Kidder named to outreach post
New Scotland native says she’ll be there for the seniors



NEW SCOTLAND — Long-term New Salem resident Sue Kidder is the town’s new senior outreach coordinator. The part-time position last year doubled as a town nurse but is now back to being just an outreach role; causing disagreement among the town board members and among the senior advisory committee members.

Sitting in her town-hall office last week, Kidder told stories of how, as a young girl, her elderly neighbors had a positive impact on her life.
"I have always loved old people," she said. "I loved their knowledge — their calmness." "To me, they’re a national treasure," she said.
If her mother couldn’t find her playing in the yard, she was writing at a desk, or sitting at the piano in a neighbor’s home. "I didn’t play the piano, but I thought I did," Kidder said with a smile. Now she said she wants to give back to the seniors.
"My main focus is to locate the shut-ins," Kidder said. But, she went on, "There’s no pressure; it’s up to them." She said it’s her goal to keep the elderly "independent as long as they want to be independent."
Although she works for the town, Kidder said, "I’m not government...I’m more just for the seniors themselves."

No nurse

Sue Weisz, the previous senior outreach coordinator who worked for the town for two years, was a registered nurse. Kidder is not a nurse. Last year, the senior advisory committee and Weisz applied to Albany County’s department of aging and received a one-year grant to have a third day of Weisz’s salary paid for in the capacity of a town nurse. That grant runs out in March. Although, the committee applied to renew the same grant, it did not receive continued funding, said town board member Deborah Baron who is the board’s liaison to senior services.

The town of New Scotland will continue to pay for just the two days as budgeted, Baron told The Enterprise. The town wants to secure more grants in the future to once again increase the coordinator’s hours, Baron said.

While Baron had wanted to reduce the hourly pay to a starting rate of 13 dollars and some cents per hour, she said the board decided to keep the senior outreach coordinator’s salary at $15 an hour, the compensation that had been budgeted for registered nurse Weisz during the budget sessions of the fall. Baron said she accepted this pay arrangement since that’s what the candidates were told.
"The advisory board worked so hard to get a nurse in there," said Norma Walley a member of the advisory board, "For town board people to undo all the groundwork we have laid for the position... it’s very disturbing."
"Not to have a nurse is oh so very very sad," Walley said.
Walley is 82 years old and lives in Fuera Bush. "I feel we are forgotten out here," Walley said. "I see the need of people out here," she said of the rural hamlet.
Within a five-mile radius in Feura Bush, there are four people on dialysis, she said. When she heard some of the town board member’s viewing that they didn’t see the need for a town nurse, it upset her so much she said he had to get up and leave the board meeting. "It’s just so sad," Walley said.

The advisory committee had interviewed three of the four people who applied for the position, said Baron.

Walley said that in a 5-to-6 vote, the outreach committee recommended the town board hire Judith McKinnon. McKinnon is a registered nurse who had been the executive director of Community Caregivers until October. Weisz, before coming to New Scotland, had been the director of Community Caregivers as well.
"People get confused on their medication...This other woman [Kidder] won’t be able to help people with that," Walley said.

A nurse has additional medical expertise that helps when directing an elderly person to an agency, Walley said. The town nurse was able to look at wounds and burns elderly people had received in their homes and evaluate things like that, Walley said.
"There are many different situations that needed the skills of a nurse to assist them and Sue [Weisz] did that," Walley said.
Supervisor Ed Clark said he sees not hiring a nurse as "taking a step backward for the program." He believes Kidder will do a good job, but he would have preferred a registered nurse in the position.
Clark and Councilman Douglas LaGrange, both Republicans, registered their objection and then "reluctantly voted yes" on Kidder’s hiring, Clark said. They would have preferred to hire McKinnon, Clark said.
"I don’t want the program to go backward," Baron said, but sometimes taking a half a step backwards allows for a look at the program as a whole in order to effectively move forward, she said.

Town officials have disagreed over the necessity, importance, and liability of having a town nurse.

Baron was one of the council members who has questioned the town- nurse position all along, when there are comparable programs offered with visiting nurse volunteers and county programs, she said. Additionally, Baron said, she has become even more uncomfortable over the past year with liability as she learned more about insurance.

There were pluses and minuses to each candidate, Baron told The Enterprise of the interview process. McKinnon was a professional who had experience in grant writing, but Kidder knows the town’s residents Baron said.

"No place like home"

Kidder, 56, was born and raised in New Salem. After leaving the area for 20 years, she returned to New Scotland and now resides in the home that was once her parents’, she said.
"There’s no place like home," she said. New Scotland is one of the most beautiful places in the world, Kidder said. She appreciates the history of the town and how, when she runs into people around town, they say hello and ask how each other are doing.

Kidder is a co-owner of Blackbird Prime Properties, which owns the trailer park along Route 85, not far from Town Hall.

Baron said, when Kidder was hired by the town clerk’s office last year to do some records management, document copying, and filing, everyone was impressed then with how many people coming in and out of town hall knew Kidder.

Baron said she agrees with Councilman Reilly’s sentiment that each of the two candidates had some strong qualifications and each had some things they would have to learn. Baron said she thinks it will be easier to learn grant writing, than to pick-up years of knowledge about the community and its people.
Kidder "has a big heart and a big place in her heart," Baron said. Kidder took the initiative as a citizen and started an Extra Helpings program three years ago in New Scotland, Baron said; the cooperative food buying program purchases food at wholesale prices.

Expectations

Kidder already has her own strong network of people, Baron said, and has proven her ability to recruit volunteers in town, which is one way Baron said she would like the senior outreach coordinator to expand the town’s senior programs.

Baron would like Kidder to spend time actively pursuing volunteer recruitment, so that volunteers can help with tasks such as giving rides to doctor’s appointments.
Walley said she had heard the town board members’ argument that Kidder knows the town’s residents already. But Kidder lives in New Salem, a hamlet on the other side of town. "She doesn’t know Feura Bush," Walley said.

While the town is spending much of its resources on the issues of other areas of town and for young people, the senior services was the one municipal program that benefited Fuera Bush, Walley said.
"We’ve given the town our time and talent — what goes around should come around," Walley said. She just wants to make sure her generation is taken care of, she said.
Kidder shared this same view. Seniors have already worked, contributed to society, already paid their dues, Kidder said. "What goes around comes around," she said too.
Kidder said she lives by the philosophy, "If we work together then we’ll make it through life." She said, as the senior outreach coordinator, "I’m sort of just the legs."

She said she wants to round up more volunteers, and work with the community, locate the seniors in need, turn over the information they need, make the contacts for them, and get seniors the help they need.

She has already arranged meetings on the new Medicare program at the senior center for February; Albany County’s department of aging will work one-on-one with seniors to chose their Medicare coverage. Kidder wants to help seniors get affordable heat through the Home Energy Assistance Program (HEAP).
"Basically what this position is, is making the connections," Kidder said. She is also locating volunteer nurses to continue the blood-pressure clinics at the Fuera Bush apartments and the community center. And is going to use Albany County’s program that has certified nurses to continue to give New Scotland residents vitamin B-12 shots, Kidder said.

Kidder is currently working 20 hours a week for the town, she said. Kidder is a substitute bus driver for the Bethlehem School District and has bus runs in the afternoons.

She has established her hours for New Scotland as Monday through Friday from 8:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.