Board of Health: February 1, 2022

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.

0:10 Again, the following board members are participating in tonight’s remote meeting. Elaine Hazlett, Joanne Miller, and myself, Todd Balf-Becker. All votes will be taken by a roll call vote. And this meeting is being recorded by MHTV. So we’re going to start our meeting by going into executive session. Everybody who is here in attendance, please wait. We will be going to a breakout room, and when we return, we will continue the rest of our agenda. Do we have a motion to go into executive session? I move pursuant to GLC 30A, Section 21A3, that the board move into executive session for the purpose of discussing potential litigation regarding the open meeting law. Complaints filed by Mark Pelletier and Dorothy Carlson, the public discussion of which may have a detrimental effect on the negotiating position of the board. And then we will be returning to open session. Roll call vote. Ms. Elaine Hazlett. In favor. Joanne Miller. In favor. Dr. Todd Balf-Becker. In favor. We’ll be back soon. All right, so we’ll move on to our COVID-19 update, Andrew. Can we have that update, please?

1:47 All right. As of January 28, 2022, we’ve had a total of 3,144 positive cases. As of January 14, the count was 2,831. As of January 21, the count was 3,000. We currently have, as of last Friday, we currently have 186 active cases. We have probable cases between January 14 and January 28 of 49. At this time, we have 31 confirmed deaths. For the total cases by age group from 1-14 from January 14 to January 28, we had 26 cases from 0 to 4 years. We had 23 cases from 5 to 11 years old. We had 58 cases from 12 to 19 years old. We had 18 cases from 20 to 29 years old. We had 39 cases from 30 to 39 years old. We had 51 cases from 40 to 49 years old. We had 47 cases from 50 to 59 years old. We had 29 cases from 60 to 69 years old. 14 cases from 70 to 79 years old. And 8 cases of people 80 plus. So I just want to give you a little bit more information. In the last five days, we’ve had a total of 63 cases. And in the last 10 days, we’ve had a total of 124 cases.

3:19 In the last five days, of those 63 people, 29 of those people who were unvaccinated, nine of those individuals were unboosted. So that’s just to give you more information of what’s occurring, who’s picking up the virus, and information like that. If you look at the state records, the seven-day average for confirmed cases is 4,802.7. This was last seen on December 15, 2021. The seven-day average of hospitalizations is 2,615.3. This is still pretty high and is still tracking pretty high. The last time we saw this number was January 10th, so not too long ago. The seven-day weighted average for percent positive is 7.43%. The last time we saw this for the state was December 21, 2021, and that was down to about 7.54%. The seven-day average confirmed deaths is 49.9. Again, we haven’t seen this since January 11th of 2022. Could you, do you mind, or you just put it away, but you remind me? No, I’m going to keep going, yeah. So our average daily case rate for the last 14 days is 147.8. This is a relative change of lower from the week before.

4:49 Total test taken through the entire pandemic is 97,373 tests. Total test for the last 14 days is 3,024. Obviously, this does not include all the at-home antigen tests that are occurring. And the percent positivity for the last 14 days is 14.81%, which is a change of percent positive, which is lower. Aline, did you have a question? Yeah, I apologize. I didn’t catch someone about the hospitalizations that you gave. I just like that if you don’t mind. So the hospitalizations, when I looked on it today, it was 2,615.3, the seven-day average. And that’s the last time we saw that was January 10th, so not that long ago, of 2022. Thank you very much. So I would say, you know, we’re starting to see this downward trend. Obviously, you know, the hospitalizations are still very high compared to other times during the pandemic. And, you know, it’s going to take a little bit of time for this to go down. As far as vaccination rates in the town of Marblehead, so these are Marblehead residents vaccinated for COVID-19 as of January 28th, 2022. So this is fully vaccinated individuals per capita. For 5 to 11 years old, it’s 67%. For 12 to 15 years old, we’re greater than 95%.

6:21 For 16 to 19 years old, we’re greater than 95%. For 20 to 29 years old, we’re greater than 95%. For 30 to 49 years old, we’re greater than 95%. From 50 to 64, we’re 94%. From 65 to 74, we’re 93%. And then 75 plus is greater than 95%. Any questions or anything from the board? I ask Colleen and Joanne, can you just raise your hands, please, so I can see the whole board in one place? That way you’ll come to the front screen. Just so I can… Yeah, just do the raise hand because that way you’ll be brought to the front of the row. Oh, with that. Oh, there we go. Now I can see you. Okay. So any questions for Andrew about that? Okay. So then I think… I just appreciate the data, the way you presented it to understand, you know, how it relates to earlier in the month and so we can understand some of the surge and hopefully the positive direction we’re going in. So we have said that we would address our mask mandate at every meeting up

8:00 until the March 8th end date. So I think it’s time for us to discuss that a bit. We have any thoughts about ending it early, waiting until March 8th as we originally planned? I would like to recommend that maybe we meet in two weeks. I…for what…for why? Mr. Review, because right now we hear that Andrew just said that the hospitalizations are up, other things are heading in a downward. And I think that not to meet between now and March 8th, it would be a very long time for the community. That’s one way we could go about it. Another way is we could say that because the numbers are getting better, we could put a date out two, three weeks from now and say that, you know, unless things change dramatically for the worse, we could say, you know, ending effective February 15th or February 22nd or whatever we decide. That’s another way we could do it. I don’t know whether that’s a responsible thing to do. We’ve gotten these numbers. They’re looking…they’re looking better. And actually February 15th is before the vacation even, which people are going to be going away. And I think when we’re meeting every two weeks,

9:32 we’re right on top of it in the middle of the pandemic. And I think we need to keep our thumb on this very carefully for the next 14 days. Joanne, do you have… I think both options are reasonable with respect to how this data is being presented. And I think we’re so fortunate to have such a wealth of data and the way it’s presented and understanding how during the surge, the numbers were just astonishing. And though they’re going in the right direction, they still are not anywhere near a place where I feel comfortable today removing the masking. However, I do see potential that we’re going in the right direction. And I really appreciate understanding how the hospitalization cases have not… I know this is perhaps for many, many people that get infected. It’s a more mild case and they’re not being hospitalized, but those numbers are robust and our job is to protect our healthcare system. So I think that we should proceed cautiously and hopefully optimistically. So I think looking potentially to remove the mask mandate

11:07 perhaps sooner than March 8th could be very reasonable, but I think caution is important. So I think the middle of February to continue to look, and Andrew gives us this data weekly, we can proceed looking again in February, in the middle of February, I agree. So you would agree with Elaine that we should have a meeting in two weeks and see where we stand? I think that would be valuable. Okay. Yeah, I hear you too. I think that’s reasonable. We do still have numbers that aren’t that different from when we made the mandate for hospitalizations. I was thinking that we could say ending effective this day, two weeks from now, say, because I don’t think tomorrow I think it’s too soon, but I was thinking in my head before this meeting that we could say effective this date in the future before March 8th, and then have a caveat that should the numbers be stagnant or worse, that we could always rescind the early ending of the mandate. But if you want to have a meeting in two weeks, we could have a brief meeting, if that’s what you both would like to do, and just have that one. I’d just like to respond to that.

12:39 I just feel uncomfortable giving this arbitrary date when we don’t know what these things are, what these numbers are. We have committed that we’re going to meet in two weeks, whichever way we vote now. I think there is a commitment. And believe me, I’m staying up at night worrying about this. And not that anybody cares, but it’s on my mind 24 hours a day. And I see my friend Kim Crowley shaking her head. I know that she doesn’t care, but I am taking this extremely seriously. And whether we say that we will lift the mask mandate on a particular date, if, why don’t we just see what it truly is? We can always say on the 15th, like when we made the mandate, that as of midnight that night, or the next day, midnight the next day, it will be done. So I feel a lot more comfortable than just picking a date out of, so to speak, thin air for me. Okay. So Joanne, you agree with Helene at Souns? Should we book a meeting for February 15th, two weeks from tonight? That’s fine. Andrew, you’re free. Was that your… Yeah, I’m free for that night. I have said that I hadn’t been, but I’m traveling that day, but I’ll be at Logan at 4.30, so I don’t think it’ll take three hours

14:12 to drive home from Logan. So, unless there’s another blizzard, right? Even though I could walk home. All right, so Andrea, we’ll post that for February 15th at 7.30. Before we move on, I’ll take some public comment just related to this issue. I’ll put the issues on our agenda that we will have public comment about later. So, if you have your hand up, I’ll listen to you like always. It’s a two-minute per person. Yeah, I’m going to go in the order. I see hands. And James, is that your hand has been up? James, you’re going to unmute yourself. Thank you for taking my public comment. I see a few people deciding everything as far as the mandate goes with the local mask mandate. I see differing information from the CDC daily that masks don’t work, Omicron, everything that’s going on. And I see nothing against Colleen or anybody else on the Board of Health and Andrew Petty. God, you have my wherewithal because you have the worst job in the world and I support you 100%. I think the Board of Health needs to look at the science and really digest what the CDC is saying,

15:46 what the numbers in the state of Massachusetts on their own website are saying in regards to Omicron and hospitalizations and age groups. I think it’s time for us to stop and give back to herd immunity, whatever you want to call it. But I think, and I’m actually not even on here about the mask thing. I’m on here about the dump. But I think it’s time that you guys reel it back in and actually dig into the numbers and look at what’s happening and just call it. Call it done. I’m done talking. I’ll turn it over to Kim or Emily or anybody else that’s waiting to get on here and speak. Thank you. Can we have your address, please? 21 Cheever Avenue, Marblehead, Massachusetts. Thank you. And your name, please? James Charles Cole. Yep. Okay. Next is Kim Crowley. Hi, it’s Kim Crowley from 21 Roosevelt Avenue. I just cannot understand how you made this mask mandate on December 28th. Now, granted, you made some foibles along the way, so it didn’t get officially in for a couple weeks after that. How dare you not set metrics and figure out how you lift the mandate? How dare you wait another two weeks with no metrics in place?

17:18 Andrew, you’re very patient with me. I’ve sent you an email probably six, seven times now asking, what number, what metrics is this Board of Health choosing to make the mandate stop on? What are you choosing? Is it just plain going into Crosby’s and seeing 20 people without masks on? Is that what it is again? Because that is not science. That’s all I have to say. Thank you. Please. Emily Dee. Hi, Emily. 154 Atlantic Avenue. Thank you for taking public comment right now. I just want to second Kim Crowley’s comment that we have been asking and not receiving metrics from the Board of Health regarding the mask mandate. The town of Marblehead has answered the call. We are highly vaccinated, over 95% in almost every age category. Our numbers are trending south. What happened to strongly recommend versus mandate? Why are you not putting trust in the town of Marblehead to be able to make that choice? At this stage, it’s getting ridiculous and it has consequences on people’s livelihoods.

18:53 Please explain the difference to us and give us the metrics that you’re looking for because they sound pretty darn good to me and a lot of other people. We need to be able to plan and understand how our lives revolve around your hoping for a number that we don’t know what that is. We’d really just like to be informed of what you’re looking for because it’s never going to be 0% infectivity that we know of. But we are over 95% vaccinated with numbers going down. This has effect on all of us, our livelihoods, our school, our children. We want the choice is what we’re asking and tell us the metrics for what moves that needle. Thank you. Thank you. Nicole Cohen. Hello. Thank you, guys. I want to speak to what Kim was talking about with people who, and what other people have talked about with not having metrics, this is a seasonal virus. The numbers are going to go up in December. They’re going to go down. If you want to follow science, you would follow the Gompertz curve, which talks about how epidemiological viruses flow.

20:33 This has nothing, the numbers are going down, and it has nothing to do with masks. It has everything to do with seasonality and how viruses function on their own. I also want to speak a little bit different. I wanted to speak to the small businesses and the schools. We have been trying to work with our school board to get the masks lifted for our students. They are detrimental to the students, especially our young ones, those with disabilities. And as far as I know, we’re hearing that we need to know that you and Mr. Bucky are speaking to each other. And we have you talking, and we have him talking, and you’re both blaming it on the other person. So I think that needs to be addressed, who is making the final decision with the masks and schools. Also, with the small businesses, this has been spoken about before. With this mandate and process, you have people snitching on small businesses and causing them to have a $300 fine. And they are made anonymously. People do not know who is doing this. As far as I know, you have a business in Revere where there is no mask mandate. And you are not… Could we have our address, please?

22:04 We don’t need the address, we have our name Nicole Cohen. Okay, thank you. Next person. iPhone, if you could introduce yourself. Yeah, this is Tom McMahon at 1 Gregory Street. I don’t want to say the things I said before. I do have disappointment in the fact that the board did not speak to the Chamber of Commerce before they set out the mask mandate. But also, when we’re looking at the hospitalizations, I think everyone is aware now, they’ve done this in Miami, New York. There’s in the hospital for COVID and there’s in the hospital with COVID. And the numbers in the hospital with COVID is over 50% now. So the hospitalization numbers you’re getting are actually much smaller as a result of COVID. Most of them are just people that happen to be in there. For anything else, where COVID isn’t really affecting them. So looking at those numbers as if they’re that high is not correct. And, you know, Boston hasn’t really moved into that. Where Boston.com shows the numbers where I believe you guys are getting them. I see them there too. They haven’t distinguished that yet, but that is the separator. It’s about 50%. And I’ll get off now, and I’ll talk later about the transfer station. And David, Richie, and this will be our final comment about this issue tonight. You have to unmute yourself. Thanks, Todd. First of all, I do want to thank you guys for your service.

23:34 I know that this is very hard and I know that there’s no playbook for this. But I will tell you that this whole episode has shaken my belief in our public health system. There is zero metrics and Todd, your business, as someone said earlier, isn’t subject to the same mandate that you’re placing on businesses today. I think it is insane that we are allowing people to go to bars and drink, but we will not allow people to go to gyms to work out. It doesn’t make any fundamental sense. I would please beg you, this is not going to age well, and it’s recorded. Please go in a private session, figure out what exactly you’re asking us to wait for, and we will wait. If you put a mask mandate in place that asks for N95 masks, I could respect that. It would be costly, we would have to fund it. But to put a mask mandate in place that we all know from science, and everyone else knows, doesn’t work, it’s just not going to age well. Please restore basic belief in what you folks do. I know that you work hard. I know you’re all smart. This makes no sense. And with that, I’ll stop. Thank you.

25:07 Just for clarification, all health care facilities are required to wear masks by the state at this point in time. All right, moving on. Helene, you have a SALT update, please? Yes. There have been two meetings, and they’ve been brief because they mainly trying to determine how to vaccinate the student body in the community. In fact, yesterday, there was a vaccination clinic. I’m sorry, it may have been Friday. I apologize. There was a vaccination clinic where 100 people were vaccinated. So I would say that it was recently so that I can be correct on that. And we were very happy that people came out to get the vaccination. At the meeting on January 25th, teachers were saying that the absenteeism is down. They were saying the teacher absenteeism was down, and so were the students. So that’s a good sign. And even one school had 100 percent faculty attendance. But up until now, people have been either out for their own illness or someone in their household. I’d like to quote what Deanna said, because I think it’ll make people in the community understand how we all in health care are feeling.

26:40 Deanna said that she’s Deanna McMahon, a lead nurse at the schools, said she was tired of COVID, but no way. This was on 1-25, was she ready for the schools to be removing the masks? And after she spoke, several members mentioned that they were concerned about vulnerable people in the school community. One person spoke and said, you can see people that look healthy and hearty, but they are vulnerable. And they’re concerned about that vulnerability. I mentioned that the Board of Health and the school, we don’t have to follow each other’s lead. We each have our own. We are autonomous and they are autonomous, and they should work. We should be working hand in glove. And I think that that was mainly things are looking better. And the same with this morning’s meeting. We meet every Tuesday. So the superintendent spoke with Desi again on Friday, and they are looking toward when they are going to be doing a highly recommended, as opposed to town mask mandate. And that was not a school department mandate. That’s not my announcement, by the way. The school committee will be meeting this Thursday, so I don’t want that.

28:13 But there was no, the school committee makes those decisions. And other than that, it was a fairly short meeting. And they were not going to be able to get their tests. All the faculty got their tests, and everyone picked them up, and there were no positives. So things are looking better. 899 families have signed up to receive the testing kits, and they will get them this coming Friday. So the test was shipped out. Over 1,000 tests were shipped out. And the test will most likely end once they get their kits. And I think that was about it. Oh, one good, one other good positive thing. In the beginning of this pandemic and right along, there were very, it was very difficult to get substitute teachers. And I’ve been working on that in the school department. And now they currently have seven, seven, not 17, 19 subs in the system. And it’s very enlightening that now that students classes are covered. So I think that that’s something that I’d like to share with everybody.

29:43 Yeah, I think I’m done because a lot of talk was about the mental health and what a wonderful program that the task force is doing. And we have to think Joanne Miller about that, but I think we’re going to hear more about that right away. But the school department is very happy about that. And I’d like you to know that there are seven practitioners. I was told in a high school alone. Is that correct, Joanne? Yeah, seven practitioners in the high school to help out with, that’s their positions, not to help out, but they are working with the student body and with the faculty. So thank you very much. I’m sorry for that addition, but I think it was important. Thank you. Joanne, your turn. Mental health task force, I think you had a… Thank you. Thank you so much, Helene, for those kind words. The mental health task force has been very busy and doing some really, I think, impactful work. Last night, we were able to have our second program in our speaker series. And we were able to leverage some of the expertise we had within our communities, some mental health professionals that serve our community. And we had a community conversation about suicide awareness. We had a member of our Marblehead Mental Health Task Force, Dr. Melissa Kalplewitsch, who is a professor and runs the Mental Health Counseling Program at Salem State University.

31:16 She was our moderator and contributed a lot of really important dialogue to the conversation. We had Amanda Ruble from Marblehead High School, to your point earlier, Helene. She’s a counselor at the school. And she is, right now, being empowered by Marblehead High School to implement an SOS program, which is a program that helps young people understand how to navigate suicidal ideation and begin to have those conversations about suicide and raise awareness in the schools. It’s called SOS, speaking of suicide. Excuse me. I’ll have to forgive me. I can’t remember what that acronym is for. But she’s rolling that out in the school and the health classes going forward. So this was an opportunity to talk about that and bring that information into the town. We also had Adam Sisio, who is a mental health counselor here in Marblehead. He has a practice and serves lots of the youth in Marblehead with their counseling needs and has a pretty significant staff, which, as we all know, it’s really difficult to get, connect with mental health counselors right now. So he is growing his staff to serve our community. And the conversation was really robust. It was very well received. There was a – we enabled some time for question and answering in the end. So I think it was something that was being produced by Marblehead Television, and they do an outstanding job.

32:50 As soon as the program is produced, it will be on MHTV for people that couldn’t get out last night. It was very bitter cold night to get out. It’ll be available, and we’ll post that to the Marblehead Cares website. Also, our principal, Dan Bauer, live streamed the program, and we have the Zoom link, which will attach as well. Although I don’t know that that’ll be of the same quality we can look forward to getting through Marblehead Television. We also had the privilege of inviting three interns to join the Marblehead Mental Health Task Force and work with the Marblehead Task Force, bringing some of their skills and talents to the needs that we have. And also, bringing a voice of our youth in the community to help us understand better what those needs may be. We’re looking forward to having them work with, you know, kind of the live streaming events and also the social media work that we’re doing with Marblehead Cares. There was a change at the Marblehead Counseling Center, and we are very grateful to have Carrie McDonough, who is a great resource to our town, join our Mental Health Task Force while they are filling the executive director position there. So, she’s just a tremendous resource, and we’re very happy to have her working with us going forward. Going forward, we have in late March, early April, we’re putting together another, our next program in our speaker series, and that will be aimed at our older population who we’ve come to understand have many different needs,

34:27 but they’re similar to what many of us experience and that are compounded through this isolation that we’ve experienced during the COVID pandemic. So, we’re going to invite a conversation with the community and also engage with adult children of our elderly, because there’s a caregiving component that we recognize people need to talk about and learn about the resources that can be available to help some of us who are caring for our elderly parents in this setting. And experiencing some mental health concerns. So, that is the update for the Marblehead Mental Health Task Force. Thank you. Enjoy that SOS program is Signs of Suicide program. Thank you very much. Thank you, Adam. Andrew. That’s it, Signs of Suicide. Alright, so Andrew, you prepared to share your screen when we talk about the transportation? And actually we have Dana Reader here tonight so allow Dana to share his, make him a co-host, and he’ll be able to share his screen as well. Great. So we’ll, we’ll talk about some developments in Plan B that we’re, we’re going to show and whatever else comes up. So hi Dana. How are you? Good, you? Very good, thank you. Yeah, after our last reading, I think we’re all concerned with primarily the circulation that we, that was developed by, by the initial engineers for the project over 12 years ago.

36:08 We got permission from, from Andrew to kind of break the initial, initial rules and open up Green Street to circulation and, and once we open up Green Street, some things, everything started to fall into place. I’ll zoom in on what we’re doing right here. But essentially what we’ve decided is that if we have Green Street down here and we have Ingress only at Green Street for the folks using the back of the transfer station, for the folks using the pit, and then for the containers going in and taking out the garbage from the pit area. And then finally for the staff going up and using the staff parking area right here. Let me zoom in. So we’re going up through Green Street. First of all, we see the three colors, the red color is for, for circulation, the back of the transportation blue is for the pit traffic and the fuchsia is for the container traffic. Going up through Green Street.

37:42 And then we have the open storage. It’s also a warming hut for the staff working in the dumpster area. You can take a right up to the swap shed or continue up to the composting area or turning around and continuing through the hazardous material drop off, close drop off, and then continuing out and egressing out towards Beacon Street at the, at the point where we have our main entrance today. Second line is the blue line going using pit traffic. These would be the garbage trucks and any residential, any residents that need to use the pit. Coming up here, take a right at the first fork, left at the second fork where we have this hut, and then coming up here, you’ll see the orange area is the scale, the yellow is the pit, and this is a scale house. So the circulation would be coming up, going over the scale, reversing, dumping over the scale to measure and out to pay. Final traffic is the fuchsia color, and this is where the container is, 100 yard container trucks coming in, backing up, pulling the refuse out of the pit, or for the staff. And this area would be only staff parking, so they could stay here. And this last is the new staff support. This would be for bathroom lockers and a little kitchenette for the staff.

39:16 And then the scale houses, as we had before. The one thing is that we relocated the scale from adjacent to the scale house to this location, which is angled in a way that hopefully will provide way in and way out. And we only need one scale then.

39:39 So they can travel on either side of the scale? Yes, they go over the scale, back, over the scale, get measured, back, dump into the pit, over the scale, get measured, and then pay. And some of the other technologies that we would be looking to use with this plan is something called a stickerless system or a stickerless technology. So you wouldn’t necessarily have to post a staff person down on Green Street. You could use this technology, so if you’re buying a sticker, you would go online, you’d purchase the sticker, it would enter your license plate into a system. And so there would be a plate reader in that location. So when you drove through, the plate reader would make sure that you had a sticker. If you’re a resident, you would follow that red track and go up to the right. If you’re a commercial, you’d follow that blue track and go to the left. You would go across a scale. We would need to have communication just before you actually got to the pit, and you’d have communication and control with the scale house itself. So the scale would be controlling the movement of traffic and then any communication that would need to take place. You know, account numbers, how are you paying, stuff like that that would need to occur. But we would really try to streamline business up here. Obviously we heard all your comments. I think really the Green Street entrance would allow traffic flow to be smooth, around divide between residents and commercial.

41:14 It would also allow for a long, long area for staging for commercial trucks and stuff like that. So we really try to incorporate all the comments that we heard from last time into this. So that’s just some of my quick comments. Obviously, like when you enter into that residential area, you’d still have residential trash disposal, all your recycling. On the days that the swap shed were open, they could enter that area. Those extra parking spots during the week when the swap shed might not be open would also give you access potentially by a sticker. That staff area in that residential area, there’s different operations that could take place there. So we’d want to take a look at that. And then obviously, this will give residents access back to that yard waste area, which everybody loves. I mean, we have a lot of great things that are currently built there now, and we’re just trying to maximize traffic flow, commercial operations, and make everything smooth. I think we’ll move right at the T.M. I’m pointing to the screen, like you can see me. The new staff hut for bin storage, stickers, fees, etc. It doesn’t seem like there’s any parking right there. Yeah, you can park in that swap shot area, which is just adjacent to it. Okay. Are you taking questions? I’ll go over a few more of the images, if you’d like, and then I’ll go over the questions if you’d like. Here is a close up of the pit area showing that there is no crossing of circulation right now. That was our biggest concern, and obviously the concern of others is having any kind of cross circulation.

42:56 And the way it’s set up right now, everything stays in aisle, and there’s no crossing. So, I’m looking at the buildings that you would come across as an entry. You need to share each of those, I guess, because we’re not seeing that. You’re not sharing, pardon me? I’m not seeing any of the images. We’re just still seeing the base map. I’m sorry. It says I’m sharing. Let me stop, share, and try again. Are we good now? Yep. Okay. This is the first staff support hut. This would be essentially just a place where there’d be some transactions for stickers and bins, and then kind of a warming hut. And then this last area is for bin storage. And you can see from the plan right here, nothing more than a 70 square foot room and 100 square foot storage. The next is the swap shed. This hasn’t changed much, but this gives an idea what it is. Basically, large barn doors that would open up and anything that could be brought out into the asphalt or stay in, but facilitate the use. Dana, again, you need to switch over. I don’t know why it’s not doing that for you. Yeah. Okay. Can you see that now?

44:34 Yep. Next is the staff support hut, and this is right next to the new pit structure, or not the new pit structure, but the renovated pit structure. That’ll be re-sheath. The staff support is a locker room, some storage closet, a unisex bathroom, a shower, eye wash, and then a break room with a kitchenette.

44:59 Okay. Can you see my screen? No, you got to switch. We’re still on the other side. Okay. We’ll try one more time. Okay. This is the last structure. This is the scale house. Scale house will be just a small office, the transaction window for the trucks for payment, small unisex bathroom, and some of the images. The first image is the truck going by the transaction. The second image shows the scale house with the pit and staff attendance building beyond. And third image shows a shot from the actual desk of the scale house, showing kind of a command central with good viewing of the whole operations. I’m going to go back to the- The main plan. Yeah. Yep. And keep it there. Can I just ask you one question before you go back? The first thing we saw was the staff support shed that had the bins in it, that big area with it. And then you showed- then you said the other image was the staff support shed. So I don’t know which was this. Yes. There’s two staff sheds, for lack of a better word. One of them is more of the support shed where there’ll be a bathroom and a kitchenette and a locker room and a shower in case there’s any kind of hazardous filling or an eye wash.

46:45 The second one is the up front by the scale house. Correct. Yes. And that’s up front at this area right here. And the reason we have it up here is because the cap ends right about here. So putting any kind of plumbing and underground utilities can work up here, even though we have some ledge. It does not work anything- any area south of this location. So this hut right here is actually more of a warming hut transaction area. And what that allows is it eliminates the need to go to the scale house to make transactions for other areas. So that eliminated some of the cross circulation by separating transactions for the pit in the scale area and all of the transactions at this hut. So this hut will be more of a warming hut and no bathroom, no utilities, and then storage for the bins. Is there any reason why they couldn’t all be in one building? Yes, because if we move the functions of the transactions from here up to here, then we’re going to have crossover in circulation. Which we don’t want. Which we don’t want. That was the big problem of the circulation to date, is that we were crossing over and we needed stoplights and we needed a lot of technology to make sure that we could move the functions of the transactions. And we needed to create a safer area and we’d much rather do that through dry vials that do not cross.

48:19 So the smaller one with the bins are going to be does not have the kitchen or the bathrooms? No. That bin area looks pretty large. Do you have that many bins? It was about when we did initial programming, we had the square footage that was requested and it’s about 100 square feet, I believe. So these are the recycling bins and they do take a lot of room. But they’re stacked. All right. We fill up a container, so a 24-foot container and then some with recycling bins. Because we have the biome in bulk.

48:59 If I could just clarify, there’s no ingress at all from Beacon Street. It’s all egress to Beacon Street? That’s correct. So it’s all one way. Yes. Another question. Will we say it’s so narrow, the 14 feet and you’re going one way with the red and the blue and the pink lines on Green Street? Yes. Are you going to have certain times of day for a commercial as opposed to residential or? I see. The narrow area is right at this location. That’s the narrowest area. It’s about 14 feet. And that’s one way up here. The fuchsia line actually is two-way for the three times or so per day that the container is dumped and for staff. So that fuchsia line is the only area where we have two-way traffic. We also have a wider aisle there as well. But there’s no way to put the blue one over there on the red on that. Since that’s going to be used at most a dozen times a day with the staff coming and going in the morning and the afternoon and then the containers. Yeah. If we bring the red and the blue circulation up here, then there’s potential for cross circulation by keeping the red all the way to the right and keeping the blue in the middle and the fuchsia to the left, then the circulation does not get crossed.

50:29 Which we don’t like. So it’s a very short distance where they’re going to… Yeah. And really you’d only have…it would be alternating traffic. So when you’re taking a left or right into that entrance, you know, you’re going to have a commercial vehicle and then it would be a residential or whatever it is. But they’re not going to be side by side. They would be single file and then they would go in their different directions. So if there is a congestion at certain times, would you consider having a commercial and residential at different times? Of peak times for commercial or something like that? We’re really trying to maximize the use of the transfer station for both residential and commercial. And by allowing that large staging area for the commercial, you really should be able to avoid any congestion that may occur. And obviously, you know, somebody would have to be monitoring that. And if you did have congestion, they came all the way back to that staff support area. That staff support would have to start to step out and start to really manage some traffic. Okay. The queuing area that we have all the way from essentially this hut, all the way here, is all commercial and it could be a…it’s a lot more queuing that will free up a lot of congestion that we have at the pit today.

52:01 Is that…are those all your slides, Dana? Yes, it is. Okay. Joanne, do you have any questions or comments? My comment would be that this seems like an excellent response to the concerns that were raised, and I think some suggestions that were raised at our last meeting. And I think that it’s incredibly thoughtful and a really positive solution to the concerns that we were all feeling last time we were looking at this proposal, and I’m very impressed. And obviously, we still have plans to do a community forum, and that’s something that we’ll need to discuss tonight to try to come up with a date, or, you know, we can do that in the next week. But we do want to hold a community forum so we can continue to gather some information. Would you want to talk about that now? Yeah, so I mean, I think, you know, obviously, Dana’s done a lot of work. I think we’d still need to, you know, discuss a few things. But I would love to see a community forum in the, you know, first one or two weeks of March. Do you want to just pencil in March 1st?

53:20 The meeting is on March 8th. We want to do it before or after a meeting. It might be better to do it before so that we can then discuss what has come up at our meeting. Dana, do you think that gives us enough time to put things together for a community forum on March 1st? Was that to me, Andrew? Yeah. Yes, it depends on what additional things we put together. But yeah, that should be enough time. I want to kind of reiterate what Joanne put so well is that, you know, we all had concerns last time we met about the traffic flow and I too am very impressed with the thinking outside the box to get this new plan. And we still have a lot of discussion to do. We still have plan A, plan B. But as plan B gets refined, I think that we really have some nice options to work with. So thank you, Dana, for what you’ve done so far and what you’re continuing to do. Andrew, do we need to take a hold? Just like to, before you go on, I’d just like to, you know, second those comments because I had a lot of questions before. And I think that we have gone a long way to make this plan B look so much more acceptable. And the other was with all the crisscrosses and the lights and traffic lights and stoplights.

54:56 And I was worried about the scale. I thought we might have needed two scales and that was going to be an added expense. And I think this is a wonderful plan. I think, Dana, I think, Andrew, because you had some great suggestions when we talked with you. And I have to thank the community because I think some of the suggestions came right out of the community. So I think it was a group effort. Todd, we will just plan for the community forum to be March 1st. I’ll work with Dana and Jerry to put that together. And that will be another Zoom event. And that gives us four weeks to prepare for that. We need to have a vote to post it or is it just like another posted meeting? Now, it’s just going to be another posted meeting. Okay. All right. So let me get public comment. If there’s anybody who has something specific to say about this project, please raise your hand. Okay. I see James was first and same as before. It’s two minutes per person. So please raise your hand. Go ahead, James. Thank you, James Arthur-Foldt, 21 Cheever Avenue. Can you hear me? Yes. Excellent. So I’m glad to see some reiteration of this project. I would just like to offer again that it is it’s being nuked. And if I should go see Charlie Quigley at the engineering department and get the current maps of the dump, or if you could provide them to me at no cost to you, I can show you how to fix the entire problem.

56:40 I know we’re up to our ears in engineering and architectural fees on this project. A new scale, it’s been called the whatever it was, the Taj Mahal plan, a new full blown 18-wheeler dump scale is like $200,000. We need a second scale. We need to pass the roof in the dump pit, maybe buy a new compactor. But I’m telling you right now, I can fix the whole problem for less than a million dollars. I think the whole idea with the employee hot and all that other stuff is ridiculous. You come in on Green Street, you leave on Beacon Street, bingo bango, done. Easy day. Go right to dump your leaves in your household, go left if you’re a contractor or you want to get on the scales. Cross the scales back up to the pit, leave the pit, go across the scales again, and you have a phone booth at the end of the thing that you’ve got. Pay your $28 or whatever the fee is. Period. It’s that simple. It really is that simple. Fix the roof in the compactor pit, call it a day. $6 million? Unnecessary. Completely unnecessary. I will yield. Hi James, if you want to contact the office, we can discuss this more too. Andrew, I’m your biggest fan. I know you have the worst job in the world. I would love to come up.

58:11 Please, please, please give me a call. We’ll set something up and we’ll talk. I’ll be up. Are you there tomorrow? I’m here tomorrow, so give me a call. We’ll figure out a time to get together. Awesome. Thank you. Thank you, James. Tom, if you could reintroduce yourself. Yep. Tom McMahon, Montgomery Street. I am a regular user of the pit in this scale. And I got to say, after the first meeting, I looked and I saw three people that don’t use the pit in the scale. And so what I did the next morning was I went to the transfer station and talked to the employees to see if you had spoken with them. You didn’t. And I actually went back there this morning to see if you had spoken with them. And Kay told me that Helene and Joanne had come to show the ideas, but they’re not asking any input. I reached out to a lot of the services in town. I’ve lived here 40 years. I know all of them. You didn’t talk to Kennedy. You didn’t talk to Hooper Goodwin. You didn’t talk to Lee and the gallon. You guys are talking. You aren’t talking to the community. And this is, again, the problem with the Chamber of Commerce with you not talking to them first. You’re not talking to the people that use this every day. And you need to, because those people have the best ideas. And if you don’t, you know, like, I mean, I’m just going to say it right now, Helene, I’m running in June and you’re in big trouble because these are my friends and these are people I communicate with. And I want to open that discussion and you need to before you waste this money. That’s it. Thank you. And Jen, you can introduce yourself.

59:46 Hi, Jen Jaffner, 20 Casino Road. Can you hear me okay? I just wanted a quick clarification from the presenter, the architect. The building, I understood it’s a 100 square foot building that will house a locker room, toilets and a lunch room for the employees. 100 square feet. Is that correct? No, it’s actually more than that. The 100 square foot I referred to before was the bin storage. The square footage for the, let me stop and show again. Sorry about this.

1:00:33 The square footage for the break room was 113 square feet. The bathroom is 60 square feet and the locker room was 68 square feet. The bathroom, the shower, I should say, is not necessarily one of convenience as much as more for emergency use. There’s anyone who’s been covered with any kind of chemicals, as with the eye wash. Okay, thanks. All right, Jack, can you introduce yourself?

1:01:17 Thank you, and good evening. I will say that what a difference a meeting makes. This is a much more functional plan than certainly was presented at the last time. And I was going to, you know, somebody talked about the fact that nobody has spoken to anybody yet, but I look forward to the public participation on this when it comes to Mars and we’re able to do this a little bit more. I just had really one question was, or maybe two questions. Have numbers been put to this plan? And if this is the plan that you go with, is that going to need to go to town for something you find to pay for with the leftover money? Thank you. Jack, could you repeat the last few statements? I’m sorry, it was breaking up a little bit. I’m sorry. I’m wondering if you go with this plan, if you need to go to town, if there’s a price on this plan yet, and if you would need to go to town meeting to seek funds or whether it would be paid for with the leftover money and any tipping fees that you might have in your enterprise fund.

1:02:51 Thanks. I think that’s still in process, Jack. I don’t think there’s an answer to that yet. Okay, so there’s no more hands raised. So we’ll end this part of the discussion. Thank you, Dana, for your presentation and thank you to the public for their comments. We will be, as you know, having a public forum now on March 1st. So we will be happy to hear more comments and criticisms and innovations and what have you on that night and then we can move forward from there. And Todd, I’d like to say to Tom or Jack or Jen, if you guys had suggestions and wanted to give me a call, I would be glad to talk to you as well. Thanks, Andrew. Okay, so your director’s report, please. Okay, so obviously, you know, one of the other things that we’ve been working on is we have purchased rapid tests that we’ve been pushing out into the community. So we have provided rapid tests, rapid COVID tests to all of Marblehead housing. We’ve provided some to the Marblehead food pantry and we will continue to do that. We have an environmental justice neighborhood. We actually have two of them, the kind in the center of town. It’s about 1,200 homes. We have sent out letters to all those homes and those people are also welcome. Anybody that lives in one of those homes is welcome to, you know, to have a home test kit.

1:04:27 And we’re also providing all test kits to Marblehead employees. We will continue to do this as, you know, as well as long as we have supplies, we will continue to do this. But that has been a pretty large effort over the last week and a half. We also obviously have been dealing with the major snowstorm. So we want to remind everybody to sign up for our Code Red system. This provides emergency notifications to the residents about off-street parking, delays in your trash recycling collection. So it’s really important that everybody signs up for this. You can do that right at the town website. And that’s a really valuable instrument that we use on a, not a weekly basis, but anything that’s, you know, really important. We try to push messages out. Through that, we can do, you know, obviously call your home. We can send out emails and everything like that. So it’s a great service and I just want to remind everybody to sign up for that. I’m going to keep my director’s report brief tonight and that will be it, Todd. Thank you, Drew. We have had two public comment periods already, although there’s a public comment period at the end of our agenda. I see two hands raised. I’m not sure if they’re still raised from before. If you want to be recognized. Okay. So I’ll unmute the one that says iPhone. No, Todd, that’s, I’m all done talking. I don’t know. Oh, you’re done. Okay. You have a stater. Okay. Thanks.

1:05:58 Okay. And we want to keep comments to something that’s not been already addressed tonight. So Kim Crowley. Hi, Kim Crowley, 21 Roosevelt. I have a question about when we will have in-person Board of Health meetings again. Because this format is not working for anybody.

1:06:24 We don’t have an answer at this time. Thanks. And Phil.

1:06:42 Hello. Hi, if you could introduce yourself. Yeah, sure. Phil Podolsky, five countryside lane. I just have a question. I’ve just seen a lot of coyote activity and a lot of coyotes coming onto the streets. And I’m just wondering if anything can be done. I know it’s meeting season and all, but just see if there’s anything can be done about the overzealous coyotes coming down the streets and all. Thank you. So the state of Massachusetts has a lot of information on the Massachusetts wildlife program, talking about how to handle coyotes interactions with them. That’s really the best place to go. Obviously, they’re wild animals. We’re not allowed to trap or shoot at this time, but really the state website is the best place to go at this time. Okay. Thank you so much. Thank you. Sandra. What do you say? I would just like to share my feelings in regards to your name, please. Oh, I’m sorry. Sondra Callahan, 25 Nogga. I would just like to share and I’ve shared this with the board before as someone, you know, that works in the medical field that unfortunately does not have the true traditional work hours of nine to five. I greatly appreciated the fact that you guys have been doing these meetings. I have been able to have the opportunity to participate in public comment. I have attended every single meeting since the start of COVID.

1:08:13 And whether you decide to choose to do in person, I would strongly encourage you to continue to do Zoom because I feel as though that we’ve gotten a lot more public participation when we give a lot of our public the opportunity to do that. And I would really appreciate it. I would really appreciate it. I would really appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. On that note, looks like everybody’s said what they need to say. Do we have a motion to adjourn? Our next meeting will be February 15th, 730. So Elaine, is there a second Joanne? Second. I second. Okay. Andrew, please. Ms. Joanne Miller. In favor. Ms. Helene Easlet. In favor. Good night, everybody.