~guidelines and that you don't have
to be destitute. That you can keep your equity and that it's just a more
affordable project.
t10ntgomery: Well, we have a motion on the floor and it's been moved and
seconded.
Howard moved, Kubitz seconded that the Senior Commission recommend to
City Council to generate a study for senior housing and senior center
Chanhassen.. All voted in favor and the motion carried unanimously_
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Jay Johnson: If I could say a word on political reality. Tax increment
financing. There's been a large move over the .last 5 or 6 years to close
the tax increment financing districts as quickly as possible in order to
bring those tax monies for the businesses back to have an affect on the
individual taxpayer's tax bill. As a matter of fact, 4 years ago when r
ran, when I started on the City Council, that was one of my main objectives
is to close out these. Get the work that tax increment districts done and
close them out. The longer we go in the district and the more you learn
about it, the more you see that by extending them to their maximum length,
which is 2002 I believe is the oldest for one of our districts. Others had
to die like last year and coming in the next couple.of years. Has these
side benefits of being to create senior needs and other things that Joe
Taxpayer out there doesn't see it that way. He sees it as my tax bill's
too high. This is going to affect my school district, my county and my
city tax bill. In reality it doesn't affect a school district tax. bill
hardly at all. The school district levies what they levy. They get so
much money and that's it. No matter the source so it really doesn't affect
the school's education. It might affec~ your tax bill but not the
education of your kids but it will have a small affect on the city tax bill
and a small affect on the county tax bill and it will help the State of
Minnesota balance their budget by 40% of these taxes hitting over to them.
But the political reality is that a majority of the people out there are
pushing to close these districts. And to do a senior thing and to use this
excess, which is kind of excess money, over and beyond what we need. I
guess another requirement is that the facilities will have to be within
district. We can't go and build a facility out in Murray Hills area
because that's not in the tax increment financing district.
Bragg: There's an example of what you're talking about going on over i~
Shorewood. They're going to build a strip mall on TH 7 right adjacent to
Waterford and they're running into all kinds of difficulties with that and
I think it passed like at midnight on the term of the previous mayor and
the new one came in and their whole new attitude toward it and it's just
foundering now.
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Krauss: Well our tax increment districts are doing very well. I mean
Chanhassen's been very successful in g~tting businesses to move into
downtown and move int~ the industrial park. But Jay's right. I mean every
Senior Commission Meeting
February 15, 1991 - Page 27
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year in the State Legislature there~s moves to kilt tax increment
financing. You know to you as a homeowner, typically it doesn't matter.
mean you're paying the same number of dollars you would anyway .
I
Bragg: Even though...
Montgomery: Well it's very complicated and I think the more we can
understand that and get it across to people, the better off we'll be.
Krauss: But again, and Jay touched on political reality. The political
reality in any community and this is no different is, this is ari idea. I
mean you've got to sell it to the City Council. The City Council's very
fiscally conservative. They're not looking to take on new projects. I
mean they were very supportive of the Senior Commission but most of them
asked me is this going to cost us any more money. I said well not this
year.
Howard: Are tax increment areas, are they strictly more or less
downtown area of Chanhassen?
Krauss: Well it's actually quite large. It is around downtown..
of sites.
Howard: Across TH 5? All those industrial pl~ces?
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Krauss: Yeah, it goes all the Way 'down there too but there are potential
residential sites in the downtown Chanhassen district. I mean it goes all
the way up the hill past, does it go to, Saddlebrook? Towards Saddlebrook.
Jay Johnson: To the top of the hill th~re basically. What's his name?
That project that we had so much.
Krauss: Cenvesco.
Jay Johnson:' The Cenvesco property, and that's zoned R-12. High density
residential. So we have some within it that's zoned that way. We've got
on the south side of the railroad tracks behind United Mailing. The
Instant Webb. That area. That all the way over to Galpin. No, not ,Galpin.
Audubon. Just a little bit beyond Audubon. That's all in the tax
increment district. That's mostly industrial. I'm not sure if that R-12
that's just on the other side is or not. That's in the Lake Susan Hills.
Krauss: Yeah, the northern part of it. rthink it is.
Jay Johnson: Part of that is areas that will be developed later on when we
get some industry in.
Krauss: Well see that's one of ,the things the housing study needs to
answer. Where do you need to put this thing to best serve the needs of the
people that are going to live in there. r mean common wisdom says put it
near downtown but whether that's right or not in Chanhassen we don't know.
e
Heinlein: r would think it would be more sensible so to speak because
everything goes to downtown.
..
Senior Commission Meeting
February 15, 1991 -Page 28
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Kubitz: Well it'd be more convenient for seniors to get shopping, if we
ever get a grocery store and a few other things.
st. John: That might be out of town.
Krauss: Well the site where we've approved a grocery store is across the
street from City Hall on 78th Street. .
Kubitz: The other thing, Buffalo had that committee or whatever it was,
composed of all of those different parts of U1e City. The Council, the
school board, whatever. r think we should be working on getting that kind
of an organization going to start pushing City Hall.
Bragg: ...made more sense I thought when I heard that and they>had people,
not just seniors but people that were community movers and shakers.
Kubitz: Yeah, we should get going on that. Because they're the ones that
are going to help push the City Council into doing What we wantd6ne.
B,"agg:
...then the bank gave them the TV set.
Jay Johnson: What they did is when it came down to spending the bucks,
they already had the community behind them. They didn't come up with a
small group of people and say hey, we want you to spend bucks on us. They
already had all segments of the community had already been saying seniors,
seniors for 3 years that this group had been together. Getting it in the
newspaper routinely.
e
Kubitz: When they got that group going, then they got action fast so we
should get work on that. That 23 ~onth~ they did it when they got that
group going so that's where we ought to head first.
St. John: And like Jay said, there were 4 out of the 16. There were 4
seniors on that committee. The rest we~e all.
Montgomery: Do you feel there are people in the community now that w6uld
be supportive that you're aware of?
Bragg: Jay is.
Montgomery: Maybe this is the kind of a list we can attach to this goals
study.
Jay Johnson: Who's ever going to say they're against seniors? Well
I might know a few people in town who mlght.
Kubitz: That's why we want to get all of this stuff into the newspaper on
the activities so we get them to realize we're doing something.
St. John: We should have asked them how they got those people to be on
that committee?
e
Bragg: Go give
Senior Commission Meeting
February 15, 1991 - Page 29
--
Krauss: You've already had interest shown by the Mayor and Ursula in
particular and I'm sure the others will .as well on the Council. HRA, well
the Mayor's on the HRA. There's some tie in there. St. Hubert's. I don't
know who the new priest is over there but st. Hubert's, it got kind of
bbllicked up but they were on the verge of doing their own senior project.
They wanted to have a 30 unit senior housing.
Bragg: The other church has always said, they have so few seniors in theIr
congregations. They say this is a young communIty and it it is youn~ out
here.
Heinlein: AS per our congregation. I happen to be the oldest one there.
st. John: Well they could have people on this committee even though they
aren't seniors.
Krauss: I should warn you though that you do a housing study and it could
show that housing is not economically possible to do in Chanhassen. Senior
housing. I mean that's not an unreasonable answer to get and we want to
know. I mean we're not going into this: saying do us . senior housing study
that proves we need one. We're saying show it~ Let's see if we do have a
need. .
--
Bragg: But there is a point I want to make when it comes to looking at the
other people, they are what's called the sandwich generation. They have
their own children they're bringing up and they have their parents who have
more and more needs so that, well"like you. Selda came here because she
and her husband had needs and their son was interested in having them here
where he could take care of them.
Do these studies make
Krauss: Yes.
. .
Howard: That's where we got a lot of our information from last year.
Montgomery: Perhaps even if there is an indication that the housing is not
needed.
Kubitz: The center is.
Krauss: Right.
Montgomery: Well I think we can plainly see what we need to do is to
figure out who you think would be supportive and who would help us over a
long haul because it's.notgOing to be something we're going to runaround
and do tomorrow.
Howard: Could we in the near future~h~ve a form l.tter composed to send to
various. ..to see if they would have interest?
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Kubitz: Or could appoint somebody from their group to be on this
commission.
Howard: So we have somet.hing to show them our objectives.
Senior Commission Meeting
February 15, 1991 - Page 30
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Mont.gomery:
Are we ready yet to make a motion?
Montgomery: Maybe we should wait until next meeting.
bit. I think you have
Krauss: You might want to let the idea
some time.
Howard: Oh, I'm not saying now but I think we should.
Krauss: But you might also want to consider in addition to having priests
and ministers, City Council. Somebody from the HRA. We've had a couple of
people from Carver County Social Services who came to some of our task .
force meetings who are interested in being involved and they have, you know
they tap into the services that are around. I'm not certain what her
positions going to be on this but we're. going to go have lunch with Jo Ann
Kavern next week. We've been very careful. I .mean Jo Ann operates an
excellent program and we don't want her to feel like anybody's stepping on
her toes or undercutting her program. The questions I'm going to have at
lunch with her is how does one go about starting the ball rolling for a
senior center? Is her organization, she works for an umbrella
organization. Are they an organization that we could use to work with, as
this idea gels? So again same as we don't want to give any impression to
the Chanhassen Seniors Card club that there's anybody trying to cut them
off or reshape them or an~thing else, we want to provide the same
assurances for South Shore Senior Center.
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Heinlein: Well this was the one thing that was mentioned this morning.
They do not want to lose their identity:.
Jay Johnson: As a card club?
Heinlein: Yes. They want to be known as the Chanhassen Seniors and that's
it. They do not want to be known as the Card club or anything like that.
They want to be considered.
Kubitz: But that's
anything else.
not broad enough to be
Howard: That high rise they've got over in Excelsior, they had a terrible
time trying to get land for that because the people in the City of
Excelsior didn't want those old people walking...and it was very. very bad.
St. John,: I know it . Yeah. Excelsior was nota very senior minded
community.
Montgomery: I know when we went to Buffalo and they have a little group of
card players and it sounds very similia~ to what we have here and they have
their meetings and...
Kubitz: Well the South Shore has their card group.
--
St. John: And it's mostly Chanhassen people that come
which is fine.
Senior Commission Meeting
FebruarY 15, 1991 - Page .31
--
Kubitz: Well South Shore too in their church, which is not the best of
situations, may wind~p joining forces with us over here eventually.
Kra0ss: Well it sure makes it easier. I mean ~ou've got ,a larger market
to draw on and that's one of the things that the senior center study needs
to look at." Do you put blinders on and you draw a line around Chanhassen
and those are the only people that would come here or do you do what South
Shore's doing and you draw from alLover?
St. John: That's what I said. If those 6 communities that sponsor South
Shore would get together and make one big one and all go together.
Kubitz: Then we could have that beautiful...
Montgomery: There are so many of this group that go to Excelsior.
Brag~: I was just going to say about Jo Ann Kavern. She functions as
coordinator for a lot of centers. Not just South Shore. She's there
couple days a week and sometimes a couple of hours. She's got other
places.
Kubitz: Yeah. She's missing most of the time.
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Krauss: That's why we want to get her advice and we want to be up front
with her and talk with her. And by the way, that's one of the things, I.
mean we funded, well we sent $7,000.00 or $8,000.00 to South Shore Se~ior
Center every year and have for quite a few years and I guess I'm not
anticipating us stopping that until we have an.alternative center here.
Heinlein: Somebody said is there any possibility that any of that money
could be used if we could find a place to rent?
Krauss: Larry Blacksted was saying that you may be able to but you're not
supposed to pay for rents with the block grant. You can pay, if you have a
facility you can buy a kitchen for it and you can buy a van to get people
to it but you're not supposed to pay, you can't pay for the rent and you
can't pay for salary.
Heinlein: Well our treasury does not have that much money I know that.
Jay Johnson: See that's where you get the Rotary and the Lion's and
everybody else. You get your pulltab money out of the Legion.
Krauss: They're also tapping into, I mean a lot of the federal money is
dried up for most everything over the last 10 years but there is still some
senior funding money around and Jo Ann's organization does tap into some of
that.
Heinlein: I think they are a member of that weren't they? That senior
center...Yeah. They are part of that.
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Jay Johnson: Is that who Jo Ann
Heinlein: She works for the community services.
Senior Commission Meeting
February 15, 1991 - Page 32
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Howard:
She doesn't work for just one.
She works for several.
Heinlein: Oh yeah. I know I had to s~ndchecks when I wanted to go over
there was.
Krauss: Well. it's a Hennepin County organization that she's working for
but on the other hand, we area bit of Hennepin County and maybe we.can
pull the same trick we did with the block grant.
Bragg:: I think they would be very interested in working with you on that.
Howard: But like she said, a senior center is not just a congregate dining
center either. You have to have all concerns...
Montgomery: Has anybody come up with any ideas about interim spa.ce or any
other place that might be available"?
Heinl~in: I inquired of that building you mentioned. I spoke to the
fellow who has offices in there and he said no. He said none of them are
equipped with a kitchen type thing or alwthing Ii ke that. He said that
building near Lotus.
Jay Johnson: Lawn and Garden"?
Montgomery: No. The one that used to be the treatment center.
e
Jay Johnson:
no windows.
Yes. Their minimum rent's $11.00 per square foot
If you have windows, it~s $12.00 a square foot~
AI-Jaff: We were contacted by the manager of Filly's. Mainly for bowling
for senLor citizens, if they want to participate in such an activity. I
did ask if they had space for rent and they said, well what exactly is
expected. Maybe they can use your kitchen facilities. When Iexplai ned
what congregate dining would be, they said they didn't want anything where
they would break even or lose on. . ..
Krauss: See they're in bankruptcy and I'm f10tsure how they're going to
come out of that. But there was, when the City thought about a community
center down there, there weree lot of folks who thought that having kids
and then programs, public programs next to what used to be a pretty hot
bar, was not a great idea. And I would suspect some of the same beliefs
would carryover to the senior center as well.
Zetta Demorrett: They said over at the Legion where they said they had to
delegionize the place. Put in windows andget!the carpets out and put in
lots of lights. They probably have to de-whatever that is. De-Filly's.
Krauss: So the long and the short of it. is, we conti nue to draw a blank as
to, I mean there's just not a space that people can walk into. I mean even
if we could find just a blank spacei ~e could outfit it with the block
grant money but there's just no room in town.
e
Heinlein: That was mentioned to me too this morning by Marion that,~t.Jhat
it is the Ranch or whatever.
e
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Jay Johnson:
Pony's?
Senior Commission Meeting
February 15, 1991 - Page 33
Heinlein: Pony's Bar? It usedt~ be, yeah the Pony Express~ I said
r knew there was some hook up there that the man still had a lease on
even though.
Jay Johnson: Pony's is using it,
going.
Krauss: Well they have a bar.
Krauss: Pauly's is still going.
Jay Johnson: But Pony's, I heard they have a lease as a sound studio and
he's got his apartment upstairs. But the City does own that building but.
part of purchasing it was a lease back to the former owner at a very
reasonable rate. We don't know if he's using it or not. That is something
that we could sublet it from him at a profit to him. I think our lease to
him is extremely generous and it used to be a full bar and restaurant with
full cooking facilities and stuff.
Krauss: We built a
St. John: What about parking Rlace?
Jay Johnson: Yeah, the City owns the p*rking lot.
e Bragg: There are stairs.
Krauss: It's not designed for the purpose.
Jay Johnson: You'd have to have ramps but see, that's the kind of thing
that you can spend block grant money orr. It's building handicap
accessibility to a building like that and making those permanent
modifications.
Kubitz: What's in Pauly's?
Jay Johnson: Pauly's is a restaurant, sports bar, restaurant now.
Montgomery: Somebody told me that was out of there and yet I
Jay Johnson: The bottle shop's out.
Krauss: It's a dance floor and more tables.
Jay Johnson: The City owns that building also and he's got I believe a 4
year lease to stay in that and do whatever he wants to.
Krauss: See our long term goal is to tear dowh all those buildings and
t"'e've talked about agaIn using possibly tax increment money to build the
nev.J lib,ary facility there because they're going to outgrow this place.
St. John: Would there be space with tHe library t",hen that's bui It?
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Senior Commission Meeting
February 15, 1991 - Page 34
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Krauss: Well that.'s always possible but th.t site just doesn't strike me
as being real large. Nobody's thought it through very much and there's not
a l~t of parking.
Kubitz: We're going to put up a new community center with facilities. for a
bigger Council room and so forth so the library can expand into this.
Krauss: That'd be okay too.
Montgomery: Well there's certainly nothing
on.
Kubi tz: No, as we ~t.Jork, thi ngs wi 11 open up. You know you have to set
your goals and start working and then they open up.
Krauss: If ~t.Je didn't have South Shoreoperati"g out of a church already
and inclose proximity to town and we had a real crying need for them, I'm
sure we could go to the churches and get a basement same as South Shore did
but why do that if they're already doing it.
Kubitz: What was that?
Jay Johnson: Eckankar. Use part of their property.
Howard: Give us a little
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Montgomery: Todd Hoffman was saying that there. was probably more space
than he could use at the schools but it seems to me that is not very.
Jay Johnson: Todd doesn't know much about the school.
Montgomery: No, no, no. But there doesn'tsee~to be any immediately
answer to the interim space problem.
AI-Jaff: The times when the seniors would need the sch061
be used.
Montgomery: The timing is terrible sol don't know what the answer is.
can certainlykeepoul;" ear to the ground and keep hunting but as far as the
Chanhassen senior group is concerned, we don't have any immediate answer
but it isn't that we're not lookinifor,one. I know they'd like some
different space but.
Bragg: Are you going to inquire about the Pony? The CO'f'ner
talking about?
Krauss: We can look into that. As Jay says, we think it's being occupied.
I mean I've heard, in fact I heard somebody \r.Jas complaining about the noise
from the studio.
e
Jay Johnson: It wouldn't surprise me. I know there's people living in the
top because the census taker that had to do that work there brought me
along for safety because she didn't want to go up to knock on those doors
by herself.
Senior Commission Meeting
February 15, 1991 ~ Page 35
e
Montgomery: Does anybody else have any other iuggestions about contacting
people or should we just keep that in mind and bring our suggestions to the
next meeting?
Howard: I know one thing that there are seniors in some of these apartment
buildings. I deliver dinner at your door and...subsidized housing. All
,those apartments coming on TH 101 there. Those gray apartments sitting up.
St.00hn: Archer Heights?
Howard: Yeah, ArcherH~ights. They're are quite a few that I delivered in
there and there's some that~..
St. John: That's in Hennepi~ County.
Krauss: That's Minnetonka. Archer
Howard: There's some in there.
Jay Johnson: I think there's some around where Selda and Sharminlive.
Kraul;Ss: The one's we're buying one of the buildings.
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St. John: Tbe Meadows?
Jay Johnson: Oh. Those
Howard: I don't know what the name of it is. . Just near that new apa.rtment
building that's been built downtown. It's right over there behind it.
Krauss: Oh, that's the ones you live in.
Kubitz: On Chan View. Those apartments on
Montgomery: How about the newsletter? When does that come out?
Krauss: Oh, our first newsletter has just been formed up right now and we
wrote an article that just said we have. a senior commission and what you're
looking at. It's very brief. But we have another one coming out in
April? April-May where we can actually, we're going to have a <regular
column for the seniors and anything you want us to put in there. When we
find out about programs like the smoke. detector br whatev~r and we'll just
put in there.
Bragg: It seems to me that these items, 5,6 and 7 here are really long
range where it's a struggle isn't it? It'sa struggle to find a~lace.
Kubi tz: Those are conti nui ng ones. You ltJr i te 1 on them and they go right
all the way down every meeting.
Bragg: ...onahd on so I don't t.hinkweshould feel badly if we can't...
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Montgomery: It's the little pieces that you put together that eventually
you get a base going for something.
Senior Commission Meeting
February 15, 1991 - Page 36
e Jay Johnson: You guys are the first spark in the motor.
Bragg: That's why I was so anxious to have something visible going on and
I really think your Mr. Littfin was wonderful. I'm so glad he picked up
that. It gives us a visibility and maybe once we get a little more
visibility we'll get more people that will be interested in what we're
doing. So little by little we chip away...
Montgomery: You were mentioning the Lark. Where was that used?
Howard: Well this was just an ad. When I ran .into one in the grocery,
that was in Anchorage. There were two of them sitting right with the push
carts for people who were handicapped to use. My sister-in-law was ina
wheelchair...because the wheelchair didn't have a basket and all this and
she really, it did so much for her morale to be able to go arouryd the store.
and pick up things and put them in the basket. And they're not that large.
I just saw this ad in the magazine.
St. John: Was that something that you ~ut onto the?
.Kubitz: No, it's in the grocery store and you 'get ih that instead of
wheelchair and motorized and it goes around wherever you want to go.
st. John: I see.
.
Howard: But if we ever do get a grocery store, that would be a very
worthwhile thing to contribute to the grocery store.
Jay Johnson: There's something you can actually start right now and talk
to like Cub or Rainbow,which are two of the places that a lot of our folks
go, or whatever the stores aTe becaUse that isagood idea.
Howard: Well, it really does a lot for'people's...
Kubitz: t.Jell yeah because it frees them i nsteadof somebody havi ngto
wheel or push their wheelchair and drag a cart along too. They do it on
their own. It's about the same idea as a golf cart only a smaller.
Montgomery: Does anybody have any other...? Anything else we should take
up today or should we, I would hope that you l"ill give this some thought.
and bring it with you next time. Also .the names of people that you think
would be good prospects for an advisory group.
Howard: Maybe we could get the names of the different organizations.
Community organizations that are active. I know you have a Lion's Club
here. And Rotary.
Kubitz: VFW.
Howard: Legion.
Montgomery = Do you have a list of that?
.
Ai-Jaff: I'm sure we have. I'm sure they're all members of the Chamber.
:-
Jay Johnson:
And there's a junior
Senior Commission Meeting
February 15, 1991 - Page 37
Montgomery: If any of us have some lists or if you have some lists that
are up to date. That would be great~
AI-Jaff: I'm sure we do.
Kubitz: You go to both South Shore and.the card party. Could you push
towards getting the information into the Villager? Writing up our meetings
and activities and so forth.
Jriy Johnson: Well you hade. reporter here.
He had to leave.
st. John: That would be and she would take care of all of .what
Kubitz: Yeah, but like we said before, they have part of it but they
really have enough coverage of all the activities they do.
AI-Jaff: We do keep the Villager informed on What's taking place in the
City. Dave knew about this meeting.
St. John: Yeah, and what we do ~t,this meeting, they would know so and
outside of that we don't really, you know we don't do anything.
Montgomery: And if we have something, we should let them know.
. Jay Johnson: .. .South Shore list of activities?
I
Kubitz: ...their card party, their movies and all the other things and a
lot of the programs that they do. Some of it is, some of it isn't.
Jay Johnson: ,We've still got
Kubitz: The card club plays cards but you don~t get in on finding out
about the trips they take and the potlucks they have and this sort of
thing. We've got to blow it up.
St. John: That would be for the cards and that, that would be for the card
club. They have their reporter and she should have a blurb in that...
Montgomery: Shall we adjourn our meeting officially.
Bragg moved, Howard seconded to adjourn the meeting. All voted in favor
and the motion carried. The meeting was adjourned at 11:35 a.m..
Prepared by Nann Opheim
Submitted by PaulKrau~s
Planning Director
tI,
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