Speaker numbers apply only to this recording. Names come from transcript evidence. “Possibly” marks uncertain attribution.
The Commission on Aging Well met on April 9, 2026, to approve prior meeting minutes, receive updates on transit services and infrastructure projects, hear reports from the Friends of the Senior Center and staff, and discuss upcoming events and programs. The meeting concluded with a motion to adjourn and the next meeting scheduled for May 14, 2026.
Hi, I'm Jeremy Crosby, and I'm Nick Boucher. We're your hosts for the program that's all about your city, Talking Fitchburg. Every weekday, we pull together the news, events, and information you need to stay on top of what's happening in the city of Fitchburg. Find Talking Fitchburg on Cable TV, Roku, Amazon Fire, Apple TV, and our live stream on the web. Plus, you can find all our headlines and stories on Facebook, YouTube, and our video on demand service. This is your city. Keep up with Talking Fitchburg and the issues affecting you and your neighbors. Want to know what's happening in your city? Get notify me messages from the city of Fitchburg. Visit Fitchburg WI.gov on your computer or mobile device and select the big notify me button on the left. Enter your email and or phone number, whichever is best for you to get notifications. Scroll down the list and select all the topics you're interested in to receive email or text messages about. You'll be notified every time one of your topics is updated. Sign up for Notify Me. One more way to keep up with your Fitchburg government. Okay, good morning, everyone, and welcome to the April 9th uh Commission on Aging Well. Um right now I'll start off with the approval of the minutes from our March meeting. Are there any additions or deletions? If not, can I have a motion to approve? I would move to approve yes. Second. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Opposed. No. So we're moving right into uh number four or agenda items, and we are and welcome Ross from the transportation department. Welcome, Ross. Thank you. Um, I'm just uh grateful that Ross came today. I know that um you know there's been a lot of talk about different routes and some era transit being uh more accessible to City Hall. So um now that we're at this point in the year, I thought it'd be great to get an update on that. Yeah. Um I'm Ross Kaler with the public works department. I'm the City of Fitchburg's transportation engineer, so nice to meet all of you. Um yeah, I can start off with uh transit uh projects, and then if there's any questions about other public works construction, I can kind of field those questions as well. So um, like Jill mentioned, um, we've been talking about the Route 65, 75, and Both route extensions like the length of the route and then the hours that those routes are available. Um so we discussed these route extensions with Metro Transit, um, who provides all the transit for Fitchburg in 2025, and then based on those discussions, the city um budgeted for those route extensions uh for 2026 that for this year. Um February of this year, Metro informed uh the city of Fitchburg that those service extensions were not going to be possible in 2026. Um there's been a lot of turnover at the um kind of management level of Metro, and then also they've had some issues with bus availability on their current routes. Um, based on those few things, they don't want to expand service to a level that they feel they can't provide a good level of service when they're already struggling a little bit on their current um level of service. Um I don't know if any of you saw the news, uh, Metro Transit's six point something million dollar budget deficit that the city of Madison had to kind of fill in for that. Um so that would that was another one of the things that they they cited when we had that discussion in February. Um based off of that uh all those things, Metro Transit is creating uh what they're calling report cards, and they're gonna share those report cards with all of their partner municipalities, of which the city of Fitchburg is one of them to kind of quantify those issues and give themselves a grade on you know um bus availability, on-time service, um, all that kind of stuff, and then also come up with ways to address those issues where they might feel like they're falling short.