Board of Health: August 30, 2021

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0:01 August 30th, and this is being recorded for MHTV. And we’ll go right to our minutes of August 10th. I had one change, Andrea, whenever it says School Committee, it should be capitalized. There was like three or four instances of that. And I had a change that she did. I had called it in, or I had texted it in, and she did it. So we had the wrong meeting, and at last time’s meeting, that’s why my problem is, I’m sorry. Then secondly, I’d like to make a motion to accept the minutes. Was it of August 9th? Is that correct? Yeah. I guess 10th. 10th, yeah. I guess 10th. Yeah, I’m sorry. As corrected. Is there a second? I’ll second. Okay. All right, Ms. Hazlett? In favor. Ms. Miller? In favor. Dr. Belfbecker? In favor. Great. Now we’ll go right to our COVID-19 update, Andrea. All right, so this is an update as of August 27th. We’ve had a total of 1,437 cases to date. On August 20th, the case count was 1,421. At that time, we currently have 20 active cases. We still have approximately, or confirmed deaths,

1:33 or 31. We had 11 cases, 0 to 19. We had two cases, 20 to 29. Five cases, 30 to 39. Five cases, 40 to 49. Two cases, 50 to 59. Four cases, 60 to 69. Zero cases, 70 to 79. And one case, 80 plus. And for the past two weeks, which is a total of 30. The average daily incident rate per 100,000 in the last 14 days is 15. That has stayed the same since the week before. Total tests completed at this time is 66,397. The total test in the last 14 days is 2,077. The week before was 1,854. Percent positive for the last 14 days is 2.55%. So this is a change going down. The week before was 2.86%. As of August 27th, we have 1,975 people with one dose. So they’re one dose away to being fully vaccinated. And we have 14,555 people that are fully vaccinated. Now, I actually pulled the numbers today again. So I have a total of 15,676 people that are fully vaccinated. That’s 82%. And I have 916 people that are incomplete. And that’s 4.81%

3:13 So approximately 87% of people have received some kind of vaccination. So we’re talking very high numbers at this point. So, you know, obviously we can get along. Excuse me. That again is encountering the people under 12 also. Is that? Yeah. So when I do the, so I take the 15,000 and divide that to the total population of Marblehead. And so the total population that we use for the Department of Public Health is 19,036 people. So there’s roughly 10% is 1200. It’s hard to say. Yeah. I mean, it’s, you know, it’s really, if you add, so that’s 85. So it’s 15%. You know, it’s hard to say exactly. I mean, we can get the numbers and stuff like that, but. It’s just interesting to think of how many people are not allowed to get the vaccine compared to how many people are choosing not to for whatever reason. Correct. And so, you know, to make it easy, I always think about it as being 12% can’t be vaccinated or, you know, 11% really can’t be vaccinated. So we should really be seeing 89% totally vaccinated. So yeah, we’re right. 80, 87%. So, you know, we’re missing 2% there.

4:46 82 are fully vaccinated. 82 are fully vaccinated and 4.81% are incomplete.

5:00 Which other towns had such good numbers as we do. Exactly. Obviously, there’s a lot of discussion about kids and going back to school. We have updated guidance from DESI that was released on August 25. They have a mask mandate for the first month of school. And contact tracing and quarantine protocols are now put out by the DESI. And that can be found also on the DESI website on mass.gov. DESI education. I didn’t do the whole contact tracing and quarantine protocols for DESI. But that’s a lot of really good information that parents should be paying attention to. It talks about if your child is exposed in class, depending on if they have a mask on or not, what the requirements are. And they are looking to do a lot of test and stay during the school year. They want to make sure they do a lot of cool testing in the school. We want to do a lot of surveillance. So obviously, there’s three major key features to COVID right now. So we want to make sure we get as many people vaccinated as possible. So vaccinations. We want to follow up with those any kind of contacts. If we have a positive case, we want to do contact tracing and try to identify their contacts and make sure that those people quarantine or if they’re vaccinated, look for symptoms. And then we also want to make sure that we’re doing surveillance. So testing. Obviously, with the school, pool testing is great.

6:34 We can sample a lot of students and make the testing quicker by pooling them all together. We also want to remember and remind all our citizens that if you feel that you have symptoms and that you have been exposed, it’s a good idea to go and get tested. We also have testing going on because of travel. So some of us are testing because of that. So these three items, vaccinations, contact tracing, and testing, are very important to continue on. While you’re talking about the kids, could I just step in that the superintendent at his meeting with the team, he doesn’t call it the reopening committee anymore. It’s called the SALT. S-A-L-T. I’m not exactly, I have been told what the acronym is, but I can’t repeat it right now because I don’t have it written down. But it’s the SALT team now. But all that you have talked about about the vaccination, the contact tracing, and the surveillance are very important. One thing that I’d like to stress at this meeting is that the pool testing wasn’t very successful last year because a lot of families didn’t join in. And they’d like to encourage people to allow their children to have this done. The other thing that they’re doing in schools is they’re still

8:06 having seating arrangements. So every class that a student is in, like the old seating tracks, when we were kids in school, they have the names where they’re seated. And the same thing on the bus. The buses, the students sit on the same seats all the time. And they have the windows opened and the buses. And for the most part, in school, they’re at least three feet apart. Sometimes, naturally, they may be three to four feet apart. But generally, in our school, students can be three feet apart. So that was something that I would just like to add. They’re encouraging the teachers, naturally, to sign up for the pool testing. One other thing, if parents refuse to have their kids test, then if there’s a question about as a contact tracing, those students, if they are unvaccinated, they’re going to have to, if they refuse, they’re going to have to stay out of school for 10 days. So that’s a biggie, I think. And there’s no remote learning. If a student refuses a test, they have to stay out of school 10 days, and there will be no remote learning this year. Those were the highlights. And I’m sorry to interrupt you, Andrew, but I didn’t want to go back to it while you were.

9:41 Yep. And I think that this was the best way to do it. So thanks a lot for letting me interrupt. Yeah, that’s perfect. So I just want to kind of go over some of the COVID-19 symptoms that we look for. So fever, 100 degrees Fahrenheit and above. Chills and shaking chills. Difficulty breathing or shortness of breath. New loss of taste or smell. Muscle aches or body aches. Cough, not due to otherwise or other known cause such as chronic cough. Sore throat, one in combination with other symptoms. Nausea, vomiting or diarrhea, one in combination with other symptoms. Headache, one in combination with other symptoms. Fatigue, one in combination with other symptoms. Nasal, nasal congestion or runny nose. Not due to other known causes such as allergies. One in combination with other symptoms. So we just wanted to kind of cover the symptoms so people can be aware of these different things. And yes, allergies have been very strong this summer. So you need to, you know, always remember that. But when we have a runny nose in combination with something like shortness of breath, loss of taste or smell, those are all keys that you should get tested and start to begin to make sure that you don’t have a lot of contacts at that point. But get tested, keep yourself away from people, put a mask on and wait for your results. I like that you stress combination with other symptoms so often because people get headaches all the time. So, you know, for example.

11:14 Yep. There’s been a lot of discussion about a third dose. So on Friday, August 13th, 2021, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, CDC, recommended a third dose of Moderna or Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine for certain individuals. People who are moderately or severely immunocompromised are more likely to have serious disease with COVID-19 and are less likely to develop adequate immunity in response to the two-dose series of Moderna or Pfizer vaccines. Recent data suggests that such individuals may get more protection from a third dose. An additional dose is recommended for people who have already received a primary series with either of the Pfizer or Moderna COVID-19 vaccine and who have moderate to severe immune compromises due to a medical condition or receipt of an immunosuppressive medication or treatment. So that’s a lot of discussion. Now, you’ve also heard people talk about the booster. The third dose is not a booster. The booster is something that we’ll be looking at and the CDC to recommend later for all of other people that have received their full series. And the booster might give us more protection later on, but they haven’t come back with the authorization for that for that yet. So stay tuned. But that’s the difference between the third dose and a booster is those very minor little things, but that’s the difference. You’ll hear people talk about

12:48 boosters and third doses and they’re two separate things. But they’re the same serum. Is that correct? That is correct. And the same amount. Same amount. Yep. Just different terminology and just different applications. And that’s really it for my COVID update. Thank you. Is there any discussion or anything from the board? I’m kind of interested in expanding a conversation about the Delta variant and the fact that this is more contagious and more highly transmissible and people with vaccination and vaccinated people are also getting the disease and potentially spreading it. So I just wanted to see if we could talk about other ways we can mitigate this risk. And certainly I’m just awed by the data and how you added it up for us, Andrew, to think that 82% are fully vaccinated, 4.8% have are halfway there. And then the rest of our population that potentially can’t be vaccinated yet because of their age. I know we are in a wonderful place with respect to vaccination and that is just outstanding and it’s where we want to be. But I would just like to talk about the potential of recommending mask wearing indoors as another mitigating tool that we have. We don’t have, you know, a lot of tools in our toolbox with respect

14:19 to how to help people protect themselves and the community from this variant. So would that be something worth exploring as a community? I see that lots of our neighboring communities are making recommendations and they’re very close by and certainly, you know, we all are traveling into our surrounding communities and I just think that we’re so fortunate to have our kids going back to school and we’re so fortunate to, you know, having the people that are vaccinated, they seem to be many mild cases and they’re not ending up in the hospital but does it make sense at this juncture to discuss mask wearing indoors? Elaine, do you? Well, I wasn’t prepared to make a statement about it but I certainly, I’m wearing a mask indoors when I go into public places. So when I go into a restaurant, I walk in until I sit down just like it was months ago. I go into a supermarket, I wear a mask. I know that Salem has ordered that. Swampsgoode has requested that and those are our neighboring communities and beyond that, there’s, you know, Lynn, I don’t really do too much indoor. I’m not an indoor spaces in Lynn but

15:52 certainly higher percentage of disease there. So yeah, if the board would like to discuss it, I know what I’m doing for my personal, my own person. So we want to talk about, I mean, for discussion sake, just municipal buildings or all buildings, places of business and any which way we do it, do we have the jurisdiction to do that or would we need to do it in conjunction with the selectmen? I don’t know these answers Andrew. So yeah, you definitely have the jurisdiction to do it. You know, obviously it’s a public health issue. Now obviously the discussion would be is it warranted? How many communities are doing it? What can’t you know? So with each different community, each different community is doing it slightly different. Salem has enacted a mask mandate. So Salem’s War to Health unanimously passed an indoor mask mandate for all public indoor spaces or businesses regardless of vaccination status. And that runs from August 23rd to November 13th. And that’s really based on the fact that this is their really huge tourist season with, you know, Halloween right around the corner. They want to make sure that their community is protected. They might not have as a high vaccination rate as we do, but they want to they’re using this as a tool, like you said, to try to, you know, prevent some of the spread of disease. Now, Swam Scott is doing something

17:25 slightly different. The town administrator has enacted that all town public buildings, excluding schools, which are he’s leaving under the control of the school committee. Everybody would need to wear masks. So when you look across the state, there are some, they’re not, it’s definitely not all. So Arlington has a face covering required for all municipal buildings. Belmont, town of Belmont has decided to enact a town mask mandate for municipal buildings, as well as other indoor public spaces, including restaurants, bars, retail shops, and gyms. So you kind of go down, you know, Bill Rick, Boston, Brockton, Brooklyn, Cambridge, Framingham, Lexington, Lolan, Nantucket, Plymouth, Provincetown, Revere, Salem, Somerville, Southboro, Swam Scott, Tisbury, and Worcester. Those are the communities that have made it some kind of decision about mask wearing. Yes, when you go out currently, you know, you see a lot of masks being worn, especially in grocery stores or other high traffic areas. Obviously, the CDC is recommending that if we have anybody at home that’s immunocompromised or unvaccinated that individuals should be making, taking precautions for them. So it’s a very, it’s a tough debate right now. We are a highly vaccinated community. The goal is to get us as many people vaccinated as possible, and then to try to, you know, continue on with life. Our feeling is that COVID is here to stay, and we have to learn to live with it. Obviously, we’re going to have our

18:59 ups and downs with different variants, and we’re going to need to take precautions at certain times. And we’re going to have to figure that out with school, and especially with the younger, you know, the six through and below, who are all unvaccinated and gathering together indoors. So, you know, there’s not a perfect answer. And before the state came forward and enacted, you know, a mask mandate for the whole state, we didn’t want to kind of have this, you know, different communities having different regulations, and I’m traveling to this community, and how am I going to know what the regulations are? Obviously, the board could say, you know, we recommend that you wear a mask, you know, when you’re going indoors. It’s really up to the board, and you know, and obviously, you don’t have to decide anything tonight. If you were to make it a regulation, we would have to just, you know, quickly talk to town council and see what we need. Obviously, it would have to be a, you know, a public hearing. So we’d have to announce that we’re having this public hearing to debate it. And I think you would have quite the crowd that would come to that. We really think it’s a public hearing because I know that the school department is requiring masking for all vendors and all guests, which means if a parent comes in to have a pick up a child or deliver a child or drop something off, they have to wear a mask. So they’re in charge of their buildings so they can set the rules. Just like if I was a business owner, I could say anybody coming to my establishment must wear a mask. And that’s

20:32 my right as a business owner or their right as the control of the school buildings. Now, the Board of Health wants to take control over all the businesses in town, you’d have to hold a public hearing. What about just the public buildings? You’d still have to hold a public hearing for that too. Now, the town administrator could say he’s going to enact something, the selectmen who are technically also in charge of those buildings could say we’re going to require anybody going into those buildings to have to wear a mask. Well, maybe we should make a, if we’re interested, we could make a recommendation to the Board of Selectmen. Yes, you could do that. We recommend as a board to them. Are you interested in that, Joanne? I’m very grateful to be having this discussion because there’s so much to consider and I wonder, would the business community appreciate people to come into their place of work, their business, and be wearing a mask so that it wasn’t the onus wasn’t on the business owner? I would be interested to understand how people feel about that. How do business people feel about it? Right. Versus having to tell people that come into your business what they need to do if it’s something that’s prevalent in the town and asked of everyone going into the businesses or the municipal buildings that look like

22:04 different communities are differentiating that starting with municipal buildings. I’m interested to learn that you have to have a public hearing about that and I think that’s a valuable thing to consider to get the sense of how people feel. I think Andrew said if we referred to the Board of Selectmen, they could make that decision about the public buildings. Is that correct? That is correct. So then we would have a public hearing if we chose to go further with the retail. But now all physicians and dentists are requiring masking. Safe resolution. Yeah, it’s a health care facility. So there’s a place where people are masking. And I think it only makes sense to me because you go across the border, so to speak, and into Swamscot or into Salem. And honestly, you don’t know which community you’re in when you’re traveling around to various places. And I mean, we do know where we are, but what are the rules here and what are the recommendations here and such? So I think it would be a lot easier if we were able to have something that was more uniform. I agree. As do I. Well, there we are. Just so we agree, does that mean that we want to have a public hearing to have masks for all

23:40 indoor establishments in town? Or do we want to just start with municipal buildings, public buildings? Let’s do both. Let’s ask for the municipal buildings and have the hearing. Do you want to vote on that? We just agree verbally. I don’t know if that we need to have a vote to go to public hearing. No, if you would like to have a public hearing for all. So if you’re going to do all the businesses, I don’t believe you have to have the select window of municipal. I think your blanket coverage is going to get this. Okay. Well, I just know that this is going to be a very large public hearing. I’m just thinking if it were made quicker for the public buildings. But I don’t think if we have a meeting in two weeks, I don’t think there’s a problem. Or meeting is scheduled for the 14th. And we can just have this as part of that. That’s what it needs to do. I guess we should have a vote that we all want to move forward with this. And if we move forward with the public hearing, as Andrew said, we do not need to ask those selectmen to participate because it’s an umbrella. Well, Johanne, would you like to make the motion since you brought up the topic? Yes. May I make a motion for public? Sorry. Public meeting.

25:11 Discussing mask recommendation of wearing masks inside and public buildings and indoors places of business in our community. Is there a second? Yes, second. Ms. Miller. In favor. Thank you. Ms. Aisley. In favor. Dr. Belsberger. In favor. Okay. The other thing that you’ll need to remember when you do this, so you’ll need to create a matrix of when you’re going to, so now you’re going to require it, when are you not going to require it? So you have to come up with a matrix to say, I’m going to turn it on now, but it’s going to get turned off here because they will be asking that. Okay. I think is that something we could discuss now? Because certainly, if we can mitigate this risk and as more data comes out, as we learn more about this variant, and as we proceed with our increased vaccinations, you know, I think other communities are saying, let’s, I guess Salem is doing it into November because this is their big business season, but like the schools, I think putting an end date saying, let’s revisit this as more data and more information is available to us. I think that’s a valuable thing to do, to revisit it in October, potentially. Well, if we do it, it would be only two weeks.

26:46 Please say the same thing. I would say. It would be for two weeks. I don’t think it’s worthwhile. But yes, I agree that, you know, as data comes out and case numbers go up or down, we can definitely revisit. I would say four to six weeks to me makes like, makes sense as a period to see how things are going. And I’ve read that Delta might be peaking in September. And then, I mean, if that’s true, then by October, hopefully there’s fewer Delta cases. Who knows? I agree with you, Todd. Well, maybe we could get some figures between now and the 14th, Andrew, about what other communities are doing. We don’t have any of those figures yet. No other community has come up with a matrix. Right. So Salem has a date and it’s based on business. It’s not, it’s an arbitrary number. It’s not a matrix. Okay. Well, I’m thinking like through Thanksgiving, but that’s me. And so just remember that people are going to ask you why, why are you doing this? What’s your reason? What are you trying to accomplish? And you’re going to have to answer all those questions. And if the data starts to show that our cases are going down, why are you enacting this? Well, the schools have October 1st and they’re going to revisit it and they could push it out

28:17 like they’ve done before. Right. But you need to understand why the school is has a mask mandate for the first month. It’s only to get, to try to increase vaccination rates, to try to get over the 80%. We’re already there. Well, they’re in the same community we’re in. So they’re already there too. Who’s on the same? The people there that Marvel had schools. I don’t understand your comment. So the state made the October 1st date as not for towns like ours, which have the back, the goal, but for towns that don’t have the goal. We, at our last meeting, we’re more concerned about just children being unvaccinated and being around each other. So our reasoning for our school committee, our recommendations to the school committee was different from the state’s reasoning for having a mask mandate. Right. Because we’re already at, do you think we need to fit the date now or we can think about it for our open, a public session? No, you can think about it for your public session, but you need concrete answers and why you’re doing something. Okay. And what your goal is and what your benchmarks will be and essentially what is your matrix to remove the mask mandate. We haven’t had it all summer long. You know, our cases have been going up for the last month. Why are you going to enact it now? And how are you going to turn it

29:48 off? It’s been going up to the last month, but they’re slightly going down now. It depends on how you look at it. I mean, hopefully you’ll go down more. What are you looking for? Are you looking for zero cases in town? Wouldn’t that be nice? I would think that would be unrealistic. I would say, you know, like at the low point this summer, what, what off the top of your head, were there five active cases? I can’t remember exactly. Yeah, I think you probably, you know, I’d have to go back and take a look. When we had your weekly reports, maybe something to consider is you will be matched the best we were at, which was whatever case count it was in the early summer. Then maybe that’s, that’s, that’s a point to look, to strive for. And once we meet X number of cases, then we can consider relaxing these potential regulations, because I don’t think we’re ever going to get to zero. Right. And I do agree with Andrew that we have to have a very specific time frame in mind. And then if everything, if there’s an epsilon variant or whatever, then, you know, we deal with that. But as far as delta goes, I think that if we see in two weeks when

31:20 our next meeting is that the case count has dropped to three, let’s, wouldn’t that be nice also? But then maybe we say let’s postpone this and see how things are going. We don’t have to, just because we call a public hearing doesn’t mean we have to go through with it. We can cancel that part at any point. A vote against it. Yeah. So, so it’s let’s do we need to, for the wording of a public hearing, do we need to have it all put out before we start the hearing, Andrew? No, you do not. Okay. But you’ll have to announce exactly the, you know, we’ll have to, I have to check with talent council to make sure that I have everything correct. But you’ll have to advertise, you know, have on the agenda that you know, it’s going to be a mask mandate by the Board of Health, you know, potential vote, stuff like that. I just looked up the cases for a 14 day period. And between 528 and 716, there were less than two cases. May to July, July 16th. So it’s like a six week span. Yes. There were two cases during that six week span. Well, I’m looking at the, you’re saying no? No, because I know, so I know on August 20th, there’s 14, 1421, right? 1437. The week before

32:59 that was 1407. I mean, I’d have to go back every week. Well, I was just looking at the, Take a look at it. The eight, the cases per 14 day period with your graph. Okay. So that, okay. That’s what I was looking at. And let’s say it was very low and it was lower than what is now. But I see, from what I see, that was dates. So let’s not say it’s a fact, but I’m reading with, is on the graph, but it was much lower for that six week period.

33:39 So that’s our plan. And Andrew, you and I can discuss before it, you know, how we’ll put this together to. Yep. Okay. I mean, we’re only interested in the public’s health. Of course, if this, if this can help mitigate cases and get us to our goal, and don’t forget there are other people coming into this community, not as much as they come in the summer, but we have, I hope people shop and visit and eat and visit family. And what has your goal?

34:23 Yeah. What is your goal? To, to slow the spread based on this very contagious variant that seems to have be spreading despite even to vaccinated individuals. Even, even, and we, if this is a tool, this is a measure that we can take and make an impact. And hopefully it’s also a measure that can be easily removed when, when we understand what we’re dealing with better. So what happens when Lambda comes along or Lambda’s here, you know, obviously we don’t know about that. You just have to start to think about what am I trying to do? What am I trying to prevent? You know, what is the risk that’s going on? What is the risk factors? How sick am I going to get? How sick is my community going to get? And does it warrant a mass mandate? Is it going to warrant mass mandates for the rest of COVID-19? You know, how are we going to get out of this? How are we going to go back to normal life? This is always going to be around, you know, these are all very big questions that I’m asking, but these are all the things you really have to think about. You know, this is pure public health. I understand that, but this is,

35:56 this is where the real challenges go and not everybody’s going to agree with this. You know, obviously our state does not agree with this because they have not enacted a mass mandate. So just be ready for this.

36:15 We have 15 days to do our research. Dr. Kruger is agreeing with you. He’s shaking his head an awful lot. Maybe we should hear from him. Oh, Polly too? Is that what you’re pointing? So we do have stuff to think about and I think that we can. Oh, here he comes. I’m agreeing with Andrew. I think that Andrew is making a lot of very good points. And I know this is in public session yet, so I probably shouldn’t say anything else. But it’s, but I will say something. If you’re not having an increase, if you’re having a low level of 20 in a community, week after week after week, if you think of the percentage within your community, it’s municipal and people will not be very happy with 20. That’s what went from 20 to 30 to 40. I think that you would have a lot more support. So to me, it seems as though you need to see it, you know, so that back to the matrix, you could also see it going down again. Because, you know, at 20 is pretty, it’s still there. I’m not saying, but out of 20,000 people. Yeah, it’s 0.1%. So anyway, I won’t say anymore, but I’m just that’s my, and I’m hearing everything Andrew is saying.

37:49 So that’s my two cents worth and I’m muted. Thank you, sir. Your two cents is worth a lot more than two cents. That’s free medical advice. I really, I really appreciate that. And the perspective of the 0.1% is very compelling.

38:17 And I just, I really respect everything you said, Andrew, and I deeply appreciate it. I think that this conversation is something really important to have, though, because I think as far as what we have to contend with things, I think masking is one of the opportunities that we have.

38:46 It’s a small ask. It’s a small ask. Based on Andrew and Tom’s points, do we want to backtrack? I’m just putting this out there and if we want to do something, go back to the selectmen and just do municipal public buildings instead of townwide, I’m just putting it out there. I’m not saying either way. It would be a different way to approach this. And that’s why we’re here tonight. We’re here for discussion. Yes, I appreciate this discussion because certainly you know, I’ve been mulling things and doing lots of research this week and trying to understand how we can protect our community. And I appreciate Dr. Kruger and I appreciate Andrew’s very valuable perspective. So I think it would be valuable to have a conversation about masking in municipal buildings if that is something, a place to start. And then as we proceed, we’ve already started this lively conversation and it can be something that we could continue to have as we navigate this. Well, what’s the difference between walking into Abbott Hall with a mask on and walking into Crosby’s without a mask on? There are more people in Crosby’s that you pass by than you pass in Abbott Hall. So I think if we’re going to ask for public buildings, I think we should

40:22 think about the entire thing. And I say that we’ve got 15 days to think about it. So my two different perspectives are is that as a business owner, sometimes we make decisions to protect our employees. And those protections can come with the way of asking the public when they come into your establishment to wear a mask and therefore providing protection to your employees. Now, the next step is asking everybody to wear a mask for everybody’s protection. So two different levels there. I’m not sure if I see the distinction between your two levels. Looking at it from an employer trying to protect their employees versus trying to do, you know, I mean, in my place of business, you need to wear a mask. Okay, I get it. I think we would be helping the employer to have the employee wear the mask because I’m sure the employees just as there is employees that are not interested in wearing masks, that there are other people in the community. I don’t know. I’d like to recommend that we when does it have to be posted? The I have to check with town council, you might need to reach the post it because it’s

41:55 going to be a public hearing. You might be able. I’m not so sure you could pull the emergency authorization on this one. I don’t think it’s an emergency. I don’t call it an emergency. So it seems like you want to move forward with our motion and do an overview. I’m just thinking that what like to mull it over. It was just brought up to us a half an hour ago, 30 minutes ago. And even so we if we need 14 days, that’s tomorrow, right? Yes. Well, can you check into it and give us information we can know.

42:35 So what if you know, like, I’m wondering if if this is like I said, a couple minutes ago, if this is worth doing stepwise instead of over overreaching and stepwise in my mind would be municipal buildings first. And I know that, like you said, Helene, there’s a very strong argument. What’s the difference between happen hall and Crosby’s? I completely hear what you’re saying there. But maybe as far as logistics to get this kind of eased in, maybe we should start with just public buildings. I’ll agree with you. And I’ll wear a mask and Crosby’s. So will I. So will I. Okay, so there we are. All right, well, then we’re in agreement. Okay, so then I guess we need to have a cancellation vote. Is that? No, we won’t move forward with it. Okay. But do you guys want to make a recommendation to the select one that the board recommends that municipal buildings require masks be worn by everybody that enters? I would think that would be a good recommendation to make. I would too. So we would need a motion for that. I’ll make a motion to ask the select men to have people entering municipal buildings wear a mask.

44:05 Should we say ask in the motion or recommend? Recommend, excuse me, recommend. That we recommend the select men have people that enter municipal buildings wear masks. I’ll second that. Okay, this is Miller. Do you want to discuss Celine? Because.

44:33 I don’t know if it’s going to cover that much. I mean, we’ve been in all the public buildings. I may say a public. I may like to change it. Maybe a public meetings if there’s going to be public meetings after September 1st. I mean, I go into I go into the Board of Health. I walk into the office. I walk past three, three offices. There’s three people sitting there at least 10 or 12 feet away from me. I walk into the Board of Health twice a month and everybody’s been vaccinated. So, but I would like if we go into public session, I’d like. At a meeting to be mass. If I go to board select men’s meeting, I’d like that meeting to be mass. So, yeah, I. In public buildings. Excuse me. But those would be in public buildings. Those are in public buildings, but to just walk into a building. I was wondering if it’s just. Best to say a public meetings within public buildings. They can make that motion. So, all right, I’ll second it and I’m on board with you. I just had to discuss that. But first, before that night, thank you for processing it before we vote. I just want to say that if there is another variant or if the cases do skyrocket or double, even I think that we definitely need to readdress a bigger mandate.

46:03 But, but the point 1% is kind of what convinced me that. Let’s let’s do one thing at a time. And I think that we have. We have a good step in this. I would I would I like that recommendation we’re making. And I would feel very uncomfortable people weren’t master. They came to a board health meeting when and if we call in in public. So I think this would be helpful. I’m sorry for going around about but there I am. No, that’s that’s why we’re here because this is the only place we can talk like this. Miss Miller in favor. Miss Aisley favor. Dr. Belf record in favor. And just to dial the I’s and cross all the T’s. Let’s let’s make a motion to negate our two motions ago. I just just because we voted on your vote. For the public hearing. Yes, if we vote on that, I did it. What is it? Just the motion. We voted. Okay, so I know we recent vote on the public meeting on the public hearing. I second. Miss Aisley favor. Miss Miller. Favor Dr. Belf Becker favor and thank you everybody because I think that was very productive and and a good discussion we just had. Thank you. I also hope that the public hears how concerned we are.

47:37 That they will take their their health and others and others health and into consideration. Absolutely. So that’s a good segue for mental health. Joanne, it’s a mental health task force. Maybe we need to go to the where’s the where is it? It’s zoom. It’s another zoom. So to give an update, we had mental health task force meeting about the website that we’re building and we have some very good news. Moses greater and Melissa couple which were able to work with a local gentleman who is willing to offer to build our site pro bono and he met with us this earlier this evening and has some great ideas and it’s something the town is going to fund a $300. Process to begin building the mental health task force website which will be aligned with the Marblehead town site. We’re pulling together the resources for that and we just had a wonderful couple of weeks of convening with different groups and people that are helping support this initiative and it’s coming together really well with respect to the schools, the Council on Aging and some of the resources that they’re availing to us as well as the female humane society is contributing and

49:13 locally we had a meeting with Jack Atridge who started Marblehead Cares which is kind of the umbrella tagline that we’re leveraging the mental the website as well as the speaker series that we’re working on and tomorrow I’m meeting with Jason Silva who is helping support this initiative and one of the things that Moses greater was able to work with he’s on a committee that has is called the ARPA which are some federal funds that are being brought into Marblehead and we’re going to talk about potentially partnering with well potentially accepting some of those funds to carry out our website initiative and our speaker series initiative so some exciting things are happening and there’s some momentum also we welcomed the new police chief Dennis King to our meeting and he was really interesting and a wealth of information with respect to potentially speakers and suggesting speakers that have been helpful in the past with his in his past work in Salem and also he’s looking to work with Seth Moulton an initiative that he has to build to bring a mental health clinician into work with our police department and it’s something that would be

50:48 funds outside of Marblehead funds so some very exciting things happening on the task force and learning and growing and convening with different groups to make sure that we build the resources that the community needs and can access. Was this meeting tonight Jake? Yes so it was brief it was a brief we just held we had a meeting last week but then we had a quick meeting this evening because Dennis and Melissa were able to sit down with Peter Shallis who has a local business and has done a great deal of work for the town and and had connected with Moses about potentially doing this effort pro bono so we are offering the prototype of the Lexington mental health task force and we’re going to proceed to build our website and add the resources that are for our Marblehead residents to to be able to access. How long does he think it’ll take to build the website? Well that was so exciting he said a couple of days which I was flabbergasted because it looks like quite a quite an undertaking and one of the things that he did mention was something in terms of tracking to see how many people are you know accessing the website there’s

52:19 some tools available to build the data and understand you know how many clips it gets and where there is interest and potentially that’ll give us an opportunity to maybe build out those specific resources more. So things that that seem like you know the man behind the curtain there’s someone the expert was able to help us understand how we can proceed and he is offered to do so without charging. If he’s pro bono are the funds that you’re raising for the speakers or what else are you expecting to cost? That’s a great question. The speakers I think we’re going to redirect because I had spoken to Jason specifically about the website and the other initiative we have is the speaker series where we intend to bring in a speaker to talk about mental health awareness and build mental health awareness and mitigate you know the stigma that’s associated with mental health and then our aim going forward after that is to work with some of our local clinicians. We have a wealth of really bright talented professionals in our community that we’re going to we’re reaching out to to see if they would have an opportunity to put together a speaker program for the different populations that we want to you know connect with so we’ll have for with our council on aging working with a speaker that can address some of their specific needs and concerns through the schools. I met with Gina through Dan Bauer who already has a lot of

53:58 these things up and running and has great resources that she’s already you know been able to find and discover and connect with so we’ll be working with the schools and certainly you know younger students older students families that are navigating these times and may have different specific needs so it’s a pretty broad aim but I think what we decided was we have we have so many really talented generous professionals here that could be especially relevant to speak to our community directly. So you don’t have dates though for that yet? No we don’t that’s that’s early and I think we are worried about the funding the funding is is an issue but seem to think between you know some of the conversations we’ve had including Chief King was talking about the mic up I’m going to mispronounce the the the acronym but if we could work with of the National Alliance of Mental Illness resource quality speakers and and according to Chief King that that is not a big financial burden so so we’re connecting with them but I think the the challenge was how do we proceed to find speakers if we don’t have funding so do that do there some of our work around.

55:29 So there there are people from the school department that are on your committee is there anything that’s going to be put out as school starts in the next few days? Yeah teachers to know of what’s going on? Absolutely that’s a great question I think Jeff Newsom is on the task force as is Daniel Bauer and Dan was was sharing with me some of the he introduced me to Gina who is a professional in the school and and she was able to show me all of the resources they have there specific to the high school the tremendous team that’s empowered to really help these young people through this time and they’ve built a website as well so I think there will be some links between some some cross you know cross links with some of these websites that we have. Well with the need it’s not going to be it’s never going to be too much. True good point good point. Is the counseling center involved at all? I know Ben’s on the committee. Yes yes Ben’s on the committee and one of his points was we certainly have you know a wealth of resources in our counseling center and perhaps one of those counselors will be able to you know find a topic specific to a specific population that they can plan a task for and Lisa Hooper is with the Council on Aging and she said they have a professional social worker on staff who may be able to

57:04 coordinate a specific talk for that for that population as well. So the task force is made up of really talented thoughtful people who are all engaged and bring so much to the table. Great report. Yes that’s great thanks to see so much and such a short time since it really started it’s a lot has been done already. Well it’s getting lots of momentum. Yeah okay thank you Joanne. We’re going to talk about the transfer station now. I am not too much to discuss at this time so we reached out to the architects and they’re they’re still working on trying to gather what the cost will be to get these estimates. So we had used an estimator for the transfer station building in the past. The architects are no longer using that estimator but they don’t want to lose that so they’re going to go back to that estimator. They’re using a different company these days. They’re going to go back to that estimator to see how much it will cost to get today’s estimates for that construction and so they’re going to wait and give me all the prices at the same time rather than giving me a little bit of information about the costs to do the small bits of work now and some of them and then the cost later for the bigger project. So in two weeks I hope to have all the costs to get the estimations done. That would be great. So we can have that for a meeting in two weeks. Yeah we should have that for a meeting in two weeks. And they know that we have a time frame that would like to get the reports. Yes

58:38 they were hoping to get stuff to us today but it just didn’t work out. They want to make sure they have you know good communication with this estimator to get true costs and stuff like that and they don’t want to use the new estimator. Well that makes sense because they’ve already begun with the correct. Yep. Is there a reason they’re not using the estimator? Has the figures been pretty good? I didn’t ask that question. I’m sure they you know it’s probably just companies that they use all the time or you know I can ask them that question but that didn’t come up today. There was a real reason why they’re not using them. No. Okay good. Well then we’ll talk more at our next meeting. Do you have anything in your Director’s Report tonight? Director’s Report. So September 15th is our last day of water quality testing. So we have three more samples. So we have this Wednesday next week and the week after that. September 15th is the next household hazardous waste collection event. So you need to sign up online like we’ve been doing for the last year and a half. That posting should be on the website tomorrow. So please go to the website for the collection day of September 15th. So same idea. This is you know you sign up you tell the company what you have and they’ll come right to your house. We don’t consider it curbside because they go to your

1:00:11 you know in front of your garage or on your porch. It’s on your property. It’s not curbside. So working with the same company with that. That’s gone really well and that should be posted tomorrow. And then I will be at a all day seminar tomorrow on for emergency preparedness for basic disaster life support course. So a bunch of us in town will be at that course all day tomorrow. And that’s it for the Director’s Report. Now I see that a lot of the communities are having closed beaches because of the failure of the testing. Have we had any problems in the last few weeks? We have not had any problems in the last few weeks. Good. Does your class tomorrow include CPR? No it does not. It’s a much larger topic. We do basic CPR and stuff like that and Chokesaver other times. You just go over to the Red Cross. You know where to go to us. Usually our fire chief gives us a course on that. It sounded like you said life support. So I was like well it is it’s called we call it biddles. It’s basic disaster life support. So that’s exactly what I said. Okay it looks like there’s nobody left to comment from the public. So we have our next meeting in two weeks and that’ll be posted. And let’s hope the numbers

1:01:44 keep going down. And we will have to change. So you know when the next Board of Sluccumbs meeting is? John Castle would know right away. It’s probably will they meet on Wednesdays? I don’t know. Actually I don’t. I think the second and fourth Wednesdays but the second Wednesday I haven’t heard if they’re having their meeting or if it’s because of all the Jewish holidays. They might not. I’m not sure. They met last Wednesday. I know that. So yeah. So it’ll be two weeks from last week. They should be meeting next week on Wednesday. But you say that’s another meeting the 22nd. I don’t I just haven’t heard anything with me. I think the one last week was a special meeting. Oh it was? I think. I’m not positive but they were saying that they were going with the second and fourth Wednesdays. Okay all right. So is there a motion to adjourn? So moved. Second. Miss Seazley. In favor. Miss Miller. In favor. Dr. Belfbecker. In favor. All right. Thank you everybody.