Board of Health: March 8, 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.

0:00 On Friday at 7 30, we’ll call the meeting to order. I have to read our opening lines. So, pursuant to Chapter 20 of the Acts of 2021, an act relative to extending certain COVID-19 measures adopted during the state of emergency signed into law on June 16, 2021, this meeting will be conducted by a remote participation. No in-person attendance by members of the public will be permitted. Specific information and the general guidelines for remote participation by members of the public and or parties with the right and or requirement to attend this meeting can be found on the Town of Marblehead’s website at www.marblehead.org.

0:46 For this meeting, members of the public who wish to watch or participate in the meeting may do so in the following manner by inserting the meeting ID number 434-701-1658 on Zoom or dial in phone number 253-215-8782 or 301-715-8592. The following board members are participating remotely in tonight’s meeting. Andrew, if you could do a roll, please. Ms. Helene Hazlett. Present. Ms. Joanne Miller. Present. Dr. Todd Belfbecker. Present. Okay. First item on our agenda is to approve the meeting minutes of January 11, 2022. We have a motion to approve. Is there a second? Second. Ms. Helene Hazlett. I mean vote. I approve. Ms. Joanne Miller. In favor, approve. Dr. Todd Belfbecker. In favor. And the next item is the executive session minutes of January 11, which are closed for the time being and we still need to vote to approve them. So moved. Second. Ms. Helene Hazlett. In favor. Ms. Joanne Miller. In favor. Dr. Todd Belfbecker. In favor. The next item on our agenda is an annual update from the Marble League Counseling Center.

2:22 And we want to welcome you for being here. And if you are ready with your report, we’ll unmute you and we can have our annual discussion. Great. Thank you guys so much for welcoming us. Hi, Terri. Hi. How are you doing? Thanks for having us tonight and for your continued support for Marblehead Counseling Center. Most of you know me and you know I’m a little bit of a talker, so I’m going to keep my remarks brief. As I know you guys have a whole agenda to get to, but and then I’ll hand it off to my board co-chairs, Tim Phillips and Frank Sweeney. So I think Andrew, if you have a slide deck for us, do mine. And who do you want me to unmute? So I have… You have Frank Sweeney and JT Phy. Hi. JT Phillips. Tim Phillips. Thanks. No problem. So you should be muted at this point. Frank, can you… I’m good. I’m muted. So just a reminder, don’t hit the mute button. Otherwise, I’m going to have to unmute you and stuff like that. And I can roll the PowerPoint presentation that you guys have put together. So I will share my screen, but you will need to ask me to advance the slides. Got it. Thank you. Mike, just introducing yourselves just for the record,

3:53 please. Sure. Thanks, Todd. I am Terri Allen McDonough and I’m the Social Service Director for Marblehead Counseling Center. My name is Tim Phillips. I’m co-president of the board along with Frank Sweeney of the Counseling Center. I am Frank Sweeney, co-president of the Marblehead Counseling Center. Welcome all. Thank you. Thanks again. Andrew, can you just flip to the next one, please? Great. So now in its 53rd year, Marblehead Counseling Center continues to collaborate with the Board of Health to provide the town with counseling, education, and community services. 53 years ago, the town saw the need to provide mental health counseling for folks who could not afford it or who did not ensure it. Can you flip to the next one, please? So again, the initial reason for funding was to provide mental health services. It was also around substance use disorder and the community saw the need to respond to that. So at the beginning, the majority of the funding was provided by the town. 35 years ago, the Board of Directors got really active and really went in a direction to begin fundraising for the building itself and

5:30 for the services provided by the Counseling Center. About 30 years ago, the town contributed two-thirds of the funding, which was about $140,000 a year. As years went on, the town began to reduce financial support. We’ve always had our backs and been here for us, and we feel that. About 20 years ago, as recent as the year 2000, the town of Marblehead provided approximately 40% of the funds. And then in 2010, the town provided $60,000 a year, which is now some 20-plus years later, excuse me, 12 years later, is now a little more than 10% of the total budget for the year. So 15 years ago, the total caseload was under 3,000 sessions a year, and currently, the caseload is over 7,000 sessions a year. The Friends Group raised additional money for the center to enhance the building and continues to support our services. Basically, I just kind of want to

7:04 wrap up my piece. This is a little bit about the history. Just to express our appreciation again for the Board of Health and the long history of support that y’all have provided to us. We are a really unique community service, and as an organization, we’re really woven into the fabric of the town, and other departments have come to rely on us. Police and fire, you know, officers clear a call and go home that night and worry about the way things were left or something that’s just not sitting right, and they give us a call. And out of those calls, we may engage with social services, we may engage the family with mental health, with therapy. We have referrals come from the schools, the library, the veterans agent, the health department, and local utility providers. They noticed, hey, someone has consistently been paying their bills for 20 years, and all of a sudden, they feel something’s off, and they contact us. We’re a part of this community, and we continue to partner with you to respond, especially after COVID, to our community’s mental health crisis. So, I’m going to hand it off to Tim Phillips. Thank you, Terry. Appreciate it, and thanks again to the Board for allowing us to give you guys an update. We’re really a

8:34 24-7 organization. Since COVID, our demand has been up twofold. I think, Terry, took you through. Our sessions are almost up two and a half, but our demand is up twofold. We’re getting double the requests for service, which has been very difficult. Our wait list has grown. We currently have about 110 members from Citizens for Marblehead on the list, and the big stress points that we have is the dearth of mental health professionals, the clinicians in the marketplace, are very difficult to recruit, retain, and fund. That’s the number one thing. And the second thing is the amount of time it takes to credential not only a client or a patient, but also a clinician. The way the state works, it takes quite a bit of time, and the money that was provided to us by the town historically kind of gave us a buffer zone so that we could see those people, use the town money, and enable the timeframe to kind of develop fluidly so that we can get people credentialed and get them seen by a clinician, and that way we can get insurance from them. Terry mentioned the Friends campaign. That is our number one kind of resource to fundraise. We also have a golf tournament that was done semi-annually, but we’ve raised, our fundraising’s up about 60%. We’re well over $100,000. We traditionally were in the 50 to 60 range. So we’ve really worked hard to raise more money, but quite frankly, given our current financial

10:05 state, it’s going to be difficult for us to continue to operate in perpetuity unless we get more support somewhere else. Could be the town, could be the state, could be the federal government. We did ask for some ARPA funds to enhance our electronics record system, which is antiquated. We’re waiting on John McGinn and the select one to give us word back on that, but that’s kind of tenuous. And as you guys know, getting money from the state and federal government has been, I would say, lacking, even though we’ve made efforts to communicate to our representatives, be it Lori or Seth. So that’s been kind of an issue for us. So two-thirds of our operating expenses are covered by our revenue, but one-third is kind of open-ended, and that’s really where the stress point is. So what we’re basically asking of you folks is to see if we could get back to where we were historically, which is around $120,000. To represent what that money would provide for us, it would give us kind of an additional 903, 905 sessions, which would equate to about what our wait list is for the people in Marblehead currently there. So it would allow us to close that gap by allowing us to hire more therapists and enable us to see more people who are in need within the town. So that’s really what the request is, and I know Frank would like to kind of add a little bit to that as well. Sure. Well, thank you all. Thank

11:42 you for your support, and thank you for your personal dedication to the town. You play a very valuable role. I just question, I do wish to add a finer point to the conversation. You know, we are experiencing national mental health crisis, and this crisis is really on our doorstep locally in Marblehead. Marblehead Counseling Center is an essential service to the town. I’ve been on this board for a little over four years. I’ve only seen increasing demand, record sessions, a record backlog of people requesting a meeting, and most of these are children. I know that the slide says 110 Marblehead residents. I believe our backlog is over 300, and it is growing daily. Honestly, as an organization, we are paddling very hard, but we are definitely taking on water here, and given the current demand, this is absolutely not sustainable. We can get this additional funding. You know, we can definitely get our head above water and address this growing backlog of Marblehead kids that are seeking therapy sessions. I know you’re doing a valuable job for the entire town. I really just want to say thank you and really appreciate you listening to our message, and hope you can understand. You know, we’re trying to make this a sustainable

13:14 organization, but the demand is so high today. But again, it’s such a dedicated board and a dedicated group of people that we have done. We’ve accomplished a lot, but the demands are making it overwhelming at present, just the sheer numbers. So again, thank you. I really do appreciate your listening and your concern. Thank you guys. And Andrew, if you could just put this slide right there. There’s one more. Yeah. So this just represents the piece, you know, of the Marblehead residents. So you can see the numbers that we serve here. And again, we value our relationship, our partnership, and hope that we can continue to work with you guys, continue to serve the Marblehead community. So thank you guys for your time. Do you have any questions at all for us? Yes. Hi, Elaine. Hi. Joanne, you know, maybe you want to go first because you’re chairing the task force. You might have some questions and answers because I’ve got sort of different kinds of questions. Do you have any? I mean, if you don’t, I’ll go. Go ahead, Elaine. I think I

14:46 have seen formulating, but I’d love to hear. I just wanted to give you the opportunity where you’re a representative and chairperson of that committee. I’m the past president of the Marblehead Counseling Center. So I want you to know that whatever I say is from the heart, and it’s very close to me. And what I didn’t see in the slide, and maybe it should be, is that it did start out to instill, and now, the ports, like you say, the employees. But you talked about the fire and police that come home disturbed and all. But it was one of the main reasons, along with the drug and alcohol abuse that was skyrocketing at the time. So maybe that would be nice to add to the slides. The thing that has changed, which really I question, and I’ve questioned it for a couple of years, is that you’re going outside of the community to service other people from other communities. And I wonder if you’ve made presentations to those communities. If you’re asking us to support those people, those people, that’s not a, people from other communities, that I’m not, you know, we’ve got 110 marble headers on the weightless, but there’s more than double, you know, including the other communities. So I hope that we’re not seeing, you know, our own marble headers are not being held back because of people that have

16:16 slots, that have slots in that their communities are not subsidizing. So maybe you could answer that for me. And then I have something else. It’s a good question, Elaine. First of all, all the money that is currently divided to us by the Board of Health goes directly to Marblehead residents. Second point is we have not, we’re a Marblehead organization. Do we see other people from other towns? Yes, we do. Again, we’re seeing more obviously because of the impact of COVID and the state of mental health within our, you know, our neighborhoods. But all the money that we ask is going to Marblehead residents. We have not solicited support from other towns because, again, we view ourselves as a Marblehead organization. You know, I don’t know what year you were president of the board, but the mix has changed. We do see a lot of people from Swamscot. But as I said, everything that we’re asking for is the basic point of it is the Marblehead residents on the wait list. We want to get them off the waves. And that’s why we need the 60K. But you’re rather, the people from other communities are taking up slots and taking up hours that Marblehead people might be able to take. I don’t sit on the board anymore, so that’s your decision. But it’s something that I crushed in the last few years. The other thing, we were doing a fifth, I was on the committee to do the 50th anniversary, and then boom, we had COVID. People are now getting back to doing their fundraises. Are you planning to do that? Because

17:47 that should bring in the 100,000 that you might be looking for. We are planning to do that, yes. We were kind of waiting until everybody could kind of meet without a mask on, and that would appear to be sometime in the fall. So that’s what we’re targeting right now. They have the function in the fall. Yes. Still a similar event that we talked about earlier? Still a similar event, yes. So you should be able to take care of it. And the other thing, as far as the money, we’ve already put our budget in our budget request for this year. So not sure that you may be asking for this down the road, but it certainly wouldn’t be for the next budget year. In other words, the 23 budget is already requested. Well, I mean, it has been submitted. We understand that. I think part of the objective was to have a conversation with you and give us, give you a state of where we’re at, and the risks that we have staying in place within the community without further support. Again, we’re we’re very appreciative of what the town has provided. We obviously operate out of the Hobbs building, which the town also allows us to work out of with a minimal amount of rent. But we’re struggling with the demand, as our most major community health organizations. We’re not unique in that way. Every community health, mental health organization is struggling. So

19:21 you know, that’s that’s part of the challenge. So we, you know, the objective tonight was to open up a conversation. We understand how we. I just weigh in on the local preference. So a lot of times if we’re seeing folks from other communities that may be in slots during the day when a majority of the waitlist may be kids who can only be seen after school. So we definitely have that local preference for Marblehead residents and also for the social service component that is solely available to Marblehead residents, which is part of that resource network and referring folks to other supports, financial assistance, housing and things like that. And that’s only unique to Marblehead. I’ve got one last statement and then kind of a statement and a question. I sat in on the of these Selectments meeting that you were talking about and I did ask a member of the board of Selectment afterwards if I was confused that you were asking for 120,000 in funding or was it for the roof? And the select person seemed to think that you were asking for a roof. So now I hear that you’re asking for funding to have more services. So do you need both or is it just? We need both. We went to the Selectment to talk about the Hobbs building, which is kind of falling apart on top of this. It’s not necessarily about

20:55 the roof. It’s about the boiler’s just about gone. We put in $70,000 of the counseling center’s money to upgrade a lot of the building, particularly the first four wiring. We put the server back in the building. We painted the outside of the building, which was basically peeling apart. So part of the session with the Selectment was to kind of make them aware that, hey, this asset the town owns is kind of falling apart. We’ve got trees at risk of falling on the roof. And that was really the objective of that session, Helene. This is more of a conversation about our operation and how we can meet the demand. It’s funny, the number was the same, wasn’t it? Yeah, the numbers pretty well the same. But I mean, we’re not asking for you for 120. We’re asking for 60 to get back to where we were historically. All right. Well, maybe we can have more of a conversation another time. You know, you’ve got the Ebbla school right next door. I don’t know whether that’s going to be available or things like that. So I guess I’ve had my turn. Thank you. Did you have a question? I do. Oh, go ahead. I just thank them. And for all that they do. Yes, I’d like to start with that as well. And I’m so impressed with the work that you do and meeting this enormous challenge in our community. I’m so impressed. And I just had a question about you mentioned the challenge funding to get clinicians, more clinicians to be able to

22:31 meet the demand of our residents and population. And I was curious to know what I had come to understand is that it’s very difficult to find clinicians that are available. Everyone’s maxed out. How realistic is it to be able to hire people? Can I get an understanding of what your expectations are with respect to getting clinicians to come to the counseling center? Well, we’ve been lucky this year actually, we have attracted three new therapists to the center. So I think our reputation is out there. And I think that kind of speaks for itself. And Michael Pelletier does a great job recruiting. And we’re out there looking for him. We also have interns that sort of act as a feeder from some of the schools as graduates. Go ahead, Tim. Sorry. I see that Michael Pelletier is here. Did you want to go ahead and run the conversation? Yeah, thank you very much. I was just going to speak to Helene first of all, if that’s okay. The first point, when vetting potential clients, the chief clinical director, myself, Marie Wollette, we always give precedence to Marblehead clients when push comes to shove. As the other folks spoke of, we are a Marblehead organization.

24:02 And historically, that’s what’s happened. And that continues to happen. So just to give you some context about that. The recruiting piece, yeah, roughly costs up between $2,000 and $4,000 to onboard a clinician, which can take anywhere from three months to six months to even now we’re going on roughly almost a year and not being able to find any suitable candidates, which mostly comes with licensure. We keep getting candidates who are not licensed, which we cannot have. They have to be licensed to be able to see clients do the insurance carriers. But we are actively looking, Joanne. I am every single morning at 8 31 a.m. I go on and I check all the platforms that we’re marketing on. And I continue to network outwardly. My own networks, along with the board members and the expectation is to hire a clinical supervisor, which is posted. I can share the link with everybody if they’d like to see it by email, as well as an FTE clinician who will conduct roughly 25, 27 clinical sessions per week. And we’re always searching for fee for service clinicians at all times. Joanne, it’s easier to become a commercial pilot than it is to become a licensed clinician. So part of it is the difficulty in getting licensed within the state. And as Michael mentioned, we have to have licensed clinicians to do the work. The second kind of challenge that we have

25:37 is there’s a lot more competition since COVID started because there’s more telehealth organizations like Talkspace. I think you’ve probably seen some of the commercials on TV. So there’s many organizations like that that are our competition to draw talent within the counseling center. And then, you know, I think there’s a little bit of compassion fatigue, much like the nurses in hospitals. There’s certainly compassion fatigue out there within the mental health professional community with the clinicians. And a lot of them have quit the business as a consequence of COVID, which has been very difficult to treat, particularly with children. COVID is impacting children more than anybody else. And 50% of the mental health problems start before the age of 14. So we’ve got to get to those kids before they hit 14 to try to give them the life skills they need, particularly as it relates to things like social anxiety, which is probably the number one thing we treat in the center. If we don’t get them before the age of 14, they’re going to continue to have problems as an adult. So does that answer your question? I wanted to give you a sense for how competitive is in the environment and why it’s difficult for us to draw talent to the counseling center. Thank you. I have how many full-time therapists you have and do you still have a psychiatrist on staff? We do. Do we have a psychiatrist? Go ahead, Tim. We do still have a psychiatrist on staff. She works, traditionally, we work one day a week. We’re trying to get her to go to two. We have two full-time clinicians. And we have,

27:09 obviously, fee for service, which, you know, are partial full-time, and we pay them per diem, basically. Thanks. So what does that add up to as far as the number of hours, the number of clinical hours? Well, we do over 7,000 a year, Helene. But again, the demand probably is somewhere around nine. Okay. Thank you. I think there’s a strong sense that people that call for service when they’re in crisis and then are told there’s a wait list and I don’t know if they hear there’s 100 people in front of you that lots of those people feel like, well, I hope I don’t feel like this in three months, and they don’t necessarily connect with that service at that time. That is correct. It’s larger. Yeah, that is correct. I mean, the crisis people, particularly as it relates to suicide, we have to treat them immediately. We have to prioritize them, and we do. We try to prioritize diagnoses like schizophrenia, which is very difficult to treat and requires specialized training by the clinician. So there’s certain diagnoses that we try to react to immediately within the town. There are others, forms of social anxiety that people may be pushed for the wait list as a consequence of that, and they’re not treated immediately. So we have to operate that way

28:42 to get to the people who are in the greatest need. Thank you. I appreciate that. Just a quick point. I mean, this is just so there’s no confusion. This is entirely for operational support and dealing with the demands and the volumes. So I just wanted to address that. And I had a quick question. I know that you submitted your budget. So I feel like we’re a little bit late to the party in terms of this conversation, but could you, is there any chance you could submit a revised budget?

29:22 Andrew, it’s already past that point, isn’t it? Because the Finance Committee has already voted on our budget. I think I’m not, I don’t think it’s possible at this stage in the game. Correct me if I’m wrong, Andrew. We were asked to produce a level funded budget so that the increase of that would be a very large ask, essentially. So we’re following direction, obviously, we’d have to go back through the process to go through that. But that’s definitely something we would want to, you know, this year, the budget process started earlier than it usually does. Usually, we don’t start the budget process until February, March. But so, you know, if you are looking for that ask next year, I suggest that we start talking about it in November to see what the climate is. Fair enough, Andrew. The other question that I have was, you know, the ARFA funds were a big conversation with the Selectmen. Do you guys anticipate, Biden spoke this week about putting more federal money against mental health? I don’t really know what that means or how it’s going to be articulated. But do you guys assume that you’re going to see more money from the state and federal government coming down the pike for mental health community organizations like ourselves? So earlier on, when Biden came into office, I was very excited about the potential of, you know, a lot of extra money. It’s really hard to say right now. The financial stability of the country is unknown. So I wouldn’t be looking at that as a possibility at this point.

30:54 You know, obviously, our country needs a lot of infrastructure. Yes, there’s a huge mental health issue, substance abuse issue. We are seeing some grants from the state. And we hope that those do continue. So we will continue to watch out for that. We currently do have a substance abuse grant with some surrounding communities, but that deals more with substance abuse in the school system, generally the high school and younger kids. One of the big accomplishments that we’ve had this year is the YRBS survey. So that, you know, that was a huge accomplishment and that we were able to do some of that work through a grant. Obviously, we would love to see more grant opportunities come along, but it’s unknown at this time. Thanks, Andrew. I think it’s fair to say that we are happy to give the money that we’ve been giving the 60,000. I think we feel like it’s an important contribution from us. We do see now that what was 50% is now 10%. And I think that come, you know, come the fall, I think we should reopen a discussion to see if we can find money to find to help you out more. We can’t promise anything at this point, but I do think that it’s important to have that discussion. The community is extremely lucky to have the Marblehead Counseling Center in town.

32:26 It provides an invaluable service to the community and to my department as well. Anytime that we go out to do inspections or in form of a situation, I have the luck to be able to call upon the Marblehead Counseling Center at any time to come and assist myself or my staff to deal with the situation. So there’s been many situations where we’ve called on them to help with the elder services. Again, it’s a tremendous service and extremely valuable resource that I have the opportunity to just reach out, especially to Terry McDonough and some other people. But Terry has been extremely, you know, it’s a great working relationship that I can call at any time when somebody in the community is at need. Thank you, Andrew. And don’t forget to reach out to me for the 50th or the 55th, the weather is going to be. Just kind of curiosity, what the 60K that we get now, which we’re very grateful for and use very well, what percentage is that of your total budget?

33:40 It’s about 15% of the health department budget. Okay, fair enough. You know, if I’m correct… The health department budget is very, very lean. Most of it is for salary.

34:02 Aline? Yes, if I’m not correct, but I think the school department gave the other 60,000. And maybe you’d look back into the archives. I don’t think that the health department ever cut it. We had the health department paid half and the school department paid half, and then they wrote it out of the budget. Yeah, actually, my understanding of it was that multiple departments contributed, if not all the departments contributed to it. And then I believe in the 80s when the town did see some financial instability, they had to make some cuts and a lot of those were, all those departments started to cut in those areas. I’m digging back and I, if I recall, I sat on the school committee that came out of there, but before we, we’re on public TV, but before we make a firm statement, maybe you’d like to look into that because maybe those people could help out also. Not that we’re passing the buck, because I told you this, this agency is dear to my heart. So I, I, I hired the, your prior director. I worked with the director before that as a president, so I’ve been very close to the agency. Yeah, thank you. Thank you. Well, here’s what we’ll do, Andrew and the rest of the board. We’ll revisit in the fall. We do

35:34 appreciate the time that you provided with us tonight. If you have any more questions, please, you know, reach out to Terri. Terri’s a real asset for us. We do appreciate her presence in the community counseling center and, you know, we want to do more, but just like anything else, we’re, we’re kind of strapped. We have approached a few benefactors locally to try to kind of enhance their annual giving. We lost our biggest benefactor, Ann Siever, last year. She, she did a tremendous amount for the counseling center and other organizations like the Old North and the YMCA, etc. So losing people like that hurts, but we’re doing our best and we appreciate your support and your ongoing support and we’ll revisit in the fall. So thanks for your time tonight and you guys be well. Thank you for coming and thanks for all you do. Yeah, thank you very much. Thanks for having us. Have a nice meeting. Moving on, Andrew, do you have a COVID update, please? Sounds good. So as of March 4th, we have had a total of 3,334 cases so far in town. The case count as of February 18th was 3,295. On February 25th, it was 3,309. We currently have

37:06 25 active cases. So for over the last two weeks, we’ve had a total of 39 cases. We are seeing a dramatic decrease in cases, which is great to see at this time. We have had a total of seven probable cases from February 18th to March 4th. As of March 4th, we have an average daily incident rate of 16.9%, which is a relative change in cases which is going down. The total test to date was 101,723. The total test for the last 14 days, 1,576. And please remember that at this point, there’s a lot of people that are doing at home rapid tests, which is a great thing. We don’t want to discourage that. It provides another set of safety. So we only are seeing, you know, we only see reported PCR tests. The last 14 days to percent positive was 3.3%. That’s a relative same percentage as last week. We have a very high vaccination rate. Most of the age groups are greater than 95% fully vaccinated. For the 5 to 11 years old, we’re at 72% fully vaccinated. We have 7% of the 5 to 11 year olds are partially vaccinated. And obviously, they have not received a booster at this time. For the 12 to 15 year olds, we have 35% that have received a booster at this

38:42 point. For 16 to 19 year olds, again, they’re at greater than 95% fully vaccinated. And 64% of them have received a booster. For the 20 to 29, greater than 95% are fully vaccinated. And 55% of them have received a booster. For 30 to 49 years old, greater than 95% are fully vaccinated. And 63% have received a booster. For the 50 to 64 year olds, 94% are fully vaccinated. And 71% of them have received their booster. For 65 to 74 years, 93% are fully vaccinated. And 78% of those individuals have received their booster. For 75 plus, greater than 95% are fully vaccinated. And 90% of them have received their booster. We have reduced the number of meetings that we’ve held in with the state. We used to have weekly meetings with them on Tuesday afternoons. And at this time, the state is deciding that that can go to every other week. So we will begin that shortly. Just some updates on the mass requirements in certain locations. For K through 12 and childcare transportation as of March 1st, 2021, masks are not required for school buses or vans for early childcare or K through 12 school settings. So those are the major updates for COVID. Obviously, we’ll continue to track this. At some point, we will stop doing the weekly COVID

40:14 report for the town on Marblehead. And we will push people or suggest people take a look at the state data on mass.gov. And really, at this point, we are thankful that we are seeing a dramatic decrease in the number of cases in the community. So that is the COVID-19 update. Could you just repeat that bus date much? Is it March 1st? March 1st. So that’s already happened. Yep, that is already accurate.

40:47 Lorian, do you have a SALT update? I do. And I have a very exciting first statement. This was our last SALT update this morning. So that follows the good news that Andrew has given tonight. I think that with all that we’ve done in the past months and years, I think that we were in sync with what has been going on with the community. And I’m very pleased with where we are now. And I’m sure the board is also. And after school vacation, the entire school system was allowed to mask optional. That was something that was, if you saw the school committee meeting, it was not discussed this morning. So it doesn’t have to go into this SALT report. But the school committee took a different tack than the superintendent. He wanted to wait until this week, after school vacation. And they did it for February 28th at the time of school vacation. So when they returned, and he wanted to wait another week. But they all came back in school, back to school in February 28 with mask optional. So Glover and Brown School were the schools were affected because

42:19 both the Glover, Brown and Village were the ones that came mask optional on the return from school vacation. The high school and the vets were already masked optional. And today was a month that the vets in the high school were able to be mask optional. As far as how this week, this past week went, I’m talking about this past week because school began a week ago and today’s Tuesday. It didn’t, the mask optional did not begin yesterday, if I’m confusing you and myself. But it was last week. So both Glover and Brown with the mask optional, they came in the first week, they were 30 to 40 percent wearing masks. And faculty were somewhere wearing masks. Now this week, starting yesterday, most are now feeling more comfortable not wearing the masks. The next situation is that they’re looking to open up the cafeterias to be pre-pandemic, but they’re going to do this slowly. The students need more, especially the youngsters, the younger students need more socialization. And they’re going to start on this Thursday and Friday with a trial. And then they’re going to see how it works the next few days of this week, the end of the week, and determine how

43:51 they go beginning next Monday. Right now, the Village School still has five to six foot spacing. And the Glover did say that they will stay the same at three feet separation. So the various schools are having some ability to make a decision. The vets will go Thursday and Friday with the trial, as for the high school. The teachers are doing more group work and they’re feeling more comfortable. And as far as the pooling, there were five positive pools when they came back from vacation last week. And out of the five positive pools, there were only two positive cases in the elementary. And then I think there were two in the upper grades after. West people are requesting that the pool testing, because they have to sign for that, the parents have to sign for that. And they seem to think, the school system seems to think that they will be eliminating that shortly. They’re also, because they’re going to open up for the cafeteria, they’re keeping the windows and doors open to make everybody feel safe. And now with the weather breaking a little bit, I don’t know, I think we’re supposed to have snow tomorrow, but with the weather breaking a little bit, they’re going to start going outside if they could.

45:29 I understand that they are short on monitors at the vets, and that might be a problem. Our superintendent offered to go there and monitor outdoor lunch. I think this is my addition. I recall that when they were outside last spring, I think parents were doing it. So I don’t know if they’re going to be, that’s my editorial. I don’t know if they’re going to be doing that again. So then the last part was that there are families that have still been calling that are concerned how this is going. And that’s when I’ve asked, generally, I’ve asked for our community to be respectful of all decisions. And I hope that parents and family members are telling their students to be respectful of students who make choices that are not their choices. So they have been reinforced that the ventilation is up to the minute the windows will be opened. There’s an opportunity for outdoor lunch when there’s good weather. And the staff is even taking opportunities to eat outside if they wish. So the last words we got was, this was the last assault meeting. So this will be my last report until hopefully I never called again to do this, but I’ll be available if we are. You’ve heard serving as our representative on this committee.

47:01 I also told the superintendent that I appreciate him appointing someone from our board. And that I think that we gained a lot from getting the information and firsthand like this. And he thanked us for the partnership. So I think I would like that to go into the minutes that he thanked us for the partnership. Thank you. Okay. Moving on Joanne, your mental health task force update, please. Thank you, Todd. So we had our most recent meeting last night, and we had a robust attendance from the task force. The first thing that we discussed was our community conversations. The last one being our suicide discussion that we had back in early February. And our next discussion is going to be held on hopefully May 5th. We’re aiming that conversation to be about aimed to our senior community members and their adult children and caregivers of our community, our senior residents. And our hope is to build a conversation. Sharon from the Counseling Center and Lisa are building out the conversation that’s going to be similar to what we had briefly introduced in our speaker panel, talking about some of the different unique challenges and mental health challenges our senior residents are encountering and how we can get support and

48:35 recommend accessing different tools and resources as they experience some of these challenges. So we’re aiming to have that on May 5th. And we push back, we are working with the NAN program, which is another organization that engages conversation about suicide awareness and prevention. And we’re aiming to have that in late February, excuse me, late September, in the new year, in the new school year. We did hear from our police chief, Dennis King, that the grant from DMH that he had applied for earlier is in process. And we’re very excited and just really so impressed with this effort. He’s going to be able to access a 24-hour-a-week mental health clinician to work with our police force. And also every member of our Marblehead Police Department will be receiving, I believe it’s 40 hours of training in CIT to help equip them with an understanding of how to work with people who are having mental health issues. And so very impressed with that opportunity. One of the things, we’re looking at new initiatives for the task force going forward. And something that really engaged a really robust discussion was working with volunteers. We get lots of people that are interested in participating, volunteering some of their skills and talents to the work done by the task force. And then it

50:07 turned into a really big conversation about how do we bring these people that are offering their time and talent and leverage it for some of the needs in the community. And we’re talking about working with our faith community as partners and spur. And the first thing we’re going to be working on is building out a connection page on our website, the marbleheadcares.org website, which we hope to continue to build and bring resources and tools into the community that people can access as needed. So I think this is something, it’s a new idea that’s evolving, but it sure generated a lot of enthusiasm and response in the conversation at our meeting. And it’s something I think lots of wheels are turning. And so please look forward to hearing more about that as we proceed. Something else, we did have a community member, a community participant, join our conversation. And Reese Dahlberg shared with us that she’s working on a program with our Parks and Rec Department on March 31st at the MHS Auditorium, working with DC Safe Schools Facilitators, which are going to be coming in and doing an interactive training and panel discussion for the Marblehead community about how we can make youth sports more LGBTQ plus inclusive. So that’s something that the task force enthusiastically agreed to support. And our next meeting is coming up. Let’s see here, we are

51:44 looking forward to having that on March 21st, the first day of spring. So please stay tuned, lots of enthusiastic work continuing to be met by the Marblehead Mental Health Task Force. What a difference a year makes. We started last March, I think, or April to start forming this and we’ve had two programs and one going and I congratulate you. Elaine, it’s a really talented group of experts on the task force. Agreed. We had good applicants. Thanks for that report and for all the ongoing work. Thank you, Todd. Let’s see, next up is the transportation discussion.

52:39 I just want to start by saying we, I think we need to choose before town meeting if we’re going to do plan A or plan B. The warrant meeting for the town is April 11th and our next meeting was going to be April 12th. So I would like to say that we have our next meeting on April 5th, the first Tuesday of the month instead of the second, and we can have this month to continue making our decisions. But I think that we should plan on April 5th, making our final decision for where we’re going forward. And we can get some information from Andrew. We can get more data, but I think that should be our plan is to schedule our next meeting for April 5th instead of April 12th. Does that work for both of you and Andrew and Andrea? It works for me. That works for me. So that will be our next scheduled meeting and we will, as I said, that will be our decision, our vote for where we’re going forward. So Andrew, is there any updates from the architect or from Jerry? No real updates, but you know we did have a well-attended committee forum last week. I think you know some of the self-information that I gathered from that is obviously there’s a concern about traffic for option B coming in from Green Street that we’ll need to take a look at that. There was a planning board decision and some traffic study information that was provided in 2012. So we will take a review of that. We will also speak with our police chief,

54:13 our DPW director, and potentially go out and ask for some determinations about traffic, or at least get a memo from an individual that’s worthy in traffic studies and stuff like that. So more to come about that. We do hear your concerns, especially from the Arnold Terrace community, and you know we want to have further conversations with you. One of the hardest things about the entrance to the transfer station is that from the Green Street and that access road is the proximity from the access road into the buildings. We don’t have a lot of green space in those areas. Yes, we have a well-planted buffer further into the site, but that is something that we will continue to take a look at, and we’d love to open up those conversations with representatives from Arnold Terrace area and stuff like that. The other thought is that we should probably put together a pros and cons list for the meeting on April 5th so the board can take a look and weigh some of their options, you know, for both option A and option B. So we’ll begin to work on that pros and cons list. And then the idea of putting together a building committee. Obviously, so we took a look at what the Abbott Hall Building Committee was. So you had representatives from Board of Selectmen, Historical Commission, Finance Committee, Building Commissioner, Town Planner, Town Administrator, local builders, and obviously we would have our architect in the OPM if that’s something that the board would want to take a look

55:46 at. But overall, it was a well-attended meeting. You know, we allowed everybody to try to get as much feedback as possible. And if people still have feedback, you know, you’re always welcome to email myself or give the office a call so we can continue to discuss that or take a look at, you know, trying to provide some of that information. I think the pros and cons list for A versus B would be very helpful to have at our next meeting. Okay, well, we’ll definitely start working on that. Obviously, you know, we began working on that already, but we’ll make sure that we have a pretty solid pros and cons list. Who’s going to develop that? We’re supposed to call you with our… Yeah, so you can submit, you know, you can submit your pros and cons to me through email. Obviously, I’ll be working with the… we’re reviewing the meeting, recording itself to listen to the public again. I’ll work with the owner’s project manager, the architect, to try to put some of that stuff together. But obviously, I would love to have feedback from the board. Andrew, I’m sorry, my question would be if that recording is something that we could access, I think that might be helpful as we proceed just to review some of the… On the MHTB website. Gotcha, all right, thank you. So we didn’t have an opportunity to, because it was late with the meeting the other night, about some various… I had some very minor

57:18 questions. Should we save that when we have a discussion next meeting? I have one question that I feel that is… that I’d like to ask tonight, but the others possibly could be on our pros and cons list, I guess. Go ahead. The one question I do have, the concerns about the trailer, especially depending on whether we select A or B, are we comfortable as a board that all concerns are taken care of? I went to the transfer station, I spoke to Kay. She showed me with my own eyes that she walked me through, and so did the young man Jerry. Is that the other gentleman, Jerry too? You’re a young man too, but I was thinking of the other young man. Would have been either Marty or Ralph. Marty, I knew there was a Y in there. Okay, so he took me around to the back of the pit and showed me where the electrical problem had been. Kay showed me the things inside the trailer where there had been a rodent problem, where there was several other things that were questioned, a hole in the floor or something. She was very satisfied. I hope she was honest with me. It didn’t seem like it was the same story that I had heard last…

58:49 at the meeting that we had last week, but I just want to make sure with our director that that trailer is what’s going to be satisfactory and if it can last through our construction. I assume we’ll continue to listen to the employees and deal with any concerns or questions that come up. We want to provide a safe and good working environment. It seems with my eyes that it’s not beautiful, but I think it’s functional. So that’s how I… in case things satisfied and Marty seems satisfied. But if we hear more, or if you hear more Andrew, please tell us okay. And obviously the plan is to try to get them into a new scale house as soon as possible. So where that’s going to be modular, that could happen sooner than… Obviously that’s part of the project. So we want the project moving forward as soon as possible, but obviously that’s going to determine from our April 5th meeting the direction that the board chooses. But yeah, I mean obviously the project has been extended longer than we had anticipated and we would love to get moving on the next phase of the project. Well, either way we can’t do anything to after town meeting though, which is two months away. What would be all ready to go after town meeting? I mean, whichever way we…

1:00:23 No, obviously you’re going to have to make sure you’re finalizing your plans, receive permits, go out to bid and then begin construction. Go out to bid, so that will take several months. You had more questions, Celine, or did you want to say that? No, I think the others are… we can handle those next week. They’re simple. I was just more interested at this time in the trailer. Celine? If I may make a few comments about something that resonated with me at the community forum was some of the conversation from the residents at Arnold Terrace, I thought, that they presented their point of view and the questions and concerns that they raised. And concerns that they raised, I was thinking it might be really valuable to have a sit down and listen to them, get some feedback, understanding what specifically their concerns are. And I think also sharing some of the background, because I think perhaps this has been ongoing for a very long time. And if we can make sure that we’ve got all of the information about what has been done to try and protect that border, that neighborhood border line for them and make it as comfortable as possible. If we can pull that data and just engage a conversation,

1:01:57 I would be really happy to sit down with some of the members of the HOA and just listen, because no matter A or B, certainly, I think it’s worthwhile to have a conversation with those residents. I thought they were really gracious in the way they presented their concerns to us at the community forum. And I think that it’s worth continuing that conversation. So thank you, Andrew. I agree. I think it’s very valuable to sit down with that group. Obviously, we do deal with Carol Kennedy, who’s kind of one of the representatives. But if there’s concerns through individual members, we would love to hear from those individual members themselves. And yes, of course, we would love to sit down with them and try to absorb any of their concerns. Okay, great. Being a good neighbor, right? Yes. Because obviously, we’re going to be neighbors for a very long time, and we want to make sure that we both respect each other. And I think something we find with some of these community conversations is when we sit down and listen to one another, especially when it’s done respectfully, we can all share ideas, and ideas can grow and evolve, and we can really come forward with the best plan. So I think this group is really open to that. So I think that would be welcome for both sides. Could I suggest that the board send a letter to the residents of Arnold Terrace,

1:03:30 inviting them to a certain time or to come to our next meeting? Some people might just say they never even knew about this, if they don’t follow the Board of Health. And is that something that you could arrange, Andrew? I think we definitely want to have a meeting with them before our next meeting, if possible. We want to try to get together with them as soon as possible to understand all their concerns. So is there a way to reach out to the neighborhood? So our contact at this point is Carol Kennedy, who is kind of representing them at this time. But if there’s other individuals that want to contact us to sit down with us, that would be great. I think that might be valuable to go back to and see the names of the residents that spoke really eloquently about their neighborhood. And maybe we could reach out to them specifically and just say, let’s follow up and let’s talk and listen. Were you thinking Joanne, like having you and people in the conference room, I mean, like, because we wouldn’t be a posted meeting. Also, were you wanting to volunteer to be the go to? Okay. I would, yes, thank you. I would be delighted too. And I think anyone that would be interested would be most welcome. And just, I don’t know, those are the kind of conversations that where I think the most, those are the most successful conversations when

1:05:00 everyone comes to the table and wants to hear what the other party wants to say. So I think we could consider it very fruitful. But I would like to suggest whether Carol gets in touch with all the neighbors, Arnold Terrace, the board gets in touch with them, that they all be invited, not just the ones that were at the meeting last time, because I know of people that live in Arnold Terrace that came to a lot of meetings that we had early on, and they were not at the meeting. So I don’t want to miss anybody. Good point. Carol, Kettie is going to be at my house tomorrow morning. And I will inform her that this conversation is being had and that, and would you like me to put her in touch with you Joanne? Yes, please. Thank you so much, Jerry. That’d be great. She just, she and my wife were going to a museum tomorrow, so she’ll be at my house. Okay, well I think that’s a very good step, productive step. Is there anything else anybody wants to discuss about this? Andrew, Elaine, Joanne, Jerry, if not, we will, as I said, make our decision at our next meeting on April 5th. And will Jerry and Dana be at the meeting? Jerry, be there. Sure, we can have Jerry and Dana at the next meeting.

1:06:32 We can ask any final questions. If nobody else has more, I’m going to open it up to public comment just related to the transfer station. We can have more public comment after the director’s report, but if there’s anybody who has any questions or comments, I see a hand raised already. And like always, we’ve got two minutes per person, and just introduce yourself before speaking, please. So I’ll start with David. David Lieberman, Thrive Arnold Terrace. So I want to start by saying I appreciate the amount of thought that was given to our concerns in this discussion this evening. Andrew, I don’t know if you saw, but I did send an email your way, I believe the day after the meeting. I haven’t seen any acknowledgement of that. I’m happy to resend if you haven’t received it. The question I’d like to raise tonight is actually related to the issue that I raised at the last public forum around what, if any, mitigation for noise, for fumes is being considered for that region that, as Andrew points out, is basically just directly abutting the entranceway. My concern is that there’s a lot of momentum, I sense, growing for a decision to be made quickly. And I would like to know if

1:08:02 there’s any proposal for mitigation to be implemented there, that whatever expected cost of that mitigation is also included in the budget that’s put before the community, and frankly, put before this board for its next discussion. Because honestly, as Andrew noted at our last meeting, no thought had been given on that front at all. So clearly, this isn’t something that can be done for free. And to my mind, that at least has to have some impact on total cost of option B with respect to the total cost of option A. Thanks. Thank you. Something to absolutely discuss and consider. And I think that’s another reason why Joanne’s idea is such a good one to to get all this stuff out there before we make our final decision. Okay, next is Terry. Terry Toro, 113 Jersey Street. In regards to the trailer and the conversation that Helene had with Kay Monahan. Number one, they’re not the, I’m also the MMU president, the employees are not satisfied with their working conditions at the transfer station. I don’t know how that was misinterpreted by showing holes in the walls and you know, road and infestation. I believe that Helene and

1:09:37 Joanne Miller both went out there about six weeks ago and talked to the employees. And it was my understanding that they said they were happy to have a job. They didn’t want to cause any trouble, but they were not satisfied with the conditions of the trailer or the conditions of the transfer station work area in general. Also, I just want to point out that a board member coming up to an employee who’s already not too sure about how their department head feels about them, asking them, are you satisfied with your work conditions? They’re not going to tell the truth. They’re not going to, they’re going to be intimidated and afraid. You know, that’s what happens when, when, you know, when bad work conditions and not listening to the needs of your employees takes precedent. The employees that becomes, it becomes normalized and that’s just the way their day goes and they’re afraid to lose their job. So I just would like to reiterate that if this project is going to continue, that trailer is just going to keep, keep deteriorating the longer it’s there. So, you know, I believe that the, oh, you’re just going to cut me off. I can’t finish my, I can’t finish. Time, you’re not done yet, but I’m telling you, give you a warning. Thank you. Appreciate that. The trailer will continue to deteriorate.

1:11:13 I believe the quote for a new leased trailer was a thousand dollars for the trailer and maybe a couple thousand dollars more for the installation. So I’m asking again that the trailer be replaced so that it’s, there is a safe and healthy place for the employees during construction. Thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you. Pleasure as always. Okay. Directors report Andrew because I think we’re done with public comments. All right. So just a few items. Tomorrow we have household hazardous waste. So this is a residential collection event again. So ACV will be driving around town and to the community of Swamscat picking up household hazardous waste. They bring it back to the transfer station where they repack it and they get rid of that. This has been working very well for both the community and for our department. And we will continue to do these events on a quarterly basis. So if you are unable to sign up for tomorrow’s event, the next event will be in June. I just want to put out a reminder about trash and recycling delay notification. So if we happen to have a delay and it’s not your basic holiday delay, we like to use code red and we like to use the Marblehead Board of Health listserv for emails. So I want to remind residents to sign up for these two different things. So to sign up for code red, you go onto marblehead.org.

1:12:45 You’ll see the highlight for code red. You can go on that and you can make sure that your phone number, your email or your cell phone is part of that. So that’s a really good piece so we can contact you at any time as well as the Marblehead listserv for the Board of Health. If we need to send out notification, I have a very large email listserv and we can push email out through that. So just a reminder on that. Today we had a meeting to discuss capital improvements and the rolling stock for town meeting. We do have a roll-off truck that we have on the list for requests for vehicles. So the roll-off truck that we’ve had has been with us for over 10 years. We’ve had some issues with that over the last couple of years and we’ve been looking to get a new vehicle. So I just want to remind the Board that that would be something that could potentially be coming up for a town meeting in the rolling stock. They don’t list every vehicle. It’s part of the rolling stock article. But I just want to make sure that we… What is that truck again, please? It’s called a roll-off truck. It’s how we move the 30 or the 40 yard containers and how we haul all the recycling over to JRM to grief into the other vendors. The last thing is that as we head into spring weather, I do start to see some boat work being done. We will be bringing back the shrink wrap dumpster. So that will be back hopefully on site around April 1st. And that’s it.

1:14:21 All right, public comment period. We discussed the transfer station. Is there any other public comment? Okay, Erin. Hi, I’m just trying to figure out how to unmute. Hey, everyone. I just wanted to thank you all for the work that you’ve done on the mental health piece and task force. All three of you and especially Joanne, I know that she’s the liaison for that. I just think it’s phenomenal like what has been done in just a year and especially just literally relying on the resources internally that we have within our town and volunteers stepping forward. It’s amazing that you’ve done an event in November and January and now something upcoming in May. So I just wanted to thank you for that. And everyone’s just… I mean, from what I can tell, everyone’s just been very impressed by the quality of that task force that you guys have put together. Thank you, Erin. And Joanne’s not just the liaison, she’s the chair. So yes. Thank you all for supporting it. Thank you so much. Have a good night, guys. Thanks. Okay, so our next meeting is, as I said several times, April 5th.

1:15:56 I don’t see anybody else with the hand raised. And we have a motion to adjourn. So moved. Seconded. Miss Joanne Miller. In favor. Miss Colleen Hazlett. In favor. Dr. Todd Dolfbecker. In favor. Good night.