Summary of the May 8 Second Wednesday Conversation

There are 25 residents association members of ORANJ. Thirty-five residents from 20 associations participated in the May 8 Zoom conversation: Applewood, Atrium, Cedar Crest, Cranes Mill, Crestwood Manor, Evergreens, Friends Village, Harrogate, House of the Good Shepherd, Lantern Hill, Laurel Circle, Lions Gate, Masonic Village, Meadow Lakes, Medford Leas, Monroe Village, Oaks at Denville, Pines Village, Seabrook, Winchester Gardens.

Since August 2022, Andy Kleppe, from Oaks at Denville provided the summaries of our conversation. He passed away in April. I miss him as a colleague and as a friend. Jack Mahon, from Friends Village, is now helping with contact info and training us to be better at using Zoom. The Zoom hand-raise facility made a Big Difference in our Zoom conversation in May.

Paul Basham, another member of the Communications Committee no longer participates in Zooms due to hearing loss, but Paul has recently written a story about shopping at our CCRCs. Getting it onto a blog post for the website has been languishing on my to-do list for a while. Now that I’m telling you it’s coming this month and I’ll have to make it happen .

The May conversation started with a report from BJ Drew about plans for the in-person gathering at Applewood that was happening the next day, May 9. Thirty residents from the Central and Southeast regions were coming together for “chit chat” and then lunch supplied by Applewood.

Construction projects at Cedar Crest have advanced to a stage that they are offering to host the October 2025 Plenary. Yay!! Seabrook, another Erickson facility with plenty of room for large meetings, is hosting the 2024 plenary on October 16.

The transcript of our May conversation tells me that we spent 35 minutes talking about appreciation funds without directly answering the question which had been raised about the need to keep up with inflation.  “How does your residents association work on the appreciation fund in order to keep moving it forward as times change and the value of the dollar changes?” We learned that most residents associations do have employee appreciation funds because of no-tipping policies. We also learned that there is a huge range in terms of the amount of money requested and given. There are a variety of ways of distributing the money and the money received by employees from residents is taxable.

Then we learned about a QuickBooks issue which is affecting residents associations. Something is being discontinued and the new product is expensive. If someone can send me an explanation and a recommended solution, I’d be happy to make a separate blog post about that.

Next was a question from Laurel Circle about whether staff were trained in the use of the Heimlich method. Don at Masonic Village said that there are legal requirements in the food service industry and medical profession. He suggested contacting the HR department and finding out what regulations and laws they are subject to and what they are doing about implementing them.

The Senior Freeze was mentioned. This link explains Senior Freeze: https://www.nj.gov/treasury/taxation/ptr/ (ptr means Property Tax Reimbursement). Senior Freeze is not the same as Anchor: https://www.nj.gov/treasury/taxation/anchor/.

The conversation ended promptly at 11 am.

— Maggie Heineman