• Maintain road side camping
• Increased access to wilderness camping for those with mobility impairments,
• Expand 4 season trail system to develop economic opportunities and encourage wilderness sports
• Support a snowmobile connector trail
• Increased stewardship of the Adirondack wilderness balancing community and wilderness preservation

LEAGUE OF WOMEN VOTERS OF HAMILTON COUNTY

Business Meeting – Provisional Agenda

Monday, August 16, 2010, 4 p.m. – 8 p.m.

The Woods Inn, 149 Rt. 28, Inlet (4-6:15) & Inlet Town Hall (6:30-8)

4 p.m. Welcome and introduction of new attendees

Review and adoption of June 28 Business Meeting Minutes

Treasurer’s Report

Up-date on local, state, national matters

4:20 Barb Thomas, President of LWV Saratoga County and Inlet homeowner

Strengthening Your MAL: Some Ideas Based Upon LWV Best Practices

5 p.m. Co-President Nancy Berkowitz, Consensus on NYS DEC Proposed Unit Management Plans: Moose River Plains.  Please study the detailed  documentation at www.dec.ny.gov/lands/22571.html and prepare to share your views for purposes of arriving at LWV Hamilton County consensus.  Your informed participation is valuable.

5:25   Next business meeting

5:30 (Optional) Dinner.  You may visit www.thewoodsinn.com for a preview of the menu. We will be asked to place our food orders at the beginning of the meeting so we can be served promptly, pay our individual bills and adjourn on time.  We expect to be seated in the private Victorian dining room.

6:15  Decamp to attend the Adirondack Park Agency Public Hearing (6:30, Inlet Town Hall) on the Proposed Moose River Plain Unit Management Plans. Nancy B. will present our concerns based upon the consensus arrived at through communication to her before the meeting and discussions during the meeting.

The purpose of this first ever meeting in Long Lake is to reach out to the community to acquaint people with LWV as a non-partisan grassroots political organization open to men and women. The League encourages informed and active participation in government at all levels, works to increase understanding of major public policy issues, and influences public policy through education and advocacy.

The LWV neither supports nor opposes any political party or candidate for elective office, but does encourage its members as individuals to take part fully in the political process. The League operates at the local, state and national levels throughout the U.S.. In New York there over 50 local Leagues and Hamilton County is among the youngest having been recognized as a Member At Large group in November 2009.

Please join us to learn more about what we have done and plan to do and to consider becoming an active member or a financial supporter of the Education Foundation Inc.

In total the County Public Health Service has an annual budget of approximately $1 million. The Patient Services section which she heads is a Certified Home Health Agency (CHHA) comprised of licensed providers including registered and practical nurses, physical therapist, occupational therapy, speech therapist, medical social worker and dietician. Their objective is the provision of intermittent care to patients through home visits with acute or chronic conditions to assist the patient in recovering or facilitating their maintenance in their own home. They accept referrals from hospitals, physicians, clinics, social agencies, community members, family, friends or self.  Contributors to payment include Medicare, Medicaid and private health insurance. Following a financial screening process services are provided on a sliding fee scale in such a way that no person in need would be denied care. Patient Services works in collaboration with other community-based agencies such as Helping Hands Caregivers and the County’s Department of Social Services, Community Services and the Warren-Hamilton Office for the Ageing that provide supportive assistance not of a strictly medical nature. Church groups, friends, neighbors and family are often drawn into the shared care plan.

Beth elaborated on the specific programs directed at different sectors of the population: Women, Infants and Children (WIC), Newborn Visiting, Pre-School Special Education (3-5yrs.), Children with Special Healthcare Needs (less than 21 yrs.), Prenatal Visits, Early Intervention (birth-3yrs.), Childhood Immunizations, annual School Clinics and Adult Immunization and provided a handy directory. One participant noted that in spite of the significant proportion of the county’s population that was age-eligible it was difficult  to get local immunization against herpes zoster (shingles) although the Center for Disease Control recommends it for persons 65 years of age and older.

Having grasped the breadth of the work the participants were drawn into questioning Nurse Waldron about the challenges the staff finds in the work. Traveling long distances across the county on a single day, sometimes having to enter into sparse home environments, caring for people who are in the process of dyeing (and some who have returned to Hamilton County specifically to do so) and dealing with their loss, especially if in quick succession with another recent death of a patient, and the weight of demand upon an ageing nursing population. She also emphasized the paperwork demand imposed by NYS which requires the first nurse evaluator to carry out a lengthy and detailed analysis of the patient, and for her to further review the details of that analysis. In her view this volume of paperwork was not proportional to the benefit derived by the patient or the service providers. She also made clear the importance of having all patient records up to date within hours lest the State make a spontaneous visit and criticize the timeliness of recordkeeping.

Most captivating was her description of providing services to individuals who felt uncomfortable receiving services within the healthcare facility on White Birch Lane, Indian Lake. She described providing (good or bad news) HIV counseling or just usual injections to persons in various parking lots and back roads around the county.  Beth is the only qualified HIV counselor in the county.  Achieving this qualification required her to attend an intensive three day course in Albany during which she learned much more than she had anticipated would be necessary!  It included a round-robin exercise in which all 40 participants had to come up with street and slang terms for genitalia in order to get participants comfortable with the vocabulary of one of the prevalent means of transmission. In view of her intended retirement later this year plans are in progress to replace this mandatory service provision.

Participants included leaders from the county’s emergency service sector who were further able to explain the relationship between the nursing service and the overall county healthcare services apparatus including areas for improvement. Attendees left having received an earful on the local situation which could inform their thinking about national and state healthcare provision policymaking.