Board of Health: November 15, 2021

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 First item of business is to approve the meeting minutes of October 12th. I move that we approve the meetings of October 12th. Okay, is there second? I second. Okay. Ms. Hazlett? In favor? Ms. Miller? In favor? Dr. Belfbecker? In favor. Andrew, can we have the COVID update, please? All right. So, unfortunately, we are still dealing with some COVID cases. As of last week, November 12th, we had 17 new cases from the week before. We have a total of 1,684 cases from the beginning of the pandemic. On November 5th, we had 1,667. For the past two weeks, we’ve had a total of 43 cases. On the report that was sent out on Friday, there was a small error. So, I list the ages for the last two weeks. If you note on the age bracket from 50 to 59, it states 19. It should just be a nine. So, we are seeing a slight shift in demographics as far as which age population is hitting the hardest. For a long time, we were really having issues in the zero to 11, and even in the 12th to 19th. At this point, we continue to see a lot of cases in the 20 to 29-year-olds. And right now, we’re seeing cases in the 40 to 49 and the 50 to 59. Those are two, like, those are our three large groups.

1:33 So, last week, or last two weeks, zero to 11, we had two cases. 12 to 19, we had two cases. 20 to 29, we had eight. 30 to 39, five. 40 to 49, eight. 50 to 59, nine. 60 to 69, four. And 70 to 79, three. And 80 plus was two. Please remember to continue to check with the CDC recommendations for your booster shots. And obviously, at this point, the CDC has approved the vaccine for ages five to 11. We will be holding the clinic tomorrow. The new Brown School, Lucretia and Joseph Brown School. But that is for people that are already signed up. Like, in the past, we have, we are only able to receive a small number of doses for these first clinics. But we anticipate that we’ll be able to get more vaccine as needed. But please check with your pediatricians, CVS, Walgreens, Rite Aid, and other locations to get vaccinated. Both for your five to 11-year-old and for everybody else. But really, if you are fully vaccinated at this point, you do need to look at the guidance for the CDC about when you should receive your booster. As far as the average daily incident rate, this has really gone up and down for the last couple weeks. We’re now at 11.5, which is slightly higher. We’ve had 79,784 tests total so far.

3:04 For the last 14 days, we had 2,067 people tests. And for the last 14 days, our percent positivity was 2.03. Or, obviously, we can’t see. Please, please mute yourselves. Thank you. And so the change of the percentivity has gone up just slightly. Obviously, we now include the graphs and stuff like that. We are doing very well with our vaccination per capita. So we have high levels of vaccinations, essentially throughout all our age brackets. Our 20 to 29-year-old bracket is the lowest at 89 percent. But overall, we’re doing extremely well as a community. So we should be proud of that. And we should always be encouraging everybody to get vaccinated. We will be switching over. So community contact tracing is currently done by the municipality and a lot of help with the state. That is coming to an end at the end of November. This will continue with the help of a grant that we’ve received from the state. But so please remember, any time you are positive, you will continue to receive phone calls from local health departments. So please continue to pick up the phone and answer the questions. People should continue to make sure that they’re aware of how long you should be isolating for. So if you’re a positive individual, you received a positive test result.

4:35 That’s a PCR. Isolation is 10 days. Now, there is questions about it’s from the symptom onset. So it doesn’t always go by the test date. When we talk about quarantine, so quarantine is for an individual that has contacts, and there’s several different ways to get out of quarantine. It’s no longer a straight 14 days. So people should go on to the CDC. They should read the reports and make sure you understand how long you need to quarantine for. You can test out a quarantine. So you can test on day five and get out on day eight and stuff like that. So please make sure that you’re aware of all those, you know, things have been in effect for a long time. But we want to just remind everybody of this. We constantly still get the same question. How long am I supposed to be in quarantine for? How long do I have to isolate for? Please, at this point, people really need to be aware of this. It’s always posted on the CDC website, as well as many other sites. Any questions regarding COVID? Is this your first vaccine date tomorrow? Yes. So tomorrow is the first vaccination date as far as that we are doing with the school department. They also have another date, I believe, on Thursday. But please remember, there’s multiple places to get the vaccine. Like I said, pediatricians, pharmacies, us. So please don’t just wait for one. Try to use all resources.

6:06 We want to get people vaccinated as quickly as possible. Obviously, with the weather change, the time shift, we’re spending more time indoors. And with that comes the chance of spray. Do we have a sense yet of how many five to 11-year-olds have gotten the vaccine first dose? I do not yet. Those reports won’t start to come out. I’m hoping this week we’ll start to see numbers coming out from the state about vaccination rates for the five to 11-year-olds. I have another question. As far as the holidays, well, our first holiday, Thanksgiving and other holidays are following. Are you recommending people take rapid tests if they’re going to visit family members or any recommendations about visiting family members? So obviously, like to be courteous to everybody, I mean, it’s what everybody’s comfortable with. But obviously, it depends on who you’re visiting, what age, what kind of illnesses, their vaccination status should kind of dictate the precautions that you’re taking. So yes, I’m going to visit to my family. There will be some older individuals there, maybe some people that have some health issues. So yes, we will be taking rapid tests before we go for Thanksgiving dinner. So just to make sure that we’re being cautious and recognizing that I don’t want to bring anything to family that have traveled and stuff like that, too. Obviously, it’s hard.

7:40 So we’re using Bidex now as the rapid tests. It’s not always readily available. Most of the time you can pick these up at the pharmacy. It’s like your turkey. Get it early. Yeah, it’s like your turkey. Get it early. Okay. Joanne, any COVID related questions? Okay. Okay. Is that the full report, Andrew? That is the full report, Todd. Great. Thanks. Helene, it’s time for your SALT update. Yes. Because we’re meeting monthly, this update is a little aged. It’s from October 26th. And Deanna, the lead nurse, was the first one that spoke. And she was saying that the nurses have been working very hard. They are looking for more nurses. They can have LPNs, CNAs, nursing students they’ve been using. To do some of the testing. National Guard at that time was coming in to help with the swabbing. And I’m not sure whether they’re still there or not. So right now we don’t have Tom on here, do we? I don’t see Tom. No, Tom is not available today. Oh, he isn’t. Okay. So that was, I just don’t want him to be writing things that may be aged, but they were helping.

9:12 And that was the day that they voted for the 5 to 11 year olds. That was very exciting. And then there was the building update that changed at that time. The Village School had a little bit of an outbreak. But then I want to just jump to 11-2 because when we went to November 2nd, they said that their numbers were much, much better. So before we write it down, I just want people to know that. Also, they were talking about the morale of both the teachers and the students and the behavior of the students. Some of the teachers were having difficulty with kids wearing masks. If they wouldn’t wear their masks, the teachers were sending the students to the nurse because that was the person who could enforce that. The other thing is all the schools had some kind of a breakfast for the teachers to get them, just have a socialization time when they came in, when they first came to school. Somebody had a Halloween, one of the class schools had a Halloween breakfast. So everybody’s trying very hard to get the social ability back together in the schools and the same with the students.

10:43 One thing was brought out that meant a lot to me because it just was so poignant that the students that were in the first grade two years ago came in as third graders and they have no idea how to behave in school. So it seemed that, I’m sure it wasn’t a generalization, but the teachers were saying that the learning curve was pretty steep. So just on behavior and following various directions. So I think that that was quite interesting. So that was more or less, a little bit more. The students were very happy in both the middle school and the high school to get back to their clubs and activities. They were very excited about that. And high school principal Dan Bauer reinforced that. He said the clubs were rolling along. The only thing that they were concerned about was concerts, how they were going to handle that. So these meetings are very in depth and they’re sharing. And I think that that’s what’s the good part about these meetings. And I think that to meet, they are to meet once a week, but they’ve been meeting every other week because of various holidays or a short week or something like that. Even the Metco directed, Deandra, she is going around speaking to other students.

12:19 The interesting thing about the food service, Richard Kelleher said the supply issues were a shortage with basic staples like cereal, even cereal, he said. And the trace, this is important for us because the reusable trace, a case of them were $17. Now then $95 a case for double the trace, but still at all, it’s much more than double the price $17. Well, so that’s $14, $34 from $34 to $95 is a pretty hefty jump. So, because that was one of the things that we’ve been watching that, you know, for the disposable trace and things like that. So that was the October meeting. More of the same on the November meeting. Again, the teachers have been sending this to the nurse. They talked about the Hop, Tink, Tim. They removed the masks because of there was an 80% return rate of the people that were vaccinated and our students are being asked to submit their vaccination cards. And it seems that even though we most likely, especially in the high school and middle school have 80%, which includes the faculty, it includes everybody in the building as far as the 80%.

13:55 It seems that a lot of the parents are not sending the vaccination cards in because what they are, what the school department is thinking is that those parents aren’t ready for the kids to go without masks. So I think we’re hearing from a different group when we hear this, because when we had people come to our meetings, they want to have the kids not be masked in school. The hockey rinks on November 2nd were requiring masks. And so there are places that are doing that. Let’s see what else. Oh, and the youth risk survey was supposed to be done the day of the storm and they had to delay that until November 3rd, but it has been done. And that report should be out and I asked to get a report once it was collated. So I think that would be interesting for us to see. And again, that village school where there was a good group of outbreak, there was none on 11-2. And the Brown school had a positive pool, but then when they retested, they were false positives. So that was good to hear. So that is it. Sorry to have such a long report, but we haven’t met for a month.

15:31 And fortunately, they only met twice or else you would have had other two meetings. So I’ll go right into the mental health task force because it’s one sentence. We met once and we are meeting again on… Alaine, did you mean the wellness committee? Yes, the wellness committee. What did I say? Wellness. We met once and we are meeting this Thursday on the 18th. So I have no report because I reported, I think, on the previous meeting. So thank you for continuing to represent us on these committees. Let me ask you one question. Is this helpful to take five minutes to hear all this? I especially appreciate hearing about the supply chain, the costs, because I know when that was initiated, it was, you know, cost efficient and it’s become a little less efficient, but it’s still important. I’m hopeful that gets ironed out so it doesn’t, you know, eat too much of the budget. But hopefully he’ll go to another source. And I think he even said there aren’t enough of the trace. And he doesn’t have enough people to wash them. So we don’t have to worry because I think we’re all set. So Joanne, mental health task force update, please.

17:06 My pleasure. Thank you. A very successful event last week. Thank you. Yes. Last Monday on November 8th at the Marblehead High School, Dan Bauer offered us that wonderful venue to put together our long-awaited panel discussion. And we were able to invite eight local mental health professionals that are frontline workers and are managing lots of the challenges that have become, you know, more significant through COVID, through these months and months of COVID. And the panel was really enlightening in sharing a conversation specific to our community and the needs and concerns that we all share in our community. I thought a couple of things about the discussion that they were able to highlight, just the fact that there’s a supply, you know, supply chain keeps coming up, the supply and demand challenges that the practitioners deal with every day, that there’s such a gigantic need and not, you know, as many practitioners to meet the need as we like. So that was something that they talked about. But, and certainly lots of the challenges were discussed. And I really thought what was pretty impressive with the group was that they were able to keep a thread of compassion and hope throughout the entire panel discussion.

18:40 They were able to talk about how they’re trying to mitigate the challenges, but also highlight some areas that were, you know, the silver linings perhaps, where, you know, the resilience that’s earned through some of this experience. And I think it was really impressive to see the level of professional talent that we have right here in our community, working to support the people that we care about in our community. So the feedback has been positive. We had a pretty robust, a bunch of robust discussions. And Michelle Gottlieb, who had served on the Board of Health for 12 years, came and was able to introduce our panelists. And I thought that was a really nice circle, given that she, you know, helped develop and start the task force. And our very own Marblehead Mental Health Task Force member, Kim Leventhal, moderated the discussion. So it was really, I think, lovely to have the person that was engaging the conversation to be a person who has, you know, such a strong background in the field and expertise. And I think I’ve gotten lots of really nice feedback. And we’re very fortunate Marblehead Television produced the program, so it’s available for community members that weren’t able to come join the conversation live.

20:11 So it’s being produced, I believe it’s nine programs throughout November. They’re going to be playing the program. And we also put the link to the program from Marblehead Television on our website, which is another update I’d like to give about the task force. We were able to offer the website. It’s been produced and it’s been availed under marableheadcares.org. And it also is a very robust website. And it’s always in development. It’s going to be an ongoing process as we learn of new offerings for the community. We’re going to post them there, and we’ve got a calendar attached to it. So as we uncover different opportunities for people to plug in and get some tools, they’ll be on the website. And we are very grateful to the whole team that was able to contribute to make this a tool that hopefully will be valued by the community. In fact, Dennis King, who is on our Chief King, is on our task force. And he said it’s something that his department will be using in offering for people that are in a situation. And, you know, where do they start? This is a great place for people to start to better understand what is out there that they may need to connect with.

21:48 So hopefully it’ll be a great connector. So, let’s see. I wanted to just also mention that, you know, the two priorities that the Marvel Head Task Force has set upon its inception were the website and the speaker series. And the speaker series will be continuing going forward. We’ve obviously got a wealth of really valuable resources right here in our community. People that care for the people in our community and their mental health needs and are aware of what’s in front of us. What are the big concerns and how can we try and tackle them? So we will be continuing to build out the speaker series. And I would like to ask the Board of Health members of our Board of Health who inspired this task force, you know, to help us. And if you have ideas, because we’re going to be setting new initiatives. I’d love to get your feedback of what you think priorities would be most important to tackle next. So I invite that conversation. Because we’re having a meeting on Wednesday night at seven o’clock and that’s going to be one of our agenda items to start setting some new goals. And let’s see. Oh, we did invite the new executive director of the Marvel Head Counseling Center.

23:22 We had had Ben Day and just enjoyed his and appreciated his contributions to the task force. And that the Marvel Head Counseling Center recently hired a new executive director, Marisa Delahonti. And we are looking forward to having her join our task force and contribute with her expertise on the panel and the task force. Could I have something to say, Todd? You go first. I went and I chose it over going to something else that I was a member of the committee. And one of the actually one of the speakers, it was a program that one of the speakers wives was was doing so even he wasn’t at the program but I was very glad I made the choice to go to this because I was tremendously impressed. And it took us a while to get the program together. I think we started the mental health task force last March or April and it’s but it was worth the wait. I’ve been on the website. It’s very full and lots of recommendations. I have a question I have and maybe you could bring it to Wednesday’s meeting. I know it was the first time and everybody had a lot to say. There were a lot of questions. The questions that were posed to the various to the various members of the panel were posed by Kim and they did an excellent job.

24:56 Nobody spoke too long. It’s just a very, very full agenda that I would have liked to have had an opportunity for the audience to have questions because I did have a question, not just because I had a question. I went up and asked my question, which was on my mind because so many parents have been clamoring for for appointments with the therapist and I went up and spoke to several people from the panel and they said that they had openings and that somebody was hiring and had someone coming on. So I hope that people would try again or still I’ll use the website because there was a wealth of names on the website and I just hope that everybody can get their needs satisfied because that’s why we formed this group because there was a crying need for mental health assistance and I hope we’re meeting that need. Thank you so much, Elaine. I agree. I think we had we had really thought we would have much more time for questions from the audience. So that will be something we will make sure to avail, you know, when the speakers programs going forward, perhaps not such a robust panel. We can have a smaller panel and the intention is to have them with a more narrow scope so that we’ll bring a speaker in, maybe a few speakers in to talk specifically to parents of students, particularly potentially to our more elderly population and some of the challenges that they face.

26:36 And then, you know, hopefully have more specific demographics, instead of the breadth that we try to appeal to. It was an excellent job and you always have to take the kinks out and you I’m sure you’ll be able to do that. That’s that’s what I kind of wanted to touch on is that the panel was so varied everything from just addressing little kids to the oldest population, the most elderly population. So it was great to have that and it’s nice to hear that you’re going to think about narrowing it down so that people who are just interested in elder care can attend one and really be in depth or just for school children or anything. But, but for the opening night, I think it was good that you had so many different aspects of mental health represented and so many different experts in different branches of mental health. We’re all willing to be on that panel and that was great. Thank you. I agree. I’d like to really encourage the people who weren’t at the meeting to to watch.

28:08 No, I think with the program that we had on Monday, the eight, we, we didn’t we were waiting to push it back because we just wanted to do some follow up and start building some new initiatives. So there’s probably a better date, and I’d love, you know, recommendations about I know we used to do it different Mondays and that may probably makes the most sense. So it just allows people to, you know, regularly show up to your meetings. So obviously all the meetings are posted and we’ll make sure that that’s available to everybody. Thanks. In such a short amount of time to put together such a great website and such informative panel. I mean, you’ve done a lot in a short amount of time. That’s very, very impressive. It’s a very dedicated group of passionate people on the task force. We’re very lucky. That is that all for tonight. Yes, that’s all I have for this evening. Great. Thank you again. It’s going to our transportation update now. Alright, so I have a very quick update on this last Wednesday, which is street architects brought in a structural engineer to evaluate the in place, our compactor and really the cover of the compactors to the roof, the sides to look at evaluating the project for our future and be projects. Obviously those are for estimate reasons. And now that they have this information, we are waiting for the estimates for, you know, moving forward with the as proposed projects or the modification of the project.

29:52 So as soon as we have those estimates obviously I’ll be sharing that with the board. I would hope so. I can talk to Dana of Winter Street Architects next, in the next couple days and give everybody an update of when we think that will be, you know, when we’ll have these estimates. Because we’re meeting monthly, there’s only one more meeting. We’re moving forward. On the agenda or with the project? With figuring out where we’re going and what’s next, what our next steps are. I know. But why don’t we move forward with the agenda too. So we’re going to talk about some fee increases. Yeah, so fee increases at the transfer station as well in the health department. So we will start with the health department side. So for fees, obviously we have food service, retail food, mobile unit permits, bed and breakfast, milk cream, farmer’s market, food service and retail food caterer, food service and caterer, food service, retail food and caterer, food manufacturer and retail residential kitchen. All right, so for the modifications, we are proposing that the mobile unit permit, which used to be $50, moves up to $175. The reason that we’re asking is that this is the same type of requirements as a regular food service permit.

31:29 We do the same amount of work. It’s the same number of inspections. It’s really, it should be apples to apples. So a food service permit is the exact same thing as a mobile unit permit that the costs were different. So we’re proposing that it moves from $50 to $175. Can I ask you a question, Andrew, about can you, as a mobile unit, like an ice cream truck, don’t we need? Yeah, so a mobile unit could be an ice cream truck, it could be a food truck, anything that’s on wheels. Okay. Obviously food trucks are really popular these days. So do you want a motion to change the fee from $150 to $175? Yes, please. Can we see all of them first? Yeah, you can see all of them. So the next one would be cater. So cater used to be $50, and now it’s moving up to $175. Now, please remember that we also have a new category. So you can be food service, retail food, and cater, and that would be $185. But just a $50 cater permit, same thing. We had to do a lot of work, and this will allow it to capture that. There’s not too many outside of town caters that come in that, you know, if you’re an outside caterer, we have to do a huge amount of paperwork to go through all the items that you’re serving. But if you have a regular establishment, like a restaurant, and they want to do catering, like, or Shubies, who owns, you know, does retail food service and catering, it’s just an additional $5.

33:00 But if you’re out, you know, if you want to just have a catering business, we’re moving from $50 to $175. And the last one is retail residential kitchen. So we do offer a residential kitchen permit. Residential kitchen permits are designed for baked goods, and these goods can only be served or bought in person, at the home, or at a farmer’s market. And same thing, same number of inspections have to be completed, same number of paperwork. It used to be $50, and now it’s going to be $175. Question there, I’ve seen something at, I talked about Shubies, at Shubies, it is a retail residential kitchen. And if selling there, that doesn’t sound like you said that it was possible. Correct. So unfortunately, the state has kind of gone around us and allowed for wholesale permits to be given to residential kitchens. It’s not something that I think the state should be allowed to do, but they allow it. And so there are some, there is at least one establishment residential kitchen in Marblehead that has a wholesale permit from the state. And so that allows them to sell at Shubies. I do not think it’s fair. I do not think it’s appropriate, but the state allows it. All right. I just wanted to make sure that you knew that that was happening because I had seen it.

34:30 So if there’s any discussion, or we just go ahead and take our votes. All right. So we need a motion for each one. That’s three different motions, three different votes. So we can’t do it all at once. You can do it all at once. That’s for your pleasure. So yeah, there’s three separate changes. Yeah. So you can say as proposed. Okay. So 50 for mobile permit, you go in from 50 to 175. For cater, you’re going from 50 to 175 and retail residential kitchen 175. So is there a motion? Okay. So moved. And a second. Second. Miss Miller. In favor. Miss Haysley. Dr. Belfryker. In favor. All right. So the second one is for the waste side or the transportation side. So we’re talking about two different fees. The first is for the commercial ton. So currently people pay 185 per tonne and we’re proposing to go to $210 per tonne. So just give me a, obviously we do a lot of research and looking at surrounding facilities, both municipal and private. And look at what people have to pay per tonne. So currently with that 185, our disposal cost currently is 97 38.

36:06 That doesn’t, that’s for just trucking and our waste management fees. That doesn’t account for any of the labor, any of the other employees that goes into it, the facility or anything like that. We are in July 1st, we will be going up to 113 and change. We’re going to be looking at a pretty large increase. We are trying to stay with the market with other facilities in the North Shore and really with the state of Massachusetts. More and more facilities are closing and we’re seeing more and more commercial waste coming to Marblehead. We need to make sure that we’re accounting for this just like everybody else’s. We’re proposing to go up from 185 to 210. The other increase is on mattresses. We have a, we use UTEC for our mattress disposal. Our current charge is $15. UTEC currently is charging us $16 to dispose of a mattress. So we’re losing $1 in every mattress. We’re proposing to go up to $20. We want to make sure that these mattresses are collected and recycled responsibly. And in the future, they will become part of the waste and items under Mass DEP. So mattresses we’re posing a change from 15 to 20. Could I ask you a question on that? Yeah. If the mattress now is 16 and I mean, we haven’t voted on these numbers in a very long time, especially the food service. We have voted on waste before in my memory. But do you think we could go to 25?

37:38 You’ve taken a pretty big jump on all the others. Yeah, you could definitely go up to 25. We just want to make sure that these get, you know, these items get recycled and they don’t end up in areas that they’re not supposed to be. Did you think that would be the charge for 25? Joanne, do you have a question? Oh, I just was going to ask a different question. Sorry. So, you know, so a lot of times people are bringing in, so it’s a mattress box spring pair allows you to dispose them for that $15. If it’s two mattresses, that’s twice the price. So a lot of times we’re seeing, you know, several matches box springs come in at the same time. You know, and that’s still only the one item. If it’s a mattress and a box spring, correct. That’s one item for $15. Currently, I’d like to suggest the 20. Maybe let’s wait and see what happens. So, go as recommended. Well, I meant I didn’t know if Joanne was going to address this. My question was actually about I heard you say, Andrew, that there’s a waste ban going eventually to be for mattresses. That’s correct. So the way that works is like currently we are using a company called UTEC. They are recycling the mattresses. So the mattresses are not going into this what we call the solid waste stream. So they’re not going to a landfill or they’re not going to an incinerator. Our trash goes to a landfill.

39:09 So they’re not going there. So the mattresses has voted to decide that mattresses will no longer be allowed in the waste stream. I don’t know the exact date of when that will go into effect. Thank you. So in other words, we’re doing the right thing all along. Correct. So how do we go about this? I make a motion that the mattresses be increased to dispose would be increased to $25. Is that. Yes. Yep. And there hasn’t been any other motion made. For the other amount. So. Right. So let’s. Rescending the first one. So. So European, you would like to do 25 not 20. Joanne, do you have a thought on this? I don’t. I actually, we just got rid of a mattress and I thought that was, it was very reasonable. And I think. I think if it goes up to 25. I don’t think that would be a burden to the community. And I’m just thinking if we’re already paying 16, it’s next time it’s 18. You know, and we, this way we’re allowed to be able to. It allows us to not have to address this for a while. That’s my thought. I’m comfortable with that too. I am too. Is that all the transportation increases Andrew? Yes, it is. So we need another another motion, please.

40:40 I’ll motion. We have to do we have to, you know, we didn’t have to, we don’t have to make a motion. Vote on the 25 and vote it all together right now with the two. Yeah. Right. Because it was just a proposal from Andrew. It wasn’t. Yeah. Right. Good. So you admit you made the motion. Is there a second? I made the motion on the mattress. Let’s make a motion on both of them. The book, both the commercial and the mattress. Okay. Andrew. Miss Miller. In favor. Miss easily. In favor. Dr. Belfinger. In favor. All right. And that’s it for the key changes. Okay. So you have a director’s report now. Director’s report. So JRM has had some difficulty this week with dealing with the leaves. Again, another company that’s short staffed. So they tried to pick up everything on Saturday. They were unable to pick up everything on Saturday. They went back out today. I understand that they’ve missed a couple of spots. But we’ll continue to work to make sure all the leaves that are, that were out from last week are picked up. You know, we understand that it’s important. We understand the weather is can be troubling for some people. But please, we will take care of all the leaves. Household hazardous waste. The next date is December 8th. Again, this is a, this is a, this is a, this is a, this is a, this is a, this is a, this is a, this is a, this is a, this is a, this is a, this is a, this is a, this is a residential collection.

42:12 Again, this will be a residential collection program. So the individual will sign up for their home and the waste company will come directly to their home to pick up the material. We will not be holding a annual or a semi-annual event at the transfer station. This is working out really well. And we’re actually able to service more people. So the next household hazardous waste day will be December 8th. That will be posted online shortly. shortly. I had a meeting with the Sustainable Committee in the schools this last week and we talked a lot about making sure we’re bringing composting to all the schools. Currently we have composting in the high school and we really want to make sure that by, you know, as soon as possible we get high, you know, composting in the veteran school, the village school, the Glover and the new Lucretia Joseph Brown school. So obviously we will be contributing to the cost of the composting. So we’ll buy all the totals required to pick up the composting. We’ll buy totals for the collection of the composting and we’ll pay Black Earth for the disposal of the compost. So obviously we strongly believe in composting both in the schools and outside the schools. Composting is probably the biggest difference you can make these days when it comes to waste. So please remember and please think about joining Black Earth composting, but if you can’t afford a curbside, we do have Black Earth collection at the transfer station as long as you have a facility sticker. The collection bins at the transfer station are in the back now. They used

43:46 to be up front and thereby the yard waste area. So when you pull into the yard waste area, they’re on the right hand side. They’re in a caged in area so the bins don’t blow around. Composting is really important and obviously we can make some of the biggest differences in waste reduction with composting. Unfortunately on Saturday I was notified of a graffiti incident at the Marblehead Transfer Station. We had anti-Semitic and racial graffiti that was painted onto our swapshead boxes. Obviously this is very disappointing and obviously we notified the police department right away and they came out, took pictures of it and we will be removing the graffiti in the next couple of days. Have you covered it up? Yeah, we did cover it up that day to make sure nobody could see it and obviously our next step is to remove it. And you don’t just want to spray paint it, you want to remove it. No, I want to remove it. Obviously it was painted on a nice storage container. So my fear is obviously we want to make sure that I want to try to remove as much evidence of it as possible. It’s really disturbing to everybody that this happens. So first we’ll try some material that should be able to remove the paint. But if that doesn’t work then we’ll look at the next steps would be painting over it.

45:19 But I don’t want this blight on the side of this container where every time you drive in and you see this squared off area where we all know it was there and it gets covered up. I would actually consider painting that whole side or repainting the storage boxes in total. Good point. And what about security cameras in the side? Yes, so we have spoken to a security camera company in the past and the costs associated with that were on the higher side. We had estimates between 55 and 75 thousand dollars. We obviously were working with the police department. They are going to increase patrols to the transfer station and we will go back and visit the idea of the security cameras there. I think it’s really important to have them and to make sure people understand that we have security cameras. So maybe it’s not as robust as the system that was designed, but it’s the beginning and that will hopefully deter some of the activity that occurs up there. Well, it’s just disappointing that it’s happening to the property that we oversee because it’s been extremely disturbing that it’s elsewhere in the community. And it was my thought and other people’s thought that sat on the committee that had an event

46:53 about a month ago that people would be listening and people would care more. And it doesn’t seem that those bigots have gone away. And I know you’re on a group that’s doing its best to to combat this or to educate people and that’s very important. Working very hard and they were still bigots. Can I ask a question about the leaves? Yeah. It seems from what I see when I’m driving around that people have 10 and 15 bags out at once. And was that why it was difficult to pick everything up? If that’s the case, do you think we should limit for each pickup? No. So really it comes down to a labor issue. So JRM is short labors, both drivers and laborers on the back of trucks. So what happened last week was that the trash truck had to complete its routes and then go back and start picking up leaves once they were done with trash collection. They are unable to get any help for them to come in and help them with leaf collection. So you don’t think that this should be a limit to whatever people can put out? We’ve always tried to stick. I know the community has had a limit in the past, but we’re trying to be open-minded about making sure people can get rid of all the yard waste.

48:23 So I think it would be tough to install limits at times and people want to wriggle on it all at once. And if I had 14 bags and I can only get rid of 10, it starts to cause some issues. I respect your opinion.

48:52 So are those the main items? I had a couple things to piggyback on though. I was thinking that, like I bring up every year, we can put on a website or reminders or something that with the holiday season coming, ripping paper is not recyclable. I think it would be nice for us to just have that up there. Just to remind people that there are better ways or more environmentally friendly ways to wrap stuff up. Whoever is not on mute, can you please mute yourself? Sounds like there’s a radio on somebody’s… Thank you. So anyways, I feel strongly that there’s ways to wrap presents that are not environmentally detrimental and that are recyclable. So I would love to have on our website. We’ve got the press here, just wait for people to deliver. So today I had a meeting with… I gave a presentation to Sustainable Marblehead about holiday waste. Covered everything from wrapping paper to reduce reuse recycle. So that will be shown on MHTV, I believe. Also on Sustainable Marblehead’s page. But really the biggest things is that people should be really familiar with the Recycle Smart guidelines. These are posted on our website as well as you can go to RecycleSmart.com. So it’s RecycleSmartMass.org. And this will tell you all the items that you can recycle.

50:27 It also has a recyclopedia. And so in this little box, it says, can I recycle it? So you put in the item and say, gift wrap. So gift wrap is what we call for wrapping paper. And it’s going to tell you to throw that item in the trash. Unfortunately with gift wrap, there’s whole bunch of different items that they put into the gift wrap. There can be traces of plastic and other different sheen items that they use. And unfortunately, those items cannot be recycled. So please use the RecycleSmartMass.org website using the Recycle Smart guidelines. And then if you have questions past that, you really need to use this recyclopedia. It’s a great tool. And to tell you the truth, we now work with the town clerk’s office. And every year, just after the new year, we send this brochure or this flyer out to every home in Marblehead. So please make sure you open up your mail during that time as this flyer will be in there. The idea is that you can post this on your refrigerator. It gives you an idea about what food and beverage cans can be recycled under metal. What plastic bottles, you know, bottles, jars, jugs, and tubs, bottles and jars for glass, and then paper and cardboard products. Obviously, do not bag recyclables in plastic bags. We don’t want plastic bags or plastic wrap in the recycling. No food or liquid waste, no clothing or linens, and no tanglers. So a tangler can be a hose. It can be a video cord. All those things do not belong in the recycling.

52:02 It’s important to know this. Yeah, the holidays, obviously, we generate a huge amount of waste. We definitely see an uptick, you know, as far as tonnage goes for the whole month of December. And people really need to remember, reduce, reuse, recycle. It goes in that order. So really, we should be reducing the items that we buy. We should try to reuse the items that we have. And the last thing is recycling. And also, moving on, I’d like to just bring up the, it came to my attention that the charter school had a play. And they had a big notice on the back of their program says, I’ll just read it. We have received approval from the Marblehead Board of Health to not use masks for our performances. So don’t use our name in vain. We are happy to discuss things with people at our meetings, but we never gave any permission to anybody to, say, take off your masks. So just want to put it out there that, you know, if you’re going to say, we told you something, we have to actually have told you that. And just a little, thanks Todd. Just a little piece of recycling. We did receive a grant from the state of Massachusetts through the Sustainable Materials Recovery. And we are just notified today that we will receive $15,600 this year. Great. Good. Is that something you apply for? Yeah, it’s something I apply for every year.

53:37 And you have to tell them what you’re using it for? What you’re using it for? No, so I get to decide what I’m using it for later on. But I have to fill out. So every year I have to do annual reporting that shows, you know, our waste volumes, how we’re trying to reduce waste and stuff like that. I have a question. I read that the budget was due already. Are you going to discuss that? Yeah, so just like always, so, you know, we’re following, it’s a new budget season this year, but we’re following the same practices as before. I submit the budget as proposed. We meet with the budget liaisons. After that, the budget comes back to the board for review and approval. And then we’ll go to the final FinCom budget meeting. Which as of right now is scheduled for December 13th, which is Monday night. That could change. It could not. We’ll know more later. So yes, they have a very aggressive budget scheduled this year. We are only given a short period of time to put our budgets together. Those were due last week, last Monday. We submitted those. And in the next couple weeks, we’ll have to meet with our liaisons and then have our budget hearing with Finance Committee. Could you send those out to the committee, please? The budgets? Yeah. Yes. Thank you. I mean, we’re talking a good month and a half earlier than we typically do this.

55:12 Yeah, in Germany, we have the state of the town in mid-January, which is the kickoff to the budget season. And then in February, we generally have our budgets to put together. And then we’ll go into the liaison meetings, and then the Finance Committee meeting, and then town meeting. Is there anything else in your report? Any other? No, that’s it. Okay. Let’s have a public comment period. I will recognize you if you raise your hand and we’ll have a couple minutes to speak. There’s no hands raised. Okay. Looks like nobody’s raising a hand. So let’s go to our schedule. Our next meeting will be on December 14th. Day after the budget. Yes. You want to go right into February since we know it? So we have January 11th, and then we have February 1st, and then we can do March 8th. That’s the second Tuesday. Maybe we should wait on April to see what people are doing for April vacation or whether the second week is the feel-bit. So March 8th,

56:46 I will be away. Okay. Do you want to do the 15th then? I’ll do the first again since it’s there was a two-case. Either the first or the 15th works for me. Me too. So let’s do the first so it’s not more than one. Let me just check. Let me check my schedule for March and just make sure I, you know, get the exact dates for that right. Okay. So then we can definitely talk about that at the next meeting. All right. So if that’s all, do we have a motion to adjourn? Motion to adjourn. Second. Thomas Miller. In favor. In favor wishing everybody a very thanksgiving. Dr. Velfbanger. In favor. And again, I agree. Have a great Thanksgiving everybody.