NYSILC Full Council Meeting

November 16, 2007

Present: Christina Curry, Nick Rose, Melanie Shaw, Bruce Darling, Brad Williams, Bob Gumson, Mike Godino, Kieran McGovern, Lauren LeFebvre, Randy Black Schantz, Sharon Flom, Sharon Shapiro, Doug Usiak, Stephanie Orlando, Mike Orzel, Edith Prentiss, Dennis Boyd, Gene Hughes

Chris: Will start with open forum. I would like to congratulate our Executive Director, Brad Williams, who was the recent recipient of the 704 Democratic Club Justin Dart Award for political advocacy.

Brad: One of our members, Sharon Shapiro, has spent two full three year terms with us, which is a long time but seems to have been short. I have a certificate of appreciation to award to her for two full terms as a NYSILC council member and an executive committee member. It was signed by Chris and me and I want to give it to Sharon for her hard work. Thank You.

Chris: Thank you Sharon.

Sharon: I just want to say it’s been wonderful working with the council especially during the height of my ability to be involved with the voting issues. Lets move on and up from here, and I know we will.

Chris: I am sure we can count on you to stay involved in those issues, Sharon, as I know how passionate you are about them. Alright, I will open the floor for open forum.

Edith: I would like to mention that we are finally off the ground with the Yahoo voting group. Join NYSILC for disabled voters getting equal voting access. Email Joe Adler. It is an open group. If you say something bad or that I don’t like, I will moderate you in a heartbeat. So please note; we doubled membership and are up to eight this morning. Hopefully, we will be using this as a tool. Thank you.

Chris: Thanks Edith.

Brad: I promised Greg Jones I would make this announcement. The Commission on Quality Care is inviting anyone who is interested to participate in the filming at the State BOE for their HAVA law show to address prevailing issues with HAVA and people with disabilities. I am passing this information along.

Mike Godino: I just want to recognize Edith Prentiss for the hard work she did in bringing the ADA Freedom Tour bus to NYC and hosting a press conference and getting that off the ground and making that happen last week. That was exciting. We are leaving NYC to go back down to Washington, DC, for the end of the tour and the meeting in Congress. I want to recognize and thank Edith for the hard work she did in putting that together.

Chris: Very nice. Is there anyone else? Ok, moving on. I hope everyone received the minutes from the September minutes in their packets. I haven’t had a chance to look at them. If you did, you will notice that the corrections and revisions we discussed were very nicely included in those minutes. If there are changes that need to be made, I will accept a motion.

Mike: Mike Godino move to accept.

Kieran: I second that.

Chris: Any discussion. Are all in favor? No oppose or abstention. Ok, the first thing I want to talk about under old business is that Dennis brought up question of when we have a motion on the floor what is necessary to see it passed. Up until today, with my history of council, we have always passed motions based on simple majority of the number of people who were in attendance so we had a quorum to begin with. Dennis brought up at the last meeting the question of whether that was proper and whether we needed a majority of the total number of voting members of the council and not just the total number of members who are present. Dennis and Doug Usiak helped me figure this out. NYSILC is a quasi-state agency; best way I can explain what proper procedure will be is excerpt from a letter that Dennis Vacco sent to Doug Usiak when he was chair of the council in response to this question. I have a paragraph that explains the opinion that then Attorney General Vacco provided to the council. It is a little different from the way we have been doing things, at least since I have been on the council. “Under general construction law, a majority of the whole number (meaning the total authorized membership of persons making up the board or body constitutes a quorum. The quorum or body may not exercise its power, authority or duty in the absence of a quorum. Further, a majority vote of the whole number is necessary for the board or body to take action. For example, if the statute or the bylaws of a covered entity provided for 20 members at least 11 members must be present to have a quorum, and then at least 11 members must vote for a proposal in order to take action. So in order for this council to take any action, we have right now a total of 23 voting members - that would mean we would need at least 12 members to vote either I or Nay in order for that motion to move forward. That is a little different than what we have been doing; I don’t know if anybody has any questions about that? I would ask Dennis if he has anything he could add to help enlighten us – I must admit I read through this reference. The legal wording was a little daunting to me, so maybe Dennis could help with that.

Dennis: I think you stated that well, Chris. The only I would say is that you need a majority of yays to carry a motion; it doesn’t really affect the nays per say. I think going forward, unless and until there is an amendment in the law or another opinion, that we seek and get from the current AG we would have to have the 12 a particular motion. Also, relating to presence for the purpose of the quorum – in terms of people that cannot be in the room. The law requires that people participating from a remote location participate through a video – videoconferencing as opposed to teleconferencing in order to meet the quorum requirements. So if we end up with 11 people here and 1 person on the phone, we wouldn’t have a quorum.

Nick Rose: People can participate by a phone conference, but their vote is not considered towards quorum. When we really need a vote and don’t want to put things off, we can vote by written proxy – so you can send out a proxy vote and that enables the executive committee to move forward.

Edith: As a body that includes disabled constituents that this might be an interesting issue that we would like to pursue because for those of us who are disabled and are more at the mercy of our adaptive devices, might be concerned about weighing down the council in business. I was wondering if this is something we might want to bring to the AG’s attention as being discriminatory.

Chris: That’s an interesting perspective – I certainly hadn’t considered it…

Edith: You’re not at the mercy of a chair…

Chris: Well, that’s the difference…that’s true.

Edith: I mean, it’s this sort of issue that keeps us from full participation.

Chris: Maybe it’s something we can discuss a little more fully with some of the attorneys that we have the luxury of having on the council. Dennis, did you want to respond to that?

Dennis: Yes, a couple of things. I just wanted to follow up about the proxy. It has to be written according – it has to be written under non-profit law. You can’t orally confirm proxy. This is state law – you can’t aggregate a clear provision of state law.

Edith: I’m suggesting it be changed –

Dennis: Yeah, ok, alright, then rather than the normal way of seeking a way to accommodate – think about bringing to executive committee whether you want to advocate for changing that requirement.

Chris: Bruce that may be something we can put on a future committee agenda

TK Small: I think that this issue of asking for reasonable accommodations for people with disabilities to participate is a legitimate legal issue. But traditionally, I don’t see quite as much clarity in the paragraph that Chris just read. It says a majority has to vote, it didn’t say a majority had to vote affirmatively. So it might do well for the executive committee to ask for a clarification from the AG.

Chris: I appreciate this, TK, and I certainly am not going to question whose interpretation might be right or wrong but I read the salient sentence in here and I can see where it might be interpreted differently.

Bob: Yes, I saw the same thing when I read it – it may be wise to see if new perspective on this would come from a different AG’s office ten years later, but one other thought I had when I read that. I don’t think it totally clarified the issues of members either because it seemed to talk about the members of the council in a total number – this council has voting members that are separate from non-voting members and we have several ex-officio members but we all the number counts as the total count of people on the council. Does it even get more complicated to get an affirmative vote of yays if you are counting the full number of people on the council? I don’t see this as clearly stated in the letter.

Chris: I think this is clearly showing we need a lot more investigation about this. Nick, you had mentioned Bob Freedman, someone who is an expert on this. Maybe we can connect with him and invite him to make the next NYSILC meeting to see if maybe we can get a clearer picture on exactly what the interpretation is, what it means, is it voting members, non-voting members, etc. I see a lot of differences of opinions here now. I think for today’s purposes we are going to have to just go with the majority as it talks about or as I initially talked about. Maybe at the next meeting if Mr. Freedman could join us he could help us come up with some kind of resolution.

Bruce: I just wanted to suggest that one of the ways we could help support each other in having the accommodations they need was for people to actually come to the meeting. Instead of looking to change state law, which might be an extensive process, I think the question to be asked is what about the voting members who are stuck at home due to faulty mobility devices. I think it is incumbent upon those of us who can get to the meeting to be here and make sure we follow through with our responsibilities so in the event we have someone out there who has something happen, we can accommodate this as a council. I am not disagreeing with you Edith, I just think other people on the council have the responsibility to make sure that you are accommodated.

Chris: I couldn’t agree with you more Bruce and I think that really needs to be said, and unfortunately it is probably NOT the people sitting around this table who need to hear it. It is the people who are NOT sitting around this table. It may be that we do send out a notice to the members how important attendance is and they did make a commitment to the council when they agreed to become a member of the council and also as we look to recruit new members we have to make sure they are ready and willing to accept that commitment and truly participate as fully as they can. Can we move on to the election of the new member at large? The two nominees are Doug Usiak and Pratik Patel. Dennis nominated Pratik in his absence, so a few of us have been trying to contact Pratik to ensure he can accept nomination. Unfortunately, none of us can get in touch with him so it puts us in a bit of a quandary. We don’t know if Pratik is even interested in serving as a member at large. Brad and I talked about this during the week, trying to figure out whether we should withdraw his name or what. We decided we would go ahead and keep the two names as nominees for the member at large; we would let the council know what the circumstances were. So that’s what we have done; Joe is passing out paper ballots.

Mike: It goes against the policies of this council. Anything disseminated within this council must be disseminated in alternative formats – it goes strictly against policies of this council. You need to take a voice vote in this room, not a paper ballot – I’m sorry.

Edith: I will support that statement.

Chris: Does anyone have any objections to that? I agree with you Mike, that goes against the policies – I believe that information presented to the council needs to be made accessible providing a reader is one type of accommodation. However, if folks do not have any problems with taking a voice vote then we will do that. The point is moot; I would like to move on.

Mike: If we as a council have been fighting for equal access within the voting booth and to hand out paper ballots that cannot be read by all council members in this room is against all policies of this organization as far as formats of choice and goes against what we are fighting for as policies of this state. We really must adhere to policies….

Chris: Mike, I am aware of fights we are having at the polling booth. Thank you. I am agreeing to change the process. No one has any objection to it, now I would like to move on. And before we take a vote, I would like to offer Doug, one of the nominees, to say a few words if he would like.

Doug: No, I prefer not to say a few words.

(laughter)

Chris: Ok, we can move on to taking the voice votes. We can start with Christina –

(Doug won the voting with majority of votes) (Twelve votes for Doug which is a majority of the whole)

Chris: Congratulations Doug, and welcome.

Edith: I think this is a perfect example of why we may need to look at requesting a change in state law – we know this won’t happen overnight – but this is exactly the reason. For whatever reason one member is on the telephone and it creates a situation by which we have to ask people to realize this. We have to be Caesar’s wife in our own dealings, but I think that saying nobody in the room objects does not remove the need to be aware of the situation with the alternate formats. It’s almost like saying you can “crawl in that voting booth – someone will read that to you.” We would not consider that for our citizens, our clients and ourselves.

Chris: I understand the sentiment, Edith, and again I don’t disagree with it. Unfortunately, circumstances were what they were and we tried to make the best of it. But certainly it is a point well taken. Moving on, we talked with Kieran McGovern since our last meeting, when we did not have a chair for the youth leadership committee. Kieran has graciously agreed that he would share that committee – we are really pleased. We think this will add a lot of youth and vitality to the committee; we are really glad to have him join us. The SPIL has officially been approved; we have it in writing. Thank you all for your hard work and keeping it moving forward back in February meeting. Brad is going to talk about some of the deliverables to the State Plan talks starting October of this year. We are beholden to this plan for the next three years.

Brad: Just to mention – the approval process for many of the states was not a smooth process – many of the states had to go through a very excruciating time – in fact, were made to agree to deliverables that were in some ways almost contrary to some basic principles to IL. For instance, in some mid-Atlantic states they made the state council the watchdog of the centers. One could imagine what they basically did was with the regional offices of RSA gone; they turned the SILC into the monitors of the centers. They turned that into a SPIL objective and made them use money to do it. RSA basically held the approval of that state’s SPIL over their head until they did that. So fortunately for us, our approval process went relatively smooth. The SILC congress is coming up in January; it’s one of the tracks they have to go over what happened. They are going to have RSA there to answer to some of these questions. So it should be interesting. Tom Kelly is going to be there to say “how did this happen?” For instance, they took away the state of Kansas’ ability to do systems advocacy. I had a long discussion with Shannon Jones and she was like “you guys still have a systems advocacy network – we can’t do it anymore – they took it away from us.” So how is it that in one region they aren’t doing something but in other regions they are still allowed to? There is something going on. I think it is a regionalized preference interpretation, but it should pan out at the SILC congress in January. Let me go over some of these agendas we are going to be pursuing under our state plan this year. We have one where we are working with strategic media services with Communication Concepts, (Tim Cronin). We are going to focus on general PR and in this particular case and our HAVA issues. We also have a series of things we are working on in conjunction with NYAIL, and this is one of them. The next one is Rapid Response Emergency Technical Assistance – it is done in a confidential way. If centers receive the service they want to know they got it in a confidential way – and that is effective. We do an evaluation at the end to be sure they feel the service is beneficial so we know that it was done to their satisfaction so we are able to evaluate things. This will be going on for next three years. We are also continuing the Statewide Systems Advocacy network over the next three years – there are 19 new center locations which I think have been posted out. They will be very active starting in January; they actually already are. That is wonderful. There will a community organizing initiative with NYAIL. We will be coordinated to connect them with a national group but trying to connect them with 4 particular projects statewide for particular CILs to increase their capacity for grassroots disability rights organizing and leadership skills. We are also working with Families Together to develop a youth leadership project – Stephanie Orlando is with us. We had a great meeting with her. We were planning for this new project as well as getting Stephanie to help utilize her talents in organizing with the youth movement in NYS and nationally. We want to increase this in IL here in New York. You will hear more from her; she is developing initial materials for the project so she can do outreach and marketing. She will start to build what she has; we are looking forward to what she is going to do. You will definitely hear more from Stephanie. We are going to try to connect Stephanie with Kieran, who is the chair of our youth leadership sub-committee. They can work together as well. This will be very exciting; we are really looking forward to the combination. Page Pierce is the executive director of Families Together in NYS. Finally, we have the SILC congress. We have slated to go myself, Edith (the region II SILC rep), Joe Adler, Bruce Darling and we are very much looking forward to going to New Orleans. One of the other things we put down here is – they are looking for donations. One of the things Edith as the Region II rep has put out to me are sponsorships, donations, etc. – we have done sponsorships and donations to the SILC Congress before and one thing I would like to put out to folks for consideration going to SILC Congress is if they could support a $500 donation to SILC Congress.

Doug: The only thing I want to say to that is please make it a sponsorship because WNYILP used to center to donate to centers around the state with the memberships and stuff. When the state audit came through we were criticized; we were not allowed to do that because of money.

Brad: So make it a sponsorship…

Doug: Yes, make it a sponsorship – I will make a motion that we can sponsor that $500.

Edith: Could I clarify that please, first? First, it could actually be a sponsorship as Doug says or we can do a contribution to a line item that we might have space in our budget for. We could do a $500 contribution towards it if we had $500 floating around in our budget – we can be invoiced for a specific purpose. It is whatever fits in our budgetary needs as a SILC so we actually have that line. If we had money in a certain category we might want to consider that. I am just trying to clarify the options we as a SILC have.

Chris: Ok, a motion has been made by Doug. Doug, would you re-state the motion please?

Doug: I make the motion we sponsor the SILC congress for $500.

Mike Godino: Second.

Chris: Any further discussion on the motion? All in favor

(All ayes)

Chris: Moving on to treasurer’s report, Mike.

Mike: I have gone through the 4^th quarter numbers, and everything seems to be in line with the quotas. This year we ended with a proposed budget of $563,532 – in the IL net similar numbers were budgeted – $74,335 – we should be happy to move forward into next year.

Chris: I just want to check and make sure everyone received the financial reports in the packet and does anybody have any questions on those reports? I would like to mention excess revenue; the amount that NYSILC under spends if they do under spend – they don’t claim that amount of money. That is just unspent funds. Just to clarify.

(Motion and second to end treasurer’s report)

Chris: Next thing on the agenda is the executive committee report – our esteemed chair is on a conference call. We will table this for now. Lets move on to subcommittee report then. I want to look at committee structure in general that NYSILC has. The last executive committee meeting we spent quite a bit of time talking about the committee structure, oversight of the committees, chairmanship, membership, are they active or not active, etc. Certainly, one of the duties of the now new member at large is to oversee the committee structure a little more. What I would like to do today is to ask committee chairs to provide a list of committee members along with a brief statement about what the committee’s goal or mission is. I have asked them to submit that to the NYSILC office. Then I would ask them to re-forward that to the executive committee – if you could do that by January 7 that would help us out for the upcoming executive committee meeting we have in January. I would like to take just a minute to look at the committees that NYSILC has. Some of them are standing committees and some are ad-hoc committees. The standing committees we are looking at are the public policy committee, the finance committee, personnel committee, improvement committee and the state plan committee. Mike is the chair of the finance committee as treasurer – Bruce is the chair of the state plan committee. To the best of my knowledge, the public policy committee, the personnel committee, and the recruitment committee not only doesn’t have a chair but has not convened. Does anyone disagree with that? The sub-committee we have is a travel sub-committee that Randy is chair of, the emergency preparedness or evacuation sub-committee is one that Edith is chair of, the audit sub-committee which I don’t think we have a chair of, the new member orientation sub-committee, the disability vote education sub-committee which Mike is chair of, the housing institute sub-committee (we don’t know if we will keep this sub-committee)?

Brad: What happens is some of those you are talking about are now under the state plan – these are some of the ad-hoc committees. We just changed to a new state plan, so some of those you are talking about were projects under the old state plan. Housing institute was a project invented under the old state plan. I would think that would be one we would give up.

Chris: I meant to bring part of the by-laws that mentioned how we dissolved state committees but I did not do that – maybe what we can do since the executive committee is looking at that is clarify it and if there are committees we agree should be dissolved we can do this at next meeting.

Randy: When I came on board, we were told we should try and join three of these sub-committees at that time. I was told three would be ideal when I came on. But I don’t see that followed through.

Brad: Just to let you know what happened was the member at large position (one of their primary purposes is to make sure chairs go out to recruit folks for the committees and make sure those committees meet). That is why this is a very important position.

Chris: You are absolutely right, Randy. Things have gotten a little loose – we are trying to see where we are at so we can move forward in a more productive way.

Randy: Wonderful. I just want to say to Doug: remember who nominated you and who your campaign manager was!

(Laughter)

Chris: Ok, so the next committee I have would be the Disability Caucus subcommittee – that is another one we have a question about dissolving. Disability Caucus subcommittee does not have a chair, hasn’t been meeting. The statewide consumer satisfaction survey committee has been active; statewide needs assessment has been active with Doug as chair. You will be listening later to him today. Best Practice Conference subcommittee – that is something that NYSILC isn’t necessarily as involved in as it used to be.

Brad: We just had people in that were interested in participating in the annual conference. We found out which NYSILC members were interested and we merged those NYSILC members in with the committee that met on NYAIL. We made that merge happen.

Chris: Right, the NYAIL conference committee has recently become reactivated – Melanie is not here. I can tell you that Chris Hilderbrant is co-chairing that committee as a representative of NYSILC. If any other NYSILC member is interested in being part of that committee, they should contact Melanie. So anyway, if the committee chairs we talked about could provide the NYSILC office with a list of their membership by January 7. There is going to be a committee meeting for committee chairs and the executive committee, most especially the member at large. That will be on March 27. We will be looking at committee structure, activities, membership and how to get the committees that are not active moving forward (if they are still necessary committees). We will hold it late in the afternoon so it will give people time to travel for the meeting so they don’t have to add up yet another day. Probably around 1:00 PM. We are still firming up arrangements for that. Looking at the agenda, I see I am up next with the Statewide Consumer Satisfaction Survey Subcommittee. Hopefully, there was a report to the full council from this committee – the committee has been pretty active. I am not going to go through entire report – going to try to hit the highlights of what the committee has been doing over the last year and a half. We are going to ask from some recommendations from the council. We did look at these changes with a mindful eye towards modification as it is spelled out in the SPIL for the next three years. We believe we are going to meet our obligation under the SPIL even with the changes that we are talking about and that we will propose to you today. When the committee first became more active, it decided it wanted to look at what satisfaction surveys were showing. It wanted to re-examine the process, including the survey instrument and the indicators on the instrument, but they also felt that the significant portion of the real impact of IL was just not being measured. We felt like NYSILC and IL had a much greater impact on people with disabilities across the state than we could show by standard satisfaction survey. The committee felt very strongly that doing the consumer satisfaction survey was an important piece – we certainly didn’t want to give up that piece. Again, we believe it is very important to hear from the people we serve as to what our strengths and weaknesses are. But we also wanted to see how we could better capture what the real impact of IL was, is and will hopefully continue to be across the state. So we started out looking at the survey instrument, and we believed that we needed to conduct some focus groups across the state. They were held in Buffalo, Harlem, Syracuse and Troy. Doug Usiak was generous enough to agree to facilitate each one of those focus groups so that we could be more structured and maintain the same kind of structure and standards in all of the focus groups. A script and questions were developed and they were the same questions posed in all of the focus groups. Out of those focus groups, priorities developed from the groups that were actually put into a questionnaire and distributed to the ILC’s in hard copy and electronically. We asked the ILCs to ask their consumers to complete this questionnaire to help us prioritize what folks across the state saw as good service and what they viewed as satisfactory service. 185 people responded to that survey and from that survey and the information I sent out to you included the results. These were the top 12 indicators. We did develop 12 indicators we would like to use in the next satisfaction survey instrument and again, you have that information in your packet. Next to each of the 12 indicators we included the percentage of people who responded to the survey who felt strongly that this should be a priority. So those indicators we would like to use in the next survey instrument in addition to the 12 indicators the committee is discussing, although a final consensus hasn’t been reached yet about adding additional questions just for the purpose of assessing other IL issues such as community impact and systems change. Those indicators would be separate from the individual satisfaction piece of the survey. Other standard information and demographic type information will be included.

So that is how we have been looking to change the survey instrument – it has not been changed since we started. We have a certain amount of money budgeted in the SPIL to do the Consumer Satisfaction Survey – we wanted to be able to address the impact of IL in general. One of the things we are proposing is changing the process itself. Each center would now be responsible for disseminating the survey questionnaire to their consumers. NYSILC would provide each center with a form letter that they could cut and paste their center’s logo on that would go out with the survey instrument which would also be provided by NYSILC. Survey results would then be sent to a drop-box which would be controlled by NYSILC. All the survey results that our consumers completed would go to a drop-box at NYSILC. The process to be used for utilizing survey results is something we are still trying to work out. Later we will have more information about what our recommendations are. But each center will then be responsible for reporting their survey results to NYSILC and to VESID and for maintaining hard copies of the results. So with those changes we believe we can then figure out how we could look at a more general broad view of what the impact of IL has been in NYS. We haven’t come up with the exact process but if the committee approves these recommendations will begin talking to folks who can help us to try and identify those things we want to identify. The committee really felt strongly that we could add this direction to what we assessed of IL in the state. In order for the committee to move forward, we need the council to approve the new consumer satisfaction survey process. We need the council to approve the indicators that we proposed and we would ask the endorsement of the council to allow the committee to move forward in looking for ways to measure the impact of IL in NYS. So I know a couple of folks have questions. The survey will be available in alternate language and alternate format – folks will be able to complete it electronically or in a hard copy. I believe there is a number folks can call if they need additional assistance. We will have some kind of helpline; we have not worked out the details.

Edith: Do the individual polls go back to the centers to be tabulated? Or will they be tabulated by NYSILC? Formerly, everything formerly went back to Potsdam. NYSILC is doing the compilation – if it is a confidential assessment. Similarly, issue of doing it electronically assuming NYSILC is responsible for downloading and printing out every electronic assessment that is being done through Survey Monkey. I am not comfortable with the concept that the original paper goes back to the SILC – I believe somehow that the original paper should be held by NYSILC. I am saying that as a potential consumer and from a sociology type background.

Chris: To answer your first question about how it will be tabulated is something that we have not decided. We are grappling with some of these very issues.

Mike: Similarly, you said they were going to a drop-box and they were going to be maintained by the SILC. My question is how they are going to do both? The availability where a peer advocate is sitting down with a consumer saying “oh we have these surveys lets fill them out together” – then mail it back to boost the numbers.

Chris: That has been an issue – the consumers come in with a survey and ask center staff to help them fill it out for them. You are right. That is another consideration we are grappling with – certainly we have talked about some possible remedies like bar coding surveys or whatever. Again, we are still working on that. And it does say that the hard copy would go back to the CIL eventually and certainly, given comments, it is something we could remove from what we have decided to do with the recommendation – we are throwing that back to the committee for further discussion. Certainly the surveys are anonymous. The problem is not where the surveys go to; the problem is the confidentiality of the responses.

Mike: If I received an anonymous survey from someone in this room and didn’t know who it came from I wouldn’t know what CIL gets it back.

Chris: Well, certainly it would be identified on the survey instrument. There would be a way to identify what center the person is responding to and about.

Doug: I am not sure if there has ever been any confidentiality in the survey anyway because as a center director I have received various calls from Potsdam where the person said to me “You know I read this survey, and this is happening, etc. so why don’t you take this person’s number, etc.” (laughter) and the other thing is as far as identification of where the survey is coming from, we have written a cover letter that went out to the consumer. A lot of this stuff I appreciate hearing but at the same time it would be helpful to demonstrate what has been the past practice you have accepted.

Chris: You are right, some of the issues that have been brought up are some of the issues that have been concerns for a long time.

Bob: Some of these issues you are raising have been discussed in the committee; one thought is we probably need some very clear instructions on staff not assisting consumers and being referred back to an 800 number. The validity of the information is incredibly important as well as confidentiality. The other part is that a certain number of surveys per center come into NYSILC and are gathered together from the drop-box. Then if they are batched and sent to the center for the center to tabulate and they don’t like what they see. I have been trying to figure out a way to at least scan them to figure out what was sent on to the center. We will figure it out – the confidentiality issue will be addressed. Sometimes people give some very recognizable comments and give away their own identity. It is very obvious and some people even sign them!

Chris: I would just like to re-iterate: we know that our work is not done, we just want to let you folks know where we are and receive some kind of recommendation from the committee to proceed in these directions. We do understand there are issues that need to be dealt with and we really are trying to overcome them.

Agnes: One of the things I would like to say regarding confidentiality; particularly regarding consumers in Syracuse who don’t have any other supports but the center. They don’t even have family supports so this really has to be taken into consideration.

Chris: Well, let me address the first issue first. Yes, you are right. Having center staff help folks complete surveys isn’t a good idea – it is not just folks that don’t have support. People call and say “hey, I have the survey instrument; how should I fill it out” – if we are getting those calls, others are too. That is why our intent is to continue to have a helpline. Again, we don’t know how that is going to look right now.

(Lost some time due to next tape being put in recorder; new conversation beginning

Chris: If we don’t supply RSA with recommendations and there does happen to be some federal dollars which everyone knows is not likely, my understanding is RSA will decide whatever the heck it is they want to do with it or not on their own.

Melanie: I want to suggest this is a group of recommendations that was considered by the committee and I think that it is possible the counsel struggled because we were looking at this in isolation – so it appears prioritized but that is not how the committee looked at these different recommendations.

Mike: Looking at #2, it says: once the expansion of the network is complete – so there again is the prioritizing.

Doug: One of the reasons why I am bringing these recommendations forward is that there were issues that came up after the committee meeting. If we go forward with one motion at a time that eliminates any of those concerns you brought up so – I do ask that people ask to what is being said here so there is no arguing circles – we are eliminating that we are first giving these counties the opportunity. Certainly in the second recommendation that comes forward that the offending words come out so it can go forward. We saw where our error was and did not want to make that mistake twice.

Bob: Adding to what Doug has said, for the purposes of the 704 report today we have a commitment to RSA to give them recommendations based on a needs assessment that was done in the prior 3 year SPIL. And that is what the 704 report would include. We can come out with these separate recommendations where the test of our ability to mix and match and set some priorities comes out later on at some point in time. Yes, we can do this in a variety of ways to work on both upstate and downstate with federal funds at the same time and set the priorities the way we want them. We will have to get there as RSA will ask us in January for priorities. It becomes particularly relevant if there is money to go along with it – we may be able to defer to answering them about priorities if they are not going to give any money. That is to be determined. We have always had priorities in our state plan before – this is only today going to reach recommendations but at some point we will have to have this discussion about priorities.

Dennis: I wanted to suggest something – if anyone can make a motion along these lines. We might want to – rather than each one of these put forward independently – having each of them put up or down independently – I make a motion to vote on all of them and report the yays and nays on each one. Thereafter make some type of independent determination – I suppose we would never want to put these into priority order – but it just strikes me that given current number of people in attendance it may be difficult to get some of these passed, even despite potential changes in the language. I would propose that we vote on them independently and keep a tally of the votes for and against and abstaining and use that basis as a recommendation going forward.

Chris: Is there second to that motion that Dennis just made

Kieran: I second that motion

Chris: Any need for further discussion on it? (Two opposed and one abstain)

Bruce: Could I move that the 13 counties listed above with populations exceeding 48,050 be given the ability to compete for future funds till all 13 counties have functional IL centers in them and that a plan to increase funds to NYC IL centers be developed to increase funding of IL activity in order to create more appropriate funding ratios to serve the expanded need downstate.

Doug: I second that motion

Chris: We have a motion on the floor and we have a second

Mike: Could we put increased federal and state funds?

Chris: NYSILC deals with federal funds Mike, so we cannot

Brad: This is our communication to RSA and we need to do our federal funding priorities to them for the federal funds

Bob: I think I know what our intentions our, but when we made this long sentence about NYC living centers downstate – when you are dealing with the 13 counties, there is nothing there. So you are not concerning yourself with whether or not they are federal, state or combined. When you are dealing with NYC, when you are dealing with centers for the purpose of the SPIL you are talking about federal centers – so you are almost compelled to add some language about NYC or downstate centers whether federal or state funded – I think that is the point Mike is kind of getting at. You have to make that clarification; otherwise you are only dealing with what is in the SPIL because in the SPIL a CIL is a federal center. There is Bronx, CIDNY and Harlem.

Brad: This is about our funding priority to RSA for Title VII Part C funds and what we are looking to establish for new federal centers so we are going to be telling them where we want to have our growth for the new federal centers.

Bob: Brad, I am just trying to clarify that

Brad: It’s not NYSILC’s purview to increase funds on the state’s side

Bob: I am not saying anything about state funding; I am saying we have to be clear to say that we will be using the federal funds to expand the funding of either the three federal CILs in NYC or the state IL CILs in NYC.

Chris: So are you proposing a friendly amendment to these?

Bob: Yes, that it be whether or not they are funded with federal or state dollars -

Chris: Bob is proposing a friendly amendment

Bob: Only adding to the language where you are talking about the second part of the sentence and you say the part with ILC’s in NYC – you state whether they are currently funded with federal or state dollars

Chris: Do you accept the friendly amendment?

Doug: I accept it

Chris: Recommendations three: NYSILC should identify the areas in NYS that have significant concentrations of the above-mentioned under served minority groups – Hispanic and Asian – and allocate funds to provide culturally competent IL services and targeted outreach to them. NYSILC could allocate any unspent Part B funds in the current SPIL or identified funds in the next SPIL for this use. If necessary, NYSILC could also direct a portion of any future Part C increases for this purpose as well. Is there any discussion on recommendation three?

Sharon Flom: Just a technical comment: I am wondering whether it would be better to put Hispanic and Asian right into the recommendations in case these two things get separated as some point in time.

Edith: Yeah, I was just going to say that and also just raise this question: If there were a significant minority population within a single county could we look at tweaking it somehow? Suppose you suddenly had a billion Albanians in Dutchess county –

Doug: The only thing I can say to that is – remember: Hispanic and Asian comes out of the demographic data collected by this state and feds. There isn’t a category that says Russian or Albanians, etc.

Edith: I think within an existing center they would just be urged to hire a culturally competent staff

Doug: How this gets implemented is to be determined in the future

Edith: Ok

Mike: I also request that we make it more generic by removing “the above mentioned” and focusing on just the minority populations

Doug: The above mentioned is Hispanic and Asian – and Sharon recommended we put that down there already

Mike: I would like to see that we make it more generic because of the expansion of the other minority populations that are coming to be all around NYS

Doug: Again, I repeat that we don’t have a data collection system that supports that at this time – it is something we can do at a later time, but at this time it is the only type of material that we collect

Chris: Ok, I have got Brad, Christina and Stephanie next

Brad: I hear what you are saying- but we base this on the assessment that we did which we crunched a whole bunch of data on – this drove these particular needs and got us to this particular result. It is driven by the data, but I think as Doug said we are here because we started a process driven by data

Christina: I’m sorry – I’m a little stuck. You are telling me blacks are minorities and Asians and Hispanics are not – is that how we are looking at it for this purpose? Do I not understand this correctly? That is possible

Doug: Christina, no, it doesn’t say we don’t address issues of minorities who happen to be black. What we looked at in the beginning are the state trends and we looked at those numbers that were seriously off. For example, with the information collected by the centers as it related to the US Census statistics. Asian and Hispanic populations were the most under served. It does not exclude the issues of blacks or Native Americans or Hawaiians – it just popped up in state trends as the biggest gap. As Brad said, we want to justify to the RSA what drove our decision making process.

Stephanie: Just because those minorities are being served does not mean they are being served in a culturally competent fashion – if you only say Hispanic and Asian, do you limit the possibility of allocating funds to those counties that might be serving a population but are not doing it in a culturally competent fashion.

Doug: Again, this particular needs assessment could not evaluate the cultural competency of any center, so I can’t respond to that

Bruce: I’m not making any judgments – the data was just limited so this was what we could come up with from the limited data we had. While I think that African Americans need better services, the data doesn’t demonstrate that in terms of what we are collecting. It doesn’t support that. There clearly is a differential for Hispanic, Asian and Pacific Islander communities. That is why they were selected and I support the proposal.

Bruce: I move to accept this recommendation

(Motion carries)

Chris: The next recommendation: There is a need to better serve the disability youth populations – this can be done by NYSILC staff by allocating funds for training ILC’s in outreach to schools and families that have youth with disabilities or advocating strongly within the state to position centers better to utilize by the statewide systems that provide services to youth for grant funding opportunities or fee for service contracts. The most direct mechanism to receive this would be to work with NYAIL through the IL training academy.

Edith: I do think that there is a need also to acknowledge that we are not serving the older adult population and I am not sure how that should be incorporated

Doug: You have the data in front of you of what we have drawn down from the centers – and what we underscored were the biggest deficits. Again I say it doesn’t exclude NYSILC going forward and doing some of those things you are talking about, but at this point what we are trying to do is justify the reasons for these recommendations. 30% of the people served by the centers are over 65.

Edith: The IL service population starts at 55 and you are saying the census population is 13% over age 65. My contention is that seniors are not getting into the IL system and that’s the problem. We need to better serve seniors to get them into IL – I think if we are predicating this discussion on who we are currently serving, we have a problem conceptually

Doug: The numbers are there

Dennis: Just looking at the numbers I concur with Edith. I was going to suggest we add another recommendation after this one. In looking at the data, I want to say that one/ most of us have recognized that elderly populations have been underserved by the disability community (if not IL’s) and there is a distinction made (census percentage of 65 plus is 13%). The IL service has a cut off of 55 and older – I think that tends to support Edith’s argument that in effect if you actually had that cutoff at 65 or older the number would be significantly less than 20% of users of IL service are 65 and over. Clearly this data suggest people 65 and older are significantly underserved by the IL system. Again, I would propose a recommendation we add an effort to increase services to the elderly population 65 and older and we address youth service need.

Chris: We will call for a vote on this recommendation

(12 in favor) This carries

Chris: NYSILC should actively seek ex-officio representation to the council and have these members provide training opportunities to IL centers as how to develop fundable programming for their state agencies and setting up their billing and programmatic infrastructure.

Doug: It seems this is generating so much difficulty and you have such a limited number of membership. Even though you have gone through such a difficult process to get to these recommendations, there still seems to be so much concern. My sense is we may want to take a step back and work on this. I don’t know if we could do this by executive committee – you are at a point where you are upsetting a number of members.

Chris: I agree and I don’t like doing this. Unfortunately, the report has to get to the feds before the next NYSILC meeting. The only remedy I see is if the council brought it to the executive committee and gives the executive committee the authority, but with such contentiousness about these issues I can’t imagine that would happen. We would need a motion to do that anyway – I don’t know. Your point is very well taken and unfortunately this is not a good process, but we just got this information to us and it has to go to feds by end of calendar year and I don’t know any other way.

Doug: Any of these recommendations can be voted down – this last one I would like to speak to.

Chris: I don’t like pushing things through this way – this is not as open a discussion as I would like to have about these very important issues. But unfortunately we have other things on our agenda. We have two folks who have to give committee reports and we have to leave by 2:30 PM. If people don’t want to pass recommendations they should not pass them.

Mike: I would move that the last sentence come out of the last recommendation.

Doug: I will second that motion –

Chris: All those in favor of this recommendation with deletion of last sentence, please raise your hand.

(Motion doesn’t pass – recommendation as it stands still stands)

Doug: Recommendation fails, that concludes my report.

Bob: As Nick pointed out, there are some pretty contentious aspects to these. We didn’t have a chance to point out the ones Stephanie mentioned that are not aligning with youth thinking. If we take the whole package and vote on it as one recommendation once the whole 4 together. Would you re-open this for any discussion on any of the wording.

Doug: The original intent was to give everybody and opportunity to wordsmith each and every recommendation. For example, one and two became one. The real work is going to be the implementation of all of this.

Chris: I would encourage folks who are interested in the recommendations to see Doug on becoming a member of the committee as there is still work to be done. I will ask Sharon to report as she has to leave in 5 minutes.

Dennis: It is my motion that there is a need to better serve elderly populations with CSR performance service versus Census figures. This can be done by NYSILC allocating funds for training at ILC’s and how they can outreach to elderly populations and families that have elderly members with disabilities or advocate strongly within the state to position centers better to utilize by the statewide systems that provide services to persons over 65 years old for grant funding opportunities or fee for service contracts.

Chris: Ok, is there a second to that motion?

Mike: With discussion I will second.

Chris: All those in favor raise your hand (motion passed)