To All Who Have Received This Letter,
You might want to read to the end since this letter is being sent to Non Metro NM Area Agency on Aging (AAA), NM Aging & Long-Term Services Department (ALTSD), and various people on the Grant County Board including the Manager, and the Media.
To: Rusty Tolley and other HMS Board Members
Once I tried to tell you about issues with one of HMS' decisions—like closing all the Centers because of snow in Silver when none fell in Gila and the roads out to there were clear enough to drive on—and your response was, " Don't tell me. I don't want to get in trouble." I like you as a person. But as a member of the HMS Board your job is to understand what is going on in the entire nonprofit company; and not to rubber stamp decisions. This is not GE where there are so many divisions and locations that you can't try to talk to any realistic number of employees of every level or visit every factory. From the perspective of my seniors, myself, and a few other employees not named here—I'll let them add their opinions without outing them personally—Dan and HMS is running an Old Boy Network, and it creates problems. More details about this issue below. You Board members must not simply agree to any changes without doing your own research on the true state of things. Please.
To: Dan Otero CEO, Debra "Nikki" Conyers, Cathy Diaz and Lacy Brown-Contreras
In my first meeting with you after Steve Chavira was fired, I told you I was shocked that he was hired at all, much less that he wasn't fired within 3 months. You had no idea how many positions he had lost during the decade before you hired him due to failing to qualify for a new contract, being fired or quitting right before being fired. His history of not actually doing his job was well known among many in the community.
That was my first indication that it was an Old Boy's Network that determined how/who you hired for certain positions. You seem not to know that AAA requires 3 interviews for the Senior Services Director position, nor that AAA needs paperwork on the interviewees, and that they have final say as to who is hired. NM State Law says that all applicants must be interviewed. Aaron Holmes was basically offered the position while both your families were together on a camping trip. I understand there was an experienced woman who had also applied for it whom you decided not to give us Senior Center Supervisors a chance to interview, as you did with Aaron. Did she even have an interview? You told us she existed, but you never sent us her CV as you did with Aaron's. It's become obvious that you only wanted your buddy to get the job. I did leave that interview with Aaron with concerns I shared with others.
In a meeting with you and all of us Supervisors I brought up that Felicia and Yvonne weren't giving us the AAA Dietician's sheet that broke down each day's lunch offering for the month, by how much weight or cups of each item should go on a plate. Their excuse/lie was the one that they had given me months earlier in a meeting of all Center employees with Steve. It was later that I discovered via contact with Constance Rudnicki, the AAA Dietician, that what they were telling me wasn't true. When I learned where I could download the information online and compared the menus typed up and sent via Felicia and Yvonne to what the Constance had approved it became obvious that they were changing menus. When I sent this to Constance, she told me all changes needed to be approved and they hadn't been sending her changes they wanted for at least a year and a half. I still have copies of the changed menus Felicia and Yvonne sent to the Centers for whenever AAA wants them for a comparison. I hate being lied to! I presented this information to you during a private interview, and you blew me off. I tried presenting the information to Aaron, and he gave me Felicia and Yvonne's line and added an excuse, and that the real problem was that we had to change dieticians. This rather than sending in the changes that are desired and negotiating with Constance to meet the dietary needs of the seniors. And contrary to what Aaron, Felicia, and Yvonne believe, even if you switch to the HMS dietician, all menus still need AAA approval. Even bringing in the HMS dietitian would not alter the nutritional needs of the seniors or the menu ingredients needed to meet them.
People talk to me, including people I don't like or have accused of lying. I have been told something I suspected because of a conversation Aaron and I had early on. He is a homophobe; I have had that confirmed by others. He has made it clear he hates gays and therefore doesn't like me. More about this subject below.
To Aaron
At 70 years old, I refuse to put up with a homophobe who is terrified of stopping in a town because he might see a transgendered person. But that isn't the reason why I have major issues with you. The night you called me because I had texted you asking if it was true you fired Dixie you went off: "I only am answerable to Dan, not to the seniors." WRONG! Just like doctors and nurses are first and foremost accountable to their patients, we're accountable first to the seniors. "I don't have to answer their questions or meet with them about it." WRONG! "If (I had to tell you the senior's name) bugs me asking any more questions I'll ban her from the Center!" WRONG! Unless they bring in a gun, start a physical fight or break another rule spelled out in our policies you don't have the power. It is not within your purview to ban a senior for simply asking questions.
But you gave me inklings about your attitude during earlier conversations when I tried to tell you that I agreed we have to get all the paperwork that AAA wants done, but while doing that we still need to focus on our seniors' needs. You always emphasized that the paperwork was the most important thing so that we didn't get closed down. I agree that we don't want the centers closed, and therefore we must do the paperwork. However, the seniors' needs must be at the top of our list; paperwork second, because their needs are why we do what we do. Your emphasis on Dan as the only one you need to be answerable to sounds like you won't be answerable for your decisions to your staff, let alone the seniors. It sounds too much like a manager I once had who was dictatorial and always ran to the owner tattling about anything anyone said about him. Thankfully that owner eventually realized that people sometimes need to blow off steam, and the manager was demoted and his gossip ignored.
I heard that you finally went out to Gila and to talk to the seniors about why you fired Dixie, but didn't want to answer any of their questions. When I took my FMLA leave, I wrote down my phone number on the white board for them so we could talk and sometimes meet for lunch in town. Your firing Dixie isn't the worst issue for me, it's the fact that the week before you made your hand in the shape of a gun and pointed/touched her back and said, Bang," that's the issue! That, from an ex-cop, is not a joke but a threat. And if you don't understand that firing her not long after that motion could only be seen as a threat, I hope she sues.
Finally, you're just petty. Not allowing a bucket of scraps—cores and bad leaves of lettuce, uneaten food from the trays of seniors, rotten vegetables—to feed the chickens of one of our less financially stable seniors is truly just petty and mean. Besides the lunches we serve, the eggs and occasionally slaughtering one of her hens supplements the diet of a woman in her mid 80s. It means less money she spends on feed. And it hurts no one while keeping more trash going to the dump and landfill. The fact that you made this declaration about the bucket immediately after the day Felicia and Yvonne spent doing assessments in the center just shows me that our two worst gossips were exercising what petty power they could garner in the most hurtful way possible. A few months back, Dan, John Prejean and Ethan whose last name I do not know were there for a meeting with my seniors, Jean sat within a foot and a half of the bucket, Ethan wandered past it frequently, and Dan stood about 3 feet from it as people dumped their uneaten food into the bucket. As always, a garbage can was right next to the bucket to receive napkins, milk cartons and any other inedible items. None of the 3 men said a word about it/complained until you.
I voiced my concerns to some people about things you told us about yourself during your interview, and I was correct to be concerned. What this all boils down to, is the fact that you're temperamentally ill-suited to the position.
Owning a very popular restaurant for 14 years many people know who I am. Quite a few are seniors and go to the Silver Center. They also talk to me. I've been told that Felicia can pick on seniors, and of those she picks on Bob is her favorite target. I heard from someone who was in the pool room at the time that she did this whole number about how a dead radio was from her deceased grandmother upsetting Bob and making him feel like crap. It was an old radio that didn't work and hadn't in quite awhile. My person felt like it was a great acting job and wondered if it was from her grandmother why was it in the center and why was it left dead there for so long?! He felt it was a con job to once more pick on Bob. But Bob isn't the only one. And the people I know dislike Felicia's treatment of a small group of seniors. Someone other than Aaron needs to look into it, because he is too close to the situation, since he stood behind Felicia when she was hassling Bob and never said a word or tried to stop it. We all have a senior who can be difficult sometimes. There are ways of dealing with them and publicly isn't one of them.
The following is added, since it's my resignation letter.
When we talk on the phone or in person you don't seem to get certain concepts, so I'm putting it in writing. Hopefully you'll think about what I have to say.
Concepts such as, seniors complain and want to see things done correctly. That is NOT a personal attack on you, nor are they trying to get you fired. They just want answers. They have questioned Dan and John before I was hired. They have questioned Steve, Yvonne and me. I'm sure Felicia and Silvia are also getting questions. Yes, it can be annoying, but you have got to stop threatening to ban seniors from centers because you don't like it. You sound dictatorial. And I assure you that they aren't trying to get you fired, they just want some ability to get answers and have a real conversation.
Then there is you going off in the phone call between Pat Nesbitt, you and myself, as you and Pat watched the Wednesday 9/16, 2024 video of the coffee table, trying to see if you could catch the thief taking candy money from the jar. I told you that several people, including Bob Meyer—who watches the money and uses it to shop for candy for the seniors—said that the paper money was stolen from the jar. Since that Wednesday a group of professionals were in Gila to inform and teach the seniors in a variety of topics, you immediately JUMPED to the conclusion that the ones you consider "troublemakers" were trying to hurt the visitors' reputation. They were not! They just wanted to know who took the cash. Unfortunately, Bob didn't tell me what day it was taken—it was actually Tuesday 9/15—vs the seniors who did notify me misremembering the actual day--as we age it can happen. They asked if it could be seen on camera, but thought it happened on the Wednesday. That whole monologue you did on the phone with Pat and me, added to the rest of our recent conversations, just make you sound paranoid. You asked why they didn't tell you about it and sooner….. Because you made it very clear to the bulk of them that you don't want to answer questions and make them feel as if you won't do anything about their needs, on many occasions.
What this boils down to is, that as a 70-year-old gay man who gives a damn about my seniors, who has heard too many stories about your anti-gay tirades—verifying what I picked up from you within the first few weeks after your hire—as long as you are still in your position at HMS I won't be working for you at all! I left my keys, the deposit and paperwork with Nikki at HR. I know others are quitting due to your poor personal interactive style. Personally, I've had enough!
Media
Do with this as you will.
To All
This was written to ensure that the seniors are given their due by people who care and put them first. To get better for my seniors, I'm willing to burn my bridges.
Shevek M Barnhart
Silver City NM
