Board of Health: November 2, 2020

Transcript machine-generated with Whisper speech recognition (the source video has no caption track). No speaker labels; proper names and dollar figures occasionally misheard. Click any timecode to jump to that moment in the source video.

0:01 We’ll call the meeting to order. We’re waiting for me? That’s a first. It’s a first. Wow. There’s this little person down on the left behind your shoulder. Is it? Me? Yeah. That’s John Malkovich. She’s a book teller. Oh, is that who? Yeah. This little person. So let’s get right to it. We’ve got a lot to talk about tonight. And we’ll start with the meeting minutes of October 19th. You both had a chance to review them. Yes. And I there were two changes that I made. I think they were made before you got them. One was I think was caught before I called. I was telling words that I caught before, but Andrea already caught it. And the other was about the health and safety committee that they were talking about. And it was mistakenly put in that was a Board of Health person on the committee. And that was not a Board of Health person. It was a health professional. And that was changed. So I make a motion to approve them as corrected. All right. All in favor, Andrew? Miss Gottlieb? In favor. Miss Hazlick? In favor. Dr. Belfucker? In favor. All right, Andrew, let’s go right to our COVID update. All right. So last night I was notified that we had a positive case in the Gulliver School.

1:37 And obviously a lot of people received that information. We needed to make some clarifications. So we met with Dr. Bucky this morning and he sent out a second letter. Viewing with some of the updates. So regarding the classroom, the kindergarten classroom, Deanna McMahon, who’s the public health nurse or the school nurse, conducted the investigation. Her investigation found that there are no close contacts as defined by CDC. So only the teacher is isolating at this point. The public, the school nurse will take care of the investigations in the school with the assistance of the public health nurse. So obviously we want to make sure that everybody understands that we never share names. We recommend that you don’t share names. And so there’s a little bit of update information about we just don’t want people to be called out. It’s privacy. We’re trying to do our job in the normal way that we do it for every case that we deal with. So for public health reasons, we recommend that you never share names. Yes, at times people can figure out who it is, but you don’t need to identify that person. I guess there was also another case in the Gulliver School, but that is the individual is a remote educator. We were told that they’re not in the building with other staff or students. So that is not also a concern for any close contacts in that school.

3:09 And then obviously people are asking what’s the difference between the Gulliver School and the high school. The high school was dealt with because of a party in a totally different situation. So that’s kind of the update on the schools. Does anybody have any questions about that? Any board members or? Well, the high school party, I know that’s a week ago, so it’s an attorney to go. But is there anything to mention tonight about that? No, obviously, you know, this school made their decision. They have canceled school for, you know, went to remote for two weeks and all sports are had stopped for the next two weeks. And after that time period, they will be going back in. So that’s really the update. There was not an additional party over the Halloween weekend. There was a party, but it was older kids or younger adults, really. They’re not kids anymore. So we will deal with that, you know, first under another situation. So what we plan to do with these parties that are occurring is that we will issue violation notices for gathering orders. So I have received the reports from the police department and we will issue citations based on that. Does the board have any issues with that? I have several questions with several statements that you made. Yep. Go right ahead. One, you said that it was a party. And so because it’s a party, we treated it differently initially, but the party two weeks ago or a week and a half ago.

4:40 And I was explaining to me at the meeting today, not that it was just a party, that we couldn’t do anything about it, but there were 50 kids and we only knew who five of them were. And we didn’t know who the other 45. So we couldn’t do any tracing. We couldn’t do a lot of tracing. So it wasn’t just the fact that one was in school and one was a party. But the ability to do tracing wasn’t there. So that was one thing that I’d just like to add to that part. It’s important to note, though, that we only do tracing for positive cases. And yes, because we only knew five people there, if there had been a positive case, we would only have those five people to talk to. So we become very difficult. So we didn’t know where these kids were. They could have been freshmen, seniors or even out of school, some of them. And didn’t know anything enough about it to be able to do anything. That was one thing. As far as the older kids party, they were out of our out of school. They weren’t students of ours. They are not students. That’s correct. Well, they are maybe students someplace else in college or something. But we had no jurisdiction over them. As a school, we could do whatever we needed to do just because of their citizens. Correct. Public health issue. Right. So it really had nothing to do with the schools. So to say that this party was treated differently than the other party and that the kids in school were treated even more differently, each one was a different situation for different reasons.

6:25 Right. And we look at each situation separately. Obviously, we want to stay consistent with what we do, but each investigation is separate. You know, back when John Caswell was in school, they would call in the parents and give them some I can’t call it punishment, but they would do something that would to the parents, which they weren’t happy with either. They had a record or something. And I don’t know why these parents of where the party was. I mean, I don’t even know who it is or what it is. It could be my daughter-in-law, my son, my next door neighbor. I don’t know where this party was. So it couldn’t have been any of those people because I don’t have any kids in the school system anymore. They’ve gone to college. But anyhow, but I know that, you know, back long ago, the parents were had the charges or there were things that were done because that was when I was on the school committee. And things that happened. I don’t know why these parents aren’t being looked at. We’ve been saying things since day one of this crisis with teenagers all over time. We’ve been saying that the parents need to be accountable for their kids. So I believe in Ligon Sudbury that the some charges were pressed against the parents when they had that party that shut that school system down.

8:08 I mean, I mentioned this at the time that they should have been charges. And it just seems that if these kids are underage, the parents in the house, the parties at the at the home, then I think that these parents are responsible. And whether they’re there or not there, I can. Is there something that could be said about that, Andrew? So I, you know, obviously we look at public health issues. Obviously, underage drinking is an issue. But as far as, you know, the school bringing in the parents to discipline them, that’s a school matter, not a board of health matter. We’ll look at the board of health matter of the violation of the mask order, the gathering order and stick with that. Okay, well, at least we’re on record for that. Thank you. I had a clarification, Andrew, about the Glover. You said it was CDC that the tracing was done by not not Dessie. No, so that we follow CDC guidelines as far as what a contact is. So CDC guidelines, someone who is within six feet of an infected person for a cumulative total of 15 minutes or more over a 24 hour period, starting from two days before illness onset. Or for asymptomatic patients, two days prior to test specimen collection until the time the patient is isolated. So that’s the definition that we go by.

9:43 Michelle, is there anything you’d like to know? I only uncovered some of the stuff that I had concerns about. I’m sorry. No, no, no, that was fine. Can folks mute if you are not speaking, we just have some background noise. Right, Andrew. And then so the governor had a meeting today and made several very large announcements. So I’ll cover those. He came out today with order 53, order 54 and order 55. So order 53, whereas the Department of Public Health has today issued a stay at home advisory that urges all persons in the Commonwealth to remain at home between the hours of 10 p.m. and 5 a.m. in order to slow the spread of the virus, preserve hospital capacity and save lives. So there is a lot that goes into this order. These orders have been posted online. You can also go to mass.gov. This order will go into effect. 1201 a.m. on November 6, 2020, all businesses, facilities or activities included within the categories listed below must close their premises to the public each day, not later than 930 p.m. and may not reopen their premises to the public before 5 a.m. the following day, the mandatory closing period. So there’s a lot that goes into this.

11:20 So this is targeting sitting at a restaurant. So you can still do takeout order from a restaurant after 930, but you can’t be seated seated in the restaurant. This affects arcades and other indoor and outdoor recreation, indoor and outdoor events, indoor and outdoor theaters, movie theaters and performance venues, drive-in movie theaters, youth and adult amateur sport activities, golf facilities, recreational boating and boating businesses, outdoor recreational experiences and educational activities, casinos, horse racing tracks, ensembles facilities, class facilities, drive-in and flight schools, zoos, botanical gardens, wildlife reserves, and nature centers, close contact personal services, fitness centers and health clubs, indoor and outdoor pools, public and semi-public swimming pools, museums, cultural and historical facilities, and guided tours. So this will be, this is also, you know, please note that this is posted on the town website. And so there’s a lot of information that I won’t read tonight, but that’s a pretty large order coming from the governor. The second one, order 54, is also a very strong order. So beginning same time, 1201 a.m., November 6th, whereas section 7, 8 and 8a of chapter 631 of the acts of 1950 authorize the governor to put this effective period in declared emergency.

12:57 I’m going to skip a little bit, but now, therefore, I hereby order that the following entities subject to sector-specific rules. So he’s putting together a gathering order. So he is limiting gathering orders to, so requiring social distancing. So in addition to the capacity of sections specified below, all participants in indoor and outdoor gatherings, including gatherings at private residences, must maintain at least six feet of physical distance from every other participant in the gathering. Except where participants are members of the same household. A gathering shall violate this provision where, no matter the number of participants present, conditions or activities at the gathering are such that it is not reasonable possible for all participants to maintain this degree of separation. Gatherings at private residencies, indoor gatherings at private residencies and in any other place not falling within the definition of an event venue or public setting are limited to the maximum of 10 people. Outdoor gatherings at private residencies and in other place not falling within the definition of an event venue or public setting are limited to the maximum of 25 people. Gatherings at event venues and in public settings, indoor gatherings at event venues or in public settings are limited to maximum of 25 people.

14:30 The following capacity of limitations shall apply to outdoor gatherings at event venues or in public settings. In low risk communities, as defined in COVID-19 or number 51 or in any successor order, gatherings at event venues or in public settings are limited to a maximum of 100 persons in a single venue or space. In communities that do not qualify as lower risk communities, gatherings at event venues or in public settings are limited to a maximum of 50 persons in a single venue or space. Notification to local boards of health for outdoor gatherings and lower risk communities where more than 50 attendees are anticipated, the operator of the event venue shall provide notice to the local board of health in the municipality where the gathering is located at least one week before the event is scheduled or otherwise as soon as possible where one week notice is not practical due to the nature of the event, e.g. memorial services. For events held in public places like parks where more than 50 attendees are anticipated, the event organizer shall be responsible for providing this notice. The notification shall include at minimum the location and time of the planned event, the name and contact information of the event organizer, their number of anticipated attendees, and any other information reasonably requested by the local board of health. Time limitation, all gatherings, no matter the size or location, must end and participants must disperse by 9.30 p.m. with the exception of religious gatherings and political gatherings.

16:11 Face coverings, consistent with the revised order requiring face coverings in public places, and I’ll get to this one. This is COVID-19 order number 55. All persons over the age of five must wear a face or cloth face covering over their mouth and nose when in public locations, including at gatherings in public except as provided in section two of COVID-19 order number 55. Contact tracing, legal exemptions. Legal exemptions for the gathering. This order shall not apply to any of the following businesses, organizations, workplace, and facilities. Any municipal legislative body, the general court, or the judiciary, federal government entities, any healthcare facility or licensed healthcare provider, any of the following workplace or facilities with specialized functions and populations. Polling places, public and private elementary and secondary K-12 schools, residential and day schools for special needs students, license, approved or exempt childcare program and emergency residential programs, operating under emergency authorization, facilities operated by the department of correction or any sheriff, facilities operated, contracted, or licensed by the department of youth services, department of mental health, department of public health, or the department of developmental services, facilities and programs that provide safe spaces for the unstable, housed such as homeless and domestic violence shelters, any other facility or workplace that the commissioner of public health may exempt in writing from the term of this order.

17:50 Enforcement, the department of public health, local boards of health, and their authorized agents pursuant to general law section 111, section 30. And state and municipal police are authorized to enforce this order also. It continues to go on. The effective date of this, like I said, is 1201 a.m. on November 6. Finally, order number 55. I hereby order the following requirements to wear a face covering. Acceptance provided in section 2, all persons in Massachusetts over the age of five years old are required to wear a mask or cloth face covering over their mouth and nose when in public location, whether indoors and outdoors. Masks or face coverings are encouraged but not required for children between the age of two and five. Public locations include any place open to the public, including without limitation, grocery stores, pharmacies, and other retail stores, public transportation, tax deliveries, and other ride sharing vehicles, public streets and ways, and any location that hosts indoor and outdoor event or performances. Masks or cloth face coverings are also required when in a carpool with non-household members. All persons are strongly discouraged from using medical grade masks to meet the requirements of this order, as medical grade masks should be reserved for healthcare workers and first responders.

19:25 If a customer refuses to wear masks or cloth face covering for non-medical reasons, the operator of a facility or business may decline entry to the individual. Exemptions, the face covering requirement in section 1, shall not apply in the following circumstances. Where a person is unable to wear a mask or cloth face covering due to a medical or disabling condition, provided that a person who declares to wear a mask or cloth face covering because of a medical or disability condition, shall not be required to produce documentation verifying the condition except as provided in section 3. Where a face covering would impede communication by or with a person who has a hearing impairment or other disability. When a person is inside a personal vehicle, alone, or with other household members only, where applicable sector specific COVID-19 safety rules issued by the Department of Public Health, the Department of Labor Standards, the Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs, the Department of the Elementary and Secondary Education, the Department of Early Education and Care, or by any other agency authorized by the executive orders to issue such rules permit the removal of face coverings in specific circumstances, such as while eating and drinking in restaurants, receiving dental care, or swimming, and in circumstances or for other populations that the Commissioner of Public Health may exempt in writing from the term of this order. Places of employment in schools, where an employee or other worker who is required to wear a face covering pursuant to this order, or any other applicable rule requests and accommodation, so as not to have to wear face covering at the workplace due to a medical or disabling condition, an employee may require documentation to verify the condition, and a student, if unable to wear face covering because of a medical or disabling condition,

21:21 and will be participating in person learning, the school may likewise require documentation to verify the condition. Enforcement, the Department of Public Health, local boards of health, and authorized agents pursuant to General Law Section 111-30 are authorized to enforce this order, and if necessary, may do so with the assistance of state or municipal police. And same thing, this effective order goes into play on 1201 a.m. on November 6. So that does clear up a lot of questions and concerns around people wearing masks in town or not wearing masks in town. Do you have questions, comments? So I do. Do you mind if I go first? Of course, go right ahead. So that sounds like if you’re just going out to walk your dog and you’re not around other people, they’re required to wear a mask? That is correct. Okay. Any public street that you’re walking on, no matter how crowded, if you’re the only person on the street, according to this, you need to have a mask on? That is correct. Okay. Yep. That is how I’m reading it also. Which is a big change from previous… It’s a huge change. Yep. Well, it makes life a lot easier for the health director and the people that are calling the various members of the Board of Health. I’m not so sure it’s going to make it easier for us, but that’s okay. I mean, obviously, these are the steps that he’s taken, and we will enforce these orders. And that also includes the path.

22:53 And this also includes the path, which is a public location. So as far as this order goes, we will need to produce quite a few signs to make sure that all public areas are kind of marked. So like the bike path, all the athletic fields, all the public parks, the transfer station. We will have to create some signs that say masks must be worn at all times and get them out there as soon as possible. We will have to make some smaller ones that we can hang on streetlights or anything like that so we can make sure we cover areas. Is it possible since this is such a dense… Oh, I’m sorry, Todd, you were still going through your things. No, that’s fine. I was also… Okay. You know, since this is a pretty dense communication, I’m just wondering, like, if we can pull out some of the pieces of it so that, like, if I post it on our Facebook page, we can have, I don’t know, some bulleted points. I’m happy to do that, but I want to make sure it’s something that you’re comfortable with and not… I feel you’ve given the link to the order and they read the order themselves, you know, not so that it’s not confused with all the language that’s in it. You know, yeah, you can look at some of the bullet points, but it’s better that they read the order themselves so they can understand it. If they have questions, they can, you know, come to us and ask those questions, but I wouldn’t necessarily condense it down at this point.

24:27 All right. I mean, obviously, we will be creating signs that we can post online to say, these are now out per the order of the governor. Yeah, I mean, I think that’s good if we can also post that online just to make it clear because, you know, it’s not likely that everybody’s going to link and read the full extent of the order. Yep. May I ask a question? I don’t know if you can answer it, but it said requested not to wear medical masks. And are they just mean the N95s? Are they mean the little blue pleated ones that you see a lot of people wearing? Really the N95, which is the hard one to come by. Right. I’m sorry, because we’re experiencing issues with non-N95 medical masks. So we can ask that question, Todd. So obviously, you know, this just came out this afternoon. We had a special conference call today with the Department of Public Health. There was a lot of questions that they didn’t have answers to. So that’s one question that we can definitely push up, Todd. What is your definition of a medical mask? I would like to know that, too, because I’m wearing something that’s a medical mask, but it’s not an N95. Andrew, did you expect this to be coming? No. No. It’s a pretty large step. I mean, obviously, our numbers are really climbing these days in the state of Massachusetts.

26:03 There has been a lot of discussion about rolling back guidelines. And so always in the beginning when we went through phase one, phase two, phase three, it was always stated that at any time, if he felt that we needed to roll things back, that he was willing to do that, as we continued forward, we did not feel that he was still on that path. We saw new guidelines come out. So, you know, phase three that were more restrictive in certain areas than the phase one. So it kind of felt that we’re going to continue to march forward as the numbers started to increase this fall. There were a lot of communities that were concerned and actually started to talk about creating their own rules and regulations for their own communities. And I think he heard everybody loud and clear and decided that he needed to make a stand and try to… He wants to make sure that the regulations and the guidelines that he sets out are put out in purpose to make a change and make it, you know, make it dense in the issues. He doesn’t want to close indoor dining if we’re not seeing cases caused by indoor dining. So that was a lot of the discussion. He’s like, I need some hard concrete facts that I have issues in these certain areas, similar to ice hockey, where we are seeing some clusters in ice hockey, and they actually came out with new guidelines around ice hockey. Now, we continue to have some concerns about youth sports and clusters that are created around that.

27:37 And that’s why one of the orders in the mask is that you must wear a mask when you are in somebody else’s car. One other thing. I heard the presentation because I saw it, that it was coming on. And he specifically said numerous times that he’s not interested in closing the schools. He said numerous times, he also said he did not want to close down businesses. So he understands what needs to be done and what shouldn’t be done. So through the Department of Public Health and the Department of Dessy, the goalposts have been changing a little bit with the remote in-person or hybrid. So in the very beginning, the state came out with these matrix, giving color code into communities based on positive case count over a 14-day period. At the very beginning, if a town was red, they were supposed to go remote. As we began school, they started to change that. We got finally, we got to, well, you need to see if the community is red for three weeks. Don’t just do it on one week. Do it, look at three weeks. If you look at just one week, you’re going to be in and out. And it might be very challenging for everybody because when you look at Marblehead with 20,000 people and you have it based on 100,000 people, you’re multiplying that case count by five.

29:17 So a small number of cases can jump us up pretty quickly when we’re looking at the numbers. So they wanted us to take a look at over three weeks. And now they’re changing that again to say, okay, three weeks, we also want to look at transmission and positive cases in schools and make some determination about that. We’re looking for some guidelines on that. But at this point, we don’t have anything. But we will continue to talk to the Department of Public Health and look for guidelines coming back from DESI. Can you go into enforcement a little more based on these new orders? So enforcement. So we are a very short staff department. We’re extremely busy. It’s going to be very hard for us to take in all these phone calls and say, hey, you know, there’s somebody down the street that’s walking the street with no mask and sending somebody out there to do enforcement right away. We just don’t have the manpower for that. And then say you were to go and go up to somebody on the street, not wearing a mask. What would would there be a warning, a fine? Like, was there? I have, you know, I have, you know, I’d have to take a look at it. Yeah, it’s all new. Yeah. And look at the enforcement side. You know, there are citations that you can issue. So enforcement, the Department of Public Health, like I stated, the MBTA transit police are authorized to enforce this order on an MBTA bus. Rail and transit system, violation of this terms of this order or department public health guidance may result in a civil fine up to $300 per violation in the manner provided for non criminal disposition of violation of municipal bylaw ordinance rule or regulation pursuant to general law section 40-21D.

31:07 So, yes, it gives us the authority to issue violations. So do you have to come up with a plan for what what the enforcement would be, whether there’s going to be a financial financial thing involved or? And obviously, you know, in the beginning, it’s going to be education. And then if we get non compliance or repeated non compliance, we’re not going to have much of a choice but to issue citations, which are non criminal disposition. And obviously, same thing. There’s a lot of new information. We’ll have another conference call with the state on Friday where we will have a council that will give us some guidance on that legal council. Yeah, this is brand new. This is brand new. Well, I didn’t mean it would make life easier for you when when, as far as the work to be done, but I think that this this rig is going to make life easier for us with the complaints that we’ve been getting because there’s a lot of people in the community. And I’m sure that that’s why in all communities that aren’t even doing what was asked of them initially. So this is just bringing it another step forward. And I think that it’s just making, I think, the complaint issue, I think a little bit easier for people because we’re not going to hear those kind of complaints.

32:43 We’re just going to hear complaints about people seeing them. Others not masking up. But I think that it was it was kind of very, very ambiguous before. In my personal opinion, I thought it was very clear. You either stay six feet away, or if you’re less than six feet, you have to have a mask on if you’re outside somebody’s family. Well, but people weren’t doing that. Well, we’re going to run into the same issue with non compliance. I hope not. What’s next, Andrew, on your report? After this, I’m changing from I go off of COVID. So if you guys want to continue to talk about COVID. We never want to stop talking about COVID. Is there anything else either, Hilleen, Michelle? No. Well, as far as on COVID, I’m not on the agenda from the meeting that we had this morning with reopening. Okay, you got to do your report, please. And I just want to say to the we drove a large group of people tonight and I’m going to open up after all our discussions for any questions you may have. So, not yet. Since we’re moving on to hazardous waste, do we want to take any of the questions on COVID before we move to hazardous waste?

34:13 I thought I was going to talk about the reopening committee. Oh, right. Well, I need you, whichever you want, you want to get the COVID and then I’ll you may have some questions on what I have to say because I want to. Let’s hear your report now, Hilleen, from the New York. It’s going to be a lot more condensed because a lot of the things that I heard today were what Andrew reported, namely about the Glover issue, the high school issue. That’s, you know, that has already been discussed. And someone did ask, one of the faculty members asked what the difference between close contact and contact. And that was answered by the cumulative time of when people are together. If it’s 15 minutes or more, it becomes close contact. Just contact is less than 15 minutes. And that came up because of the incident at the Glover School because they were trying to determine, you know, who the these staff people were in contact with are close contact. And they have a teacher survey was sent out. And there are a lot of interesting, several interesting things that were shown through in that survey. The superintendent said he underestimated the fear of the teachers.

35:44 They’re concerned if they bring lunch back into the school, if the kids are eating lunch in the classroom and they take their mask off, which naturally they have to do. And there are issues that the teachers are concerned about there. So they were talking about the busing and how they’re not really ready to do busing all over town. They need to step back and think about that. Certainly the people on plans are being picked up and the buses are immediately cleaned. Before they go back to wherever they’re parked, they’re not cleaned when they start to use them. They clean them right away. And today they’re going to launch a survey. He launched a survey, the superintendent, to parents and students. And those results will be reported at the second November school committee meeting. So that will be of interest to people. He also is looking at getting, they had a webinar this afternoon on live streaming. And they know that we are not, that our technology isn’t up to speed. And if we do go into that, it will be costly. So they are having the tech people looking into the cost of that.

37:20 But they did have a webinar on that today. Now the health and safety committee, Andrew, they said that, which we know that you had said that we should go with the guidelines. I didn’t hear whether he appointed the committee or that we were just going to go with, he’s going to go with the guidelines. Did he appoint that committee or not? I think there’s still more information to come on that one. Okay, because it’s not appointed the committee. Okay, it seemed like he was going on your say that we were going to the metrics of the state and, and he’s worked with the 10 surrounding towns with his superintendents group. And I think that that’s where it went. So thank you for clarifying that because he just didn’t say whether they were going forward with that. Already talk about masks and wipes and bottles of water. They already have to reorder for that. And the other very interesting thing is that there is a company, a custodial company that the school department has hired. And they said that it’s costly and it’s a small price to pay for the safety of the kids. They are doing the additional cleaning and they are helping the staff by doing this cleaning because the staff would not be able to do the deep cleaning that the company is doing.

38:57 They said that the people that have been sent to our town are outstanding. Do they come in a day? They are there constantly and it costs $30,000 a week. But they said that they couldn’t do it without them and that it’s a small price to pay even though it is costly. They get back again about the buses and those custodial people are disinfecting all the buses. So they’re doing things that our custodians on a regular day could never ever do to take on those extra commitments. So we’re going to go to weekly meetings right now, back to weekly meetings with this committee. And he said that the school committee appreciates the input of the reopening committee of the schools. So they are serving a purpose and I’m glad to be able to help. I’m glad to be able to bring this to my committee. And I’m finished. Thank you. So I want to finish our business and then we’ll open it up. So Andrew, the Hazardous Waste Day? Household Hazardous Waste Day. So our original schedule is to have a Household Hazardous Waste Day with Clean Harbors. I believe it would have been November 14th.

40:29 That has been canceled for gathering order reasons. But we have had a contract with a company called ACV who we used back in September. So our next Household Hazardous Waste Day will be December 8th, which is a Saturday. It’s a pre-registration event, same as last time. You go online, you tell them what you have, you prepay, and they’ll come to your house and pick it up. It was very smooth last time. We had over approximately 150 to 200 people in Marblehead that participated, and another 150 to 200 people that participate in Swamp Scott. The event is open to both Marblehead and Swamp Scott individuals, but it is a pre-registration event. Andrea? Tuesday, Andrea, not at that. I’m sorry, thank you. It’s Tuesday, December 8th is the event for the ACV, which is the next Household Hazardous Waste Day. Where do you look that up? So we have not posted the flyer yet. The flyer will be posted this week. We’re just finalizing it with the company, but it will be posted online, usually posted in two different places, upcoming events, Household Hazardous Waste Day on the website. You do not need to be home for them to pick up the material. So you can prepay, pre-register, set the material out, and go to work, and they will still collect the material. This has been a great event. We’ve got a lot of really good feedback.

42:00 A, for the fact that a lot of people can participate even when they’re at work, and so it’s another option. The idea with this event, rather than having two events annually, we would like to have more events, so potentially four times a year, as long as the need is there. So this is kind of the new model going forward. Which would ideally have people who don’t want to wait five months, they can throw stuff away with it. They shouldn’t. They can wait three months. Yeah, we always had questions from realtors, you know, hey, you know, my client is selling their home, they need to get rid of some Household Hazardous Waste. Where’s the closest place that you can do it? All those facilities, it’s winter, all those facilities are closed at this time, you’re going to have to hold onto that. Or try to contact Clean Harbors themselves, and you would end up playing a very high fee. So this really takes care of a lot of your needs. They will collect latex paint, some non-hazardous items that are a little bit harder to get rid of. Latex paint, propane tanks, stuff tires, batteries, you know, large car batteries, not the regular household throwaway batteries. So this is kind of the new model that we’re moving towards. Great. I’m glad it was smooth last time, so it needs more. Yeah. And then the last thing to report about the transfer station is that due to the high winds today, we did have some issue with the roof on the compactor shed. So we will need to have a company come out and do some roof repairs on that.

43:34 It’s the old rubber roof membrane. So at some point the board’s going to have to decide. We’ll have somebody come out and repair that, but we need to have a large conversation about what we’re doing moving forward. So we can put that on the agenda and begin to talk about that. Okay. Do you want to do that as soon as next meeting or within the next couple months? Probably the next couple months. Okay. I’m coming in the new year. Yep. Maybe a little bit before, but probably in the next couple months so we can start talking about it. You might want to put it in the budget, wouldn’t you? It’s going to happily be, you know, a budget issue, and, you know, yes, that’s going to be the larger discussion. So that would have to be before January? That would have to be before January. Yep. So we’ll talk about it in December. Yep. Great. All right. Later, Michelle, any new business? All right. So if anybody does want to have a question for us or participate in the meeting, just do the raise hand option, please. We can talk. And if nobody does, then we’ll set our meeting dates. We have the next meeting, but we’ll set the one after that. So it doesn’t look like there’s anybody up. Sondra Callahan. I see your hand is raised. Hi, guys. I’m calling for a quick question. Andrew, I don’t know, and I might be mistaken. You had mentioned you didn’t think the board was picked. I thought I saw an email that had come out from Dr. Bucky with some board members on it for health and safety.

45:04 I could be wrong, but I thought it came out this weekend. So that was one thing. But another clarification, this is more from a personal, personally, because I have kids that are in Marblehead, but I’m also a provider and see a lot of the kids on the North Shore. I know that you guys are short staff. Could you just clarify if there is a close contact in Marblehead? Will we be, because this is happening to me on a professional level, who will be contacting us? Is the expectation still from the Board of Health, if we’ve had a positive exposure, that you guys will be contacting a parent? Because there’s been some incidences where, not in Marblehead, but on the North Shore where coaches, because we’re talking about some of these issues with some of these clusters on these teams, where coaches have reached out to parents saying, there’s a positive kid, call your doctor’s office. And then unclear whether or not that close contact has occurred, because the parent has not heard yet from contact tracing or the Board of Health. I just wanted some clarification of what the expectation is from Marblehead’s Board of Health. Yeah. So the expectation really should be the same across the Commonwealth. So if you are a positive case, the public health nurse or CTC will contact you. They will do an investigation to identify your close contacts. The public health nurse or the CTC will contact those close contacts to give them the guidelines for quarantine. So yes, you might hear from a coach, but you really should be hearing from the public health nurse, the Board of Health, or the CTC.

46:43 So is the ex… Oh, sorry. Excuse me, what does CTC stand for? So CTC is… So the Governor has hired additional employees to help out communities do contact tracing. So it’s contact tracing collaborative. So, you know, we share slightly different platforms, but if we are unable to get to a case, when we are in our system, which is called Maven, we can click a button to say, I want CTC to take a look at this case and do the investigation with, you know, for us or along with us. And what we do is we often… So just to make sure that we’re having good communication with CTC, there are times when we’re just pushing the button to make sure that it’s working, having outreach to them. So we’re used to that system as they are used to us too. So I know… So if a parent calls me and says, listen, I’ve been notified by a coach that my kid had an exposure possibly on the team, and should we be telling these parents to wait until they’ve been contacted if it’s a concern? Because then they’re being told to contact their pediatrician and that puts us in, you know, a questionable situation. And then my follow up to that is obviously you guys aren’t open on Saturdays and Sundays. My understanding is contact tracing is still occurring, at least from the messages of government level on Saturdays and Sundays. I know that they’re doing outreach, but I’m not sure if you guys… Let’s just say a positive case comes in on a Saturday.

48:14 Are you guys not aware of it till that Monday or does CTC step in on that Saturday and Sunday with that positive case and then start doing the investigation to figure out who the positive contacts are? No, we work on the weekends also. So anytime the case comes in, we have government issued phones and it comes right to our phone. We can log into the system so we can begin the contact tracing right away. If we work for whatever reason, if we miss a case, CTC will notice that we’ve missed it and they will pick up the contact tracing for us. You know, sometimes we might be overloaded with cases and there’s so much paperwork going back and forth that somehow the public health nurse missed it, but we really haven’t had that issue yet, but CTC would pick it up if we happen to miss it. But yes, we continue to work all weekend. Okay, so the expectation is if we get called that we tell parents to wait until you’ve been notified by the Department of Public Health if they need to be quarantined. That is correct. I mean, obviously we always recommend that if people have concerns or questions that they should reach out to their primary care physician also. Okay. But yeah, you should be contacted by the local. So it depends on where the case originates. So, you know, if it’s an employee, you know, somebody that works at an establishment in town, and that employee is actually from another town.

49:48 So they’re from, they work in Marblehead, but they’re a Pbitty resident. Pbitty actually does the contact tracing. It’s where you reside. We’ll contact, yep, but we’ll contact Marblehead for us to do an investigation at the restaurant also. And kind of coordinate the case to make sure we capture all the information that we need to gather. Lisa, how are you? Hi Todd, how are you? Good. Good. Thanks so much for your guys’ time. I know you’re so busy right now. I just had a couple of questions and a comment. And one of them has to do with just understanding a little bit about the communication that comes out from you guys with respect to cases coming through the school. And I guess one of my questions was, I know that the Glover communication was a little bit confusing to people today. I’m not in the Glover district, but I think this kind of speaks to one of the issues that, you know, everyone’s sort of grappling with, which is, you know, in the case of the communication that came this morning, it felt like there was still tracing going on when school was about to start. And so people felt a little bit unsure. OK, so is this still going on? Do we need to make our own decision here? And then obviously the subsequent communication, which indicated after the school day, had really gone on that, OK, they had actually completed that and felt like it was a safe start to the day. And I think a piece of it is just understanding, you know, what the consistency and transparency is.

51:24 Obviously, I know you guys are probably working with obviously like the HIPAA regulations and trying to make sure that you’re not jumping the gun on things. But, you know, I think one of the pervasive things that I have heard from other parents and I feel myself is that, you know, if there’s a way that we can at least have an expectation of, you know, if there’s a case, even a communication saying, you know, there is a case, it’s being investigated and it impacts this population. I think that would make people feel more comfortable rather than, you know, almost it’s feeling like there’s a lag on it. And that’s creating a little bit of concern as to whether or not we’re getting sort of up to date information where people can make their own decision about whether or not they need to wait to see how the investigation pans out or whether or not they feel comfortable. So obviously, you know, we want to make sure that we have all the information. So when we get the case report that comes in, we have contact information for Save You. We have to call that person. Obviously, it’s coming on a phone that they don’t recognize. So the person doesn’t always pick up right away. So sometimes we have issues with conducting our investigation. Obviously, we want to complete it as quickly as possible. So sometimes there is a lag with that. We want to in today’s case, we want to make sure we have all the information.

52:56 So we decided to stay on the safer side and not have cohort A go in and make sure the investigation was completed before and make everything, you know, that everybody was satisfied with the outcome before saying, all right, we feel it’s safe. Let’s bring everybody back to school. Okay, sorry, just a quick follow up there. So and maybe I’m just on misunderstanding, but I would have thought then really the safer thing would have been to not have anybody go in. If you don’t, you know, it’s like you’re saying it’s staff, at least in the initial communication staff. So, you know, from that perspective, as a parent, you’re like, is it a front office staff? Is it a teacher? Are the teachers and you know, it’s not a perfect system and the teachers are obviously doing the best they can to quarantine, but it’s not a perfect system. So I think there’s there with a little bit of that, you know, yes, it is cautious to keep one cohort at home. But again, I think it was just because there was a lack of detail, which I’m sure you guys were trying to figure out. But that’s where I’m sort of trying to figure out, like, you know, one other comment, sorry, and then I’ll be done. But, you know, I think I’m not super clear on even, you know, when numbers are released. And I think one of the challenges about being in a small town is that people hear, you know, things go quickly through the town. So, you know, obviously, that’s a challenge because people want to feel like the information that they’re getting is up to date and that they feel confident about the information that they’re getting.

54:28 And I don’t think that, you know, and I think that is a challenge. And I’m sure it’s something that you guys face as well, people hearing certain things and confirming it. And so trying to figure out a way also so everybody feels like you guys aren’t, you know, responding to. I don’t know how many different calls or inquiries you get. Well, also people feeling like they’re getting the information real time. And I understand, again, it’s a challenge, but it was just it’s just sort of a comment. I’m not clear on, you know, I don’t know that as a general whole, people feel very dialed into when numbers are reported. And, you know, I think are having a hard time feeling like they’re able to tie those out to cases that they actually know about. So, sorry, that’s all. Thank you. I think part of it is that this is just, you know, this is happening in real time. And it’s just every time there’s an incident that happens, there’s more experience from the time before to make it a smoother process. 100 percent. Yep. Thanks. Todd, I had some old business, if we could, I just sort of popped into my mind. You asked about new business. But, Andrew, could you just give us any update on how Halloween went? Do we have the regs and all? Yes, you mentioned it. So, I mean, we don’t have any we don’t have any issues to report.

55:58 It seemed like overall everybody did a good job. You know, the high school did it, you know, or the there was a group of people that set up a Halloween drive through at the high school. That was a very well run event. I believe there were 350 cars that went through and maybe served as many as 800 students. Everything was socially distanced. Everything was as safe as possible. So that was a great event that we can look back and say, yeah, you know, we we made a difference. You know, we tried to keep Halloween the way as you know, keep it going. You know, so that’s the only thing I really have to report about Halloween. So that was that was publicized through the schools. That was publicized through the schools. Yep. So elementary kids went to the high school where high school kids passed out. Unfortunately, it was not high school kids. It was parents and first responders. It was kind of a drive through boo event where there’s pumpkins on the side, people dressed up in costumes on the side. And at the end, first responders handed out a gift bag. That was very nice. And that was planned after we met. So we really didn’t know anything about it. That is correct. That wasn’t you know, we didn’t set that up. That was set up by a PTA association. Very nice. All right. Thank you for that. So you talked about meetings.

57:31 We have one on the 16th. I was wondering with all this new all these new regulations, I was wondering if we should meet next Tuesday and then maybe we don’t have to meet on a Monday because Michelle can’t come. I think she said she couldn’t come. I’m not sure. So I was wondering, what do you think about that, Andrew? Wait, when did I say I couldn’t come? You said you couldn’t come on the Monday the 16th. Is that? Oh, because I had been having a medical procedure on the 13th and I just thought I’m just uncertain for the 16th and just not sure how I’m going to be. What do you think Andrew enough to cover a week from now? I mean, I’m sure there’s always gonna be a lot to cover because we have these new orders that we’ll be dealing with. Well, that’s what I thought. There was so much new stuff that. So let’s switch from the. What do you think? I mean, I just throwing it out. And then we’ll cancel the 16th. I mean, we’ll move the 16th to the 10th and then we can decide the next two weeks after that is Thanksgiving week. We can figure that one out next week. Okay. Okay. 10th is. I think that. That would be good. Okay. That helps me to something. Did I see Tom raises hand or he’s off with.

59:01 When is the meeting now? Yeah. Okay. The regular Tuesday. Okay. So, that’s that. Let’s have a motion to adjourn. I’ll make a motion to adjourn. We have a second. Scott lead. In favor. In favor. In favor. Dr. Belfekker. Okay. Everybody. Okay.