Board of Health: March 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.

0:01 Present. Ms. Helene Hazlett. Present. And Dr. Todd Belfinger. Present. So tonight’s meeting is is only posted as a meeting because we have a forum here, but this is a public forum to discuss the Transfer Station project, and I will cede over to Andrew to begin the presentation. Great, so good evening everybody. I’m Andrew Petty. I’m the Director of Public Health for the Town of Marblehead. And Todd, so if you could just pay attention to that waiting room and admit people as they come in and stuff like that. If you miss somebody, they will eventually come into the meeting. But I’m going to go right ahead and share my screen and get right into this presentation. Good evening everybody. This is the Transfer Station Community Forum of March 1st of 2021. The agenda tonight, I will give introductions. I will talk about the project itself. We’ll go over two different options. Option A and option B. We’ll have a question and answer period towards the end of the program, and then we’ll talk about next steps. For the format tonight, this meeting is being recorded. All attendees are on mute until the question and answer period. And we are here to discuss the future Transfer Station, the facility. You know, the idea is to gather information from the public.

1:35 We want to get some feedback. We’re not here to discuss all the past litigations or how the money was spent. Again, I’m Andrew Petty. I’m the Director of Public Health at the town of Marblehead. Tonight with us is Jerry Smith, who’s the owner’s project manager. We have Dana Weeder for Winter Street Architects, and we have the Marblehead Board of Health consisting of Todd Belfecker, Helene Hazlett, and Joanne Miller. Just to give a brief history of the site, waste disposal operations began on the site in the 1930s. Household refuse, scrap metal, old cars, paint, oil, tires, yard waste dumped on the site, items were burned in open pits, and then buried. I’m sure some of the older folks here actually remember some of the open pit burning back in the day. In 1957, Marblehead Board of Health constructed a solid waste incinerator. Residential and commercial trash was actually burned on site and actually disposed on site. Asks contained toxic amounts of lead, arsenic, cadmium, and other hazardous material. In 1975, due to the Federal Clean Air Act of 1970, the town closed the incinerator and converted the operation into a transfer station. In 2001, Mass DEP filed an order with the town to clean up the landfill and cap the landfill itself. So we were required to gather all the waste onto the town

3:06 property and then actually cap the material. The idea with the cap is to prevent any rainwater from pushing those contaminants down into groundwater and further pushing them out. In 2004, the town signed administrative consent order with Mass DEP to cap the landfill material. And failure to comply with that order resulted in signs of $2,000 per day. Site assessment testing began as far back as 1993, which later led to the design development for the landfill closure, the cap, and the transfer station. The first override was prepared in 2010, which did not pass the referendum. In 2011, $15.1 million was appropriated for the cap and the transfer station. It took two years to obtain all permits and easements, finalized plans and specifications, and issued bonds and requests for paper proposals. $1.1 million was also appropriated in 2013 for the cleanup of 151 Green Street. 1.2 million. Yeah, 1.2 million. In January, we received four bids open for the construction of the landfill closure and the transfer station, and they range from $17.2 to $19.3 million. Bids were $2.1 to $4.2 million in excess of the 2011

4:41 appropriation. And in February of the same year, the Board of Health restructured the project into two phases. To rebuild the landfill closure, and then the second phase or second piece of it was to dive into the design of it and look for stavings on the transfer station itself. And actually, you’ll take a look at the phase one and phase two. Originally, we thought we were going to do 90% of the closure, cap and everything except for the lower yard, and phase two, 10% of the closure complete, and then build the new transfer station building itself. Again, in June of 2014, the Board of Health hired a new architectural firm, Winter Street Architects, to redesign the building to try to meet our budget needs. The result was a reduction in size with the same functionality. And this is really important. Estimated costs of the new transfer station building now, and that’s today’s cost, are approximately $3.6 million just for the building. And that’s down from $6.2 million, and estimated cost savings of about $2.6 million. And please remember that landfill construction began in July of 2014. And we were finally issued the landfill closure completion, conditional approval from Mass DEP, not until September of 2016. We are under construction for a very long period of time to do that landfill closure. So we want to ask you a few questions. And so I have

6:12 a poll, you know, how long? So I’m just going to run this poll. Everybody can answer these questions.

7:28 Andrew, can I ask a question? Yeah, go right ahead. On number 10, it says, untitled question. Can you, it says choice one or choice two? It’s probably just, it’s not a question that it’s, there are probably only nine questions at that point. Okay, thank you. Yep. Also, it seems that there’s some interference with, there’s, someone’s put something over Helene’s. That’s interesting. I don’t know how to control that to tell you the truth. Somebody’s just anonymously put a hand up so they’re on top of the list and being disruptive. This is not the forum for that. Thank you. Thank you. I think it’s still blocked. I don’t see anything on you at this point, Helene. I answered the questions and I can’t submit. But it’s all right. You need to answer the 10th question. Just pick one or the other. And then you can pick out what you did. Oh, okay. I’m sorry. It’s okay.

8:59 Okay. So if everybody heard that, you will need to answer that 10th question, which is blank. That way it will allow you to submit. So I’m just going to give it another minute and then we’ll move on. Get really into the interesting parts of the forum here. Thank you very much,

10:49 everybody, for completing that. Here’s some of the results. So P6 is 64. So 88% own their own homes. 6% rent. Most of them are single family. 80% are single family homes. Average age tonight that it’s attending is between 46 and 60 years old. 47% having two people in their household.

11:45 48, 64, 75%, 21 years and older. Most of them are residential that are attending their residential interests. We have a lot of people that go to the facility once a week. So almost 40% go to the facility once a week. 34% go to the facility once a month. We have 5% once a quarter and 16% once in a while. Most of the people that are going to the facility for 63% are using the residential trash from recycling area. 31% are using that yard waste area. What areas need to be addressed? 52% said traffic flow. 11% said commercial. And 31% said residential drop-off. We’ll definitely have some follow-up questions on that residential drop-off. We’ll be interested to see what kind of concerns that you have with that. So moving on, options. We’re looking at two different options tonight. The redesign plan completed by Winter Street Architects, option A,

13:15 and the reduced scope we’re calling option B. So this is kind of the final site layout that we had agreed with with the Solid Waste Facility Committee, our old engineers Kleinfelder, and working with Winter Street Architects. You can see that we have 13 and a half acres of cap. So that’s the capped landfill. We have seven and a half acres of meadow grass areas. We planted 130 trees. 65% of those are evergreens. 35% of those are deciduous. We planted 330 shrubs. And we have approximately, if you did the full design with all the pavement, you’d have approximately six acres of pavement. That yard waste area is three acres in itself. You can see the majority of the plantings occur down in the Stony Brook Road property line around that Blueberry Road area also, as well as that Arnold Terrace is heavily planted to try to protect some of those homes from the views across to what could be the potential site of the landfill transfer station building. I want to introduce Dana Wieder from Winter Street Architects. He will help me really talk about option A and the work that they put into this because it’s exceptional work and he really needs to share all of this.

14:43 Yeah, go right ahead, Dana. Okay, yeah. Dana Wieder at Winter Street Architects. We’re in Salem, Mass. I’ve been working on this project for a while now. This first project, when I use my cursor here, can you see my pointer here? No, we cannot. Okay, all right. This first, this site plan you see right here is the project that we inherited, the site plan that we inherited from Kleinfelder a way back. And then we were tasked with designing the transfer station building itself and then the swap shed. As you can see on the top left of the screen is where the Beacon Street entrance is and upon entering, you have three choices. You can go to the right and then enter the area where you would be doing residential drop-off at the transfer station and there’s about 12 parking spaces there as well. Or you can go down to the center which goes to the back of the transportation site to the yard waste and recycling areas and the swap shed. Or you can go towards the middle area over the yellow chaffron and yellow rectangular space and that is the scale with the adjacent scale house next to it. The idea is that anyone who uses the scale would go over there on the entrance upon ingress,

16:15 drive past the transfer station and loop around and dump trash or building materials on the back side of the transfer station. And then on the ingress back there, they go around the loop and then go over the scale again to get weighed, paid, and they’re out. This circulation does not use Green Street other than for the trailers going in and out, although you can see it that there is a drive aisle up to the rear portion. The chromium uses the Beacon Street entrance for ingress and egress. You see that the swap shed is on the middle bottom portion of the screen and then the yard waste is off the screen to the bottom right. And then the brown areas are some areas where there would be not be hardscaping, it would be more of a planting areas. Not that there’d be much planting but just no asphalt at those locations. Andrew, I think you can go to the next slide. This is actually the second design we did. The first design was completed about 2014-15

17:56 and it included a walking floor and a couple other areas that we value engineered out. Those value engineering exercises saved about 1.2 million, I believe, from the cost of the building. So now we settled on this structure. This structure, as you can see here, is a steel frame structure with a fiberglass, kind of an industrial fiberglass siding throughout. This siding is chemically resistant to all things. It’s really pretty tough stuff. You can see the door opened in the middle. That door opening is the location for the residential drop-off. Folks would come in through the Beacon Street side, take that right and queue up for this location back in and throw their trash through this door and they would go directly into the trailer that is subterranean from this level below. To the left, you can see the yellow column is kind of the entrance to the larger portion of the building. Further to the left, that is a single-story portion of the structure and that is the staff attendance area where there’s a small break room, a small locker room, a kitchenette, and a bathroom, and then some storage bins. All the roofs you can see are all sloped. We captured all the rainwater with this approach

19:33 and stored it in a cistern below the parked car you see there. This cistern, water from the cistern will be used to hose down the facility when needed. You can see to the left is the aisle to get back to the rear portion of the site. Next slide. This is from looking at the rear of the site, looking probably northwest. This is more of the commercial side of the building where trucks would be weighed at the scale. You can see the green truck is actually a garbage truck that would dump the residential trash in the same trailer that the residential trash was dropped off on the opposite side. Both residential and commercial use the same trailer and dump refuse from opposite sides. The kind of the blue truck with the container on it to the left would be more building materials. That would involve just tipping onto the floor itself and there are various areas demised with jersey barriers or some other demising. Building materials are separate wood, gypsum, metals, and they’re all compartmentalized and

21:03 they would be sent off and recycled in specific areas. This, as you can see, is primarily the commercial side and no residential drop off on this side.

21:22 Here is a layout of the whole site. You can see the top kind of horizontal rectangle. That’s the area where the trailer would be and on the top portion of that is where the residential feed into the trailer. Then the bottom side is the tipping floor and that would be the commercial side. To the right, the darker lines is the staff attendance area with the break room, bathroom, and locker rooms and storage.

21:59 One of the main pieces that we really want to emphasize with option A is that option A is integrated into the cap itself. We can’t change option A. We can’t change the location of the building. We can’t change the utilities. All that had to be designed and implemented into that cap. Under the building structure here is a drain, a foundation drain that’s built into that cap itself. It’s indented into that cap and allowing the water to drain out. All the utilities, so your water, your sewer, your electrical, running from both all the way out to the street on Green Street and then also out to Beacon Street. Those have to be indented into the cap. Those are actually in place today and they cannot be moved. Currently, we were able to pull our electrical wires, any of our other utility stuff, all that’s in place today. Option A can’t change. I want to make sure everybody understands that. One of the large pieces of option A is that when you take a look at the facility today, if you look out from the compactor out to the back residential area, you’ll see that very large manhole for that 60-inch culvert. That whole area needs to be filled in. It’s a huge fill. It’s approximately $750,000 worth of fill to bring the grades in. We wanted to try to make it a level access from when you entered Woodford and Terrace all the way back to that residential area,

23:34 which means there’s going to be a large retaining wall on the left-hand side. You can see that kind of circular area. These are some large components of the option A, which is driving some of the costs up on this portion of the project. The whole idea with option A was to really separate the commercial and residential sides of the operations. We didn’t want to have residents having to park or deal with some of the large commercial traffic. Yes, there is going to be some crossover. We are trying to save costs and therefore only having one scale, but these are the benefits that you have to deal with. These are the plus and minuses that you have to deal with. I just want to make sure people are aware of that. Yes, this gives up the whole layout of the facility. That swap shot area also changed slightly. We have utilities in the ground for that swap shot area. Again, we have a pad that would go in place and we had to change that location slightly. On to design or option B. This is the new design for 2022. The estimated cost for this is $1.68 million. It’s considerably less than option A. Dana, you want to talk about this again? Sure, yes. As evidenced by the poll that Andrew gave, one of the biggest concerns is

25:09 the flow of the site. This sketch shows the improved flow that we tried to achieve. What we have here, and this is again with the reduced version, we have entrance at Green Street. When you put the entrance at Green Street and egress at Beacon Street, all the sins of crossover start to resolve themselves. For instance, you can see the red dashed line would be presumably someone that enters, goes to the back of the site, and it’s a residential. It goes either to swap shed, the leaf, or to the recycling areas and egresses at Beacon Street. The blue stripe is a commercial vehicle that would go through the site, get weighed adjacent to the scale house at the upper left portion, the yellow area and the orange rectangular area is the scale here. Weight at the scale and then back dump refuse into the scale pit, which is the yellow area that is noted as existing pit structure. Dump refuse and then get weighed again, pay at the scale, and then egress onto Beacon Street. Then the pink line, the future line, is only for trailers going in and out of the pit area or employees that would be parking at the upper left portion.

26:42 It would park there once in the morning and leave at the end of the day. So much more simple flow on this project here, but it does use Green Street for egress, or excuse me, egress. Next slide. And one of the things that we would need to implement for option B is that we would need to implement a stickless system. So the stickless system is optical eye that would read your license plates as you came into the facility. Obviously, we’re currently using stickers. You would be buying your stickers online. Therefore, we could get all your license plate identification. And there would be an optical eye that would essentially identify you that you’re allowed to go into the facility. For the commercial, that they don’t need to purchase a permit, you could be taken in. And then as you exit the facility, there would be another optical eye that would read your plate and discount you from the facility. If you happen to use the facility and you were not permitted to use the facility, the system can be set up that it can actually send text messages to employees that are in the recycling area to notify them that there’s a car that has entered the facility that does not have a permit. Otherwise, you would need to station a person right at the Green Street entrance to check stickers. Obviously, this is a stickered facility that we use.

28:13 This is a close up of the flow at that entrance area. And actually, it’s been a slight revision to what you see on the sketch. That orange scale has been shifted up closer to the new scale house that’s noted in order to get a better angle and make it easier to go off in the scale, get weighed, and then back up. This is a critical area right here. Because you see that there are no straight lines. And obviously, when you’re going over scale, you want to go straight. And when you back up, you want to go straight. We don’t have that option here, given the angles of the pit relative to the egress. But we’ll work on this with a civil engineer and get this to be laid out as well as we can. Next slide. Here is a bird’s eye view of that pit area. And actually, the scale is adjusted on this bird’s eye view in the correct location and the angle. And you can see the pit is kind of a translucent structure to the left. And we’ll be using actually a kind of translucent fiberglass panel. So there’s a nice brightly lit area of no need for artificial lighting. The middle structure is the staff attendance hut. And this will be a simple bathroom, the locker area, and a breakout room with a kitchenette. And you can see the corner glass there is where the breakout room is. They’re parking. The blue truck and the

29:47 yellow or the gray little sedan there is where the employee parking would be. And then the scale house is the structure to the right that’s right next to the dump truck egressing. And Yeah, that actually is an old version of Scalehouse, but the new version is similar to this. The idea being that the person who is in the Scalehouse kind of has a full view of the whole area and Command Central and the back side. This is the new actually, the revised Scale Office. We actually reduced the size of this and did some value engineering here because we changed the program around between the Scalehouse and the Staff Lieutenant’s Hut. So this got changed slightly, a little bit smaller, but it does show the seat at the bottom Scale Office and that would be overlooking the pit area. And you can see the transaction window on the right-hand side and that’s where there would be a transaction drawer and an utility to make transactions with the folks who are egressing in their trucks. Next one. Here’s a view actually from the Scale Office showing the view of the site and the trucks coming up to pay.

31:20 And this is one of the things that we did in order to make this flow work was provide a secondary hut at the recycling area and some of the transactions for residential folks would be occurring at this hut. This freed up the Scalehouse to be primarily a place where transactions for the scale are occurring. So this is right next to the recycling and actually additional value engineering has been done. So the storage that we have to the right there is going to be in more container storage that we have at the recycling area. So we’ll save some more money there.

32:06 And that is the plan of that staff support hut with the break room. This is the one that’s right next to the pit structure. A modest size, you’ll note that we limit dimensions to 10 feet. One of the ways that we hope to save some money here is by perhaps going with modular construction and costs are reduced when you can ship things over the highway that are less than 10 feet. Next slide. And here is a view of that pit structure with the staff attendance building right next to it. And then one other structure that we’re putting on site is the slop shed. And this is the similar type of materials. One thing about this is that it needs to be a little bit bigger than the other structures. So this will have to be site built. And we’re going to just have a stick build construction with the same kind of fiberglass siding on the outside. No heating or cooling in this is only going to have electricity. So very simple structure. The idea being that the whole thing at the corner can open up and all of the carts that are within the structure, if you advance the slop side, please.

33:41 I can open out onto the asphalt and it just makes it a little bit easier for the folks who work there to roll things in and out when they’re on carts. But things can be brought out or you can walk within the structure and to take a look at what’s there. And then it could all be sealed up for the next Saturday morning. And obviously on Saturdays, this is quite a busy area and we recognize the need for this. Obviously there’s a lot of reuse that goes on and this is a huge part of recycling. And that is a fun program space in there. But the idea is that there will be carts, rolling carts along the edges and they can be pulled out or kept within depending on how staff want to manage the shed.

34:38 So at this point, we are going to open up for question and answers. So I’m just going to be, we have four people so far that I’m going to ask you to unmute and then we can continue on. So, I have. Excuse me, I didn’t want to have an opportunity for the for the for what you ask questions or you guys can ask questions at the same time or we can we can figure that out as well. We’ll make sure that everybody has an opportunity to answer any questions. Thank you. Hi, I’m, I’m the iPad. I want to first off, tell you that this is about the most disrespectful thing I have seen in town government in a very long time. We were told this was going to be the one and only public comment available on this project. You have used 40 minutes of our time. And you also put restrictions on what we could talk about, which I hope that other people will violate. I think all of you just need to be run out of town. We need a name and address for the meeting. Chairman, I thought it is ideal to have an address. Yes. The last party that spoke, do we have a name and address?

36:12 We do not think she’s I think she’s gone. Okay. I hold on one second. Let me have chosen respect and show my face. I’m going to apologize for for being out of line here, but I’m completely disgusted and and disappointed at the lack of decorum and respect for a municipal meeting. And and for disrespect for the form of our democracy. When people put election signs up behind themselves, slander people by calling them liars in public meetings and putting up signs about people that are elected and and volunteer their time to to help us manage the town of Marblehead. It’s it’s it’s it’s wildly disrespectful to our form of government. And and just be careful because because a lot of respect should be given to our form of government, or we’re going to lose it. Thank you to every member of the board of selection and Andrew petty for all the work that you put into this project. I’ve gone off track with with what I with what I was going to comment about the plans tonight. But but somebody putting up that about Helene is is wild the off base. I couldn’t be any more pissed off right now. Helene is the person that slowed the process down. Helene is the person that got this public hearing going.

37:46 This isn’t the one and only chance to to review this project because we’ve had two other meetings before this and public participation has changed the plan that you have before you tonight. So it’s so it’s funny that the last caller had an echo. So I’m guessing they might they might have had another another phone on with with that thing up about Helene. But I recognize the voice. So it’s it’s this is wrong. This is a lack of decorum and a lack of respect. And if we keep going this way, we’re going to have a mayor and marble head that just shows up and makes the decisions for you. My apologies, Mr. Chairman. No, thank you, Jack. Well spoken. Jack, you have any comments on the project? I might come back with that. I’ll land as soon as I calm down a little bit. But I’m pretty disappointed right now. Thank you. Raise your hand again. We’ll we’ll recognize you. I phone. I’m gonna ask it on you. I phone you have your hand up. I’m gonna move on to James for before you do that. Do you mind taking the Q&A off and showing the members here because I can’t even tell my own colleagues.

39:28 And I did not luckily see whatever was on me before. I’m not sure that sound can be up either. I don’t think there’s anybody’s taken a paper chip. James, you’re up. Okay, guys. Can you can you hear me? We can hear you. Yep. Excellent. I kind of I’m guilty, but I also want to echo Jack’s sentiments. I think a lot of the frustration comes from the animosity that started when people weren’t allowed to speak. And I know I came up and I saw you, Andrew, and we talked. And I do appreciate the latest plan. I feel like I had an opportunity to speak to you and put a little bit of input into it. So, again, I’m guilty of some of the shenanigans in the past with the animosity. Right now, I kind of like the direction that it’s going. My next concern is that, you know, you and I talked, Andrew. I’m the end user. I’m the guy that implements and puts things into motion and has to deal with the engineering. I’m a little I’m a little confused. Maybe Dana could explain to me.

40:59 I saw like one right angle in all the proposed structures up there. And when I see angles that are not 90 degree angles when you’re constructing something, I see cost added. Is there a particular reason that we have so many different angles just in the employee hut, in the warming station and the scale house and everything else? And second, as I’ve said before, can we not just put some metal back on the existing kit and save the taxpayers, me and everybody in here, more cost added to the project? And I’ll yield. Thank you. So when we take a look at that, the existing pit, we want to make sure that it’s going to last. We want to make sure that we know we would like to read rehab that so it’s going to last another 50 years. So the idea is to remove that skin from it. Yes, it would be easy just to put it back up and bolt it together. But we want to make sure that all that underlaying metal and all that stuff is structurally sound. We’ve had a structural engineer out that the frame of the structure is sounds. But some of the underneath is old and corroded. We’d like to clean all that. It’s going to need a new roof. We want to build something that’s going to last for a while. We don’t want to just slap this together and build something that’s going to last only 10 years. We do want to take our time and build something that’s worthwhile, even if it’s just redoing what we have.

42:40 I’m a man. I have a question on each one in Helene. I’ll just answer your question real quickly. You can campaign before papers come out. I checked with the town clerk and for plan A, there was a mention of separating materials for the, you know, the commercial business. That sounds like a lot of work. And I’m wondering, does that entail hiring more workers at the transfer station? And was that cost, if that’s the case, was that cost implemented? But it also sounds like it might take up a lot of time to do that if you’re separating everything. Those are big trucks. And then my question on B was, it seems like the pay window is very close to the scale, which I can see in theory makes sense. But also, trucks are all different sizes. My truck is not the same size as Kruger’s truck on here. I’m curious to hear what he has to say. So just those two questions, one on each one, I think plan B is better in my eyes, but I don’t consider myself an expert on it. So, yeah, go ahead. Yeah, so we designed plan A, you know, that sorting floor is to deal with wastebam material. We never know what mass DEP is going to do in the future. So we designed that facility, that sorting floor is to deal really with construction demolition material. So we have a bunch of different commercial operations that come in. We have clean outs. We have a lot of construction demolition material. That construction demolition material would be dumped on the floor.

44:18 We have a construction excavator that would sit inside that building. The excavator is there to sort and move trash in that top loaded trailers. So that, you know, he’s going to be sitting there anyways. And while he’s not moving trash around, like even the load, he would be spinning to the left and sorting that construction material, crushing it up and putting in 30 yard cans that could potentially go to a different facility rather than into the landfill. You know, when we designed this facility, again, you’re designing for 50 years and trying to think of some of the wastebans that could potentially come out of mass DEP. Again, we would have that employee. Currently, they would just be sitting in an excavator looking at everything that’s going around, sorting trash, and then dealing with some of that material. So for the scale house, so you would sit on the scale itself before you actually pulled up to the window. We’re trying to site that scale again. It’s a single scale to try to keep costs down. So you would sit on the scale and then actually pull up to pay. The whole idea there is that obviously, I just need the truck’s weight or the tear weight. For all of our commercial accounts that have accounts, we could have tear weights in there. And so you’re not going to be scaling out, you’re just be scaling in. I’m going to say Chamberlain. I mean, you’ve just got David Lieberman.

45:50 That’s yeah, you can do whatever. It’s different order for me, Todd. Oh, sorry. That’s right. We can go to David Lieberman. I think. Go right ahead, Brenda. This is Rick. That’s Brenda. We have two questions and the first one was just answered. We were curious about who was going to do all the sorting, but I think you answered that. The second question that we had was on plan B. We weren’t sure whether or not there was a residential drop off concept built into that. And how would that work for stuff that just doesn’t go into the bins out back? So what doesn’t go into the bins out back is we consider that commercial. So those are way and pay items. So you would follow that commercial line to deal with those items. Even for the I mean, right now, usually you weigh if you’ve got, you know, just something that you usually don’t like you have something and it’s not worth weighing. Right now we just throw it into the pit. We thought that’s what the residential drop off is something just wasn’t appropriate down below. So we’re just curious if that that commercial thing was designed for, you know, weighing your vehicle and trucks or so, you know, and you also have the drop offs for like, things that you don’t want down back like the TVs and you just, you know, stuff that that doesn’t really fit into dropping off a truckload, but just kind of fits into that model of we don’t want it out in the back thing.

47:29 Yeah, so for that the option B. So for your TVs, your monitors, or your other electronics, we could we would have an attendance booth out in that location. So you could pay for those items there. We probably set up another system where you can actually pay online and then bring a receipt with you to just show the attendance so there’s no transaction that occurs out there, but you would drop off those items in that place, similar to dropping them next to the scale house now. So you would move that light bulb shed out back as well. And that would just fit in with all the other recycling that we do. We also have, we often have a 30 yard container that sits in that residential area, and people throw away their large bulky plastics. So that would be another area for you guys to use and always the attendance there to help you out. So that’s the idea with that too. Okay, thank you. David Lieberman. You’re on me now. Yep. Okay. David Lieberman five Arnold Terrace. So the butter is here. We’re have had some assurances the last time that we did some on site tour of the project that the green street entrance would be relatively light traffic. So plan B sounds like the green street entrance is now going to be continuous traffic.

49:03 So, you know, apart from that assurance just being done away with with no, no particular consideration for the butters. Any thought being given at all to any kind of mitigation additional mitigation measures. That’s going to be flowing that street all day every business day. I mean it’s something that we’ll have to take a look obviously we can add any additional plantings those plantings are packed in those areas to give you that buffer. But, you know, that is something that we could take a look at. I mean at a minimum some kind of discussion about a sound baffle. So, you know, the truck traffic is going to be going through there continuously is going to be pretty darn unpleasant. And we are not you know we’re right on that on that road it’s not like it’s, it’s, you know, over the hill from us it’s right next to us. And you’re all Terrace. Yes. Any other questions or concerns. It’s the primary one from my perspective. Okay. We’ll take a look at that and see what we can do. Thank you, sir. Next time seeing Jim’s isn’t.

50:42 Yes. Yes. Can you hear me. Okay, Jim’s this in two mound road. And I know it might not always sound this way but I think a lot of us are here. And so it looks like both in a plan B are probably going to come to town meeting. And I just have a couple suggestions before that. And before I start that I do want to add, although I don’t live on on Terrace I do recall that promise being made to the people that live there so I think it’s very important that somehow, as a gentleman said some mitigation. Anyhow, town meeting will be here before we know it there’s a couple recommendations. I’m going to make is one is, I’m guessing the estimates we heard tonight were, you know, from the architect but you get a second and possibly third estimate before going into town meeting. For sure, it’s a best practice and I would actually say three. You’ll probably have to have those estimators work together to settle out on a number. The other thing and I’m sure you have it in there is make sure you have a healthy contingency in the budget because it should anyhow, I think this surprises with hazardous wasted behind you but you know, goodness knows what’s going to happen to the cost of construction.

52:16 And then the third and I did write a letter to the Board of Health and Board of Selectments I really urge you to for town meeting, similar to what the schools do is is appoint a independent building committee, very similar to what the schools do to be involved in this. And, you know, just to respect the Board of Health. It’s a small board in your elected based on your, you know, public health things, you really need to get. I think it needs to be about a nine person board with both users and employee plus, you know, experts from the community which I know you will get to volunteer, guarantee you, I think if you have that group. In place before town meeting that will go a long way to making a better town meeting in last thing in I promise I’m not going to get into the detail tonight wasn’t the night for it but I really suggest before town meeting, you have another form and go through the financials in legalities because you want those explain good, bad or different before town meeting because otherwise I think you’re just there. I just, again, it’s fine on having it tonight, I think you want to do that because I’ve talked to a lot of people. I think I’ve got a pretty good handle on what has happened but most people don’t pay attention what goes on in town, and they just fill in.

53:55 I think if you just come out, explain it, you’ll be better off. But anyhow, thank you and I hope you take those four suggestions to heart. We can go into town meeting finally. Again, I along with most people just want to get this thing done. So, thank you. Thank you. Lori Mckew. Yes. Hi, Lori Mckew from 26 P. Tylons. And I just had a question on option B with that new hut going into the residential area at the entrance. And Andrew had mentioned in his presentation that we’d be switching over to an optical sticker system. And so I guess it’s twofold. If we switched over to the optical system, would we need that hut? Because I’m assuming it wouldn’t be manned with somebody. And if we, do we need that hut at all, A, or B, if the hut is there, would it be an additional admin position? So the stickerless system would be close to the Green Street entrance. If you had the stickerless system in place using that optical eye, you would not need the hut down by Green Street. You would still have that little employee tenants booth, upper, up closer to the residential recycling trash area. And that way, there should always be the tenant there to assist the residents with what they’re trying to recycle, making sure things are done properly.

55:36 And then making sure, you know, if they had a TV or monitor, that they could be there to handle those items or light bulbs or any of that stuff. The attendance is always great to be there to kind of show people where things should go, you know, and show users what they need to do. Okay. So that wouldn’t be an additional job up at the transfer station? It would not be. Okay. Because I did note that it said fees, you know, so I was assuming it would be like another admin position. No, we currently have another person that we could easily slide, you know, that’s generally in those areas. But yeah, we would not be adding additional employees. Okay. Thank you so much. Yep. Hi, everyone. First, I want to reiterate Jack’s comments that I really appreciate everything you’ve done. It looks like a tremendous amount of work has gone into this. And I think it’s great. I live on Arnold Terrace. So just wanted to reiterate some of my concerns about the traffic level. And from a public health standpoint, I am a little bit worried about the car and truck fumes that come into our area, like on the hazardous waste day. It’s pretty intense, both the noise level and the car exhaust that hits all of our houses there. So I just wanted to throw that out there. There’s any way that the traffic pattern could come out that way instead of in that way.

57:06 There’s a lot of backup sometimes when that happens. And just worry about all the little kids and everyone breathing all that car pollution in. But thank you for listening. Thank you. Mr. Torrell. Hi. Okay. So at the last couple of meetings ago, when we discussed the open forum. In my notes, it said that we were going to clear the air and talk about what had happened in the past so that we can all move forward. Talk about why the legal fees were so high, why the settlement to the construction company, you know, all the stuff on that list. So I don’t know about anybody else who’s on the meeting, but I was I was hoping to talk about that a little bit. I was actually hoping that the town administrator and town council would have been here tonight. But I guess they decided to schedule a select meeting instead. So none of my business. Anyway, I also would like to just discuss the situation with my employees. I’m Terry Torrell, 113 Jersey Street. I’m also the president of the Marvel and Municipal Employees Union. The employees up there have had a pretty rough time over the past few years with all of the health and safety problems. There’s been dangerous conditions with exposed live electrical wires. The pit is losing pieces of it while they’re working.

58:38 Stuff’s coming away from the building. There’s unsanitary conditions inside of the trailer that went on for quite a while. I mean, in the summer, there was the stench of decaying rats was so bad in there that I thought the employees were going to get sick. Road and feces, water leaks, all that stuff that’s still in the trailer. I know that the town has tried to patch some of this stuff up and made it habitable for now. But I think if we’re talking about any of these projects, they’re going to take a significant amount of time. Even if we go for the patchwork job at the 1.67 million, it’s still going to take a considerable amount of time. And, you know, I just have two requests of the board and of the of Andrew Petty. I would like their six-year-old trailer, please replaced. It was meant to be temporary. It’s yes, it’s been patched up, but it’s just deteriorating before our eyes. It’s just going to continue to. I don’t want the employees in that situation anymore. I really don’t want the residents in the situation anymore. We need to have a clean, safe place for them to retreat. You know, God forbid somebody gets hurt and they have to go in and clean a wound or something and they’re in this disgusting trailer. Who knows what will happen? You know, in case of illness, somebody’s not feeling well, it’s really hot out. It’s got to be a place for these people to go. And they’re people. So I would also like a promise to the residents and employees that conditions like this will not be left unchecked again for six years.

1:00:09 They won’t, I just see the town simply reacting to the fact that they were caught. Hey, Union saw this, hey, State saw this, and oh, oh yeah, now we’ll fix it. So that was kind of my impression of how that all went down up there. And I do appreciate the fact that things have been, that there’s been an effort made to keep things safe, especially that electrical box that was an instant death trap. But, you know, I think that it’s important to explain to the residents what happened to that money. Where, what was the litigation? I don’t even know. Does anyone know what the litigation was? Just so that we can all move forward, I think the people of Marblehead are intelligent enough in that if you explain to them what happened and just come clean with it. You know, tell us what happened. They may very well vote for an override to build this place the way it was supposed to be built in the first place. So that’s my comment. Thanks everybody for holding this forum. I appreciate it. Andrew, you’ve answered some of the other people. Do you want to just express it to the people that haven’t been up to the transfer station that all those concerns were taken care of? Well, obviously we are addressing some of the concerns. And obviously one of the big, you know, one of the big things is obviously a new facility would address a lot of the concerns.

1:01:40 And obviously that’s why we’re continuing to meet to decide on option A or option B. Obviously, yeah, that is a temporary trailer. We do want these permanent locations. We do want a permanent scale house. You know, we do want to building that is functional and all this stuff. This is why we’re here. You know, obviously we need to move forward with these things. Well, it’s really not super obvious to me. I think that what’s obvious to me is just it’s a leased trailer. Just replace the trailer during the construction. That’s all. It’s not going to cost that much money. That would be that would be the biggest request that I have. Thank you. Thank you. Yep. Oh, yeah. Sorry. Jason Grazardo, 115 Elm Street. Yeah, I was looking at both of the options. It kind of occurred to me and Terry definitely stole my thunder now that I was going to have anything near this say about the staff up there. Both of the facilities for the staff were great and it made me wonder what occupational safety implications there might be one versus the other because I’m up there about once a week and I see the conditions are in. Maybe there isn’t one, but just if there is, I’d like to know. The second thing and then I have two more quick things and then you can answer whichever you want to address is I saw a lot of the trees being planted, which is awesome.

1:03:19 Wondering if you’re working with the conversation or conservation commission in terms of what gets planted that might be better suited for fumes or noise abatement and stuff like that. The last thing was I liked both of the designs and getting back to James’s statement about right angles. I think while I am interested in keeping costs low. I also am the son of an architect here in town. And we live in a beautiful community and I think there is something to be said for when you go to the dump, not having it look like a dump, whether it’s a year from now or 50 years from now. I do appreciate that there’s some thought going into the design up there. Thank you. I assume, as far as the concerns about health and safety, both plans would have to equally address the health and safety of the employees. Hi there. I’m Jean Lamkin, 19 Denver Street. Thank you for holding this event this evening. I mostly just want to, I guess, amplify some of the suggestions that an earlier speaker Jim Zissen offered and just really encourage you to go for those additional comparative estimates. Also to really think about establishing a more diverse and independent task force that could tap into different types of expertise that clearly would be needed for this.

1:04:54 Also might give everyone involved officially and unofficially in this process a chance to have a bit of a reset and a reframe of how we look at this incredibly important project. The notion of how you come to town meeting, what information gets offered, what budget contingencies, all the information that’s provided, I guess, on that part, I just, I really think how we convey this and how we engage with each other is almost more important at this point in our community than what we actually decide. And many people more intelligent than me have pointed out some of the issues and the options of the what we’re going to decide. And then the last one, again, I’m just going to repeat some great advice that Jim offered to establish another town forum, maybe to be unrelenting and are willing to be open and listen to each other, even when we perhaps annoy each other. It’s been a crazy weekend in the whole world. And I would just like to encourage all of us to give each other some grace and space, even if we’re being difficult and grumpy. We’re blessed to be in warm homes and on computers when people elsewhere in the world are in much harder shape. So let’s put our transfer problem in a one percenter’s problem. Let’s reset to solve this in a way that we’ll be proud of each other. And I would volunteer to help organize any of the things that Jim suggested. I think he had it right in the four. Thank you again very much for letting us have this time.

1:06:31 And I hope we continue to engage as opposed to consider this a check the box to be done talking and done listening. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you. All right. This PC area. Okay. We are Tom and Barbara day from 20 Stony Brook Road. And first of all, I would like to repeat what other people have said about granting us the opportunity to discuss what’s happening up there at the transfer station. So my questions are primarily about cost. You’ve you’ve presented two different options with two different price tags. And one of my questions is, is there money residual money from the previous approvals left with the Board of Health that could apply to to both of those options. And the second question related to that is, are you seeking any additional outside funding and if not, why not. So we currently have one point two five million dollars. So option B, you know, obviously with the be the lesser of the ass and you could continue to do value engineering with that project in itself. You could actually look at, you know, pre mods or, you know, modular buildings that that could be used for some of these facilities.

1:08:07 I don’t think we’ve ever looked at outside sources. You know, and I guess I would, you know, that’s not something that the town usually does, but that’s something we could potentially explore. But usually that entails like handing over facility to a company like JRM or waste management to run the facility and they cover some of those costs. And I’m not so sure that the towns looking for some, you know, a company like that to do that. Okay, thank you, Andrew. And I would like to endorse Jim’s suggestion to about a multifaceted oversight committee to to provide opinions and expertise in how this is constructed. Thank you. Thank you. I’m all that’s Bill Devell 19 long to drive a couple of maybe nitpicking questions. But one of the first I had was with both plan A and plan B, how many cars can dump at one time? We’re talking about having individual cars pull in turn around and back up and empty out the vehicle, their vehicle. How many cars can be at that discharge location at the same time? That’s question one. I have I have like four questions here.

1:09:41 And do you have an answer for that? Yeah, I recall there about six spaces for the option a residential parking spaces that they could dump at the same time there are 12 spaces for the scale house but six actively can don’t at one time. Now, I saw not to disagree with you, but I saw on the drawing I saw I saw parking type places we had stripes out for diagonal parking. That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about the people who have their, you know, their SUV loaded up in the back and they want to dump things in the, in the, in the pit, so to speak. That’s correct. Six people can can do that at the same time. Yes, that’s correct. There were about 12 spaces that were diagonal for for parking if they needed to to do any transactions in the scale house. But independent of that, there was a queuing area there are two two lanes there. And one of them was queuing. And in that queuing line, you would set up for a turning around and backing into the into that space and there are about six, six spaces there I believe five or six spaces. Second question. You talked about, I was in plan A but I’m not sure if it was in plan B. You have plan A you were having the, the residential waste come in from one door and the other side of the building have a commercial waste that would go into the same container.

1:11:13 I was just curious like, what is that container going to be? Is it just an open dump truck and you’re going to pull it out from time to time or is there a compactor? That’s correct. It’s an open top container. So they, we have those current tractor trailer trailers that are actually built for the tops to come right off and turn it into an open top trailer. The current system we use now has a compactor in it, which is much more efficient, I think, in compacting and waste so you can put more in. I just don’t see how that’s going to work. I’m just going to fill up one of those containers pretty quickly. So in option A, there’s an excavator that would fit inside the building and move waste around and load the trailers itself. And compact the trailers and stuff to settle the loads and make sure that they’re adequately packed. Well, I’d suggest you take another look at that because I don’t believe that that would happen as a practical matter. Moving on, another question. I wasn’t quite clear on the traffic flow. Could you explain in plan B, the residential, as patrons are coming in from Green Street? That is correct. And are they exiting on Green Street or are they going out Beacon Street? They’re exiting on Beacon Street. Okay. Can they also come in on Beacon Street if they want to or not?

1:12:49 They cannot, no. Okay. Just a minor question. Where does the oil recycling area go? Where is that planned and is it under a roof somewhere or shed? Yes, that would be put under a shed roof and that could be up front or that could also be moved in the back area with the other recyclables. Okay. The last question I have is trying to look ahead. If we’re seriously trying to make this last for 50 years or even 25 or 30 years, what thought has been given to leaving space for a second scale so that at some time in the future we might need that if we get more commercial waste in? So one of the biggest constraints that we have is the cap itself and so we can only put the scale in uncapped areas. So that’s essentially the area from Green Street and even the Green Street area is a little bit unsuitable. There’s a chunk of ledge and then there’s some unsuitable soil that sits under that road and you’d have to make sure that it’s a suitable location. You could potentially put one down there but the other location up by the Beacon Street would have to be essentially from that compactor towards Beacon Street.

1:14:22 It couldn’t be passed that compactor into the facility due to that liner. Okay, thank you very much. And Jack, I believe you’re back with questions. I am, thank you. And all good conversations tonight, which is great. I think it would be great if we could have another meeting after distilling all this information and these comments. I think there’s been some very good comments made tonight, especially from the owners at Arnold Terrace. Certainly, it should be reviewed as to whether some promises were made in the past and certainly what could be done to mitigate their concerns because they really are sort of right back up to that road that gets little use now. And also, I think it would be really helpful if we had a pros and cons or a comparison chart for both plan A and plan B, and then probably compare that to the demand that is there on a regular basis. Is demand being satisfied with one vehicle at a time? Is demand being satisfied with one scale?

1:15:56 Or do we really need to be able to back up six vehicles at one time? So maybe just a comparison and a pros and cons list on plan A versus plan B. It seems like plan B will get us by at a much cheaper cost, but I’d rather not be short-sighted on that, and it would be good to have those comparisons to present and also to keep the conversation going between now and town meeting. Thank you. Thank you. May I jump in with some comment about that? Because something that I know Jerry, Andrew can speak to more powerfully than I, but something that was very compelling in my understanding of differentiating plan A from plan B was with respect to your point about demand. And there is some really important data about how we can’t really increase demand as much as you might think if we were to have the bigger facility, because Andrew can you speak to, I believe it’s the DEP’s regulations on how much waste can leave the transportation. Yeah, so we currently, our permit is for a small operation, so small transportation facility. We’re allowed 50 tons a day.

1:17:30 That equals out to 15,000 tons a year. We currently, in the last couple years, we’re about 12,000 tons, 12,500 tons, and in this last year, we just broke that 13,000 ton mark. So even during our operations being that we’re open from 730 in the morning, closed at lunchtime for an hour, and then open again until 330, we’re pretty close to that maximum allocation for mass DEP. If we were to want to expand that 15,000 tons a year, we would have to open up to a large permitting process, which would have a large discussion and open public forum to the community. Essentially, it would be looking probably something like the planning board. And obviously, the biggest concern would be truck traffic within the whole town. So I don’t think that’s something that we’re looking to go forward with. So I think we would be keeping our small generator permit at 15,000 tons a year. So really, we don’t have a lot of wiggle room as far as capacity goes. So in no sense do we have envisions of this becoming a huge facility. Obviously, the facility is really designed to help the residents. The commercial side of it does offset some of the costs, though. Thank you.

1:19:01 I forgot to put my camera on. Let’s see. Alaina? Sue? Yes, hi. I have a quick question. I’m after the daily item, and I just wanted to double-double the numbers of the estimated cost. So the estimated cost for design option B is estimated at $1.68 million. And?

1:19:48 Is $6.275 million. Sorry, could you repeat this? Yeah, $275. Okay, gotcha. Thank you so much. Brian’s iPhone?

1:20:11 Yes, thank you. 15 Waterside Road, Brian Wheeler. Just wanted to make a point on the Green Street entrance. I just think it’s going to be a horror show when that new unit, those housing units, gets filled in there with their entry and an accident entry on the hill and the base of the hill. And then traffic moving and coming down green to the left onto that road, coming down and crossing over to get back in and out. I think it’s just going to be a challenge for everybody on that specific road with a volume of traffic that’s going to go through there. Thank you so much. Thank you. And then James, do you have any other questions? Obviously, your hand is still up. Do you want to ask more questions?

1:21:00 Yep, yeah. So, I’m a little, I’m a little miffed. I mean, I thought we were making progress towards a solution tonight. And now we have the residents that are on Arnold Terrace and Tyrego Way and the Abutters, and I’m one of them that’s on Blueberry Road and Cheever Avenue and everything else that are complaining about the fact they bought a house next to the dump, and they don’t want the traffic going by their house. I understand, but we also have to look at the big picture of what is the solution. Is the solution one way in, one way out, residential, commercial, ease the traffic and the smog and everything else? And I just, there is no perfect answer for the whole thing, Andrew. You and I talked. I don’t think getting into the minutia of having people that live next to the dump, myself included, saying I don’t want it in my backyard. We have to come together as a community and figure out how to make it work. The numbers still frighten me, and the designs of the buildings and stuff still frighten me. We talked about that, but let’s keep it simple. Okay, I get it. You want, we want new siding on the pit? I’m all for it. That’s okay. But we all need to come together as a community. Seriously, everybody on here right now, we need to have a public forum in honest discussion and say what do we want?

1:22:42 Do we want cars going in one way, not both ways? On Green Street and both ways on Beacon Street? We have to come together and just make a forum and say this is the best solution. And the only way we’re going to get it, unfortunately for you guys at the health department, is to have open forum in open discussion. And that’s all I want to see happen. I understand all the emotions. But please, people, as Marvel headers, let’s work together to get a good solution without it costing us millions of dollars so that when I retire, I can’t afford to live in this town anymore. Okay, that’s my big thing. Thank you very much. I’ll stop. Thank you. And then there’s one other person, iPhone, that still has their hands up. I just had to go back to them. I just want to make sure that you don’t have anything else to say.

1:23:47 Okay, so I really appreciate all the comments tonight. Andrew? Andrew? Go right ahead, Jerry. Yeah, I don’t know how to put my hand up, but I just like to address a couple of things. You can introduce yourself, Jerry, please. Oh, yes, I’m sorry. Jerry Smith, I’m the project manager, the project manager on the job. To Mrs. Zissin’s comment, this has been worked on nonstop by Winters Street Architects for five years. And everybody hated the design that when we first started this round of discussions. And the problem was always that Green Street was not available. When Green Street became available for discussion, Dana put together a stellar plan in a couple of weeks. So I understand, I’ve lived in this town for 77 years. I used to shoot rats up at that dump when I was a kid. The dump is where it is. The access points are where they are. There’s not really any change in to make it, you know, you can come in by hood molded foam, I suppose.

1:25:24 But that ship has long since sailed because everything up there is capped. We can’t move anything now that’s on site. So I’m afraid that, you know, Green Street is pretty much a reality if we want to have a safe and efficient operation. Let’s see, there was something else. I’ve been sitting here so long. But at any rate, you know, Dana has just done a marvelous job. And I think, oh, I know what it was. As far as another committee and more meetings and conversations, we’re getting close to the point where this goes to bid. And at that point, it’s not like when you build the house. This is a contractor is going to give a number. And this time, hopefully, we’ll hold into it because there aren’t any gross errors and emissions in the plans. And negotiations after the plan is settled cost a lot of money and they delay the job. And it’s just, I know that everybody wants something, but I just, there’s been a lot of considerations that have gone into this design that don’t meet the eye.

1:27:09 And some of them were arrived at after years and somebody said, oh, how about if we did this? That would work. But at some point, you got to pull the trigger and do it. And I think that time is now. And as far as a committee to supervise the actual production of the dump, that is really counterproductive. Professionals will be there doing what they’re supposed to do. And it can be open. Anybody can know anything they want to know. But once this thing gets, once the plan is done, the time for input is gone. That’s all I get to say. I appreciate the conversation. I especially appreciate Jack Atchison’s comments. I couldn’t agree with him more. So that’s very, we’ve appreciated all you’ve done for the town over the past, what I say, decade. No, not yet. It’s getting close, but that hasn’t been yet. I’m trying to live long enough to get it done. Thank you. Thank you. We have a few more now. I’ll go back to Paul Manley.

1:28:41 Good evening. I’ll be brave. I just want to say thank you for giving me the opportunity to say a few words. I also want to, I appreciate everybody coming in here this evening. I do appreciate all the work that’s been put into this project. I know it’s not easy. And I appreciate what you’re doing. The gentleman who just spoke, I have to disagree on something. First, I’d like to ask, was there a traffic study completed as far as Green Street? We will have to take a look at this. I know there was a traffic study that was done quite some time ago. Okay. Was the town’s police department, fire department, and public works involved in that traffic study? Yes. Okay. I just can’t, for the life of me, understand why Green Street has not become available since it was closed in the 80s because of the fact that Green Street at that time couldn’t handle the traffic flow. Now you have an influx of developments. You’re going to have more cars, more people coming in and out of the side streets. I’m going to be talking about the police in and out of the developments traveling to and from along Green Street to echo a few of the comments that have been said here tonight. It’s going to be a traffic nightmare. I live at 14 Arnold Terrace. I bought my unit knowing that I was going to live next to the dump. I don’t have a problem with living next to the dump. That’s not my concern.

1:30:22 My concern is the noise level and the public safety issues that are going to present themselves on Green Street. I think you really, really need to think about using Green Street as an ingress for this particular project. As a public safety professional myself, I can see the handwriting on the wall. So all I ask is that you consider or reconsider Green Street. And I appreciate you allowing me the opportunity to speak. I appreciate all the efforts that are put into this project. And that being said, I’m done. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I just wanted to follow up a couple of questions after what Jerry said. He said something about gross errors and emissions in their original plans. I just wanted to know what that meant. And talking about the fact that we didn’t need a committee, a building committee, because there are going to be plenty of professionals around. We weren’t there professionals around back then when we had the gross errors and emissions in the plans. Can I answer that? Sure. Thank you. Okay. I’ll give you a quick example. Which, and I, I had issues with this engineer that designed the original project from day one. But anyway, when the new contractor, who was a bit of a shyster,

1:32:04 enough said on that subject, when he started to move the waste, the huge volume of waste, it had to be collected up from basically out on the doorsteps of many houses, the whole neighborhood, Green Street, everywhere. And putting it in a pile. There was a study done, I think the cost was around $50,000 to establish how much waste was in the dump. That never was given. There was a very thick document I was given. I glanced through it and said, okay. When we got into the job a little bit, every time we came to the limit of waste, which meant we didn’t have to go any further. We didn’t have to clean. We have a gun which we tested the soil with. And the soil was contaminated. It was dirty. It ended up that of the 50, I believe, test pits that were dug by the original engineering firm, somewhere in the mid-40s were contaminated. This also explains where the money went once again. The state of Massachusetts was having, the only thing they were interested in was did everything get cleaned up. The contractor had vastly more material to take and put in a pile and put under the cap. And that’s where the money went.

1:33:41 And that’s when I say the original engineer did a great disservice to the town. And that’s where all the litigation money went to try and recover some of that money from him. Okay. Well, that’s kind of nice to know where the litigation… Yes. Just one more… And as far as the litigation, I’m not going to take any position on what I think of the outcome of the litigation. But, you know, you hire your lawyers and then you let them do their job. Yeah, to the table. And that’s the best deal the lawyers said they could get. We were looking for a lot more. What did they get? I don’t know. I saw… The $1.25 million that we got left over, I think. Right, Andrew? The settlement was larger than that, but we still had to pay other people back and stuff like that. Yeah, okay. But whatever it is. Roughly. So my next question, Jerry, I’m glad that you’re answering this. This is great. When you… Did you know about this extra waste when we all appropriated more money for a building? No. So obviously… You thought that this was all going to happen. No, see, underground construction is very difficult and very different than vertical construction. You’re not going to drill a test pit every 10 feet. You know, obviously, you know, they have… They have to come up with limits and try to identify those limits. But once you start to excavate…

1:35:14 But it’s never done, right? Say that again. You said the study was never done. No, it was done. The studies were done. No, all the studies were done. You know, plans were developed. But yes, there were a lot of errors and emissions on the plans. But once you get into waste removal, you have to remove everything that you find. So if I have a test pit over here and it’s clean, right in the middle can be dirty. And you have to continue to excavate that material until it’s gone. And it can run very, very deep. And you had no idea that that was going to happen when we voted the 5.75 million to build the building. That’s correct. So you had to use all that money for the litigation. That’s what happened. You have no choice but to try to recover and try to do it. So I was wondering, that was a long… That was quite a litigation for that much money to lease a me. It took years. We began to fight with the contractor from the start of the project. Okay, so that would segue into my next question. You’re saying you don’t need a building committee. I think you do. Because look what happened the first time. It’s better to have all those people in place. We hear you. We don’t need them. They’re really professional, very knowledgeable, and they donate their time. Okay. We will bring that back to the board and the board to discuss that. Okay. Could I just stick in with Terry? We did have a building committee throughout the cleanup.

1:36:47 Todd was on the building committee. How many years did you sit on that committee? Seven years. How many? Seven years. Seven years. We had a building committee for seven years. Was Todd on the board at the time too? Yes. I was. Okay, and your profession, Todd, is…? My profession is dentist. And you’re on the building committee, okay? Yes, as the board of health representative to the building committee. Okay. Okay. Who else was on the building committee? There was an architect. There was a public service person. Was the architect the one that we hired? No, it was a construct person. There was a former police officer. There was… You were on a… There was engineers. There was attorneys. You know. Yep. Someone who… So you’re getting up to your own one-hundredth committee? They were all people that fit a good representation. Someone that had been on the… Either had been or was on the finance committee. It was on the finance committee. It was the health director, the former health director. Wade? Yes. Okay. All right. I’m just wondering, so that’s not something you want to do again then? You’re just going to… Nobody said that. Does that happen on the building committee?

1:38:17 Nope. Nobody said that. I’m just saying that we did have a building committee. Oh, okay. Obviously, this project that we ended up in litigation, even after we had seven years of a building committee, that would qualify in professional in their fields. Okay. But the construction person hired was not… He was a shyster from… But I didn’t say that. Nobody… No, Gary did. I said it. He was a shyster. The engineer was a problem and the contractor was a shyster. All right. Well, let me clarify the shyster comment. He worked every possible angle. He delayed… He behaved in a stunningly unprofessional manner. The parking bulb was in front of loaded concrete trucks, tried to come in and pour concrete on the site. He’s not somebody I would ever work with again. Okay. In the engineering firm, there were serious errors and emissions, and that’s what we went and chased him for, and we got what we were able to get from this. So probably a better vetting process this time around, so we don’t lose all that money this time, right? Because it might not be so… So, vetting, that’s the problem. This is the system that we’re… You have to take the low bid in Massachusetts. You don’t have a choice for some of this stuff, unfortunately. Okay. But they all are well-known in the field.

1:39:48 Okay. All right. Thank you. That clears up quite a bit. I’m glad that you answered those questions. I appreciate it. Anytime. I’m always around. Okay. Thanks. Jim? Jim’s this one from Two Month. I wasn’t going to speak again, but I do have to address something that Mr. Smith said. First of all, I was not critical at all of Dana Wheeler. In fact, I know Dana. I know his boss, Mark Mesh. And Winnes Street Architect does wonderful work. So, Mr. Smith, please don’t put words in my mouth. And I will also say, I’m on the Brown-Gary School Building Committee. The building is operational. The building committee is still working on it. We came in under budget and ahead of schedule. And there was a reason for that. Okay. You need a building committee. And you need to have them participating very much. Not going to belabor what Terry already said. We hired Gilbank Construction. They did a wonderful job. They did a wonderful job. We did not hire, quote, Shyster. Okay. We had great engineering firms. We vetted them very carefully. Yes. And we were, like every other construction project, subject to lower bid. So, please, again, for the record, Winnes Street Architects, a wonderful firm.

1:41:22 And I’m just very surprised that a member called Maverick Construction, Shyster, I think the Board of Health already went through this, where they were bad-mouthed. And Andrew Petty actually had to give a disposition to say that’s not true. I’m just kind of really shocked. I just said the board did not use that word. And it’s not a word that I find very bad. I just heard, again, I don’t want to derail the meeting. We can have another meeting about mitigation and finance. But Winnes Street Architects, wonderful. I never said that, really. Get a building committee that actually runs a project and not blown off and not have the town council run the project. Jim? Yep. Just so you know, I hired Winnes Street Architects to do this job. I’ve been so much into them. Yeah, they’re great. Fine. So, that’s just, and if I misspoke, I’ve been in heavy rain construction for over 35 years. And I know all the angles and all the ways to rip off money from clients by manipulating things. I won’t say it’s a Shyster act. I know how it’s done. I’ve watched it be done to the tune of huge sums of money. And Maverick is one of the masters, one of the masters at that.

1:42:59 And they really took the town for a ride, just so you know. One of the worst rides I’ve ever seen anybody taken before in 35 years. I think that’s clear. And I think we should have another meeting to talk about that. Fine. So, our goal, just to point of order, our goal for this evening was to move forward, not to move backwards. So, I think we’ve gone backwards enough for this evening. I think we should continue to move forwards and plan ahead instead of going over the past. Does that sound good to everybody, Andrew? Yep. Playing Joanne? Yes. Okay. And I just want for the record that the board did not speak disparagingly about any people that we hide in this community. Yes. It was a very challenging project and Maverick’s work was very good. Maverick’s work was very good, you say? Is that you said Maverick’s work was very good? Yes. Okay. Yeah. That’s like for the record, please put this in the record, Andrea. The board did not speak disparagingly about anybody that we employed for this job. Ross, I thought Doug just asked for us to close to…

1:44:38 No, I think we should move forwards. We’re not going to continue to dig through the past. I have a quick question on the operations for the commercial. Your name, please. Ross Riley, 78 Kenneth Road. I’m a contractor here in town. I’m just curious as to on the contractor side where you’re going to have this excavator separating. I’ve seen how I dump out of a truck. I see what other guys dump out of trucks. Someone’s going to be down there in an excavator. It’s going to be pretty ugly. And do you have more than one container where it’s going to be moving the stuff? I mean, do you have an operation that we could actually see where you… What your planning is actually working that we could actually view? Obviously, we have that floor plan. And then that floor plan, you have two entrances for commercials. So you have, obviously, a trash truck that could be dumping residential refuse. You have the other entrance that could be a sorting floor that could be used for multiple different operations. Building and shelter material. A sorting floor that we could actually go see an operation that is working. I just… As a commercial contractor, I’ve never seen one. I don’t see how that’s going to be viable without adding another employee full-time there. Okay. Thank you. And, Dean, again?

1:46:09 I’m sorry? Nope, I’m moving on. Yep. Hi, Mrs. Cheney, just coming back. And I just wanted to sort of also, I guess, read into the record and give us all a chance to learn together. I think the expression is, when you know better, do better. And the word Shyster was introduced to this conversation in a number of different contexts. And I would just like us to, especially in light of some of the anti-Semitic incidents that have happened in this town over the past few years. If you don’t know, it is absolutely a pretty egregious anti-Semitic slur. Because I’ll just read from the jewishtimes.com. Shyster. Readers, please be warned and take care that this one is particularly offensive. The word was defined as unscrupulous lawyer in 1843’s U.S. slang, according to the Online Etymology Dictionary, probably altered from German, Shyster, meaning incompetent worthless person, from Shyster, meaning pardon me, but shit, from old high German schism to defecate. I’m not here to judge. I’ve learned a lot of things that words I thought were not meaning anything mean really striking things. So I just offer that here for us all to learn from. Thank you very much for that. I apologize.

1:47:40 I had no clue that there was any such implication in that word. That’s why I took issue with it right away. Well, thank you. I learned something today. Okay, so moving on from that, I do have a last poll to close this out with. Something very quick. I’m just going to put this up and people can run through this. All right, I’m going to end the poll at this point and share the results.

1:49:38 So we had even split here 41 percent, liked option A, 59 percent, liked option B. And you supported an override for this project. This is also very interesting. So 51 percent said yes, 49 percent now. So thank you very much, everybody, for joining our community forum regarding the transfer station tonight. And the board will need to make a motion to adjourn. But thank you very much, everybody. Thank you, Andrew, for all that you contributed to this tonight. I want to thank the community for coming out, speaking from the heart, and those that did speak from the heart. And I’d like to thank Jean Lampkin personally. She said something that I thought that I really didn’t feel that it was my place to make that statement tonight. So thank you, Jean. And I still think you’re terrific, Jerry. Thank you, Elaine. I do apologize. I had no idea. I had no problem. Motion to adjourn, yes. Motion to adjourn. Is there a second? All right, Ms. Hazeland. Yes, in favor. Miss Miller. Sorry. That’s right. Mr. Miller. In favor. Dr. Belf-Becker.

1:51:10 In favor. Thank you, everybody. Thank you. Have a good night, everybody.